Caribbean: a novel Part 4

'd.a.m.ned little.' As soon as he uttered the words he drew back and looked apprehensively at Ocampo, remembering that some authorities considered the word d.a.m.n a serious blasphemy punishable in New Spain by a visit to the chambers of the Inquisition, but Ocampo as a former soldier did not. Swallowing, Cespedes resumed: 'In fairness to Coln, there was very little we could have given them, but when we sailed away, good houses had not yet been built, we couldn't give them much powder for the few guns we could spare, not much lead for bullets, and no food.'

'None?'

'Maybe one half-barrel of flour, some sc.r.a.ps of pork.' Cespedes shook his head, then added brightly: 'But my friend from Cadiz, the one who traded with me because he wanted to stay, said: "We can fish and hunt game and depend on help from the natives." '

'There were natives?'

'Many. And since we'd had good relations with them, we supposed the thirty-nine would depend on them for a.s.sistance.'

'But General Coln did leave the men in a kind of settlement? I mean, there were paths and latrines and places to sleep?'

'Oh yes! It was the beginnings of a town. After all, it did have a name, La Navidad.'

'But no real houses? No women?'

Cespedes laughed nervously: 'The men thought of that. A year, maybe two years with no women. My friend from Cadiz said: "Maybe we'll take the women we need from the natives." '

'When you sailed, you ordinary sailors, did you expect the thirty-nine to survive?'

'Yes! Just as we parted I loaned my friend my good knife. "I'll be back to claim it," I told him. But as I said, he died and I didn't.' He dropped his head, brought his hands to his lips, and stared at Ocampo, then whispered: 'The natives killed them all, but even though I don't like Coln, I don't think you can blame him for that.'

'How did you get back to Espaola?'

'On the next trip with Coln in 1493. He was an admiral by then. He didn't like me, for I reminded him that he had stolen my prize, but he knew me for a good sailor. And what a difference between the two trips! First time, three little s.h.i.+ps, only a few men, feeling our way across an unknown ocean and terrified we'd fall off the edge of the world. Second trip, near two dozen fine s.h.i.+ps, hundred of men, swift pa.s.sage across a friendly ocean, and as soon as we pa.s.sed through that chain of islands guarding the eastern edge of this inner sea we recognized the beauty of what the men were beginning to call "our Spanish lake." It was becoming home to us, the more so when we spotted this island we already knew. Our hearts expanded and it should have been a triumph. But when we reached La Navidad we found nothin' ... houses torn down ... skeletons where the natives had attacked. I found one body that could have been my friend, head severed. And I said a prayer as I buried it: "You gave your life for me. I'll live on this island and make it a decent place in your honor," and here I am.'

One important question remained, but it was Cespedes who brought it up: 'Sir, will you give sailors like me the money the admiral stole from us?'

'You still believe he did that?'

'Not only from me, from all those poor men who died at La Navidad.' When he saw Ocampo glaring at him for repeating such rumors, he ended lamely: 'Maybe he felt their money would be safer that way. Besides, what could they have used it for in a place like Navidad?'

An old sailor, a widow and an abandoned son each came forward to relate how men had been paid only a portion of their wages or none at all, when it was clear that funds were available for this purpose.

A local resident named Alonso Peraza, whose manner and speech indicated that he had profited from the education his priest in Salamanca had given him, offered a partial explanation of why Coln may have acted in this miserly way: 'The admiral was insane about money. He said the king and queen wouldn't pay him what they promised. He said they owed him a tenth, an eighth and a third.'

'What do those terms mean? I'm unfamiliar with them.'

'When Coln returned from his first trip it was some time before he was recognized as a great hero. Then King Ferdinand and his Queen Isabella agreed to a doc.u.ment written on parchment and sealed by notaries which formalized a preposterous proposal, put forth by Coln, that he receive in perpetuity one-tenth of all the wealth generated by the new lands he discovered.'

'In that doc.u.ment, did perpetuity mean what I think it does?'

'Yes, for Coln during his lifetime, and his heirs forever after.'

'A fortune, eh?'

And Peraza replied: 'No s.h.i.+ps large enough to carry it home.' He then explained that the eighth referred to the portion of wealth that might be generated during the voyages by bartering trade goods with the local settlers, whoever they might be. 'That made sense,' Peraza said, 'but Coln found it difficult to collect his share because accounts were too complex to keep.'

'What was left?' Ocampo asked sardonically. 'A third part of anything is apt to be substantial.'

Peraza broke into disrespectful laughter: 'Coln seriously demanded the right to levy a tax in that amount on every business transaction carried out in the Indies. Yes, one-third of everything.'

Ocampo leaned back and studied his thin fingers as he made a calculation: 'Those three taken together-tenth, eighth, third-would have added up to more than half the total wealth developed in the entire New World. It would have made him the richest man in Christendom, and no king could permit that.' Leaning forward, he asked: 'Yet you say he demanded it?'

'He did, and his heirs still press those ridiculous claims. They seek to be richer than the king.'

Ocampo's attention now began to focus on one of the most serious charges against the admiral. The testifier who broached the subject was an ordinary sailor, one Salvador Soriano, who had served on the famous Nia and returned to Santo Domingo to live out his life: 'It's a miracle I'm here to answer your questions, Excellency.'

'I'm not really an excellency, you know. What do you wish to tell me?'

'We called him Coln the Killer because when he was viceroy in charge of this island he had a pa.s.sion for ordering men to be hanged. There were gibbets all over the place ... six ... eight, all bearing fruit, men dancing without their toes touching the ground. And the hangings would have continued if Special Emissary Bobadilla had not had the courage to halt them.'

'What were the charges? Mutiny?'

'Anything that irritated him at the moment. Hiding gold from the appointed collector. Speaking poorly about the admiral or one of his family. He kept going back and forth to Spain and bringing more and more of his family and they were sacred here. Two men were hanged for using a fis.h.i.+ng boat without permission.'

'That sounds incredible,' Ocampo said, but the man surprised him by saying with great force: 'I was sentenced to be hanged, with my nephew Bartolomeo, and for what? Eating fruit that was reserved for some other purpose and then arguing with one of Coln's men about it when we were reprimanded. Mutiny, he called that mutiny, and we were led to the gallows.'

'I see you're still here. Did the admiral relent?'

'Not him. He hanged a score of us. Fearful temper.'

'Then who saved you?'

'Bobadilla. You might say he saved the whole island. Because the way Coln was going, there'd have been revolution for sure.'

Since this was the fourth time Ocampo had heard the name Bobadilla, the first having been when the king himself referred to him, it became clear that he must fix firmly in his mind who this shadowy figure Bobadilla was, for regardless in what direction Ocampo turned, he found himself face-to-face with this elusive man who seemed to have played a major role in Coln's life. Setting aside an entire afternoon, he sat with his scribes and asked: 'Now what do we know about this Bobadilla? The king told me several things. Bobadilla was Queen Isabella's choice, not his. He was a man of distinguished background, overly fat, an errant coward.'

'Doesn't sound appealing,' one of the scribes remarked.

'Very intelligent. And most important, he arrived on this island to track down Coln's misbehavior armed with five different letters empowering him in ways far beyond my commission. In fact, the king told me: "Because Bobadilla abused his five letters, I'm giving you only one." '

'You mean you have no power to arrest? To force a man to give evidence? The rack if necessary?'

'I do not have such powers, nor would I want them.' He concluded the meeting with an order: 'Let us direct all our attention to learning as much about Bobadilla as possible, for if we first understand him, we may understand Coln.'

Two days later the senior scribe informed him: 'I've found a man whose life was saved by Bobadilla,' and Ocampo said: 'Fetch him.' Within minutes one Elpidio Daz, sailor from Huelva, was seated uneasily in the tilted chair eager to testify: 'Bobadilla was a gentleman, a splendid man. He knew how to govern. Stepped off the s.h.i.+p that brought him from Spain, first thing he saw on the island was me and my cousin waiting to be hanged, rope ready and all. And he cried in a loud voice, I can still hear the words, believe me: "Release those men!" Coln's people were furious. Refused to obey. And I thought: Here we go. But Bobadilla whipped out some papers which showed he'd been sent by the king to clean up the mess on Espaola, and the hangings were stopped.'

'You say hangings? Plural?'

'There was a score of condemned like me waiting in this area or that. In the little town of Xaragua far west of here, sixteen of us prisoners were held in a deep well, all sentenced to be hanged. It was Bobadilla who saved our lives: "Get those men out of there. Set them all free." '

'You have a high opinion of him?'

'The finest. A man of common sense and order.'

Ocampo began to acquire a balanced a.s.sessment of a man whom neither he nor the king liked. He might have been cowardly in battle, but he was certainly not afraid to confront ugly messes. He seemed to have exercised solid judgment and was certainly not a cruel man. He was honest, so far as could be seen. But there the list of positive aspects stopped, for again and again he emerged from the testimony as an obese, gluttonous, self-important functionary who used his five royal letters in an obscene way, like a cat using her claws to play with a mouse.

Supporters of Coln, and there were many, especially those who owed their jobs to the admiral, excoriated Bobadilla as an unfeeling, vengeful man who delighted in bringing the great explorer down, but more sober citizens a.s.sured Ocampo that Bobadilla had done a masterful job in a humane way, and it was almost impossible to discern who was telling the truth. And so the questioning about both Coln and Bobadilla continued.

In the late afternoons, when the interrogations ended, Ocampo liked to leave his office and take an evening walk along the beautiful waterfront of Santo Domingo; he preferred to walk three paces in the lead, with his two scribes trailing behind him. In this way, the three Spaniards from the homeland formed an elegant trio: Ocampo in front, tall and rigidly erect, with his conspicuous eye patch and scar attesting to his valor, the two scribes dressed in black marching behind in orderly fas.h.i.+on, and all comporting themselves like grandees from earlier centuries.

When they encountered citizens they knew, Ocampo would bow graciously and inquire as to their welfare. His scribes noticed that it was he who always bowed first, and when asked about this, he said: 'A soldier carries his dignity in his heart. He can afford to be generous to others, especially if they have no dignity whatever.'

When his oldest scribe said: 'But you're a licenciado,' he replied: 'Once a Spaniard has borne arms, he's a soldier forever.'

In his walks Ocampo learned much about this tropical capital, not yet twenty years old, for to its harbor came all the s.h.i.+ps traversing the Caribbean or putting in to islands like Puerto Rico and still-unsettled Cuba. Watching these daring s.h.i.+ps, he saw clearly that it was Spain's destiny to rule this inland sea, but he was equally interested in the natives, whom men were calling Indians, a name Coln had proposed when he finally had to admit that he had not reached China. In his obstinacy he had said: 'Then it must have been India,' and thus the natives, offspring of those early Arawaks who had escaped annihilation by the Caribs, received a name totally inappropriate and erroneous.

Sometimes as he took his evening stroll he would meet Alejandro Pimentel y Fraganza, the lieutenant governor, and the two proud men, each suspicious of what hidden powers from the king the other might have, would bow formally, say nothing, and pa.s.s on. It was obvious to Ocampo that Pimentel feared that he, Ocampo, had arrived on the island to investigate Pimentel's behavior. Once Ocampo told his men: 'I am so relieved we're getting on well with that fellow. I'm sure he is suspicious of us, but I like him.'

On two occasions when the strollers met Pimentel, they saw with pleasure that his young wife was with him, but she was so closely guarded by her onetime duea that they had no opportunity to speak with her.

Occasionally the evening walks bore unexpected fruit, for strangers would approach Ocampo and whisper furtive hints regarding questions he might want to raise, but a more important consequence was that the women of Santo Domingo became accustomed to seeing the man they had supposed to be so austere coming toward them with a gracious smile and a gentlemanly bow. So when the town felt at ease with him, he surprised certain citizens, especially those from good families who adhered to the old patterns of Spanish life, by inviting to his interrogations several women, as if the time had come when they, too, should be listened to, and from them he obtained those unusual insights which so often illuminate major concerns. For example, when he interrogated Seora Bermudez he listened patiently while she outlined the distinguished heritage from which she came. It was much more exalted than her husband's, she claimed, and Ocampo learned several interesting facts: Francisco de Bobadilla was exactly the right man for the job, for he was of ancient lineage, had served the king in many positions of honor, and was a caballero in the military Order of Calatrava, than which there was no higher. A most excellent man, wise in the ways of the world and more than able to penetrate the effronteries of a peasant like Coln and the insufferable members of the admiral's family working here, who only wanted to enrich themselves at the expense of others.

Ocampo felt that he must correct such a gross misstatement lest it find its way into his official report: 'But certainly, Seora Bermudez, there could not have been seven Colns here, because there weren't that many in Spain. His brother Bartolome, his brother Diego, and his own son Diego and maybe one of his brother's sons. Counting him, that's only five, and it's not unusual for the head of a Spanish family to find jobs in his retinue for five family members.'

Seora Bermudez, once started, was not one to surrender easily: 'You're right in your count, as far as it goes, but you're forgetting men related to his wife, or his brother's wives, or a.s.sociated in other ways. Seven?' and her voice rose. 'More like a dozen.' Then she became conciliatory: 'But Coln did discover this island ... and all the others. He alone kept his s.h.i.+ps from turning back. He alone persevered.'

But as she rose to leave Ocampo's office she stopped, sat down again, and began speaking as if her interview had just begun: 'The worrisome thing about Coln and his endless relatives, all of them absorbing money that should have come to us, was that he was an Italian. Not Spanish at all. And to think of him as lording it over good Spaniards like my husband and me, who come from the great families of Spain, was intolerable. It was simply intolerable!'

It was a woman of much different character who provided Ocampo with his most valuable information about Coln. As Ocampo had been about to sail from Sevilla to take up his duties in Espaola, a grandee from a n.o.ble family had come secretly to deliver a bottle of perfume distilled by Arab experts working in Venice. And it was so valuable that the n.o.bleman begged: 'Protect it with your life, Don Hernan, and when you reach Espaola deliver it privately to Seora Pimentel. Her going desolated me.'

For this subtle reason, Ocampo had been more than casually interested to meet the Pimentels on his evening walks. He had spent many hours when alone wondering what kind of woman the young seora was, and from the meager information he had and having observed her quiet dignity, her obvious reserve, he suspected that she might be the kind of intense woman who would tell her husband nothing about the presence of an admirer in Sevilla. He decided to follow the n.o.bleman's advice and deliver the perfume in strictest secrecy.

He therefore dispatched one of his scribes to the Pimentel house to inform Seora Pimentel that he would like to question her about the Great Admiral, and in due course she appeared, attended as always by her remorseless watchdog. Displaying no irritation, Ocampo started to question his visitor about Coln, engineering it so that he could block out the duea's view, whereupon he slipped the seora the vial of perfume. Then he returned to his desk and looked at her meaningfully for a moment. 'In Sevilla,' he said casually, 'I met many who remember you and your husband with pleasure,' and he made arrangements then to interrogate her further at another time.

On the next visit, with the hawklike servant still in evidence, Ocampo noted that Seora Pimentel had deposited somewhere about her face or neck a drop or two of the rare perfume, for its soft aroma permeated his office in a most alluring way. It was then that she started talking about the Great Admiral, and her shrewd conclusions made more sense than those of any of the other testifiers: 'Cristbal Coln has fascinated me from the first day that I arrived here, when he was hanging men by the dozens. I saw him then as a monster, and when I learned how he had mismanaged his first two settlements, La Navidad and Isabela, a forlorn, doomed town on the north sh.o.r.e, far away from the first one, I could not understand how their majesties tolerated him. My husband and I visited there in its last days, a miserable boat trip, smooth as gla.s.s here in our sea, turbulent beyond words when we reached the ocean. It was a heartbreaking place to have been named after our great queen. No decent port for s.h.i.+ps. Not a stone house in the place. Fields had been chopped from the woods but had not been tended, and I'm told the last settlers there nearly starved, because the Indians would not bring them food. That was Coln at his worst, incapable of launching any village and sustaining it.

'I knew him only briefly in that period, his worst you could say, and I viewed him princ.i.p.ally as a boorish Italian adventurer. But then he began to take his meals with us. Even though my husband was a personal representative of the king, like all the others, we lived in those early days in nothing more than a shack, but Coln filled it with his extraordinary vitality, his imagination, his quest always for something new and challenging, and I came to admire him as a genius, difficult but standing at the edge of the known world. To hear him explain his dreams in his accented Spanish was to witness greatness in action, and I was awed by his volcanic power.

'But my husband and I also saw his flaws, and they were monstrous, almost disqualifying. He rarely followed through on what he started. He could not govern for the simple reason that he could not keep his eyes on the task at hand ... always looking to the future. He was a brutal man at times, arbitrary to the point of hanging anyone who disagreed with him, and he was certainly avaricious, mean, untruthful and petty, even when dealing with his own men. And his greatest fault was his almost insane nepotism and favoritism.

'However, when the grand balance is struck, Coln was the man who gave us this New World, and I doubt I shall ever see his like again.'

She had permitted no interruptions, and when she finished she indicated to her companion that they must go, but as Seora Pimental left the room, the aroma of her presence hanging in the air like a memory of flowers, she told Ocampo: 'I was interested to hear that you were once in Sevilla.' And then she was gone.

Ocampo had supposed that this was the last he would see of Seora Pimentel, so he was surprised when only a few days later one of his scribes came into the interrogation room to announce an unexpected visitor 'A woman to see you. I think she's the one that comes with Seora Pimentel.' Into the room came the duea, with bows and apologies: 'Excellency, Lieutenant Governor Pimentel and his lady seek the honor of your presence at the evening meal tomorrow night, and he apologizes for the lateness of this invitation.'

Ocampo showed unseemly haste in accepting, but next evening when he was ready to set out for the stone house of the Pimentels, he stopped at the door of his quarters and reflected on what he was about to do, and the caution he displayed was an indication of how colonial Spain was governed: It could be most imprudent for me to go to that house alone. Pimentel might have discovered the perfume and supposed it came from me and concluded that I was in love with his wife, or he could be suspicious about my motives in coming to Espaola. In either case, he might want to dispose of me, so it would be better if I didn't go alone. Calling for his scribes, he asked them to form the customary parade group and thus they marched to the Pimentel home, where he said casually: 'I brought my men, of course,' to which the Pimentels replied: 'They can dine with the rest of the family,' and the scribes were seen no more.

The house which the seora had modestly described as being 'nothing more than a shack' was now a colonial mansion as fine as a visitor might have found in a rural town in Spain. The stone masonry was strong and well joined; the floor of the main room was of some hard tropical wood, neatly polished, those of the lesser rooms of tile brought from Sevilla. The entire home bespoke the quiet dignity of a Spanish gentleman's residence. The Pimentels had obviously imported many things from home, including first-rate carpenters and stoneworkers, but there was no garish display of rich fabric or precious metal. If anything, the rooms were underfurnished, though Ocampo was pleased to note that the best of Spain had reached this capital of the New World.

'This house will stand forever,' he predicted, to which Pimentel replied: 'It must. Spain must seek deep roots here, because soon envious others will appear in this golden sea to wrest the islands from us. Or try to.'

The dinner was impeccable, with at least four different servants appearing at intervals to serve it. 'My wife's cousins,' Pimentel said offhandedly, but Ocampo observed that at least one was an Indian and the others were from peasant stock.

Since Seora Pimentel took no part in the conversation, Ocampo was bewildered as to the purpose of his being there, but when the rich wine of Cadiz pa.s.sed at the end of the meal, the lieutenant governor said: 'We delayed so long to invite you to our modest home because, frankly, we could not guess why you had really been sent to our island. Now we have cause to believe that what you said from the start was true. You came here to investigate the dead Coln, not us.'

Ocampo, struggling for some pleasantry with which to acknowledge this gracious concession, happened to be facing the room's only major piece of decoration, a rather large ironbound chest which must have been imported from Toledo, considering its careful metalwork and two large, intricate locks: 'Spain is as securely founded in this special sea as that chest is secured against theft,' and, without looking at the chest, the Pimentels nodded.

Thus the remarkable dinner with the distinguished family ended, with no word having been spoken regarding either Coln or Bobadilla, for which Ocampo was grateful: 'I've been hearing so much about those two adversaries that tonight was a pleasant respite. Thank you.'

On the walk back to quarters, he told his scribes: 'It's time we restrict our summons to those older men of good judgment who can tell us truthfully about Coln as a business administrator, for we must remember that he had for quite a few years been the all-powerful viceroy of our holdings in this part of the world.'

The first witness Ocampo summoned was Gonsalvo Perez, an older man who had held high office under Viceroy Coln and who had that sagacious approach to problems that sometimes comes with increasing years. He was a handsome man, the deep lines in his face attesting to a maturing character and a detached, amused att.i.tude toward life, for on the frequent occasions when he smiled at some injudicious act of his own about which he was forced to confess, his entire face lit up, the lines becoming frames for flas.h.i.+ng eyes which had seen so much of the world's nonsense and had understood it all.

'It seems to me,' he said, nodding to the scribes as he tried to relax in the witness chair, 'that one should judge a viceroy on how successfully he performed those certain tasks which form the very base of any viceroy's job, whoever he might be. Did he settle the new lands placed under his control? Did he protect the king's money? Was he just in dealing with men under him? When he left were things better or worse than when he came?'

'The very questions I've been trying to find answers to.'

'Let's first clean up the crucial points. Was he honest in dealing with the king's funds? Scrupulously, and I was in a position to know. He never diverted the smallest coin to his own use, not one maravedi, and would allow none of us to do so, either. So on that basic point, you can halt your investigation right now.'

'Second fundamental, did he leave things better or worse than when he took command?'

'Neither. Our island had not deteriorated, but neither had it progressed the way it might have. But the fault was not Coln's. It was Spain's.'

'You mean ... the king's?'

'No, I mean Spain's. The Spanish nature. The inborn arrogance of Spanish men, especially those of good family.'

'I cannot follow you.'

'We should have brought to this island, twelve years ago, carpenters and weavers and s.h.i.+pbuilders and sixteen or seventeen men of middle age who knew how to run things like shops and bakeries and ironmongeries, men who could do things.' He accented this word heavily, then added with a touch of regret: 'Instead, we brought out the sons of rich families, young fellows who'd never in their lives done a day's work at anything constructive and whom Coln was simply unable to discipline. He set them a good example. He worked, believe me. I worked on his accounts because I knew my numbers and how to write. His brother Bartolome worked because he had a position to defend. But the vast majority of the dandies worked at nothing. They had come across the Atlantic to fight, collect gold in buckets from the streams, and go home rich.

'And that leads us to the first of Coln's great failures as viceroy. He was unable, with the kinds of men he had at his disposal, to build settlements. All failed. When he found La Navidad had been destroyed in his absence, he started a second settlement-Isabela he called it out of his love for the queen who had done so much to spur his career. It was a disaster, a place of infinite sadness, and I think you should enclose in your report some account of what happened there, for I heard it firsthand from my cousin to whom it happened.' And he interrupted his comments to recount this true adventure: 'His name was Girolamo, son of my uncle, and he told me that when he visited the ruins of Isabela two years ago he was walking along the empty street, looking at the deserted buildings, when, upon turning a corner, he came upon two caballeros-swords, long capes, plumed hats-men of obvious distinction. Astonished at finding such settlers still there, my cousin approached them and said in a friendly voice: "Gentlemen, how fare you?" and they answered silently by putting their hands to their hats to return his courtesy, but when they doffed their plumed hats their heads came off, too, and for a moment they stood there headless. Then two heartbreaking sighs came from the heads as if the burden of living in Isabela had been too great, and before my cousin could interrogate them, they vanished, he could not say how.'

'Very interesting,' Ocampo said, 'but if Coln failed in his first two attempts at settlement, he certainly succeeded here in Santo Domingo.'

'False. He did get the place started on the right track, the south side of any island is always better, but real progress came only when Bobadilla took over with those plenary powers the king had given him.'

'You say he wrested control from Coln?'

'And not a moment too soon. Now the growth of the city is ensured. Bobadilla also saw to its protection, and when I concede that, it means something, because I was always a Coln man. I never really liked Bobadilla, especially not after I watched how he treated Coln.'

Ocampo interrupted: 'You just said something most interesting-"I was a Coln man." Were you one of those who represented the admiral's weakness for nepotism?'

Perez smiled most engagingly, held his two hands palms up as if crying 'Mea culpa,' and confessed: 'I was the perfect example. You see, my wife's brother, a real ne'er-do-well, married a sister ...' He broke into self-deprecating laughter and concluded: 'It's too long a story and not a happy one, but you're right. Coln knew we Spaniards resented him for being an Italian upstart, so he felt he had to surround himself with men who were completely loyal, and how better than to give the crucial jobs to his relatives ... and in my case, to relatives of his relatives?' He shrugged: 'So in the case of the Perez relatives, he got one total failure, my wife's brother, and one very hardworking expert who helped hold things together, my wife's husband.'

'I'm told you were exceptional,' Ocampo said with a slight bow. 'And now about the other criteria of a good viceroy?'

'Did he extend the king's landholdings? He certainly did. Did he subdue the rebellious natives and bring order where chaos had been? He did, he did. And most important of all, I think, he was always attentive to bringing Christianity to them. Yes, that was foremost in his mind, for he often reminded me: "Perez, Queen Isabella personally begged me to make sure that the natives became Christian, and that I've done." '

'So if I accept your testimony, the Great Admiral was a success in things that mattered, not so in certain minor concerns?'

'Exactly what I intended to convey.'

Ocampo received his most intriguing testimony during an evening party at the governor's house when a woman guest with a hoa.r.s.e voice and a gleaming eye led him aside into a hallway where no one could overhear, and confided: 'I wonder if you're missing the most important point of all, Excellency.'

'I'm not an excellency, ma'am. Just an honest scholar trying to do his best.'