Later, when rumor could be hardened into demonstrable fact, it would be determined that six thousand of Spain’s finest sons landed on Irish beaches after their ships sank, and all but seven hundred were murdered.
Ledesma, looking at his fellow Cartagenians, said: ‘The brave young men who sailed with me from this city … so valiant … so indestructible. We brought them through a hell that few men ever know, and we held them together …’ He clenched his hands and pounded at air: ‘We brought them through everything Drake could throw at us. And then to lose them to English murderers in Ireland. Oh my God … my God.’
The listeners could see his fists tighten and the muscles in his neck stand out: ‘Yes, the English murdered our men, shamelessly, but we’ll be avenged. I’m certain that before I die, El Draque will return to these waters. He must … And when he comes, if God allows me strength, I shall do battle with him once more, and I shall hound him to his grave.’ And from that moment Ledesma manifested the kind of blood hatred of the Englishmen who had murdered his sailors that Francis Drake had always had for Spaniards who had burned his sailors. On neither side would the passionate enmity be allowed to wane.
• • •
The tragedy that overtook Admiral Ledesma in his futile confrontation in Europe was so harrowing that in an effort to forget it, he turned his remaining energy to more humane concerns, and day after day he roamed his city, identifying projects that must now go forward: ‘I want to finish the battlements to enclose the entire city. We need better wells … a fort to protect Boca Chica …’ And once when he was inspecting a section of wall he stopped suddenly and turned to face Ortega: ‘I’ve watched you carefully, Roque.’ This was the first time in this chaotic year that he had ever called his kinsman anything but Captain. ‘And I’ve seen that you’re a man of honor. We’d not have brought the Mariposa back with any lesser captain.’ Ortega saluted. ‘And I’m growing old, sixty-one this year, very old I find, and have no son to carry on my name. Why don’t you become Roque Ledesma, and plan to take my place when I’m gone?’ And Ortega saluted again, speechless.
Then a happy idea struck: ‘Look, you’re already entitled to the name Ortega y Ledesma. Change it to Roque Ledesma y Ledesma and let people guess if it represents some kind of incest.’ He laughed at his joke, but still Ortega did not speak, so the admiral left his suggestion hanging.
He soon learned that his widowed captain was attending to a very serious matter pushed upon him by Doña Leonora, who had resumed her determined campaign to find a proper husband for Señorita Beatrix, her niece from Española. ‘I want you to give Captain Ortega a week of rest, Diego,’ she said, and during those relaxing days she kept Beatrix constantly before Ortega, and whereas in the first two days he was still preoccupied with Spanish defeats, on the third he began to notice how charming Beatrix was, but the girl remained too shy to press her attention upon him. So Doña Leonora knew it was incumbent upon her to intervene. ‘Captain Ortega,’ she said boldly, ‘surely you’ve noticed that Beatrix is quite taken with you … your manly ways and all.’ He coughed modestly.
‘She’s a dear girl, really she is. While you were away at war I had a chance to see what a splendid wife she’d make.’ When Ortega hesitated, she added: ‘You’re not getting any younger, Roque …’ and with her unprecedented use of his first name he recalled that the admiral had done the same when speaking to him about the name change, and all of a sudden he could see the shattered fragments of his life—his impoverished mother, the loss of his wife, the defeat in England, the uncertainty in the New World—mending themselves in a grand coalescence with the Ledesmas of Cartagena. He would marry their niece, adopt their name, and enter the grand alliance they were building for themselves in this rich and famous city.
In a low voice he asked: ‘Doña Leonora, would I have your permission to ask your husband for Señorita Beatrix’s hand in marriage?’ and she reacted with opened mouth and arched eyebrows as if the idea were his alone and somewhat startling: ‘I think he would listen,’ and she left with the satisfaction of knowing that she had solved the problems of yet another of her numerous relatives.
But when the vice-regent, now a senior official, heard of the proposal to give Ortega a new name, he lodged serious objections: ‘Don Diego, where is your sanity? People are already whispering: “This town isn’t Cartagena, it’s Carta-Ledesma.” If you make this name change, you’ll be throwing your nepotism in their faces.’
Don Diego promised that he would think about the danger, but that night as he strolled upon his battlements he thought: The most permanent goal a man can achieve is to use members of his family to weave a network of influence and stability. Look at Drake. In shadows, for fame is transient. Look at what happened to Cortés. The favor of a king is a fragile reed to lean upon. But to have your daughters’ husbands in positions of power, to see your sister’s sons with good salaries, that’s permanent. That you can depend on. What did Drake say that last night? He grieved that he had no sons? Well, I too have none, but I’m going to get one, Roque Ledesma y Ledesma, fine name, and those who don’t like it can go to hell! So the name change took place.
The seven years following the disaster of the Armada produced little excitement in the Caribbean, primarily because Drake left it alone, and without him to duel, the place seemed unimportant. Mule trains crossed the isthmus from Panamá to Nombre de Dios and off-loaded their treasure onto ships which Cartagena’s flotilla escorted to Havana, where bullion fleets were organized for the passage home to Sevilla, and in these years not a ship was lost.
Word did filter through that Drake had taken as his second wife an heiress of good family and had been elected as the Plymouth Member of Parliament, where he occasionally spoke on naval and military matters. Lured out of retirement to command an attack on the northwest coast of Spain and Portugal, he made a hash of the effort and was rebuked by being forced into what everyone supposed was a permanent retirement. After that the Caribbean heard nothing of him and people began to suppose that both he and his older companion, Hawkins, now Sir John, were dead.
And then, in late February 1596, came the revitalizing news that Don Diego had been awaiting for so many years. It came not from King Philip in the Escorial but from one of his ministers in Madrid:
Our trusted spies inform us that on 25 January of this year that infamous heretic, Elizabeth of England, commissioned her two knights, Drake and Hawkins, to lead a fleet of 27 war vessels to assault our cities in the West Indies. King Philip is old and ailing. Give him the heads of these two pirates before he dies.
The average Spanish governor experienced a moment of dizziness when he learned that both Drake and Hawkins were coming to assail him, but not Don Diego, who reveled in the realization that both his mortal enemies would be coming into his predilected waters at the same time. ‘God is being good to me,’ he told the men of his family, and they reassembled their team to frustrate this final challenge of the English sea dogs.
With maps spread on tables, the Ledesmas concerted their strategies, guided always by Don Diego, who had a sixth sense as to what Queen Elizabeth would instruct her admirals to do and what precise steps they would take to do it. In their planning, the men referred invariably to Drake first and Hawkins second, it having been agreed in all European fleets that now the old uncle took orders from the younger and bolder nephew. Don Diego, in framing his strategies, thought only of Drake, and directed the vice-regent: ‘Since you beat him back at Nombre de Dios that other time, go back and do it again.’ When the young man demurred: ‘I doubt Drake will bother with so small a town,’ Don Diego snapped: ‘He’s Drake. He’ll be drawn to that spot the way a shark is drawn to the smell of a wounded body. He seeks revenge.’
Convinced that Drake would make another attempt to sack Panamá, Don Diego assigned his two other sons-in-law to build a dozen barricades along the jungle trail the Englishmen would be attempting to follow, and to poison all available springs. Then he looked at his most recent bright
hope, Roque Ledesma, and with that good sailor he pored over the charts of the Caribbean and decided: ‘He will not come to Española, for he destroyed it last time. Where will he come?’ After considerable speculation the two plotters decided that Drake would invade Puerto Rico, where the rich capital of San Juan would offer the kind of treasure he had taken last time at Santo Domingo: ‘You and I will go there, Roque, to make his life miserable.’
‘You never take Hawkins into your calculations,’ one of his nephews pointed out, and Don Diego explained: ‘Hawkins is like me, predictable. We fight him as we find him. But with Drake, you have to be guessing all the time, for his brain is like a hummingbird. His wings never rest.’
In conclusion, he made an arbitrary assignment. To the Amadór brothers, his loyal supporters for decades, he said: ‘Go back to Río Hacha. He’s sure to strike there at some point in this rampage,’ and when the brothers argued truthfully that Río was now a desolate place with very little to attract the avarice of a pirate, Don Diego replied: ‘His memories are there because it was there he suffered his first defeat. He’ll be back.’
But then Roque voiced the greatest objection of all to this dispersal of the Ledesma forces: ‘You’re leaving Cartagena unprotected,’ and Don Diego said: ‘He’ll not come here again. Because he conquered this city once, no need to repeat. Puerto Rico’s a new target. All the others are defeats that have to be avenged.’
‘Then why won’t he go back to San Juan de Ulúa? His greatest defeat of all?’
This was a penetrating question which the old warrior had to weigh carefully, but in the end he gave the answer of a very tired man: ‘If he goes to Ulúa, and with Hawkins present, there would be reason … well, then the job of fighting him is Mexico’s.’ He pondered this and added: ‘Our job—protecting the Caribbean—is demanding enough.’
Spring dragged on, with no substantial news of Drake’s movements, but in mid-April news of an entirely different kind was rushed to Cartagena. It came from San Juan in Puerto Rico and was substantial indeed:
On 9 April there limped into the harbor of this city the king’s great galleon Begoña, flagship of the treasure fleet. Demasted in a violent storm and carrying 300 souls and more than 2,000,000 pesos in gold and silver, it had no possibility of resuming its homeward journey and is now safe in our sanctuary. Its cargo of bullion has been hidden properly ashore where it will be retained until we learn of Sir Francis Drake’s plans. In the meantime, other cities should rush all spare force to Puerto Rico to protect this great treasure so badly needed by the king for his ventures.
Now came anxious moments for Don Diego. He wanted to rush to Puerto Rico to help defend that great treasure and was inwardly gratified that he had some months ago deduced that Drake would be heading there, but he did not care to make any move until he was certain that Drake’s fleet had actually sailed. In the third week of September word flashed through the islands and the Main: ‘Drake has sailed!’ but shortly thereafter came the perplexing news that Drake and Hawkins had stopped along the way to lay a nonproductive siege at the Grand Canary. ‘Ah ha!’ Don Diego cried when he heard the news. ‘If he’s come by way of the Canaries, he’s heading for Puerto Rico,’ and next day he dispatched the nineteen men of his family to their various posts.
When Don Diego approached San Juan in the Mariposa and saw the setting of roadstead and harbor in which he would be fighting what would surely be his last great duel with these two intrepid Englishmen, he was struck by a disarming thought: Good God! We’re all old men, fighting as if we were boys! Drake was fifty-two that summer, Hawkins sixty-three, and himself an ancient sixty-seven: But we’re still the best on the oceans.
As he entered the harbor Don Diego saw that reports about the loss of the Begoña had been accurate: demasted in a fierce Caribbean storm, she had no chance of proceeding to Spain, and sailors in the escort boat shouted: ‘We have her two million deep in the fortress over there. Drake’ll never touch it.’ When he landed he found surprises awaiting, for the local commander informed him: ‘We’ve decided there’s no hope of fighting those two on the open seas. All ships inside the harbor.’ Much as he disliked such restriction, he had to obey, so against his better judgment, he berthed his stalwart flagship inside. But when the last of his incoming fleet was safely tucked away, the commander startled him by announcing: ‘Tomorrow we bottle up the harbor by sinking what’s left of the Begoña right in the middle, and four smaller ships on either side,’ and although both Ledesma and the captain of the big galleon protested, this was done.
Since Don Diego’s little fleet was now imprisoned so it could not get out, nor Drake get in, he asked the local authorities: ‘What am I supposed to do?’ and they told him curtly: ‘Help install the extra shore batteries,’ so he and Roque removed all guns from the impounded ships and placed them at strategic points atop hills overlooking the approaches to the harbor.
While the Spaniards worked with belated speed to ready their defenses, they supposed they would be allowed three or four weeks for the task, but that was not to be. However, two items of extraordinary good luck now occurred to give them an advantage. As the English fleet sailed into the Caribbean, two of its ships lagged and alert Spanish frigates captured one of them, learning that Drake and Hawkins would arrive shortly at Puerto Rico. Armed with this precious knowledge, the scouting ships sped to San Juan, shouting the news as they arrived, so that when the English ships appeared every Spanish gun would be ready to fire directly in their teeth.
The other happening was one the Spaniards could not be aware of at the time, but no sooner had this English fleet left Plymouth back in August than its two admirals fell into violent dispute. Hawkins, as the older and more prudent, had wanted to cross the Atlantic at top speed and strike Puerto Rico before its defenses could be strengthened. Drake, however, insisted upon fighting a chain of fruitless battles on the way out, and thus wasted weeks.
Even now, on the eve of battle when every second was going to count, Drake demanded another useless layover in the Virgin Islands, hardly a day’s sail to Puerto Rico. Hawkins protested vehemently, failed once more to convince his impulsive associate, and realizing that their final adventure in the Caribbean was doomed because of Drake’s intransigence, he retired to his cabin, turned his weary body to the wall, and died.
After the burial of Hawkins in the sea on whose glorious surfaces he had gained renown, Drake arrived tardily at San Juan, where the stout land defenses organized by the Spanish generals easily repulsed him. Never did he get close to forcing his way into San Juan harbor, nor did he ever learn where the Begoña’s two million pesos were hidden, let alone capture the treasure.
Infuriated by the Spaniards’ refusal to fight in the open sea, he tried to force a landing party ashore, but succeeded only in losing many men. Lashing about like a wounded animal, Drake behaved exactly as Don Diego had predicted: in blind fury he roared south across the Caribbean to vent his rage on the undefended town of Río Hacha, where he captured not one gold piece but did waste nineteen futile days, at the end of which in almost diabolical fury he burned everything in revenge for those slaves stolen from him nearly thirty years before. From there he stormed on to Santa Marta, another defenseless town, where again he found no treasure, and again wrecked the place.
Ledesma, learning upon his own return to Cartagena of Drake’s irrational behavior, paused only long enough to gather about the Mariposa a small, tight fleet with which he was determined to harry Drake to his death, and on the night before he sailed for the showdown at Nombre de Dios, he walked the battlements with his still-beautiful white-haired Leonora, and told her: ‘In a way, I pity him. Raging about like a wounded bull, attacking anything that moves, whether it’s part of his design or not.’
‘Take care,’ his wife warned. ‘A wounded bull is the most dangerous,’ but he told her as they went up to bed: ‘Drake’s always dangerous, wounded or not, and now we have him.’
In the morning Ledesma weighed anchor and le
d his family forces on their final chase. As he had predicted, Drake did not bother with Cartagena this time, so with a sense of relief Don Diego and Roque trailed him at a respectful distance as he headed yet again for that little town which held such a stranglehold on his imagination, Nombre de Dios, where he found literally nothing but a collection of rotting houses, most of them long since abandoned: the terminus of the treasure trains from Panamá had been moved a short eighteen miles westward to a more favorable anchorage at a site called Porto Bello. Enraged at finding no treasure in Nombre de Dios, he burned the ruins. The vice-regent said as his soldiers watched from a safe lookout, ‘It’s not our town he’s burning. It’s his.’
Enmeshed in an increasing fury, Drake sailed the few miles to unfamiliar Porto Bello, found no treasure there, and burned that town too, as if personally insulted that it should have presumed to supplant his Nombre de Dios. Then, in an act of shocking irresponsibility, he dispatched a small body of heavily armed foot soldiers onto that dreadful footpath through the jungle to loot Panamá and perhaps destroy it—sixty against six thousand—but after the English soldiers had struggled hopelessly against the swamps, the mosquitoes and the repeated roadblocks erected by Diego’s other sons-in-law, where Indians lurked with poisoned arrows, the men sensibly revolted, shouted at their officers: ‘We’ll tolerate no more of this,’ and trailed back empty-handed to their ships.