As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower in the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
—PSALMS 103: 15-16
Twilight was setting in as he reached the edge of the swamp. He had found his way back, just as the witch had told him, because of his own destruction. The slashes and breaks in the vegetation had guided him. Once or twice he had lost his way. He found himself turning and slogging in circles with no sunlight to guide him so deep in under the canopy. He could not trust the light as it refracted off water or rebounded off trees. The shafts of light and depths of shadows did indeed create a strange maze. Somehow, however, he had eventually regained his way. He worried a while over the Calusa, whether their spears would wing out of the foliage at him. There were none. She had not followed him, though he was sure some of those painted devils were lurking, following him to report to her his demise, or deliverance.
He waded through the shallower water, his clothing soaked through, his chainmail vest heavy, his morion feeling heavier still. He would not remove them, nor the sword by his side. They were as much a part of him as the shells of the tortoises he observed perched on logs as he passed. They would plop into the water, alarmed at the huge monster labouring by them. He moved slowly and carefully, as they did, afraid his foot would be caught in a root, or that he would sink in some concealed hole. As he struggled on he began to think himself little more than one of those swamp turtles, slow and armoured and toothless, making his way through the dingy half dark. He felt like a foolish, purposeless beast.
His thoughts strayed in bizarre directions. He reflected upon his life, perhaps to feel less an animal and more a man, but his thoughts were not ordered or logical. They were wisps of remembrance. He recalled himself in the midst of battles, the rage and pain and fear simultaneous. His years of experience, and more than a little luck, had bestowed his survival in war. In the press of clashing steel and muscled horses, amid stabbing pikes and slashing swords, beneath the explosions of guns with their powder-clouds thickening the dust and blindness of battle, in the spatter of blood and the howls of the wounded, he belonged. Within all that confusion he had ever been alert and commanding. So why not in his life?
He knew war far better than he knew his own life. He comprehended the choreography of battle more surely than he did the actions of living. He understood tactics more than tact. He had always been the boy in the corner while courtiers played so adeptly around him. Even much later, even as a man with a reputation, against Diego Colon and Bartolome de las Casas, he’d been defenceless.
He had remained the distant father to his estranged daughters and deceitful son. Why was his son so successful when the boy had appeared to do nothing of note? Why had his son come to hate him? He thought briefly of his own father and his differentiation from the man as he made his own way, a way as inevitable as his character. Was life simply cycles: his father, himself, his son?
Why was it, thinking of Leonor, then Emilia, why was it he could not dominate them as he did men in war? For they had both made war upon him. What forces had fashioned them to become so sly and evasive, even as they’d pretended to love him? How could they have been taught such cunning when he, destined for command and governance, never was? Why had he never understood them as he had his comrades, his soldiers, or even his animals? Leonor had twisted him with her ploys. Emilia had bewitched him with her plots. Together, they had defeated him.
Once a famed conquistador, then a veteran explorer, then rising in rank to governor, he’d been reduced to believing in myths, in magical waters, and new beginnings. They had done that. Or had he done it himself?
Had it all been the fantasies of an old man; of a man so desperate not to become powerless yet in the very act of trying to prevent it, becoming precisely what he had feared? He wondered who would remember him for the things he had done in the trivial length of his life.
And yet there had been good, wonderful things: Columbus and his New World, Sotomayor’s loyalty, Becerillo’s unconditional affection, Medel’s fearless love of the sea, Nunez de Guzman’s kindness and care, Ovando’s nobility, Balboa’s friendship. Every instance was cause to rejoice were it not for the other side to his life. Emilia, Leonor, his children, Diego Colon, las Casas, even the bureaucrats who had come to replace the true pioneers. Nothing was new, only experience, but experience was simply the loss of innocence.
There was no magical fountain.
There were only the dreams of an ageing man, feeling the aches of his plod through the swamp. This was his reality, he realized: an old man past his prime, in is dotage, not at all what he’d dreamed of becoming.
“I am too young to be old!” he muttered, for despite the physical aches and emotional pains, he still felt vitality in his soul. Old age had come upon him so stealthily. He had been too vain to accept it thinking, somehow, that he was the exception. Until now. It was all almost too much to bear ... not so much his mortality as his ageing and knowing he would be forgotten.
At the edge of the cypress he paused for a rest. He sat on a mossy tree trunk. Surrounding him was the grey mist of dusk. He ached for himself.
When he saw the panther, it was by accident. It had not been there and then, suddenly, it was. At first he was shocked at the sight of a lion in this accursed place but then he recalled the dragons of the river, the herbaceous faces of the Calusa, the witch standing in a canoe on the water, and knew he must expect anything here. He cursed himself for having been careless. The panther had been hunting him and he, in his self-immersion, had missed it.
It was tawny and sleek and its baleful eyes reflected the dusk in pools of lethal light. It was motionless: not a muscle moving, not a blink of an eye. It crouched on a large, downed tree, the tree angling up, caught in other trees’ branches. The panther looked down upon him like death, patiently waiting. For what was he to it but another swamp creature: slow and slogging and stupid?
As he struggled up the big cat pounced. It seemed an impossible distance and yet the panther seemed to fly. Then it was on him, knocking him backward with the power of its weight, claws catching on chainmail, screeching on the steel of his helmet. Its breath was hot and hungry. With a gauntleted hand he punched at it desperately before it could bite into his face. He grasped its muscled neck and tried to keep its teeth away. He rolled with it and as quickly as it had attacked, it leapt away from him. But it did not leave. It glowered and circled and snarled, its movements fluid though, for the moment, tentative. The panther did not understand this big tortoise proving so difficult to kill.
It tensed again, its tail twitching as it readied itself. Juan Ponce, in the few seconds provided him, drew his blade. The cat came at him again so fast he could not find the time nor space to thrust. It clawed again at his mail and bit into his thigh. Its teeth punctured his skin drawing gouts of blood. The blood seemed to drive the cat mad. It had found a vulnerability in this huge armoured tortoise and would tear him apart.
He was able to swing his arm free, shift his grasp as he held his sword like a huge knife, then thrust the blade into the panther’s flank. It screamed, a yowling howl of pain, yet it would not release him. He stabbed again. Toledo steel into its heart. For an instant it looked at him. Confused and dying, it did not understand this beast which struck back. It tried to escape the deadly skewer. Blood gushed from its mouth. It convulsed, then collapsed, upon him. The twilight of its eyes went dark.
He shoved it off, wrenching the sword from its tawny body. He rolled away from it, shaking with the adrenalin rush. It took him a moment to settle himself; enough to examine his thigh. Blood surged from wounds made by the panther’s incisors. He rose and hobbled to the swampy water. Removing his scarf he dipped it into the water, then brought it to his leg to clean the wounds. He spent several minutes at this, pulling bits of cloth from the gashes, then tying his scarf tightly around his thigh to staunch the bleeding.
Once finished he rose, testing his leg. It hurt like the devil. Still, of anything in his life, he was accustomed to physical pain and these wounds had awakened him. He looked once more at the panther. It was not Death Incarnate. It lay in the dirt, a mere animal now.
He looked up at the sky. With the coming dark he glimpsed the first of the stars. He was an explorer. With his experience he would navigate out of this mire and back to the river. He recalled the direction he, Sotomayor and the witch had come. He waited a while longer until he discovered the pole star. He was no longer helpless. He had killed a panther. He was no toothless swamp creature. He was a man.
Magic water or none, he had come here to conquer and colonize. He possessed the patents and, despite what the witch had said, he would own this land. He would vanquish it and govern it and grow rich from it. He was finished with brooding. He was finished with doubt. He was Juan Ponce de Leon and it was time, once again, to prove it.
With his sword he hacked a stout branch from a tree. He sheathed the sword and, using the branch as a crutch, made his way over the uneven terrain by the light of the stars, back toward the river. He did not look back at the panther. Careful to focus upon his surroundings so as not to be prey to some other beast, he thought only of what was to come.
“Sotomayor is dead. The witch is gone. And every Calusa we find we will slaughter.”
Las Casas heard the words as Juan Ponce de Leon stared at him with iron eyes. The captain-general had been wounded somehow. He’d staggered into the camp, limping, a branch helping him along. Yet he did not seem to feel any pain, thought las Casas. Indeed, there was something else in his mind. Something terrible.
“We will hunt them down like the animals they are. We will scourge this land, our land, of every one of them.”
“But the Church has said ...” Las Casas tried to interrupt.
“The Church has no business in this.”
“In the name of ...”
“You fool. You think Columbus risked all for your Church? You think it was on Cortez’ mind while he slaughtered? You believe it the reason for any of this at all? Your Church is a parasite, las Casas! Were it not on the side of the mighty, it would be nothing!”
“And yet once,” the friar said, “it was not. Indeed it was the opposite: a small band against an empire even greater than ours.”
“Stop your infernal arguments, friar! That was then! Now, rather than mercy, it employs Inquisition! That is your Catholic Church. It has changed from lamb to lion!”
The blasphemy astounded las Casas. He thought the old man had gone mad.
“What happened to you out there?” he said softly, afraid of the conquistador’s rage.
“Humiliation.”
“What do you mean?”
“We are leaving.”
“What of Sotomayor? Where is the woman?”
“Dead! Gone! It was a trap!”
“You must rest, Don Juan, you are wounded.”
“You understand so little. The witch set a snare for me so complex I failed to foresee it. The Calusa will do the same if those colonists on the coast are not ready. We are leaving! Now! If we do not, everyone will be massacred!”