[What Might Have Been 04] Alternate Americas Read online

  So when the apples ripened on the trees and the breeze off the inland sea cooled the evenings, I made Hawk Wing kill Serra too. The Miwok rejoiced with a feast. But I held my infant close to my breast and mourned for White Cloud in secret in my house.

  Even that was not the end of it. All that year and the next and the one after, Spaniards came riding into Nova Albion with guns. But we had a few of the guns we had taken from Moraga’s men in that first battle, though we soon ran out of powder for them.

  I was wrong. The crossbow is strong and efficient, and arrows can kill as well as guns. And when that was not enough, I built fire and tipped the arrows with flame and gave them to my brother to shoot. Our warriors followed up each flight of arrows, racing yipping and yelping like coyotes into the midst of the Spaniards, who did not know whether to beat out the fires or beat off our warriors. So we held them off.

  My brother was the boldest of the warriors, merry in the face of every danger, taking risks that made lesser men tremble, always attacking the fiercest of the enemy, never satisfied until he had killed the leader with his own hands. The Miwok said of him that he was First Captain himself, come back to us in our time of need.

  One day Hawk Wing, too, was felled by the guns and lay on the ground, half his stomach gone. It took him a long time to die, and little I knew to ease the pain. But by then we had taken many of these weapons from the bodies of our enemies, and even the young women had learned how to use them. The Spaniards were already in flight when I laid my brother on his funeral pyre.

  “There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.”

  Nova Albion, 1840

  I tell this long tale of killing and being killed that you who have never known anything but peace should understand what it is you have dreamed this night.

  Nova Albion is free from the threat of its enemies. Friendship and trust have spread among The People of a hundred towns around Lesser Sea. We have not forgotten to be vigilant, but until this night you have known nothing of war or bloodshed. We have lived in peace under the laws First Captain gave us, showing friendship to all who are friends to us, and punishing those who would harm us. Each year that passes brings more of The People up and down the coast and far inland to accept our laws, for they are just and wise. Our houses rise up the hills; our harvests prosper; our canoes sail far out over Great Sea for fish and across Lesser Sea to trade with our neighbors. Nova Albion thrives! And Spaniard has become only a name to make naughty children behave.

  Look in this mirror. Do you see how the child gives way now to the young woman? I will braid your beautiful red hair while we talk of the vision the smoke gave you. Sky Father answered my prayer, though not as I had expected. Many bloodlines run in your veins, and you will need the wisdom of all of them.

  That evil men should once again lust after our land is not surprising. This time they come from the east, but what of that? The descendants of the once-proud Spaniards in the south are weak and disorganized; we have nothing to fear from them! And though this metal you saw puzzles me—yellow as the sun, you say?—even that perhaps I have seen in flecks of sand on the beach at low tide by the river’s mouth.

  Travelers carry tales of strife and bloodshed across a great land that stretches from sunset to sunrise. Everywhere outside the boundaries of Nova Albion people fight to protect their land from invaders. They are not as strong as we are. Since those days I have spoken of, we built more smoke towers across the mountains and deserts to our east so that we might be warned when our enemies come. For as First Captain taught, he whose eyes be open to the horizon shall not be taken unaware by storm.

  I have outlived my daughter, and I am glad my time is over and yours coming. The power has chosen you, and perhaps like me you will be called upon to sacrifice your desires and dreams. Yet I have learned something. Life itself is the answer, and a destiny larger than our petty wills drives us on, like the Big Canoes crossing Great Sea. We do what we do because of that.

  I do not doubt there will be trouble. The smoke-dream does not lie. Your dream tells me we will continue to the end and take the victory once again.

  Still, I am puzzled. This new pack of wolves, you say, speaks the tongue of First Captain. For his sake we will hold our fire until we determine whether they be honorable men, and perhaps we shall make a treaty among equals. Have no fear. First Captain taught us well that though our enemies be many, yet we shall defeat them if there be cause. We shall remain free!

  Yet I wonder what he would think if we have to kill English?

  ISABELLA OF CASTILE ANSWERS HER MAIL

  James Morrow

  TO YOU, DON CRISTÓBAL COLÓN, our Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor of all the Islands to be found by you on your Great Voyage of Discovery, greetings and grace.

  What a beautiful and welcome sight was your albatross messenger, swooping out of the skies like a new soul arriving in Heaven! How your letter raised my failing hopes and lifted my sagging spirits! O brave mariner, I feel confident that the seagoing gardens of which you spoke, those vast floating mats of sargasso weed, signify that your fleet has at last drawn near the Indies. By the time these words appear before your eyes, you will have walked the bejeweled streets of Cathay and toured the golden temples of Cipango.

  Dear friend, I should like to know your opinion concerning a most troublesome matter. Do you hold any particular views on the Jewish Question? Predictably, my Edict of General Expulsion has proven highly controversial here at court. Our Keeper of the Privy Purse—I speak now of Santangel, perhaps the loudest of all those voices championing your expedition—became distressed to the point of tears, though as a converso he is doubtless biased by his blood. The clergy was divided, with Deza calling the measure vital to the future of the Church and Perez quoting the Sermon on the Mount. But it was my old confessor, Torquemada, who used the strongest words. As long as unbelievers live among us, the Inquisitor explained, there can be no racial purity, no limpieza de sangre, in Spain.

  And yet, three nights ago a vivid and disquieting dream came to me. I no longer wore the Crown of Castile but the war helmet of Rameses II. Am I the new Pharaoh? In banishing Spain’s Jews, have I thrust myself forever into God’s disfavor? O Cristóbal, my heart feels like one of those great iron anchors you will soon be dropping into the waters of Asia.

  Written in the City of Sante Fe on this twenty-seventh day of August, in the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1492.

  I, THE QUEEN

  TO YOU, ISABELLA, by the Grace of God Queen of Castile, León, Aragón, Granada, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearics, greetings and increase of good fortune.

  Alas, we passed through the Sargasso Sea without sighting the Indies, a situation so dismaying to my officers and me that they begged me to turn back. I was comforting them as best I could, pointing out that we had not yet gone two thousand miles (though in truth we had gone twenty-eight hundred), when the Ocean Sea began suddenly to swell, arching like a mountain range in motion, pulling its slopes and valleys intact behind it. We rode those waves, my Queen, plummeting inexorably from crest to cavity and back again. Terror-struck at first, we soon realized that God Himself had sent this cataclysm to speed us toward the Moluccas. Such a miracle has not occurred since Egypt’s chariots gave chase to the Children of Israel!

  You spoke of Spain’s own Jews. By curious coincidence, the same tide that bore the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María out of port also carried what I took to be a contingent of your General Expulsion, that Second Exodus that weighs so heavily on your heart. As we traveled down the Rio Saltés to the sea, our way was blocked by every sort of vessel imaginable, their holds jammed with refugees clutching kettles, crockery, toys, lanterns, and other meager possessions. Initially this scene aroused in your Admiral an unequivocal pity (the weeping, the wailing, the old ones jumping overboard and crawling onto the rocks to die, the rabbis beseeching Yahweh to part the waters of the Levan
t and lead the people dry-shod to a new Promised Land), but then Father Hojeda invited me to see it in a different light. “By driving the infidels from its cities, towns, and fields,” Hojeda explained, “the Crown has made room for the pagan hordes we shall soon be ferrying to Spain from the Orient, thousands upon thousands of unbaptized souls yearning to embrace the Holy Faith.” So do not despair, Sovereign Queen. Your edict has served a divine plan.

  I must rest my pen. A cry of “Tierra!” has just gone up from the lookout stationed atop our mainmast. Gloria in excelsis Deo—the impossible is accomplished! We have sailed west and met the East!

  Written aboard the caravel Santa María on this second day of September, in the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1492.

  I, THE ADMIRAL

  TO YOU, DON CRISTÓBAL COLÓN, our Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor of all the Islands to be found by you on your Great Voyage of Discovery, greetings and grace.

  For five whole days I brooded upon the sobering news from North Africa—racking rumors of Jews cast naked into the sea by the captains we had hired to deport them, wrenching accounts of those very exiles starving on forgotten shores, grisly tales of these same refugees being eviscerated by Turkish mobs in quest of swallowed coins. Then came your letter of the second.

  O noble navigator, you have surely delivered your Queen from madness! I now see that the true and final purpose of our expedition is not to plot a new route to the Indies, nor is it to forge an alliance with the Great Khan, nor is it to build a bastion from which we might attack the Turkish rear and win back Constantinople (though each of these aims is worthy). I now see that its true and final purpose is to lead all Asia to the Holy Faith. Not since my correspondence with Sixtus IV, through which he so kindly allayed my fears that in reducing the children of heretics to beggary the Inquisition had overstepped its mandate, has my conscience known such release. Is it blasphemous for a Queen to compare her Admiral with her Pope? Then may God forgive me.

  So, courageous conquistador, you have found the Moluccas at last. In your subsequent missives you may, if so inclined, make mention of the following matters: gold, silver, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, emeralds, precious silks, rare spices. But speak to me first and foremost of the spiritual condition of the Indian people. Do they seem well disposed to receive the Gospel? Does Father Hojeda wish to perform all the baptisms himself, or shall I send a company of priests in your wake?

  Written in our City of Sante Fe on this seventh day of September, in the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1492.

  I, THE QUEEN

  TO YOU, ISABELLA, by the Grace of God Queen of Castile, León, Aragón, etc., greetings and increase of good fortune.

  How can mere words convey the miracle that is the Indies? How can I begin to describe the mysteries and marvels that have dazzled us in recent days? Vast, glittering palaces! Mighty minarets belching smoke and fire! Ships that sail without benefit of wind! Coaches that move without a single horse in harness! Carriages that fly through the air on featherless wings!

  After slipping beneath the largest bridge I have ever seen, a mile-long passageway stretching over our heads like a bronze rainbow, our fleet sailed up a dark and oily strait and anchored off what we took to be one of the lesser Moluccas. Dominating the island was an iron idol rising a hundred and fifty feet at least, surmounting a pedestal of almost equal height. I forthwith gathered together an exploration party consisting of Father Hojeda, Captain Pinzón, and myself; plus our translator, Luis de Torres, and our master-at-arms, Diego de Harana. We came ashore in the dinghy of the Santa María, assembled in the shadow of the idol, and, thrusting the royal standard of Castile into the grassy soil, claimed the island for the Crown.

  A most astonishing fact: there is no limpieza de sangre in Asia.

  Everywhere we turned, our eyes beheld a different fashion in flesh—dark, light, rough, coarse—and our ears rang with the greatest confusion of tongues since the Tower of Babel toppled. We saw Moors. We saw Nubians. Greeks. Jews. From amid the general cacophony Torres claimed he could discern not only Portuguese, Arabic, Yiddish, and Polish, but also the language of my native Genoa, though I caught no such syllables myself. Surprisingly, we soon encountered a sizable percentage of Indians for whom a peculiarly cadenced Castilian is the medium of choice. (I must confess, I was not aware that your Highness’s overland mercantile endeavors had placed so many Spaniards in the Orient.) But the greatest shock, surely, was the omnipresence of English, not only in the mouths of the Indians but on the plethora of public signs, banners, mottoes, and decrees.

  “Give me your weary, your indigent, your huddled multitudes seeking to breathe without hindrance, the miserable garbage of your crowded beaches…” So began Torres’s rather diffident rendering of the incantation that accompanies the idol. (English is not his forte.) “Send these, the homeless, typhoon-buffeted to me,” he continued. “I lift my lantern beside the portal of gold.”

  The idol’s form is female, and she evidently embodies something called libertad—a difficult idea to explicate, but Torres has inferred it means “giving free rein to your worst instincts and basest impulses.” No doubt the “huddled multitudes” are sacrificial victims. Some are probably burned to death—hence the firebrand in the idol’s right hand. Others are impaled alive—hence the seven dreadful spikes decorating her crown.

  With the setting of the sun I directed my party back to the caravels, dined alone on ham and beer, and began the present epistle. We are uncertain of our next move. From the Indians’ chatter, Torres has surmised that other Moluccas lie in our vicinity—the Spice Island of Ellis to the north, the Spice Island of Governors to the east, the Spice Island of Manhattan to the northeast—and we are strongly inclined to explore them. But, O my Queen, this idol of libertad vexes us most sorely. The very sight of her looming over the fleet brings ice to our bowels. Might you perchance be willing to dispatch a regiment of soldiers to the Indies, so that we might undertake to baptize this cult without fear of immolation? Eagerly I await your reply.

  Written aboard the caravel Santa María on this twelfth day of September, in the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1492.

  I, THE ADMIRAL

  TO YOU, DON CRISTÓBAL COLÓN, our Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor of all the Islands to be found by you on your Great Voyage of Discovery, greetings and grace.

  Frankly, my Admiral, we don’t quite know what to make of your Spice Islands and their polyglot aborigines. As with the Jewish Question, the court is of several minds. Santángel thinks you may have stumbled upon the Lost Tribes of Israel. The clergy believes you have sailed clear past the Indies and landed in one of these secret colonies set up by Europe’s escaped convicts and fugitive mutineers.

  In any event we cannot send you infantry support. Now that Granada is ours, we have demobilized the army, leaving in uniform only our border troops, our palace guards, and our Santa Hermandad. But even if an extra regiment did lie at our disposal, we would not send it across the Ocean Sea. Dearest Cristóbal, have you forgotten the sheer power of Scripture? Do you doubt the potency of Truth? Once Father Hojeda tells them the whole story, from the Virgin Birth to the Resurrection, this libertad cult will surely abandon its wicked, pagan, persecuting ways. So say friars Deza and Perez.

  This is not a happy time for the Queen of Castile. My daughter still grieves for her husband, the Crown Prince Alfonso, killed last month in a riding accident, and she evinces no romantic interest in his successor. Day in, day out, the Infanta Isabella skulks about the castle, dressing in black, singing bawdy ballads, and, worst of all, threatening to join the Holy Sisters in Toledo. Let her marry our Lord Jesus Christ in the next life—at the moment her duty is to marry Portugal!

  Yet another lady-in-waiting has acquiesced to Ferdinand’s advances.

  As soon as her transgression became apparent, I hurried the harlot and her nascent baby off to the nearest convent, though in truth I would have preferred to hurry the king off to the nearest monastery. (It
is quite enough to make me regret that you and I behaved so honorably last April in my Segovian rose garden.) If there were chastity belts for men, I would this very night slip one over my husband’s lecherous loins, lock it up, and hide the key where I alone can find it.

  I am bored, sir. Nothing amuses me. Yesterday I attended a bullfight—an unrelievedly gory and grotesque spectacle. I have half a mind to outlaw the entire sport. This morning’s auto-da-fé was equally jejune. Of the nineteen heretics paraded through the streets in sanbenitos, eleven repented, seven went to the stake, and one dropped dead from fright. I left before the burnings, the weather having turned rainy and cold.

  Cristóbal, you and you alone can relieve my tedium. You must visit these other Moluccas, teaching the Indians about eternal life, searching out libertad’s golden portal, and having many beguiling adventures. And then, when you are finished, you must pick up your pen and excite me with your exploits.

  Written in our City of Santa Fe on this seventeenth day of September, in the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1492.

  I, THE QUEEN

  TO YOU, ISABELLA, by the Grace of God Queen of Castile, León, Aragón, etc., greetings and increase of good fortune.

  Following your directive of the seventeenth, we have spent the past fourteen hours in quest of souls and gold, and I must tell you at the outset that no man has ever endured a more perplexing day.

  The Niña has always been my favorite of the fleet, and certainly the ship best designed for exploring coasts, so with dawn’s first light I transferred my flag to her, leaving Pinzón and his brothers in charge of the Santa María and the Pinta. Once Torres, Harana, and Father Hojeda were aboard, we took off, eventually dropping our anchor perhaps sixty yards off Manhattan. Setting out in the dinghy, we disembarked at a place called Battery Park, unfurled our standard, and acquired the island for Spain.