It was scarcely a league from Ivitachuco to Oldfield Creek, the place appointed by the Englishman Moore for the rendezvous, yet the weight of the journey was as heavy upon the priest as a trek of many days. The road seemed to go on forever beside green fields of winter wheat and brown fields of last year’s corn. The homesteads scattered through the fields were empty, their occupants still keeping refuge in the town. Only the dogs were there, more gaunt and hungry than usual as they barked at the procession of four men and ten pack horses—Father Juan and Don Patricio in front, Carlos and Lorenzo each leading a string of horses behind. Ivitachuco was so poor that there had not been enough valuables in the town to fill the packs of all the horses. Blankets, muskets, scissors, knives, beads, and pieces of clothing had been collected from the Indians, but the white ranchers had sacrificed little, giving only what they wished to part with—old things, mostly worn out. It was an Indian affair, they said. Let the Indians settle it. So the loads had been filled out with baskets of corn and beans and dried meat. And with the chest that held the church silver. That was the real booty, worth more than everything else together. The burden of surrendering it dragged at the priest like a stone about his neck.
The road dipped down toward Oldfield Creek, a slow, meandering stream with wooded swamps on either side. The Englishman, if he kept his word, would be in the open field on the other side, hidden yet from view.
“You should wait for us on this side,” said Don Patricio. “It would injure your health to wade through the water.”
“My health is already injured,” Juan said bitterly. “It is for me alone to surrender the vessels of the Lord. The sin is upon me. The cowardice is mine.”
Don Patricio made no reply. They walked in silence.
The priest added quietly, “I want to see this devil who has done so much to destroy us.”
At the marshy edge of the swamp they stopped and prepared for the crossing, Juan taking off his boots and hitching up his robe in his belt. Then he led the way, wading out among the tall cypress trees, the water inching up to his knees and holding there until he reached the main channel, where the water climbed to his hips at the deepest part. As he came up on dry land on the other side, he saw the Englishman’s party ahead in the field: three white men mounted on horses and a guard of five Indians on foot. All in the party were armed, although their weapons were not at ready.
Juan flicked the water from his legs as the Indians did, using the edge of his hand, and put on his boots and arranged his robe. Then, with Don Patricio beside him and Carlos and Lorenzo bringing the pack horses behind, he commended himself to God’s mercy and strode toward the enemy.
One Englishman stood out above the others as the one who was unmistakably Colonel Moore. He dismounted as the priest approached and waited beside his horse in front of the others who were with him. He was an older man, handsomely dressed, the brim of his three-cornered hat trimmed with silver braid, his shoulder-length wig immaculately brushed and curled. He wore rich red wool with silver buttons along the length of his open coat from the collarless neck to the bottom edge at his knee. His matching waistcoat, almost as long, had a similar row of buttons. There were more silver buttons on the wide cuffs of his coat, on the flaps of the large coat pockets, and at the knees of his breeches. His coat was lined with blue silk and his linen shirt had lace ruffles at the neck and wrists. He wore blue silk stockings and stiff boots with soft cuffs folded over the tops and silver spurs on the heels. The priest had not seen such wealth and fashion since the days of his youth in Spain. No one in all of Florida dressed in such finery, not even in the governor’s house in San Augustín. The priest stood for a moment in awkward silence, then took off his wide-brimmed hat.
“Good day,” he said in Spanish.
“And good day to you,” Moore said jovially in English. “Do you speak English?”
“Then I speak the language of Spain,” Moore said gallantly, showing his command of Spanish to be more than adequate. He nodded toward Don Patricio. “He is the king?”
“He is the chief of Ivitachuco. His name is Don Patricio Hinachuba. I am Juan de Villalva.”
The Englishman ignored the priest, putting out his hand to the Indian. “I am glad we do not fight,” he said to Don Patricio. “It is better to be friends. In my land of Carolina I have many Indian friends. For you and your people to come to my land is good.”
Don Patricio nodded politely, but made no answer.
Juan glared at the Englishman. “What are you saying? That you will make them go with you to Carolina? They have brought you all they own to ransom their freedom according to your word. Is this nothing but a trick?”
“I speak of free will,” said Moore, his voice strong and arrogant. “If the king meets our demands, he is free to come or stay. But someday he comes to us. The nations move like the tides, my friend. Spain ebbs. England rises. The Indians are not blind. They see this.”
“You presume too much,” Juan said tersely. His eyes moved beyond Moore in the direction of Ayubale where the English and their Indian allies were still encamped. What right had they to come into God’s vineyard killing and destroying? All the efforts of his life, poor as they were, were being swept into oblivion. He looked back again at the English colonel. “God has not forsaken us. In His own time He will give us strength to stand against your forces of heresy.”
“Heresy does not defeat you,” Moore said with a condescending smile. “Commerce defeats you. You offer them salvation. We offer guns and cloth. They choose guns and cloth. Salvation be damned!” He laughed at his own clever words.
The priest looked away in disgust.
Don Patricio’s jaw was firmly set, his eyes unwavering. “It is not so with my people,” the chief said calmly. “We give up all that we have for the sake of our souls. We turn our backs on your guns and cloth. We denounce your way of torture and murder. We keep our feet upon the way of Blessed Jesus and his Holy Mother. We ask you to take what we own and leave us in peace.”
“You own little,” said Moore. “The Spaniards give you nothing. They have nothing. Once they had much gold and silver from the Indies. But— how do I say it? No commerce. Gold makes commerce. But not for Spain. Gold is gone and no commerce. Come live with the English and you will be amazed. Our goods are cheap. For a few deerskins you fill your house with riches.”
“We choose to stay in our own land,” Don Patricio said stubbornly. “If you do not wish to give us our freedom for what we have brought, then we will return with it to our town and fight you from there.”
“Let me see,” Moore said to him, nodding toward the pack horses. “Do you have the church silver?”
“It is not his to give,” said the priest. “I bring that myself, though it sickens me. It is only for my Indians that I do this.”
“And for your own skin,” Moore said offhandedly.
Juan looked at him without response. Then he turned and nodded to Carlos, who unlashed the wooden chest from one of the horses. Juan took it from him and for a moment he held it, his back to the Englishman as he stared down at the box that contained everything his life had been, twenty years of baptisms, masses, and last rites, using these sacred vessels. And now he was handing them over to a heretic.
“This is a grave sin,” he said as he turned and put the chest on the ground, opening it for Moore to see. “May God forgive us both.”
Moore looked the contents over carefully and then motioned to one of his Englishmen to pick it up. Juan watched as the man closed the lid, picked up the chest, and carried it over to his horse. Then the priest turned away and walked back across the field toward the black waters of the swamp. Without a struggle he had let a door close against him. It was the door of his church in Ivitachuco. The door of his seminary in Spain. The door of the kingdom of heaven. His battles were over, and he had lost. At the edge of the swamp he stopped and sat down on a fallen tree and waited for the Indians to hand over the rest of the ransom.
On the floor beside the fire, Lucia laid out rabbit skins, making a block of them to see what they would look like sewn together. Her mouth crooked into a smile as she looked up at Maria. “One shoulder,” she said and began to laugh at the ridiculousness of ever thinking they could make a blanket from them. “We could cover one shoulder at a time.”
All morning they had been at work softening the few skins that Isabel, ever thrifty, had saved in a moth-eaten pile beneath her bed. It was more than a year’s worth of skins, and yet not enough. They were able to snare a few rabbits from time to time, but there was no man to hunt for them, that was the problem. No one to bring in meat and skins. And now no Spanish blankets either.
“It will be just the thing for whichever shoulder is away from the fire,” said Maria. The humor in her voice was good to hear.
Lucia put the skins back into a pile. “Is it even worth sewing them together?”
Isabel appeared in the doorway. “Lucia,” the old woman said without coming inside, her small form silhouetted against the light outside. “I need you in the cocina.”
“Where is the awl?” asked Maria, reaching to pull the pile of skins closer to her. “I will work on them while you are gone. They make the start of a blanket, at least.”
Lucia gave her the awl and a ball of sinew and then went out and followed Isabel across the yard and into the cocina.
Salvador was there. He was sitting away from the firelight, quietly absorbed in a dish of sofkee. Lucia hesitated inside the door, distressed that he should endanger them by coming here.
“You have come,” she said stiffly.
“I have come,” he answered.
Isabel took a seat on a cane mat by the fire, and Lucia walked slowly over and sat beside her. Salvador was running his finger around the inside of the dish, cleaning up the last traces of the sofkee. He set the empty dish in front of him and looked up at Lucia.
“Do not worry,” he said. “Our time in this place has ended. Let them see everything we do. Let them say what they will.”
Lucia glanced at Isabel to see if she followed Salvador’s meaning, but evidently she did not, for she, too, was regarding the shaman with reservation.
Salvador had picked up his pipe and was tamping down the tobacco with his finger. Isabel found a twig and held it into the fire. Then she passed it to him, the small flame lasting barely long enough to light the tobacco.
“Your meaning is not clear to us,” she said gravely.
He slowly smoked his pipe, blowing smoke to the Four Ways. Then he put the pipe in front of him beside the empty dish and said, “I have had another dream. We are to leave this place.”
“Who is to leave?” Isabel asked in a cool voice that Lucia had not heard her use before with Salvador.
“All those who will become the new Apalachee people. Those who will live alone in the old way, with the White Suns to lead them.”
Isabel shook her head. “This is no time to try something like that. They will not let us live alone. The Spaniards will hunt us down as rebels, and the English will hunt us down for slaves.”
“I have been told otherwise,” Salvador said patiently.
“By whom?” Isabel reached out and stirred the fire, a shimmer of sparks rising with the smoke. The blanket that Maria had given her slipped from her shoulder and she reached quickly to catch it and pull it back again.
“By the Water Cougar,” said Salvador.
“A dream from the Under World,” said Isabel, her tone noncommittal. “What did it tell you?”
“To go to the place where the Great Town once stood and wait there until the Englishmen and Spaniards have driven each other from the land. Then Apalachee will be ours again. The White Suns will lead us as in the days of old. There will be peace in the land and great harvests. All will be new and reborn.”
“The Great Town,” said Isabel, her voice still subdued. She would not look at him. “Do you know where it is?”
“North of here, near the lake of the Ancient Ones.”
Isabel nodded. “And what sense does it make to put a camp that much closer to the slave catchers?”
“I have spoken of this to others,” said Salvador. “To men who have recently hunted there and to some who have even hidden there, in small camps. It is shielded by deep forest. Slave catchers seldom go there because there are no people living there.”
“But if you settle there, that will no longer be true. You will give them a reason to go there. They will come and kill your men and carry your women and children away.” She shook her head. “It is too dangerous. Our only safety is this stockade.” She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder in its direction. “It is the only thing that saved us. Ayubale had no stockade and Ayubale was lost. I do not love Spaniards, my brother, but as long as they can offer me protection, I will cling to them as tightly as if I were a Christian saint.”
Salvador shrugged, seemingly undisturbed. “There are many from this town who are coming with me.” He looked at Lucia. “You, my child, will you join us?”
Lucia looked at him directly. It would be comforting to believe in this hope that he offered. But she shook her head. “I cannot leave my grandmother.”
Salvador nodded, as if he had expected this. He picked up his pipe and Lucia gave him a splinter of pine with which to relight it. “Will it ruin your plans if the White Sun Woman is not with you?” she asked.
He lit the pipe without answering and smoked a few moments, taking pleasure in it. Nothing they had said seemed to discourage him.
“The White Sun Woman will be here in Ivitachuco,” he said, “singing her song to the Sun. So long as she remains in Apalachee, the people in the Great Town will prosper.”
“I will sing every morning,” said Isabel, letting him know that she meant no break with him. “And if there ever comes a day when the danger is past, I will come and join you. I would like to have the life that you see for us. I would like to have it for a little time before I die. But I am old. Perhaps Lucia will have it.”
“You are not that old, my grandmother,” said Lucia, trying to lighten the tone.
“I am at least that old. Maybe older.” She looked at Salvador, good humor in her eyes. “We wish you well, beloved man.”
“We will not be apart,” he said. “There will be messengers back and forth, though they will have to move in secret.” He looked at Lucia. “We will wait for you, my child. You will be welcome when it is time for you to come.”
Lucia smiled slightly and nodded. She doubted she would ever go, and yet she did not want to say so and disappoint him or make things strained between them. She watched as he tucked his pipe into the pouch on his belt and rose easily to his feet.
“We leave tonight,” he said. “When I see you again, it will be in another place.”
“In another place,” answered Isabel, and they watched him as he left. For a moment there was silence. Then Isabel said, “If the White Falcon had come to him in his dream, it might have been different. But I do not trust the Water Cougar.” She spoke in a low voice so that Salvador would not hear her as he walked from the yard.
Lucia gave a little sigh. “It would be good to live in the old way again.”
“I will still sing the song,” said Isabel. “That seems to be the right thing. But this other seems wrong to me. I did not know this about Salvador. He has visions, but he cannot tell the good ones from the bad ones.”
“Maybe it is we who cannot tell,” said Lucia. She picked up the pine splinter that Salvador had used for his pipe and tossed it into the fire.