When I asked Don Ángel Crespo (the kindliest of the nurses; his name well suits him!) if these savages were to be vaccinated, he said they should be, for of those who do not die on the middle passage many are lost to the smallpox once they’ve crossed the water. But the traders, being fearful lest the vaccination make their merchandise sickly, and so bring in a lower price, prefer to forego this precaution and let the loss accrue to the buyer’s account.
Why was I telling Nati such disturbing things? Why darken her day with a letter meant to bring her glad tidings? Why not tell of the sweetness and light abounding all about me? I could hear laughter now, as two men exchanged greetings and good wishes for the upcoming new year. The vaccination sessions often turned into festive gatherings, with street vendors selling all manner of fruits and sweets and boys piping tunes while a capuchin monkey danced a jig.
Ay, Nati, I should not complain of confinement, for in our three weeks here, I have had more outings than in a year in La Coruña. As I mentioned, I have curtsied before a marchesa and received many visitors and well-wishers at the convent. I have also kissed the ring of a bishop, each time a different one, I noted. You must wonder, no doubt, that I, who always sought the shadows and feared the scrutiny of the public eye, should now yearn to be out and about. But my curiosity once kindled cannot easily be snuffed out. And as I am only “the woman who takes care of the children,” I am of no consequence to the eyes that gaze in my direction. Not once have I had to wield the pin with which you armed me for my protection!
In fact, the pin was stowed among my personal effects in the chest that was ready and packed at the foot of my cot. For days at a time at sea and here on land, I forgot my scarred face, my wounded vanity, my old losses. Only in his presence, or sometimes when a stranger’s head turned to stare too boldly, was I thrust back into the cramped cell of my own story, and a fury would rise up, a desire to do damage such as the smallpox had done to me. Perhaps I should not be so astonished at slavers trading in human misery or crowds hurling abuse at some poor wretch at a hanging!
We went on an outing to the small town of Oratava, where there are many gardens. Our steward had to go to secure provisions and invited us along, no doubt trying to make amends for the loss of some of our cargo. I will not bother you with the details, only to say that some cases with Doña Teresa’s treats have vanished into thin air! The steward, whom everyone calls Steward, a red-faced, shifty-eyed fellow, who doubles as our purser, is the one responsible for the ship’s provisions. He blamed the loss on rats, but when pressed by the mate he charged the cook, who accused the seamen who returned the blame to the rats! They behave like our boys, do they not?
The outing was a welcomed treat for the boys, who will soon enough be closeted in a small wooden vessel. Ahead of us rose the enormous, snow-covered peak that, if reports are to be believed, spews out fire and pours out a burning river from time to time. The boys’ eyes were big with wonder, hearing the stories. They sat in the square in Oratava, waiting and growing impatient. “When is the damned thing going to throw out bloody fire?” (Forgive me for transcribing their very words. Judge for yourself what foulness falls from the mouths of our innocents!)
I’m afraid the outing was a disappointment to them, but I enjoyed seeing such different sights. Palm trees and banana trees, fields of corn, and vegetables such as I had never known before, thriving now in the winter season! The houses are many of them painted a white color and the red tiled roofs become them very well. The people are dusky, as if from proximity to Africa, their skin had darkened. But they put great store on their purity and would rather, I wager, have my scarred white face than a Moor’s unblemished dark skin.
I must mention a troubling incident, for my head still spins at the thought, and I have no one in this world but you, Nati, to whom I can confess it. We had to spend the night in Oratava, for though the distance from Santa Cruz is not great, what passes for a road is in very bad condition. As I bid our hosts good night—the local authority, something like our alcalde, and his kindly wife—the steward followed me to the door of my bedchamber and made a most improper proposition—
There was a tapping at my door now. One of the boys had no doubt awakened, and there was an end to my solitude. “Yes?” I called out wearily.
Sor Catalina pushed open the door gently. “Some members of your expedition.” She spoke so softly, I could hardly hear her. The little nuns were not used to tending to children, and they walked on tiptoes and spoke in whispers whenever the boys were asleep.
I was surprised. If there was a message to be delivered, one of our expedition was sufficient for the task. Why several members? Perhaps we were sailing this very day and a number of helpers had come to assist me with rounding up the boys. So much for my letter to Nati. “Is Don Francisco with them?”
Sor Catalina was not sure. The convent had been beset with officials and well-wishers, who came to pay their respects to twenty-one little sons of the king. (Orlando was staying with our captain at the captain-general’s palace.) Sor Catalina had met so many people in the last few weeks, she could not be sure who was who. The captain-general had decorated the expedition members with a red satin honor band to wear over their uniforms, which identified them. These men, she explained, were wearing those bands.
In the front receiving room, I found Don Francisco and Dr. Salvany as well as Dr. Gutiérrez, Don Francisco’s personal assistant in Madrid whom he had enticed to join our expedition. My own little Francisco was with them.
Of course! Francisco’s vaccination must be ripe for harvesting—today was already the tenth day. On shore, Don Francisco had been vaccinating only one of our boys at a time in order to conserve carriers in case of any mishap in our crossing. He might have dispensed with vaccinating any of our own boys altogether, as there were plenty of reserves here. But so careful was he of any possible corruption, he wanted to maintain a pure line of continuance from our original number.
“Gentlemen,” I said, giving them each my hand in greeting. “My child,” I added, bending to kiss Francisco’s forehead. He was of the age that such womanly affection embarrassed him. He lifted his hand, as if to prevent me, but Dr. Gutiérrez caught him by the wrist. I do not think his intention was to prevent the boy’s discourtesy, as much as to protect the big, blooming vesicle on the boy’s left arm.
“The boys are napping,” I explained. “Whom shall I fetch next?”
“I would ask you to choose among the sturdiest,” Don Francisco replied. In fact, all the boys were fat and well. We had all been gorging ourselves on the fruits of the land, sweet milk and oozing cheeses, bananas and figs and grapes, every kind of verdura mixed with spiced rice, all of the trea sures of this island of eternal spring, plied upon us by our little nuns and visitors.
“How about the little Neptune who clings to you like a barnacle,” Dr. Salvany suggested, smiling at his own cleverness. After ten days at sea, his descriptions had become decidedly nautical.
I nodded agreement, trying to hide my immense relief. It would be no great tragedy if Benito’s vaccination did not take here. There were dozens of carriers whose vesicles could be harvested and the vaccine not lost. At sea was another matter.
“We are departing any day,” Don Francisco reminded me. “We must go back to a pair of carriers again.”
My heart sunk. The voyage I had been fearing. The return of my seasickness. And now, the added uncertainty about Benito. What if the vaccine did not take on him? The second in the pair of carriers must not fail.
“You need only bring the boy, as Orlando will serve as our second carrier,” Don Francisco went on. I had been at the point of suggesting José, a sure second, as I had wiped the boy’s birth caul from his face and could vouch for every illness and ailment he had suffered. But the captain had already asked that his cabin boy be vaccinated during our land stay, so that Orlando might be free to perform his duties once we set sail. But the boy had come down with something and our director had thought it ill advi
sed to vaccinate him until he was well. “He seems to have made a full recovery.”
Orlando and Benito, two unknown carriers! I turned to go, full of foreboding.
“Stay a moment, Doña Isabel.” Don Francisco’s voice stopped me. I was almost at the door, Sor Catalina at my heels. Quaintly, the nuns did not permit me to receive male visitors alone. Whom did they think had been chaperoning me on board the María Pita? Who would protect me from the lusty steward when we resumed our journey?
I turned back. Had our director found me out? He looked weary, they all did, but Don Francisco especially, his face lined and leaner, though he had good color from the browning of the sun. Only the younger Francisco looked healthy and strong. The boy had not even raised a fever with his vaccination. In fact, we were all convinced that the boy had lied, that he was, in fact, immune. But the vesicle had finally formed on his arm on the sixth day and grown apace.
“You have heard, no doubt, of our success here?” Don Francisco questioned me.
I nodded. “We see the crowds daily from these very windows.” I pointed to the half-open casements behind him. “And of course, we have followed your reports closely.” Daily an expedition member would come to the convent to inquire after us, to send Don Francisco’s regards, to explain what had occurred that day.
“The five hundred copies of the Tratado will not be enough to carry us through. I am having to send to Madrid for two thousand more copies to be printed and forwarded by packet directly to Havana. How many have we vaccinated by now?” He turned to Dr. Gutiérrez.
“Several hundred,” his assistant guessed.
“Several hundred?” Dr. Salvany objected. “Your ocular apparatus fails you, Dr. Gutiérrez. I might sooner number the waves on shore than the multitudes we have saved from the ravages of smallpox. I wager a thousand!”
“There are records,” Dr. Gutiérrez muttered. He was a practical man. No doubt Dr. Salvany’s flights of fancy wearied him. But he did not insist on his count, loath, no doubt, to be the one to reduce the expedition’s glory with a mere actual number.
“We have vanquished smallpox in Tenerife,” Don Francisco pronounced, ending all argument.
I was glad that our mission had met with this first great success. But it was a bittersweet victory. On shore, I had lost our director to his work. Sequestered in this convent with my boys, I ached for the world beyond my doorstep, though sometimes I wondered if it was not him I ached for. “I wish I could be of more help to you!”
“Oh, but you are of immeasurable help, Doña Isabel. Taking care of all our boys is no small task.” Of course, he was right. Many invisible hands were needed to lay the stones of a great cathedral. And I did not mind laboring without recognition. I needed only him to notice.
“We sail as soon as our good wind blows. The captain informs me it should be within the week. His steward has been busily provisioning the María Pita.” He was telling me nothing I didn’t already know. I wondered why he was choosing to go over such details with me. I glanced at Dr. Salvany, who smiled uneasily and looked away. Dr. Gutiérrez stood behind the young Francisco, his hands on the boy’s shoulders as if to fix him there.
“With God’s help and Aeolus’s wafting, it shall be a swift crossing,” Dr. Salvany ventured.
“May God grant it,” Dr. Gutiérrez echoed more plainly.
“We have been sorely crowded on the María Pita,” Don Francisco continued. “As my colleagues will surely tell you”—here he indicated Dr. Salvany and Dr. Gutiérrez with a nod—“we had planned on the Sylph, a much larger ship at four hundred tons. But the repairs would have delayed us another month or two. We would still be in La Coruña to this day.”
A long road was being paved, leading, no doubt, somewhere I did not want to go. I waited in silence as our director belabored the subject of our ship’s small size, our crowded accommodations. Perhaps he was preparing to move me back to the orlop deck with my boys. The first mate, Lieutenant Pozo—I had since learned his name—had kindly hung a hammock with the crew in order to release his cabin to me. Ceding it for ten days was one thing, for the forty days or so of our crossing another.
“As you know the merchant ship, the Espíritu Santo, sails soon for Cádiz, and from that port many vessels depart for La Coruña.”
“Indeed, I am writing our friends in La Coruña,” I mentioned. “We were informed of the ship’s departure.”
“Many of our Sisters have family …” Sor Catalina began, but halfway through her sentence, she stopped. Three pairs of male eyes had turned in her direction. Her small voice trailed off before such immodest attention.
Don Francisco waited politely for the young nun to continue. But Sor Catalina could not summon the courage to go on. She was among the shyest of the nuns. I wondered why she was ever put on door duty.
“The Espíritu Santo is a fine ship,” Don Francisco explained. A slaver, it was returning to Spain for repairs after years transporting human cargo from Africa to America. “We are thinking of sending back the boys who have already been vaccinated. It would only amount to six—”
“No!” little Francisco cried out, wresting himself from Dr. Gutiérrez’s grasp. To have come so far and behaved so well, only to be denied the adventure he had dreamed about. “I will not go back,” he defied the three men before him, looking from one to the other for a champion, his eyes bright with tears.
I was glad for his outburst, for it mirrored my own sentiments. Had Don Francisco forgotten the agreement he had made through me with Doña Teresa? The boys were to remain together under my care.
“I don’t have to go back, do I, Doña Isabel?” the boy appealed to me.
I reached for him, but he pulled back, perhaps fearing any caress would turn into restraint. He looked around wildly like a trapped animal, searching for an escape. The men stood by, baffled by his reaction. It was Sor Catalina who stepped forward to try her hand with this little creature shouting at his elders. “There, there,” she soothed him, gingerly touching his hair. Oddly enough, the boy accepted her comfort. “You can stay here with us,” she added, nodding to confirm her special offer.
That was not what Francisco wanted to hear. He pulled away from Sor Catalina and wept a child’s tears.
“A man does not cry,” Dr. Gutiérrez reminded him, and though, I, too, had used this argument often, I now found myself rejecting it. Break a man’s heart and he would weep as surely as he would bleed if you cut off a limb. Had I not heard the African men on Sundays wailing horribly when they were parted from their wives and children?
And now my own heart was crying in silence at our director’s deception. But had I myself not deceived him about Benito and misled Doña Teresa about my participation? How could I think to save the world and not begin with my own salvation?
I looked from Dr. Gutiérrez to Dr. Salvany, then turned to Don Francisco, the most difficult to defy. “That was not our agreement.” I tried to sound firm, but my voice was quivering. “We are a family. I cannot allow the boys to be separated.”
“But they have served their use,” Dr. Salvany spoke plainly. The truth was so obvious, it did not merit a metaphor to embellish it.
“And what shall be done when they have served their use midocean? Perhaps we will toss them overboard like the peel of so much fruit—”
“How could you think so, Doña Isabel!” Dr. Salvany’s hand was at his heart, as if wounded by my sharp remark. Indeed, I had seen our director wince at my accusation. “Why those boys are our divino tesoro,” Dr. Salvany protested. “It is only that, as our director has mentioned, we are so crowded on the María Pita, and we have a long distance still to go.”
“No harm will come to them,” Dr. Gutiérrez added, his voice sharp, his look impatient. No doubt he thought my opposition out of order, not deserving of the consideration they were giving it. “The captain of the Espíritu Santo will be sure to put the boys on a ship bound for La Coruña.”
The very same captain who was trading in huma
n misery. What might he do with six hapless boys, whom no one would hold him to account for?
“We shall all be on that ship together then.” I might have been agreeing with them for the soft tone of my voice, but there was iron in my will.
“You would be defying Don Francisco,” Dr. Gutiérrez reminded me. “Defying our king!” he added, no doubt ready to manacle me right then and lead me to the gallows.
“The contract would have been breached already and so we could not be held to it,” I countered.
“That is not so,” Dr. Gutiérrez persisted. Had he not read the proclamation? Certainly he had heard it read at our departure ceremony at La Coruña. No doubt, his was a blind loyalty to his director and teacher. A woman could be bullied; a woman could be pushed aside. “Our director was named director to lead us. If he sees the wisdom of a certain action, we must comply.”
Indeed, I had set out with every intention of complying. After all, I had come in awe of this same man. I had helped him convince Doña Teresa and risked my boys in the bargain. But in spite of my desire to please him, I was diverging from the path he was directing me to take. What had been only a pretext for my coming had become my purpose. I could not abandon my boys. I could not allow them to be abused. “I shall comply in all things with our director.” I addressed myself to Dr. Gutiérrez, as if Don Francisco were not there. “Always and when my boys are not put in any danger.”
Dr. Gutiérrez could think of no further argument. He looked to our director for help. “She must obey,” he stated blankly. But his voice was less sure than before.
I could feel the color rising in my face, my legs turning to butter in the heat of the day. My courage would have failed me had I not looked up at that moment and caught Don Francisco’s eye. The cold sternness I had expected was not there; in its stead, I discerned a kind of respect; I would almost say, a touch of admiration, which encouraged me to plead my case to him. “As you said, Don Francisco, there are only six boys in question: four of them are scarce able to feed and dress themselves, no less to travel alone, and the other two are old enough to be of help to me on our expedition.”