Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
—SWIFT
There was trouble on deck just beneath the forecastle. The breathless weather was taking effect. Some men had been gambling and, inevitably, someone had lost. There was an argument. Insults were hurled. Accusations. A sword was drawn, a Toledo rapier, its ornate silver guard enwrapping the hand which held the blade’s point suspended in air. The blade weaved a dangerous, delicate dance before the face of its victim. The man with the sword advanced. The other man, surprised by the instrument threatening him, retreated. At some point the deck railing would halt his withdrawal. Then what?
Sotil had seen it happen. He knew enough not to involve himself. The swordsman was skilled despite his youth. He was also hot tempered. The younger son of a noble, he had signed on despite Don Juan’s reservations about him. He dreamed of gold and glory. Now he was close to killing a man.
The man was a common sailor. The dice had fallen his way once too often. He had, perhaps, been a little too pleased in collecting his coins. Now he faced death from a thoughtless aristocrat, angered at having been humiliated. Even were he to fight back he could be executed for striking a noble. The point was moot. His opponent would not give him the chance to strike before steel had found its way through his heart.
Sotil sent a ship’s boy to find the captain-general. He watched as other men subtly positioned themselves for the moment after the thrust. The sailor was the bigger man, solid and muscular from his work but the young noble was clearly the swifter, more expert fighter. He’d spent half his lifetime learning his fatal skills. He was slim and fit and wore his hair fashionably long. He had friends of similar ilk, and now they were moving to back him as the sailor’s comrades did the same for their man.
Sotil began to panic. His work was to pilot the ship, work the crew; not stand in the way of a blade-wielding maniac. He shouted from the aft castle, hoping desperately to delay the altercation.
“You there! Antonio! Put down that blade!”
The young man glanced toward Sotil for an instant, then his dark eyes moved back to his victim. He was no fool to be distracted. This cheating sailor was going to die. They moved ever closer toward the railing, both men on their toes, prepared for action. The sailor’s eyes were wide with disbelief. This cub was going to kill him. He thought to dodge and run down the deck but knew his opponent would be too quick. He thought to drop to his knees, beg forgiveness, yet knew as well that would be precisely the kind of confession this killer wanted before he ran him through. He thought finally, when he’d reached the rail, to grab for a belaying pin in the faint chance he might block the thrust.
“You would murder a man without a weapon?” he rasped in his fear, a final hope to appeal to the noble’s integrity. He should have known better.
“I kill no man,” the boy answered calmly. “I rid the world of a vermin swindler!”
“Please, your honour, I did not cheat. The bones fell my way. It happens sometimes.”
“Too many times this day to be true,” came the reply, the sword thrust forward, driving the sailor more quickly back. In seconds he would be finished. The young man leered at him.
“Swindler and a coward!” he said. “Will you not fight, you snivelling old man?”
The ships’ railing touched the sailor’s back. The rapier leapt for his heart.
And was struck aside in a clash of steel so harsh and jarring the boy’s blade was driven down to the deck. The lad sought to pull it back up but as he did the other blade, which had driven his down, was suddenly beneath his sword and sent it flying into the air. It curled twice and dived into the sea, swallowed and gone forever. The young man cursed and tried to draw his dagger. Before he could, steel caressed his chin. One move and he would lose half his face.
Juan Ponce de Leon nicked the boy’s chin. Blood flowed down into the lad’s silk blouse, staining it crimson. The young noble sought his handkerchief to staunch the blood. He was not allowed.
“Let it bleed, youngster. Be thankful it comes from your pretty face rather than your liver,” Juan Ponce uttered mercilessly. “You draw your sword against a poor sailor, then torment him before your thrust. You have much to learn Antonio de Tordesillas.”
“You surprised me!” the youngster spat back. The answer given him was another quick slice of his left ear. He squealed and brought a hand up to it. The lobe was gone.
“And yet again you are surprised,” his commander responded, “and foolish as well to insult a man with a blade in your face.”
The boy said nothing. His face had turned pale from the shock of the wounding and the utter ruthlessness of the acts. Juan Ponce glanced past him.
“I note some of you appear ready to draw,” he said carelessly. “If so, do it now. I have blood on my blade. The steel thirsts for more. Anyone of you youngsters wishing a try? What am I but an old man, eh? No? No one? What will you do when Calusa warriors surround you? Your young friend here has made an error. I shall offer a lesson to make use of this moment. When one fights a man anything might happen. A sword comes to his aid ... a shot is fired ... a dagger is thrown ... and you who would kill a man, so centred upon killing him you forget the rest of the world around you, lose the world in a breath of negligence.”
“I have been taught to fix on my opponent,” Antonio de Tordesillas said softly. “Was that wrong, captain-general?”
“You have been taught to fence, not to fight. In battle there are hundreds who want to kill you. You’ve not been in battle, have you?”
“No, sir.
“You will be. I guarantee it. The Calusa we met the last time in Florida came down upon us in hordes. You think I brought you along for the sailing? This sailor you threatened to kill ... he is here for sailing. He is good at his work. I brought you for battle. Are you as proficient as he? I think not. Look how easily you let down your guard while you faced an unarmed man. You were waylaid by the last thing you expected. This is what happens in battle. So while you fight your mind must be as agile as your body. There may be a friend to watch your back. There may be, just as easily, none. So let this be your lesson.” Juan Ponce turned to the silent audience of Spanish patricians: “Tomorrow, when you practise your combative arts, remember what happened today, to Antonio, who thought himself in control until the moment he wasn’t. Practise in groups. No more individual combats!”
The sermon had had its effect. There was no reply but from Tordesillas who said simply: “I am sorry, Don Juan. I thought I’d been cheated. I lost my temper.”
“You have lost more than that, my young friend. You tried to kill a crew member; a man with as much right as you, indeed more, to be included among us. In my younger days I’d have had you thrown overboard, joining your blade in its swim to the bottom. As it is you have lost your rapier. It shall not be replaced. No armourer will assist you. I shall give orders that make it so.”
“What am I to do, captain-general? I must have a sword to fight.”
“Oh, you’ll fight. I’ll see to that. Once you find a weapon on the battlefield you’ll use it! I don’t care if it is a wooden club, or a piece of shell, or some dying friend’s sword. That is how you shall restore your honour; by finding a replacement for the weapon you lost.”
“You cannot do this to me,” the youth said.
“Indeed I can. Indeed I do. Or would you care to challenge me now? For your honour? If that be the case, you shall have a sword!”
Antonio de Tordesillas knew very little of life, but he knew enough not to challenge a veteran conquistador. He backed away, silently, towards his friends who took him to the surgeon to bandage his wounds. Don Juan Ponce de Leon, his captain-general, simply turned his back and took the steps up to join his pilot, Alonzo Sotil, on the aft castle.
“No further punishment?” Sotil inquired.
“Do you think I could harm him more than I have?”
“No, Don Juan. I think not. And you’ve made him a better man.”
“I can hope,” the old man responded. “I once demolished his like when I was a lad in training. I defended myself then from my tormentors. I would offend myself had I done so now.”
Sotil, having no idea what his leader was insinuating, left the subject alone. There are secrets to all men’s lives. Some more, some less. The man beside him had more than his share. That other log, for instance, he spent so much time with. It would be useless to pry.
I had a friend once, not my dog Becerillo nor my lieutenant Sotomayor, but an equal with whom I found great satisfaction. I met him out here in these Indies, for he was a man much like me. Perhaps that was why I was drawn to him. His name was Vasco Nunez de Balboa. I got to know him when he was a farmer, like me, on Hispaniola, in Higuey, where we both colonized for some years. They were good years.
We both were still relatively young, strong men then. We had settled the natives for Viceroy Ovando and then enjoyed our rewards. The land was good in Higuey. We possessed neighbouring encomiendas just outside Salvaleon, and carefully oversaw the work of building our plantations. Curiously, despite our battles, neither of us felt any animosity toward the natives. Indeed, we considered we’d done enough in taking their land and, unlike so many other, more foolish Spaniards, did not enslave them.
Instead we worked with them and in many cases paid them to work. But there was work even the natives would refuse and for that, we purchased black men shipped from Africa. Those slaves, brought by Portuguese ships, finding themselves in a world so different from the one they had known so far from this world, had no choice but to work. Our plantations out-produced other men’s because of those black men. Soon enough, because so many natives died of disease, other owners began to use the blacks. I recall this was very early on, after Columbus had tried to rebuff slavery in his ‘Indies’. It was under Bobadilla the practice began. The only sensible thing the fool accomplished in the year before he was arrested. Of course, Bobadilla had ensured he took a percentage from every importation and sale. He was that type.
But I write of Balboa ... to look at him one would have seen a true conquistador, which he was. He was a large man, square shaped, his muscles like a blacksmith’s. His face was hard set and darkened by years of sun, his eyes were dark as well. He wore an elongated beard, very full and as black as pitch at that time.
He was my kind of man. He possessed no airs of superiority yet owned a self-assurance which held him in good stead. He commanded well, not ordering men so much as suggesting their movements. Yet his detachments obeyed as quickly and surely as any good captain’s. In battle he was dependable and sure to be at your flank when you needed him. I respected him, and I liked him.
I knew he liked me as well, for we would spend evenings at each other’s residences, talking quietly of our plans for our farms, recalling our days as soldiers, speaking of our homelands far away and, perhaps I must admit, plotting our ambitions for the future.
He was born and raised in Jerez de Los Caballeros in the northwest not far from Leon. His training was with Don Pedro de Portocarrero, in Moguer, in the south near Seville where my studies took place. He admitted one day, over a bit too much wine, that he too had had problems with the finer arts at Court. We laughed together, sharing our embarrassments. It was the easy conversation of men who see the world in much the same way, who are comfortable finally in their own skins.
For six years we found ourselves apart from the maelstrom of political struggles while Viceroy replaced Viceroy and the courtiers in Spain fought their parchment battles for control. It was after that time I received my orders to explore and conquer Boriquen. Vasco was sent south to Darien. As a result I became Governor of Boriquen, San Juan Bautista (as Columbus had named it), San Juan de Puerto Rico as it became known. And Balboa? He went on to greater things.
I knew him later when he became famous: finding the great southern sea which he named Pacific, so proving Columbus wrong. And I knew him when he was named Governor of that Sea and all the lands which touched it. I also heard, years later, he had been accused and tried as I too had been. He was beheaded for having been too successful; put to death as I was intended to be put to pasture.
I wish that he could be with me now on this most uncommon of voyages. He would have understood founding a new colony, having been stripped of my old ones. He would have been by my side in this, ready for battle with the Calusa yet ready, as well, to build farms and villages. But he could never have thought of that which I truly seek. He lacked the imagination for that.
Perhaps I possess too much of it.
Juan Ponce lay down to rest after writing. The altercation with Tordesillas had fatigued him. He no longer relished the clash of dispute as he once had. Younger men thrived upon it and he knew the only reason for Antonio de Tordesillas’ apology was his fear of Juan Ponce’s reputation. He would do well to fear it, the old man half smiled, for even now he, the veteran, could destroy the lad. His thoughts brought him memories of fighting tactics but he chose not to write these in his secret log for he was tired. Still, as he rested he thought of a particular day, for that day had sealed his reputation and set him upon the life he had lived.
He recalled that the squires were in the training yard having just finished prayers for Terse. For an instant he pictured that yard: yellow dust, stacks of arms, the barked commands of the trainers echoing off the stone walls. He had been only fifteen years old at the time, young but experienced from intense combat training. His instructors had liked him for they had found and drawn out a rare talent within him for battle. He had known he was the envy of other boys, even those older and nearing the time they would leave for real warfare. What he had not known was how deep that envy lived in certain of them: those aristocrats from the best families who considered themselves somehow superior.
These were the ones who had laughed at him in his other, more gentle yet less productive studies. They had mimicked him mercilessly in the dance, mincing about the dusty yellow yard bowing and scraping like dunces ... like him. They were the ones who played the bear, bowling over others playing court ladies. By this time his temper had left him, or had been trained out of him as nonsensical and liable to get him killed. When one entered combat, he was taught to forget offence and terminate insult; for should either get in the way of his focus everything he’d been taught, then trained until his body performed functions automatically, would be for naught. He’d developed the stratagem of avoiding the squires’ slights, only to teach them the meaning of revenge during their drills.
He had not been gentle. Even the older ones had been thrashed, piece by piece, and left bloody in the yellow dust. But the day he recalled so clearly was the day they had plotted their own revenge.
Dulled weapons were used during training and padded clothing offered some protection, though each boy was sure to wear a morion to protect his head. That day Juan Ponce had toed his line after prayers, dulled sword in his gloved hand, not yet wearing his helmet. He’d awaited his next training partner. It mattered little to him who it was. Yet what happened at that moment altered everything. A cry of pain had come from a squire far across the court yard. That distraction had taken the trainers away, all rushing to help the injured boy.
Juan Ponce suddenly had found himself facing two of the older aristocrats. He knew them as his most blatant tormentors. The one on his left was tall and slim with red hair and blue eyes, clearly Aragonese. The other was muscular and possessed of that darkness which came from Andalusia. Both of them he had bested in single practice, both obviously intended revenge. For each brandished a shining, razor sharp rapier and each wore his morion, strapped to his chin and ready for combat. Real combat. There was no chance to prepare for them. They were on him like wolves taking down their prey. Bright metal flashed in the dusty sunlight. Juan Ponce leapt back, out of reach for an instant, but in that instant he’d found time for tactics.
Two opponents. Two killing swords. Confident. Perhaps over-confident. They advanced on him backing him toward a wall. He knew should he end at that wall his life would end there as well. He required space to manoeuvre. Quickly he took it. Juan Ponce faked a move to his left, forcing the Aragonese to thrust. Using his morion as a shield he blocked the thrust and spun further left, leaving the second opponent behind his partner, unable to reach their victim. Thus the right-handed swordsmen had had to pivot, and the Andalusian had had to come around his partner.
For that instant Juan Ponce faced but one opponent. He used the time well. Simulating a thrust with his dull training sword he swung his helmet, sharp peaked steel crest, into the face of the Aragonese who was just then trying another thrust. The helmet missed his face but clanged with such a ringing din, helmet steel on steel, it took the squire to his knees.
No time to think, Juan Ponce’s sword swept in a parry against the Andalusian’s second thrust, knowing from training where it would come. But the rapier made it through his defence and ripped open his padding, slicing his chest. His opponent smiled, thinking he’d done more damage than he had. For that split second he’d let down his guard expecting Juan Ponce to crumple. Instead he watched helplessly as Juan Ponce appeared to fall, spinning down, yet low enough then to swing out his steel sword and slash the aristocrat’s unprotected kneecap.
With a wail the boy collapsed, bone bruised or broken, it did not matter. Then the Aragonese was at Juan Ponce again, aiming for his face, thrusting perfectly just missing an eye, his blade carving a six inch scar on the left side of Juan Ponce’s skull. Juan Ponce rolled in the dust in the direction he’d been pivoting and sprang to his feet out of range.
He arose with blood pouring from his wound. But the Andalusian was on the ground grasping his crippled knee, having forgotten all else in his pain. Still the Aragonese, who had brought blood, was more confident and once again advanced. He’d forgotten he was alone this time. His blade was parried and his elbow smashed by the steel crest of the morion coming up under his offensive thrust. His hand went numb. His blade flew like an arrow out of his hand. His eyes followed it as he screamed in pain.
Juan Ponce did not miss a second time. He split the boy’s face as he slammed his sword’s pommel into it: breaking the nose, smashing the cheekbone, dropping the boy like a stone to the dust.
In twenty seconds it was over.
The trainers returned and saw what had happened. They helped the boys to the surgeon: the Andalusian screaming epithets at the boy who had beaten and shamed him; the Aragonese prince, unconscious. He had, after that, never been seen again at Don Pedro’s court. It was clear he’d been scarred for the rest of his life.
Juan Ponce had sought help from another instructor to bandage his head. He’d refused to leave the yard. He’d felt everyone’s eyes upon him as he sat quietly while the dressing had been applied. When he rose, steadily, to toe the line for his next training run, only an instructor would stand against him.
No one had ever challenged Juan Ponce de Leon to combat again.
And the old man drifted off to sleep, smiling.