Chapter 12

 

 

“Forget all about me!” one yells as they near, his arms bent at the elbows and swinging as he runs awkwardly.

My heart jumps as I see a familiar form. Andres must have recognized him also, since he goes running to him.

“Pepe!” I say, and the captain looks up, pursing his thin lips, trying to keep from smiling but his eyes well up.

“You’re all alive!” Pepe says as he hugs Andres. “I was sure you all drowned!” He reaches to hug me and engulfs me in his arms.

He goes to hug the captain, but the captain draws back. “I never hugged a naked man and don’t want to say I did now.” We laugh, and Pepe suddenly looks self-conscious and tries to cover himself with his hands.

“How did you all keep your clothes?” Pepe points to his companion. “As soon as we came up to that beach”—he points to the strand next to ours—“the natives were all dancing with their sticks above their heads, just waiting for us to make it to shore.” He grabs the man next to him. “They took every stitch we had off us, and Carlos, here, took a bad blow to the head.” He turns the skinny man to the side, showing a river of blood down to his neck.

Pepe’s brow knits. “I could care less about my clothes, but they took Auradona, my father’s knife, and my sewing kit my mother left me.”

I immediately take my top layer off and hand it to Pepe. “It’s still wet, but it’s something.”

He gives me a grateful look and happily throws it over his head. Andres eyes Carlos’s shivering form and begrudgingly removes his top layer. He throws it to Carlos, who thanks him eagerly.

“Are the beaches clear?” the captain asks.

“We had to wait until the scavengers were gone, and we don’t know when the horses will come back. I think we should stay off the beach. There’s a church there.”

The captain shakes his head. “Nothing holy that way.” He starts to hobble toward the beach. “We need to find some biscuits or wine that wash up if we’re going to make it anywhere.”

From the knoll, I can see two strands of beach, the one we came in from and the one where Pepe had landed. I’m surprised to see an equal number of bodies on both beaches. Coming closer, I can see more had washed up since we’d been there. Andres runs to an opened crate nearest to us, and the captain yells, “Now, why would you go to an opened crate?”

Embarrassed, he runs farther down the shore to the crates that have recently washed up, and Pepe and Andres kick away at one, trying to open it. Finally, it pops open, and soggy biscuits glob out on the lid. I never tasted such delicious mush in my life. We were starving and all too quickly finished the crate; then we ran off for another. After we filled our bellies with the contents of three crates, the captain points to a group of natives coming toward us. Three short savages come up with foreign tongues wagging and spears high. We all put our hands up as they begin to pull off our clothes, but the captain screams, “Please, we are friends of Ireland!” to no avail.

Luckily, a larger savage comes down and pulls them away from us. He picks up my shirt and throws it back to us apologetically. After his stern command, the others back away and go off looking through the wreckage. The leader turns and sees us all in our misfortune and points up to another dirt road that disappears through a different patch of woods. He thumps his fist against his chest and points up the path, and we all think he’s saying it is his village.

We bow and make our way to the path. The captain pants as he hobbles. “Quickly, before they change their minds.”

After trudging over sharp stones and rocky paths, the captain commands wearily, “Give me pause here.”

We stand watching him, anxious to get through the eerie wood to some shelter. He arches his back and looks to the sky through the short, wind-hindered treetops.

“It’s hard to tell when dusk is falling due to how grey and dismal the weather is here,” the captain says with his mouth opened, panting slightly.

Suddenly, we all turn to the noise coming from the path ahead of us. It’s too late to jump into the underbrush to hide. The group sees us and are hurrying straight at us.

Two men lead the way, and the captain quickly pushes us behind him as he brings the stick he’s walking with out in front of him. One of the men draws out a knife and quickly stabs at the captain’s already wounded leg. The captain catches the blow with his stick, but the knifepoint breaks flesh. The captain grunts and lunges at the men out of range. The other man swings at his head and knocks the captain over easily. Carlos jumps forward, only to put his hands up as soon as he sees the man brandish the knife with a grin of intent. Out of nowhere, a very beautiful girl with orange, shining hair jumps in front of them and says something feverishly to the young man with the knife, causing him to lower it to his side. An old man pulls the other young man back and says something in a calming tone.

The man steps around the girl and old man, toward Carlos. He lifts Carlos’s already too short tunic Andres loaned him and pushes him away in disgust, seeing he’s completely naked underneath. The man looks at me, Andres, and half-naked Pepe and realizes we carry no worth and focuses on the captain lying on the ground, still.

The two men step over him and pull off his clothes. One removes his doublet and the other pulls off his pants. They rip open every seam, from which drop coin after coin. Our mouths fall open at the sight of so much gold as the savage’s eyes sparkle. While pulling off his undershirt, they gasp as they unveil the thick gold chain and a thinner gold chain with a red jeweled cross around his neck. In seconds, they remove them from him. They pull off his hose and leave the captain in an unflattering position on the ground.

The men start stuffing the captain’s clothing into the satchels they have on their sides, but the girl again stays their hands with a touch and pleading look, and the young men throw the captain’s clothing back to the ground. The man with the knife puts his hand up to the girl’s face gently and dangles the chain with the cross in front of her. She smiles sweetly and takes the chain as the man turns and motions for the young man and the older man to continue on the path toward the shore. They leave the girl behind with us.

She picks up the clothes and hands them to the captain. As he pulls back on the ripped hose and cut doublet, she puts his cross around her neck and smiles. She pulls up the cross and kisses it, obviously trying to show she’s a Catholic and wants to keep it.

The captain scoffs and turns to us. “A savage Catholic,” he says, and he groans as he gets back on his feet. “Are there no good Catholics in this wretched place?”

The beautiful girl motions for us to follow her back up the path. We watch her graceful form dance between the large stones on the path ahead of us. As the light’s fading, all we can see is her shiny orange hair, and she keeps spinning and smiling at us like some strange nymph or fairy. Just when we can barely see right in front of us, the path opens up to a small village on top of a hill. There are small wooden houses with thatched roofs, all with smoke coming out of their centers. She points to one in the center, and as we open the door, a small boy runs to the girl. I try to figure out if this is her son, but she looks too young to be a mother. She speaks to him, and he runs off. We all happily sit next to the fire, but the captain has trouble getting to the floor, and beads of sweat appear on his brow.

The boy returns carrying a pitcher of milk, loaves of oaten bread, and butter. My mouth opens, and drool spills out on the dirt floor. Pepe, seeing this, pulls away to his side and laughs.

The girl points to herself and says, “Carra,” and we all point and say our names, which pleases her. After giving us generous helpings, she sits very close beside the captain and motions for the boy, who brings a small jar to her from a basket in the corner.

She pulls at the captain’s trousers, and the captain balks once at the request, but Carra pulls even harder on them with an angry look. The captain turns red in the face and tries to pull off his pants and hose as discreetly as possible as we all look away. He bundles up his pants and covers himself with them as Carra spreads some herbal concoction over his wounds. When the fire begins to warm the concoction, a pungent smell fills the cottage, opening my sinuses, and makes my eyes sting. I’m forced to close them and soon fall asleep, happy, with the warm fire and full belly. We just might make it home.

 

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

 

I awake with a stick hitting my head and open my eyes to the boy tending the fire. Did he just hit me with a stick on purpose? I couldn’t tell by how he seems to be ignoring me now. I look over to Andres holding back his laughter, and I see he’s dangling a stick over my head. He and Pepe spurt out in laughter as soon as I realize it had been them.

I sit up and rub my eyes. “Where’s the captain and Carlos?”

“They’re outside trying to talk to some of the savages, trying to get directions where we can go next,” Pepe says.

The captain walks back in much stronger than he had been yesterday and proclaims, “All my boys up!” and he throws Pepe a pair of pants that have seen better days. “This boy here’s going to walk us in the right direction.” He points at a new, carved walking stick—some villager must have given him—at the boy, who seems unaware he has been nominated. Carra walks in and speaks to the boy, who hops up immediately and looks back for us to follow.

Pepe pulls the pants on like he’s afraid they’ll burn him, and we scoff at his ungratefulness.

“What?” he says. “These look like someone died, got buried, and was dug back up to get them.”

We laugh.

The captain takes Carra’s hand and kisses it as her pale skin glows. It never occurred to me until then that this woman seems to find the captain handsome, and I guess he is, with his tall stature, dark looks, and bright smile. The rest of us bow to her in thanks, and her eyes seem to tear at our plight as she kisses her cross once again and holds it up to the sky.

The boy’s running too far ahead, and the captain keeps throwing rocks in his direction, yelling, “Slower, by God!”

Suddenly, we turn the bend to see the boy sitting on a large rock. He points to a village in the distance down a knoll.

“Oh, that’s where we should go?” the captain asks.

The boy points again and moves his head and hands back and forth in a negative way.

“Oh, we shouldn’t go there?” The captain straightens.

The boy points at the path we are on and follows it all the way with his finger until it is close to the village and then shows us where the path splits and indicates we should take the one that avoids the huts.

The captain begins saying, “All right, so we just follow—” But before he can ask where the path leads, the boy disappears back up ahead.

“Well, that’s it, then.” The captain goes forth with his walking stick. “Let us keep moving. We’ll need to find shelter before night falls.”

It’s a few hours before we come to the fork that leads to the village, and we go the way the boy showed us, which takes us again through a thick wood.

“Let’s stop here and eat these berries,” the captain says, pointing to the bushes lining the path.

“How do you know they’re not poisonous?” Pepe asks, eyeing the little black berries suspiciously.

“I’m mostly sure these are the delicious bilberries. I had a most delicious jam from France that had a picture of these little beauties on them.” He opens one between his thumbs, and red juice drips and stains his skin. “Yes, these are most definitely the little black hearts!” He pops it in his mouth with a sucking sound. “Um-um-ummm.”

We grab for as many berries as we can pop in our mouths. They’re the most wonderful things I’ve ever tasted. We take the time to fill our bellies and our pockets with as many as we can find, when something hits me in the back of the head and throws me to the ground. In seconds, a thin man, much older than me, is pulling off my trousers and tunic. I look to my side and see a man on every one of my companions plus two pulling off the captain’s clothes. The man on me pulls off my dirty linen shirt and pants, then pushes me back down again. I watch as they’re unhappy to see the captain’s seams have already been torn and in anger take the captain’s walking stick and hit him across his back with it. The savages laugh and spit and go back from where they came with the walking stick, and leave us naked and shivering as a cold wind picks up.

“I just got those pants!” Pepe throws a rock after them.

We all sit there, almost waiting for them to bring them back to us, but the captain pulls himself up with a grunt and wince, then hobbles over to the brush. He begins pulling the ferns out with his hands and throwing them all in a pile. We wonder if he’s going mad, but we watch as he strips the largest fern and ties it tightly around his thin middle. He then starts tying fern after fern onto the stringlike plaits.

Halfway done, he looks up with a smile and says, “My Irish kilt!”

We all laugh and get up to copy what he’s doing.

After the last fern is on, we look like a band of native warriors. We’re still shivering but feel a little more pride walking again on the trail. Pitch dark sets in, but we have to continue.

“What’s shimmering over there?” Andres points through the trees.

We step off the path to go toward it and come out by a large lake. To our right, we see the moon illuminating the thatched huts.

“I think we should stay away from villages,” Carlos says to the captain.

But the captain squints his eyes and says, “No smoke means no fires, and no fires means no villagers.” He starts walking toward the village.