Teresa of the New World Page 4

  Teresa’s father kept laughing as he moved with his arms stretched out, and the man lowered his lance and spoke in Spanish, as did the other men, whispers at first and then exclamations. Her father laughed as though he couldn’t stop while the sweat-blotched horses lifted their feet, stepping back and stepping forward, unable to run with their heads pulled up so tightly by the reins.

  Now one horse lifted its tail and ejected plops of wet, grassy-smelling feces. Caught in the Moor’s grip, Teresa waited impatiently. With their long bony faces and big yellow teeth, these animals were amazingly unattractive. Yet her father had always described them as beautiful. He had described them with such tenderness. The Moor held her shoulder, not letting her go. The Opata guides behind the Moor murmured to each other, alarmed to be so close to the Spanish slavers.

  “Eight years!” Her father yelled at the Moor. “It is 1536, Esteban. Eight years!” He spoke again to the men on horses. “We must go to the captain now!” Then he turned back, still yelling, as though she and the Moor had gone deaf. “Come on! Keep everyone together! Follow us!”

  Teresa understood that this was one of the most important moments of her father’s life. This was comparable to meeting Charles the Fifth, the King of Spain. This would equal the day he had stood beside Pánfilo de Narváez and sailed toward the New World. Everything about this moment—the grassy smell of the horses, the glint of sun on the silver helmets, the sound of Spanish spoken by a stranger—all this was something her father would remember and keep, a form of treasure.

  The captain was only a short distance away, surrounded by more men on horseback. Also dressed in armor, he dismounted heavily and took her father and the Moor to speak under the shade of a pine tree. The Moor still kept his hand on Teresa’s shoulder. “Be quiet now,” the black man whispered in her ear. “Be careful, darling. Do what I do.”

  “Are these your Indians?” the captain spoke eagerly, staring at the guides. On the ground, he stood much shorter than her father. His Spanish was different, too, and hard for Teresa to understand. “Where did you get them? Are there more?”

  Her father explained that the people with him were friends and companions, not slaves. He had other friends, too . . .

  The captain interrupted, “We have had terrible luck.” His dark nervous eyes swept across Teresa and the Moor and noted them with interest. “This country is empty. Everyone is gone. My men are getting hungry.”

  After a confusing time, with more interruptions, Teresa’s father managed to say that two other Spanish gentlemen from the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition were waiting a few leagues east, with a large group of natives who carried baskets of dried fruit and maize. These villagers were also friends and companions. They would be happy to share what food they had.

  At this good news, the captain opened his mouth wide to show stumps of rotting teeth. He grabbed Teresa’s father and hugged him hard against the shiny metal on his chest, truly welcoming him for the first time. With a cry, her father slumped into the other man’s embrace. The Moor grinned.

  Now the captain sent his men to fetch Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo, and in the afternoon of the next day, the two Children of the Sun came with all the people who had been gathered around them. These were the families, widows and orphans, brothers and sisters, daughters and sons who had been hiding from the Spanish slave hunters these last few months. “You will not be harmed,” her father told them as he helped the slavers take the baskets of dried fruit and maize. “You will be allowed to return to your homes. You will be allowed to grow crops again.” Patiently he went among the fearful men and women, touching this person and that one as he was used to doing, blessing the few children. The Moor and Teresa stayed close to his side.

  Suddenly, and as if by plan, the Spanish sitting high on their horses spread out in a circle around the villagers. Outside the circle, Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo lay sprawled exhausted on the ground. For the moment, the captain seemed to have disappeared. Her father whispered to the Moor the same thing, again and again, urging him to repeat it. “Tell them they can return home. Tell them they will not be harmed. When they go back to their villages, they must give thanks to God and Christ, our Redeemer. They must give thanks and plant their fields.”

  The Moor signed this to the waiting crowd, silent and surrounded. The baskets of food were already fastened to the Christians’ saddlebags.

  “Captain!” Her father spoke with obvious relief when he saw the man arrive. “I must speak with you.”

  This time, the captain did not dismount. Nodding in a stern way and sitting very straight in his saddle, he towered over her father and the Moor. Teresa watched his horse breathe, strands of slobber moving in and out of the black nostrils. The long brown flank was wet with sweat. As Teresa stared into the gold-flecked eyes of the captain’s horse, she suddenly knew what her father meant when he had described his mare as beautiful. This horse looked at Teresa with such intelligence, as if he already knew and trusted her. Teresa longed to reach out and stroke his furred neck.

  May I touch you? she asked the horse.

  The animal moved back in surprise. Irritated, the captain jerked the rope at the horse’s mouth. Who are you? the horse questioned.

  “I am sending you to the Governor of this province,” the captain was saying to her father. “You will be treated well. You will be safe! Good-bye! Godspeed!”

  Smiling, the captain yanked even harder at the reins, so that the horse was forced to turn quickly. “But what about these people?” her father shouted as he grabbed at the same leather rope. The eyes of the horse rolled in white half-moons. The captain pulled the rope back viciously and shrieked, “I’m letting you keep the girl, remember! And the Moor!”

  The horse twirled. Dust flew up in Teresa’s face. Out of the dust, other men came to herd her and her father and the Moor toward Alonso del Castillo and Andrés Dorantes. By now, the villagers were packed together ever more closely, guarded by the slave hunters on horses and their long knives. This had happened very fast, all in a moment. The crowd began to moan as the healers and Teresa were led away.

  Her father was trying to weep. His face contorted, but his eyes were dry and he held Teresa’s hand, hurting her fingers. A black raven cawed behind them. Teresa tried to listen. The earth watched the scene with great interest. I will still love you, the earth whispered. I will still be with you.

  They traveled for two weeks to the Governor’s house. The Spanish slavers would not carry them on their horses, and so they had to walk the entire way. Her father and the Moor were unusually quiet, and Dorantes and Castillo also spoke little, except to complain about the lack of food.

  Everything changed when they passed through the large wooden gates into a courtyard of cobbled stone and trees full of hanging fruit. Sprays of red flowers covered the whitewashed adobe walls that seemed to go on for leagues in every direction. Two slave hunters escorted them up marble steps to a carved door that led into a huge room with enormous pieces of furniture. Teresa remembered the stories her father had told her about his home in Seville.

  The Governor himself came to greet them. Teresa’s father still held her hand.

  “Pánfilo de Narváez!” The Governor was round and smiling.

  “The treasurer of that expedition,” her father corrected and bowed. “I am Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.”

  “We welcome you and your companions! It is a miracle! After so many years! And I believe you have much to tell us.”

  The Governor and her father spoke there in the room of enormous furniture, and the Governor hugged each of the men, except the Moor. Finally they were all taken through the main hall with its high ceiling and colored pictures. Teresa wanted to stop, for these paintings of men and women, plants and animals, were so lifelike, so wonderful. She could have stared at them for hours. They went past another room, also bigger than a grass house, with a long piece of raised wood—a table, Teresa thought—covered by white cloth and metal tools. Th
ey passed one extraordinary object after another. Then the Governor left, and an Opata woman took them up a steep staircase. She led Teresa and her father to another wooden door.

  Teresa’s father pushed her gently inside the small room. “Someone will bring you food,” he said and pushed her back again. “No, you have to stay here. I will come to you later.”

  Teresa stared about the windowless square with a pallet on the floor. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Why can’t I go with you?”

  Many hours later, the Moor brought her a plate of beans and meat and slices of orange fruit. “They are having a feast at the Governor’s table,” the Moor told her, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “All the important people are eating with your father tonight. Everyone wants to hear about the places we traveled and whether or not there was gold in the villages.”

  “What is this?” Teresa pointed angrily at the orange fruit.

  The Moor praised the sweetness of cantaloupe and explained that she was to wait in this little room always until someone came for her. She should never wander about the Governor’s house alone. She should never disturb the peace of the Governor’s house. Her father and Alonso del Castillo and Andrés Dorantes were nearby, each in his private bedroom. Of course, their bedrooms were elegantly furnished with two carved chairs, a wardrobe, and a mirror from Spain. Each hidalgo had a servant to help him dress and prepare for the day.

  No, the Moor said, she could not stay with her father. The Governor would think it very wrong for her father, Cabeza de Vaca, to have an Indian child next to him in his bed. The priest would certainly not allow it. Yes, the Moor said, they had already seen a priest named Fray Tomás. This had been the cause of much simpering and sighing, especially from Alonso del Castillo.

  Now Teresa was surprised to learn that the Moor himself was a slave again. He had been brought on the ships from Spain to serve his master Andrés Dorantes, and for this reason, he would be staying in the stables outside and not in the house.

  “Most of the people you see here are servants,” the Moor explained, “who are like slaves but who must be treated more kindly. The slaves work in the silver mines where they are very much needed, for this is where the Spanish get their wealth. But I will not be sent to the mines. I am too valuable now. I know too many things about what lies to the north.”

  The black man gave her a little pot for her urine, and then he left. Teresa didn’t know what to do. She had never slept alone in her life.

  Her father pointed. “Un escritorio,” he spoke reverently, as though talking about a sacred object. The writing desk was a high box of wood carved with the faces of Spanish men, their helmets framed by flowers and leaves. A metal key dangled from a string attached to the top of the desk. When her father inserted the key into a hole, the front of the escritorio fell open like a mouth, which made Teresa exclaim and step back. Inside, more boxes could be pulled out. They were inlaid, her father said, in the Moorish style with ivory and tortoiseshell. Most importantly, the wooden lid came down, and on this a man could put his parchment paper, pot of ink, and feather pen. He could write here, and he could read.

  As he took Teresa on a tour of his bedroom, her father also made her pause before the carved wooden chairs with vines crawling up their legs. He tried to show her how a lady would sit in such a chair. At this point, however, he hesitated, confessing some ignorance about the matter.

  Lying on the bed, dressed in new embroidered pants and a cotton shirt, Andrés Dorantes laughed in a nasty way.

  “Shut up,” her father said. With another metal key, he opened the lock to the wardrobe, where his clothes were folded and stored. Teresa put her head into the closet and breathed in the smell of sweet wood. Then her father locked the wardrobe and made her open it. Her fingers fumbled. But her father waited as though he trusted her completely to accomplish this very necessary task. Finally, the tall thin doors swung apart. “Bravo!” her father said. “Excellent!”

  “Bravo!” Dorantes echoed. “You are teaching her well to become a housekeeper in your mansion in Seville.”

  “Shut up,” her father said again as he watched Teresa examine herself in the tall heavy mirror. Teresa could see him watching, standing behind her, yet also in front of her in the glass. This was amusing, and she smiled. Smiling, she opened her mouth, leaning close to the mirror and trying to look down into her throat. Like the ripples of a pond, this mirror had distortions, although the shiny surface was clearer and brighter than any pond she had ever seen. Teresa touched the blue lines tattooed on each cheek. She clapped her hands against her thighs, as did the girl across from her.

  “Yes, your wife will be pleased with this little one,” Dorantes continued. “No doubt it will spark her imagination. She will wonder about all your adventures in the New World.”

  “Shut up,” Teresa’s father said for the third time.

  But Dorantes only sat up and spoke more urgently, “A woman expects to wait for her husband, Álvar, especially when he uses her family’s wealth to go to the Indies. But she does not expect him to bring home a bastard as her reward.”

  “Listen to me,” her father used his most formal tone. “From this point on, consider yourself barred from talking about my wife. The topic is closed to you.”

  “She will have enemies,” Dorantes continued with hardly a pause, and Teresa knew that the “she” he spoke of was not her father’s wife in Spain. “There are people waiting to discredit our journey and everything we say. There are priests who will wonder about the healings we performed. There is the Inquisition still! Alonso is right about that. Heretics are still being burned! We have no gold or silver to pacify these men. You will have enemies, and they will be her enemies, and they will use her easily for their purposes.”

  “My father can protect me,” Teresa interrupted. She hated Dorantes. She wished she knew a good curse.

  “Of course, I can.” Her father nodded. He put his hand on the top of her head and moved it down against the flatness at the back. “Although Andrés is also right,” he said softly. “You have to learn, as you have already learned, to be clever and quiet and to suffer all indignities in silence. I will not always be there to help.”

  Now Alonso del Castillo appeared in the doorway. He also was dressed in new clothes that covered his scabby splotched skin. His beard had been trimmed, and a pearl dangled from one ear. “What is she doing here?” he asked with distaste. “We have to talk.”

  “There is no harm in her staying,” Teresa’s father soothed.

  “She hears too much. She remembers too much.”

  “You worry about everything,” her father said.

  “But I agree with Alonso.” Dorantes stood and crossed to the hallway. “Hey,” he yelled to a servant woman passing by. “Take this girl with you, back to her room.”

  Later it would seem that everything happened at that moment. The rest of Teresa’s life was planned and revealed at that moment when her father hung his head and let the servant woman take her away.

  In truth, of course, many more weeks passed. One morning, the Moor left with a group of men. Dorantes had sold him to the Governor to lead an expedition north in search of villages where the streets were paved with gold. Her father had been shocked, but the Moor didn’t seem to mind. He had grown to enjoy traveling with his magical painted gourds, astounding the villagers who crowded around him, especially the women. Teresa watched him leave, standing with her father by an open window. Grinning, the black man waved at her.

  Later she tried to think what she could have said or done during this time. How could it have happened differently? She knew it had something to do with this house, with the carved chairs and wardrobe, with the escritorio and its inlaid drawers of tortoiseshell and ivory. She knew it had something to do with Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo and the Governor. She knew what her father meant to do, knew in the center of her body, that spot between the rib cage and stomach, which is why she was awake one early morning when the pink light s
lanted east through the fruit trees in the courtyard.

  This time he did not come to take her away. He did not pause at the small dark room and whisper, “Hush, put your legs around me. We have to go.”

  Naked, without her new cotton dress, Teresa ran down the stairway, through the large terrifying hall, onto the front steps where she was never allowed to walk without permission. She stopped naked on the cold flagstone of the courtyard. Guards shouted to each other as they opened the wooden gate to let the group of riders pass through.

  Teresa saw her father on a bay mare. All his gifts from the Governor had been loaded on the horse behind him. She saw Andrés Dorantes on another horse, gesturing with his hand to a rider at his side. Alonso del Castillo gestured back. The guards shouted to each other. The horses made their own noises, striking hooves on the cobblestones, wheezing and whistling.

  Teresa knew where they were going. To Mexico City and the sailing port of Vera Cruz. “Papá!” she screamed.

  Her father turned his head.

  “Papá!” Teresa flew, then stumbled on a step in the flagstone.

  A hand caught and held her back. A gardener picking fruit from the trees held her with one arm. No, he said in horror. She should not run after the gentlemen leaving for their ship. He scolded her in the language of the Indians here.

  Her father turned his head.

  Teresa screamed, “Papá!”

  Her father said something. He rose in his saddle, saying something sad and regretful. She could read his intent as always. His love for her flowed from his hand into the air, straight to her, touching her cheek. She would be fine. They would take care of her. This was better for her and for him. She would always be unwelcome in Spain. She would always be a danger in Spain. She belonged here. He had made arrangements. Someday he would come back for her.