A Matter of Souls Read online

  It was Manolo who had persuaded Don Joachim to take to the sea again for “a matter of good business.” Manolo had leaned his impeccable linen sleeves across Don Joachim’s document-strewn table and said, “Father, the New World is still open to those who will take a risk!” Manolo’s sea-blue eyes glistened with excitement. He stepped back and smiled, letting his long hands fall open against the sturdy leather of his riding trousers.

  In the six years that he had worked for his father, Manolo had developed an excellent reputation for spotting new and lucrative business opportunities. In that fact, Don Joachim could see a bit of himself long ago, hungry for a chance to prove that he could succeed. He had. Don Joachim’s efforts had even surpassed his own father’s, who was of noble birth but had been content to live off the income from his lands.

  Young Joachim had wanderlust. He had followed a family friend to the East and found wonder and fortune there. Joachim Rodrigo became a true man of the world, embracing new languages and building a respect for cultures and habits strange to him. He used the inheritance from his father to first buy silks and rugs, then exotic hides and gleaming ivories. Some he sold right off the boat, in his province. Others he loaded again onto ships headed for the isles of the north.

  In time, he sailed himself to England and France and traveled even as far as Vienna to meet his best customers, to see firsthand the luxurious robes and fine carvings they’d made from his skins and bones. The early years had been hard on Filomena. Yet she remained loyal and waited to become his wife, waited to bear and raise his children.

  Now they could reap the rewards of Don Joachim’s diligence, of Filomena’s nights alone. He could enjoy his entire family’s company often, and in leisure, while Manolo looked after their future prosperity.

  Don Joachim had enthusiastically agreed with his son’s proposal to test the venture beginning even farther away than Persia.

  “Azúcar,” Manolo had let the word roll from his tongue. Sugar plantations, he said, would spread across the lands of the New World. Someone must own them. Someone must pay the managers and overseers. Someone must transport the bounteous results of the investment back to civilization. That someone must, of course, be knowledgeable of the business world. Manolo had convinced Don Joachim. They would extend their dealings to Benezvela.

  Manolo had planned it; Manolo had researched everything. He had so looked forward to this first trip to the new continent! And now a last-minute conflict over an important shipment in the Port of Cadis had interfered. Manolo would have to attend to that.

  Don Joachim had decided this was the doorway to his retirement. He would make this one last and long journey to bless Manolo’s rise to full partner in the family business. He would finalize the deal, perhaps by going further than expected and purchasing one of these plantations fully. Don Joachim was capable of looking both backward and forward at the same time. Manolo would have, must have a future on his own terms. He had chosen his way.

  “Tell me,” Joachim Rodrigo had said, “How do they keep the cost of the labor so very low?”

  Manolo was hurrying into his traveling cloak with one eye on the groom and waiting horses as he thrust the contracts into his father’s arms. Manolo looked to his father, flushed with momentary anxiety over all that lay on his shoulders. When their eyes met, however, he was immediately calmed by Joachim Rodrigo’s reassuring smile. He hugged his father tightly, quickly. His shoulders relaxed. He opened the door with a bounce in his step. Over one broad shoulder he said, “Slaves, Father. My contact says relying on the native labor will not at all suffice. Everything is there in my notes—I must go!” The heavy door shut between them.

  Slaves. It was not Don Joachim’s first uneasiness with the practice.

  Though he had developed a specialty in his business, he knew that a successful man must be ever aware of current affairs, of happenings near and far. So he often shared wine and stories with many kinds of men, young and old. He knew the Portuguese were literally carving their way into the jungles of Brasil, establishing gold mines to the envy of their Spanish competitors. Joachim Rodrigo’s fellow Spaniards were pushing themselves into neighboring Benezvela, boldly clearing and planting these vast plantations. Jealousy fueled the dueling nations. Unexpectedly, Spain had found a way to gain the upper hand.

  Benezvelan natives, unused to the brutality of toiling a crop such as sugar, proved useless. Don Joachim’s enterprising countrymen discovered that Black Africans filled the void. They could survive, even thrive in the jungle harshness.

  Slaves.

  Joachim Rodrigo had never seen a Moor up close. In the markets of Persia, he had seen from a distance the strapping bodies towering over the crowds, like shadows moving at will. But these had been merchants too, bargaining in many of the same languages Don Joachim himself employed in his trade. Surely, a man who could support himself thus would never fall into such a state as bondage!

  And yet, in taverns and drawing rooms alike, any New World conversation seemed to turn on a different type of Negro than those Joachim Rodrigo had glimpsed. It was said that these were savage, bestial creatures from the innermost regions of the Dark Continent. Unlike the clever yellow men of the East and apparently different from the natives of the New World, these creatures were said to be unworthy of comparison with a White man from any walk of life.

  The talk buzzed around and inside Don Joachim’s head for a time, then hid itself from his daily routines—why would it be otherwise?—until he heard the Word read in a quavering voice by the old Padre.

  … Bring back my sons from

  afar, and my daughters

  from the ends of the earth:

  everyone who is named as

  mine, whom I created for my

  glory, whom I formed

  and made…

  Don Joachim Rodrigo could recall no instance in his boyhood lessons from priests and brothers in which it was revealed that God had created man, woman, and slave.

  Don Joachim set out two days after his son. Doña Filomena fussed over him, saying over and over that she had dreamed of black crows and begging him to leave it for Manolo. But he would not allow her to interpret the dream over café con leche and fresh bread. She accompanied him to Mass that morning and then kissed him as long and as sweetly as she had before every voyage.

  He savored the taste of her well past the Islas de Canarias. He read Manolo’s meticulous figures describing the five-year outlay of funds needed for the project, with earnings increasing each year.

  Don Joachim Rodrigo was pleased that his son was not shortsighted.

  And when Don Joachim saw the rocky coast of Africa in the distance, he felt again the familiar surge of excitement and adventure. He would go ashore, perhaps find some small but sentimental exotic trinket for Rosalinda. He saw rising toward heaven the stone walls of the Portuguese fortress on the coast.

  The captain, a surprisingly well-mannered English, explained that they would stop on the mainland to pick up crucial supplies and cargo. Manolo had booked passage knowing the Santa Clara would be fast; it merely carried documents and foodstuffs from Spain to its settlements in Benezvela. Though the boat was small, it was traveling surprisingly light to Don Joachim’s feel; perhaps there was African ivory or palm oil to be loaded here along with the crew’s necessities.

  He stood with the other two passengers on the deck as the crew lowered the rowboats into the water. One man, a gentleman, seemingly a man of business like Joachim Rodrigo, kept to himself. He shared nothing, solicited nothing. The other, a young cartographer, had been busy with his instruments, scrolls, and eyeglasses thus far. He proudly tilted one of his maps so that Joachim Rodrigo could see.

  “I look forward to seeing some of the infamous beasts of Africa,” the young man confided in Don Joachim.

  “You are disembarking here, then?”

  “Oh, yes!” The younger man spoke breathlessly, shoving his tools into a large satchel. He dropped something; Don Joachim bent to retrieve it
for him. The other gentleman moved away from them with an air of patient impatience.

  In the midst of the noise of commerce, Joachim Rodrigo felt a rush. He was expectant, eager. Why, he wondered? What did he hope for at this place? He followed the cartographer through the gates. This was a man’s place, swirling with gruff shouts and clattering horses’ hooves.

  And then Don Joachim heard the anguished wail of a woman. He turned on his heel, ready to intercede, to offer of himself whatever was necessary to help.

  But he realized, with a jolt to his heart, that he could not help this woman. She lay sprawled in shameful nakedness, fettered and bound. Her head, a mass of black twists dotted with shells and beads, was lowered against her dusky skin. She slowly raised tearless eyes. Empty eyes.

  Slaves.

  Joachim Rodrigo’s fellow passenger—the gentleman—had gone directly toward her, pulling her chin up with one gloved hand and stretching her lips back with the other, apparently examining her teeth.

  Joachim Rodrigo averted his eyes; a woman was a woman. He could not save her, but he could not witness her degradation, either. With a sinking stomach it came to him, as he blinked away, that there was nowhere to look.

  For there ahead was a row of black bodies—a dozen men, with hands bound and legs spread for display. To one side were twenty more, on the other a line of women clad only in ragged skirts. Joachim Rodrigo was dizzied by the variety of expressions on the African faces.

  Fearful, defiant, numbed. Haughty, clever, calculating. Regal. Intelligent. Mad. Their bodies were all submissive, but their faces! Joachim Rodrigo could see the world in their faces.

  The English captain was strolling past one group of the Africans with a stout Portuguese who spoke with his hands. The English paused to pull notes from his waistcoat. A matter of business.

  Don Joachim was overcome.

  He stumbled somewhere, anywhere, to quiet the uncertainties vying for his conscience. He wandered into the dimness of a low wooden building.

  “African heat. It is unlike our own.” His counterpart from the ship—a true compatriot in all, it now appeared—offered him a drink from a bejeweled silver traveling flask.

  Don Joachim knew it would be foolish, even dangerous, to partake of spirits in a heat such as this. He declined with a shake of his head and lowered himself to a rough stool. He would take no water here, either. In his present state, nothing would ease his distress.

  The slaves had faces.

  “Your first purchase? It is hard to believe, I know, that such savages walk on two legs and mate just as we. But they are not like us. Heathens, too—our good king says we should convert them from their wretched animal worship to our true faith.”

  Don Joachim blinked up as the man went on.

  “It is almost a wasted effort. Our God has left these ignorant creatures where they belong, in the darkness—” The man paused in his discourse. “You are ill.” The gentleman assisted Don Joachim to his feet.

  “I am not,” Don Joachim answered as firmly as he could. At the hearing of his voice, the man believed his lie and let him be. Joachim Rodrigo made his way out alone. The oppressive atmosphere seemed heavier inside the walls than without.

  He closed his eyes and saw those faces again. Had the heat deluded him? Or had he somehow seen, at the same time, the faces of the old Padre, of the publican he once met in England, his friend Don Felipe, even Manolo? All black- and mahogany- and coffee-skinned. And as each of his friends and family and acquaintances had lives, where were the lives of these Africans? They had not sprung up from black African soil alone, each to exist with no support, no feeling from or for another. Are we, Don Joachim wondered, greater than God, in removing them and using them so?

  He must go back. Back to the ship now, then back to Doña Filomena and Rosalinda. Back to Manolo to confer, to explain … what?

  Uneasiness weighted his shoulders. He felt old, too old to have such a struggle within.

  Don Joachim waited to reboard the Santa Clara. Ahead of him the English captain was watching his Africans march out to the rowboats.

  Joachim Rodrigo was drawn to the water. He went so close that the lingering waves lapped at his boots. He did not notice. The first group of slaves was pulled reluctantly to a boat and put into it; they were unable to help themselves with both their hands and feet restrained. The captain waved them off. Next a group of men and women were separated at the water’s edge.

  The woman who had cried out was among them. She held herself near, very near, a slim young man with a completely bald head. The sun bounced off his crown. She arched her body to rub against him; they mouthed words that no one could hear. A sailor dragged them apart. They stared at each other, drinking each other in.

  Don Joachim tasted Doña Filomena again.

  The men were forced into the boat. The two crewmen rowed sluggishly; several of the Africans were very large. They were more than halfway across the deepening waters when the slim African looked back, not at his woman, but at Joachim Rodrigo.

  He was sure he did not imagine it. The African locked eyes with him. Don Joachim could see the passion and the love. He could see the anger and humiliation. He could see that the man inside the African refused to be diminished. When the slim African was done pouring his being into Don Joachim, he let out a shout and was suddenly, amazingly, standing full tall on the port side. One of the big ones rose up, then another. The three leaped over the side, carrying all the others with them.

  “Man overboard!”

  “Overboard!” The crewmen on the ship as well as the two in the rowboat became frantic. On shore, the captain paced back and forth but did not raise his voice.

  As the heavy Africans seemed to will themselves to remain underwater, there was nothing to be done. The crewmen, diving to exhaustion, could not rescue them. The Africans had no desire to be rescued.

  On shore, the woman with shells in her hair began to chant the same sound, or words, over and over. They were as unintelligible as her last words to her lover. She stomped her feet in the sand and chanted, and shook herself and chanted, and fell onto the ground, convulsing and chanting. She pulled down the woman next to her, but the others remained standing.

  The English captain himself ran to her, slapping her, shaking her. Her chanting reached a feverish rhythm and then stopped.

  Don Joachim saw that the captain’s face held a brief, strange expression.

  “Cut her away!” he called out to no one in particular. “She is dead.”

  “A matter of good business, that. Those two would have made great trouble.” The gentleman was in his ear again.

  That was when Joachim Rodrigo wondered if the gentleman was his demon.

  He found no peace inside his compartment on the Santa Clara, and even repeating the rosary a second and third time did not hush the taunts of his conscience. Hours after the merciless seaman had shut him in and gone away, there was an impatient rapping, then banging with fists, on his door. Don Joachim blinked and swallowed back the bile that kept rising in his throat as the boat rocked. It had been a long time since he’d sailed. There were other noises, loud and destructive.

  “Don Joachim!” The English captain burst in, sword drawn, panting, with bright burning eyes. “We are under attack. Come above and defend yourself, or you may be slain in your bed!”

  Joachim Rodrigo slipped his rosary inside his clothing and touched the cool pearl handle of a dagger. He had purchased it in a foreign alley when Manolo was just learning to chew solid food. He had decided back then that his best defense was a calm, practical demeanor; no weapons drawn unless absolutely necessary.

  His modest dress would conceal him from ransom seekers. Don Joachim always wore plain, dark woolens, and his only ornament was a small gold ring, which also served as his seal.

  In all his experience, Don Joachim had faced peril; early on he had even lost some goods due to his own youthful incompetence. But he had always escaped capture. He straightened himself and steppe
d warily through the splintered remains of the door. He showed no fear, nor did he have any.

  The deck was rumbling with confusion. Don Joachim Rodrigo inched his body along the wall, heading for the stern. Surrounding him were the grunts and thuds of hand-to-hand battle. And there was commotion below also. Shrieks and shouts. Chains dragging … Joachim finally peered around a huge cask on the starboard side.

  “Clean house! We keep nothin’ to slow us down, nothin’ that won’t bring profit!” A huge, dirty-faced Englishman stomped across the bridge above him, bellowing orders. Joachim Rodrigo stood still.

  The original crew had been overcome. He saw two of their number already bound and prostrate just ahead. Swarming about, throwing open doors and prying loose the tops of crates, were an assortment of hungry-faced men. One of them turned.

  There was a splashing near the bow.

  Don Joachim Rodrigo saw two of the pirates lifting … a black body was hoisted up and overboard.

  There was another splash.

  “I want full account of all the cargo!” the imposter captain growled from above.

  Don Joachim was grabbed with great force, his arms wrenched behind his back so quickly that there was no time for either the dagger or the rosary. He was hit on the back of his head. His teeth rattled in the sharp flash of pain. The old Padre’s voice whispered to him:

  For the sake of profit many

  sin, and the struggle for wealth

  blinds the eyes …

  Then Don Joachim Rodrigo saw nothing.

  He awoke after the attack with a pain behind his eyes. He remembered being struck … He was propped up inside the cabin, smelling the pirate captain who sat in front of him. When the pirate smiled, a hole gaped where his left front tooth should be.