DREAM HELPER
A Novel of Early California
By Willard Thompson
Published by Rincon Publishing
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 Willard Thompson
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. All persons, places and events depicted herein, except those clearly in the public domain, are figments of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is unintentional.
Chapter One
Sounds in the dry grass alerted Cayatu. Her fingers curled around the handle of her flint knife. Rising cautiously from her cooking fire, she hardened her resolve to do whatever she had to in the next few minutes to protect herself. Her skirt of tule fronds rustled against her legs as she moved to the bank of the small stream that flowed by her lean-to. The clamshells in her necklace danced between her breasts, making soft, tinkling sounds. The valley around her lay parched. Days of dryness had given it a stale smell that signaled the end of another acorn-growing season.
Knife poised, she waited, ready to defend her life, only to see two gray-robed Franciscan monks, wooden crosses swinging from their rope belts, emerge on the far bank. Open-mouthed, the two men stared at her.
Cayatu watched as the older of the two missionaries drew a cross across his chest with his fingers.
“Alavado sea Dios!” His words meant nothing to her and she continued to stare. Then he spoke haltingly in her language. “Put knife away, Niña. You have nothing to fear from us.”
She giggled at his awkward speech and relaxed. “I was afraid,” she said.
Franciscans were familiar to Cayatu. As a little girl she remembered them walking into her village as they journeyed along the coast, always curious to learn her language and curious to see how her people lived, and always accompanied by leather-jacketed soldiers. After each visit, Qoloq, the shaman, would warn the village about them.
A smile came to her now when the old monk, and the other one in his middle years, hiked their robes above their knees, showing white legs, and waded the stream.
“I am Esteben Salamanca,” the old one said smiling, showing teeth dulled by his years. He might have been a tall man when he was younger—as tall as her father, she guessed—but now age stooped him over. Sparse white hair circled his head like a wreath, leaving his crown bald and sun scarred.
“This is Brother Fermin Ortiz,” Salamanca introduced the younger man. “We’re going to the Presidio de Santa Barbara.”
Salamanca paused. Cayatu watched him look around at her lean-to and cooking fire. He seemed to struggle for words.
“Why aren’t you in your village? Why are you living here?”
She drew in a breath, let it escape her lips. “I am outcast,” she said.
“Outcast?”
“Qoloq banished me here during the last acorn-growing season.”
Fermin Ortiz had kept silent so far. The intense way he stared at her gave Cayatu a shiver. It was a stare her people would have called rude. She backed away a step. He took a step toward her.
“Your village—how far?” he asked.
Though he spoke her words, Cayatu had to puzzle their meaning for a moment. Then her face brightened with understanding. She pointed toward the ocean. “A short walk.”
Ortiz turned to examine the rabbit sizzling on a wooded spit at her cooking fire a few yards off. Turning back to her, his Chumash words came slowly. “We’re tired. Hungry. Still a long walk.”
“We’ll go to your village,” Salamanca told her. “It’s not much out of our way.” Cayatu saw the frown Ortiz gave Salamanca but didn’t understand its meaning.
“Will you lead us?” Salamanca asked.
“If you’ll keep me safe,” she replied.
*****
She led the Franciscans back along the main trail to a side path that branched toward the ocean. The village’s round huts, built of bent willow poles covered with tule mats, clung to the edge of an oak grove. The oaks gave way to a sand beach, and the beach disappeared under calm waters that rippled over sand and pebbles.
Cayatu watched tiny waves lapping against the planks of two tomols pulled up on the beach. The sight brought a smile to her face. She looked around for other canoes before moving down the path but didn’t see any.
Walking through the village, she studied the huts. Some needed repairs. One or two had fallen down since her banishment. The smell of simmering acorn gruel, rising into the pale morning sky with the smoke from cooking fires, awakened her hunger and brought back memories of happier times.
In front of the shaman’s hut Cayatu called out for her sister. She smiled her joy when Tanayan stepped from the dim interior into the strong morning light. Older by almost twelve seasons, shorter and rounder, Tanayan stiffened on seeing her. She rubbed her eyes as if to rub away Coyote’s trick, and then ran to embrace Cayatu, tears sliding down her fleshy cheeks.
“Little Sister, I’ve missed you,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you every day. …I was wrong—”
“You were wrong, but I forgave you long ago.” Cayatu gave her arm a reassuring touch. “I’ve come to the edge of the village often hoping to catch some sight of you.”
“So, you’ve come back.” Qoloq swaggered from the hut, a bear tooth necklace bouncing off his chest with the abruptness of his movements. He leered at Cayatu and waved a baton made from a deer’s leg bone as he spoke. The bone was inset with obsidian flakes that caught the sunlight as he waved it. It seemed to Cayatu, Qoloq was sprinkling his words about like sparks in the morning air.
“I knew you would,” he gloated. “I told Tanayan you would come back. I knew Coyote—”
He stopped short. Open mouthed, Qoloq pointed the baton at the priests. “Why are the grayrobes here?”
“To visit your village,” Esteben Salamanca said, understanding Qoloq’s gesture with the deer bone.
Fermin Ortiz added haltingly, “Your people join our missions.”
“You steal them!” Qoloq hissed. He pulled himself erect, pointing the baton directly at Ortiz.
Ortiz straightened. “We don’t steal. They come freely.”
“We’ll have a new mission in Santa Barbara,” Salamanca interrupted. “Your people will do God’s work there.”
“Your god is nothing!” Qoloq sneered, puffing out his chest and shaking the baton at the missionaries. “First People are real—Sun and Eagle and Coyote of the Sky, Lizard, Moon, all of them. You lure our people away with false promises. If my people don’t return, Coyote will punish them.”
Cayatu watched the priests stand their ground. Their eyes were fixed on Qoloq’s lips, struggling to understand the words he flung at them. Each man fingered his wooden cross. She turned to look at Qoloq, staring belligerently back at them, holding his baton like a shield.
*****
Cayatu felt Tanayan take her hand. Standing beside her sister, Cayatu smiled again when she saw her nephew racing up from the beach. His long hair flowing behind him in the breeze brought a quickening to her heart.
“I saw you. …On the path. …I was at the tomols. …You’ve come back,” he said, catching his breath and hugging her. “I hoped you would.”
Cayatu held him in her arms. Grown almost to an adult, Massilili was a strong, agile young man.
“I will give the girl my permission to return to the village,” Qoloq boasted to the missionaries. He turned to her, looking smug, then back to the priests. “She’s an orphan. Her sister and I raised her when her parents traveled across the Rainbow Bridge to the Peaceful Place. Now, I’ve picked a man for her to marry. He’s paid me well because he desires a young beauty like her. He wants to lie with her and run his hands over her breasts. She’ll live in his hut. Bear his children—”
“I won’t! I won’t lie with a man just to ease your life!” Cayatu’s voice rang with anger. “I’d rather live alone and move about as I please.” She confronted Qoloq, moving forward so her face pressed close to his, not letting him see her tremble. “You banished Ysaga—I’ll have no other husband. You have no power over me anymore, Qoloq.” She stopped to look around, then pointed to the other huts. “Our village grows smaller. People leave. They go to the missions of the Spanish. I’ll go too.”
Tanayan rushed in front of Qoloq and fell at his feet, “Let her stay and find her own husband. Don’t drive her away again.”
The pleading in Tanayan’s voice seemed to anger Qoloq.
Cayatu watched his face contort.
“I took her in as an orphan; she must do as I tell her,” he shouted at his wife.
The priests withdrew several steps, looking uncertainly at Qoloq.
Cayatu tensed at Qoloq’s words. She hesitated only a moment before turning to Massilili. “My father—your grandfather—led the Brotherhood of the Canoe and I have a rightful high place here. I won’t obey Qoloq. I won’t live in the village unless I can live free as I was born to live.”
“You can’t—”
Cayatu turned on Qoloq. “I’d rather die from Rattlesnake’s venom than live out my seasons controlled by you.” She turned to the missionaries. “Will you take me with you?”
Salamanca and Ortiz spoke rapidly back and forth in Spanish.
“Hmm,” Salamanca mused after their brief discussion, “Praise God.” Turning to face Cayatu, speaking haltingly again, he said, “We’ll take you to Santa Barbara, Niña. We’ll baptize you. But the mission’s not built. Hard work lies ahead. Hardship—you should wait.”
“I will go with you now,” she said, edging away from Qoloq when she saw anger burn in his eyes like the coals in a cooking fire. “I won’t live here!”
Qoloq sneered, “You live in the valley like an animal. You have no Dream Helper to guide you. Your chance of having a man fades with your beauty, like each season fades into the next. Your safe life is here with a man I choose for you.”
Cayatu turned her back on him. She hugged Massilili to her breast and reached out for Tanayan’s hand. “I’ll come back to visit,” she said.
Tanayan nodded understanding.
“Coyote was right, you’re a cursed woman,” Qoloq grumbled.
Cayatu wiped her tears with the back of her hand and forced a smile at Tanayan. She looked up into Massilili’s angular face and put her hand on his muscled shoulder. “I helped your mother raise you—”
“—The way I raised Cayatu after our mother went to the Peaceful Place giving her life and your grandfather was lost in the ocean,” Tanayan told her son.
“You’re almost grown now,” Cayatu said.
“Qoloq teaches me the healing secrets,” Massilili told her. “I’ll be shaman after him.”
Tanayan went into the hut. Cayatu felt a lump rise in her throat when her sister reappeared holding a sea-otter-skin skirt. It was the same skirt Qoloq had stripped from her in anger the previous gathering season when he sent her from the village for lying with Ysaga. “Wear this,” Tanayan said. “I’ll paint village colors and weave shells in your hair so you can go proudly. Show all the light-skin men the dignity we have.”
“No!” Qoloq ordered. “It’s not allowed.”
“Stop!” Tanayan scolded him. “She’s my sister.”
The Franciscans frowned. Talking in hushed voices, they averted their eyes while Tanayan painted Cayatu’s face and breasts. After she finished the symbols, Tanayan went back inside the hut a second time. She emerged holding a slender-necked shell basket, woven of tules with designs of dark rushes and sumac shoots. Wiping a tear, Tanayan held it out to Cayatu.
“Our mother wove this while she waited for you to come into our world, Little Sister. It contains all the love she had for her unborn daughter. She died giving you life, but this basket still holds her love. Take it with you to your new life.”
Chapter Two
Cayatu and the Franciscans walked the length of the parched valley. They skirted the marsh fed by ocean water, alive with the shrieks of ocean birds and the smell of souring vegetation.
Stopping on a slight rise to admire the scene, Salamanca placed his hand gently on her shoulder.
“He was the one you readied the knife for,” he said, more than asked.
She stayed quiet but nodded slightly.
“You are safe with us,” he assured her.
Cayatu followed the Franciscans. Soon the priests fell into their own words, paying her no attention.
“So, our task begins again Brother Fermin,” Salamanca said to the younger man. “And a new role for you.”
“Aí, and no easy task. These people seem slow to learn, lazy. They have human form, but it’s hard to believe they belong to mankind. Look at the heathen symbols painted on the girl.”
“They’ll come to our mission, you’ll see. Soon, we’ll have our hands full.” Salamanca looked deep into the younger priest’s face, but without criticism. “Try a gentler approach, Brother Fermin. You may learn a lot from these people. Learn to speak their language.”
“That’s no easy task, either,” Ortiz responded. “God help me, my tongue stumbles over my teeth when I speak their words—Look there!” Ortiz interrupted himself to point at a hawk floating down from the mountains crowding the valley in the north. Its tail feathers shone reddish-pink in the afternoon light. “The hawk’s a hunter.” Ortiz gave Salamanca a hard look. “God ordains it to rule over this valley.”
*****
Cayatu saw the hawk had spotted something in the dry grass. She stayed still but her eyes went back and forth from the bird to the two Franciscans.
The hawk hovered overhead. Cayatu drew in a quick breath when it folded its wings and plummeted out of the sky, diving so fast its feathers quivered. The bird leveled off inches above the ground not ten paces away when its talon pierced its prey. The trio standing by the marsh heard a squeal. The hawk called a triumphant kee-ah, kee-ah.
The hawk flew to a rock a few yards off. Cayatu watched the bird preen, holding a mouse securely on its claw. She watched the priests caught up in the drama.
As the three watched, the bird began to retract its claw, holding the rodent with its beak. When the mouse came free of the talon it gave a sudden twitch that seemed to surprise the bird and cause it to open its beak to get a better grip. In that instant, Cayatu saw the mouse drop to the ground and wedge itself against the rock.
She suppressed her grin so the grayrobes wouldn’t notice. She guessed a creature from the World Below, some mischievous spirit, had intervened. The thought amused Cayatu at first. But then, as she considered the unpredictability of life in the Middle World, it gave her pause. Spirits were capricious, she knew. They could change the path of any life for their own amusement.
For several minutes she watched the hawk’s efforts to reclaim its meal. The bird stormed around the rock, an explosion of wings and slashing talons, but the curve of its beak and the overhang of the rock gave the bird no way to snag the mouse. It uttered one final, defiant kee-ah and flew off.
*****
Esteben Salamanca resumed the walk, urging the others along with him. He stayed quiet for a short way but then turned to Ortiz. “We strive to know God’s ways,” he said to his companion, “but his ways are always a mystery to man.”
Late in the afternoon the trio entered El Presidio de Santa Barbara, a stockade dominating a slight rise overlooking the ocean. Ortiz put his hand over his nose to block the stench of animal and human waste, mingling with the smells from cooking pots outside soldiers’ quarters. The odors clawed at his stomach, reminding him of his growing hunger.
He watched a band of soldiers moving about the dusty parade ground. He saw their eyes follow Cayatu.
“She’s a comely girl to tempt these men,” Salamanca said, as if reading Ortiz’s thoughts. “Look how those shells sparkle in her hair.”
“Like stars on a winter night in Santander,” Ortiz said with a wry laugh. “But I think these men are more interested in her bare breasts.”
Ortiz and Salamanca led Cayatu across the open plaza to the center of the fort where the red and yellow banner of Spain fluttered from a pine flagpole. She still clutched the basket her sister had given her. A soldier in blue tunic and buff pants, Toledo blade at his side, strode across the open space toward them. At a distance, Ortiz saw only the bushy blond beard hiding the man’s face. But as the soldier came closer, Ortiz felt the intensity of his cobalt eyes blazing out from deep sockets. He judged the soldier to be in his middle years, handsome, taller than average, solidly built, with skin as fair as his hair.
Salamanca whispered to Cayatu that the man approaching was Lieutenant Don Jose Maria Demetrio de Alba, Comandante of the Royal Presidio de Santa Barbara. She showed no emotion at Salamanca’s words that Ortiz could detect, but he watched her fingers slowly turning the shell basket in her hand, much the way he might finger his rosary.
De Alba greeted the missionaries, asking politely about their health and about their journey in a tone Ortiz judged condescending.
“A hard journey,” Esteben Salamanca told him. “This land is dry and barren. It gives us nothing but sore feet as we plod the paths between missions. I pray God to release me from this task soon so I can return to Majorca and end my days there.”
“Fine enough for you,” Lieutenant de Alba said. “I fear I’m destined to serve my king here for all eternity. My superiors have forgotten me. They’ve left me to rot in this hell hole—forgive me, father—but I’m afraid I’ll never see Nueva España again. Pray to your God to send me home.”
Fermin Ortiz stepped closer to de Alba.
“We’ll pray for your safe return home, sir,” he said, looking up into the soldier’s eyes, “but surly there are opportunities here for men of courage. Not the silver of Nueva España perhaps, but land. Land that gives its own kind of wealth to those who grab hold of it.”
Salamanca abruptly turned to stare at Ortiz, “Brother Fermin—” he started, but de Alba cut him off.
“Fine-enough land for you Padres to build your missions on, I suppose. Fine enough for sheep and cattle. But worthless land; no more than a buffer. Few settlers will ever come. And for me—an officer of the army of King Carlos—a bleak end to my valiant career.”
They’re blind to the wealth of this land—The thought startled Ortiz. Salamanca has no eye for it, seeing only souls to save. Lieutenant de Alba wants to go back to Mexico City. If I possessed this land I’d produce wealth beyond the ability of either one to imagine.
De Alba’s eyes shifted to Cayatu. “Why is the girl here?” he asked.
“We’ve come to build the mission Junipero Serra planned—God rest his soul,” Ortiz said. “This girl will be our first baptism.”
Salamanca said, “Pray God we do the right thing for her in Christ’s name and protect her from evil.” That said he stared at de Alba.
“Send her away! She doesn’t belong here.” De Alba used a sweep of his hand to show his irritation.
“Tomorrow we’ll take her to the mission site. Tonight she’ll stay with us,” Ortiz told him.
The soldier shrugged. “That will be on you. I won’t be responsible. No place here is safe for her. Look how my men stare. With so few women... Just soldiers’ wives…” He hesitated. “Sooner or later this God-forsaken land gets the better of us all, Padres. I know my men. I hear them boast at night. It will be hard to keep her safe.”
“Surely for one night you’re able to protect her from your own men,” the old priest said.
Ortiz smiled but De Alba ignored Salamanca’s remark.
De Alba dropped his hand to rest on the hilt of his sword.
“Keep her with you until dark, then lock her in the chapel,” he said. “Let the Virgin protect her. Get her out of my fort early tomorrow.” Returning again to his polite but distant voice, still gripping the sword hilt, he added, “After you’ve put her away I’d be pleased to have you take your supper with me, humble as it is. We’ve made two rooms available to you until your mission is built, but stay clear of my men. Don’t interfere with me.”
*****
After praying in the Presidio chapel, Ortiz and Salamanca took Cayatu to a kitchen yard in the far corner of the fort, where a large pot hung over a wood fire. Ortiz ladled out a bowl of pasty white gruel. “Atole,” he said, offering it to her.
She tasted it and spit it on the ground.
“Come, woman, eat it,” Ortiz prodded. “You’ll be eating it often enough from now on.”
Salamanca soothed her. He urged her to try again. Ortiz watched Cayatu look at Salamanca with wide-open, questioning eyes that showed her reluctance to eat more, but he saw her hunger win out. After only a slight hesitation she scooped a handful from the bowl and stuffed her mouth, gagging it down her throat.
After she ate, Ortiz led her back to the chapel. “You’ll be safe here tonight,” he told her, opening the heavy door. “To be sure, I’ll lock you in and come get you in the morning.”
Cayatu’s look told him she was unsure of what he intended to do.
He pointed to the iron lock and key. “I’ll lock the door to keep you safe,” he said, searching for the right words. Then he gave up and used his own language. “Understand, child, I’m doing this for your safety. Jesus Christ and Holy Mother will watch over you during the night. Tomorrow you can live in the open again until our mission’s built.”
Cayatu still balked at entering the dimly lit chapel.
“Come now, go inside,” Ortiz urged, using his hands and pointing to supplement his words. “My supper’s getting cold. I haven’t eaten enough today to satisfy a small child. My stomach begs for the roast meat and good Spanish wine the Comandante has waiting for me. You’ll be safe in God’s hands tonight. Move along.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her through the door, turning the key in the lock when the door closed behind her.
*****
Ortiz sat with Salamanca and Demetrio de Alba at a wooden table in the third room of the Comandancia—de Alba’s quarters in a corner of the Presidio not far from the chapel. It was dimly lit and smoky from crude candles giving off a pungent smell that filled the room. One of the Soldados de Cuera, a soldier of Spain’s frontier army, served them. Ortiz heard the sounds of men and animals outside, quieting as darkness spread over the fort.
Inwardly, he rehearsed his disappointment at the meal. The beef was so tough he wondered if the hide had been served by accident. He’d worried he might lose a tooth as he gnawed away at it. No vegetables were in sight. A bowl of pozole—the same barley gruel the Indian woman had spit on the ground—with bits of meat afloat in it, was their side dish. Oranges and grapes were plentiful, but Ortiz judged them tasteless compared to the fruits he’d enjoyed at the Queretaro missions high in the Sierra Gorda Mountains of Nueva España. Even the wine was disappointing. Instead of the Rioja made from Spanish grapes he’d expected, the large tumblers were filled with aguardiente—crude brandy—that his host poured without reserve. Not at all what he had hoped for, Fermin Ortiz thought.
But perhaps it was all that could be expected here, so far from Spain, far even from Nueva España. De Alba was right. It was a forgotten frontier, only a buffer really, he realized, protecting Spain from her enemies to the North. His brother Franciscans saw it as fertile new ground on which to plant Christ’s cross. So be it; he’d made up his mind to make the most of that zeal to gain visibility among his superiors, visibility and stature, maybe more comfort.
“My apologies for the meal,” de Alba said, catching the disdainful look Ortiz made no effort to hide. He shoved back, reaching behind him for a cheroot in a box on a wooden side table, and signaled for the soldier. “Miserable compared to the delicious food we ate in the City of Mexico, is it not? But what can we do? We’re just an outpost.”
De Alba turned to the soldier who came by his side. “Look deep in my trunk. I think we’ve one or two bottles of fine port left. We’ll share one with the Padres.”
Turning back to the Franciscans, de Alba said, “Nothing like the feasts we enjoyed before, eh? We knew how to live in New Spain, didn’t we? The food and wine, the beautiful women, dancing long into the nights on verandas where the moon seemed to bow down to caress the señoritas’ shining hair…Aí that was the life for a soldier. Now we’re fortunate if the ship arrives from San Blas. When it does, it brings only a few pleasures.”
De Alba paused to light his cigar from a nearby candle. He took in a long draw and blew out the smoke toward the ceiling, while he looked at Ortiz. The soldier filled their glasses from the new bottle.
“What news from Monterey?” De Alba asked, after a long drink. “Any word of our enemies?”
“Nothing,” Ortiz answered. “The Russians stay north of Mission Dolores content to trade for pelts. The British are farther north collecting their own furs. All’s quiet—”
“And forgotten,” de Alba threw in quickly. “We would all be better off in Nueva España. Here’s to a speedy return for us all.” He raised his tumbler and tossed down the port.
Ortiz took a mouthful of the sweet wine and let it tease his senses, moving it from cheek to cheek then trickle slowly down his throat, as he listened to de Alba.
When he had swallowed he turned to the Comandante. “Mission and fort will be closer here than at the other Presidios,” he started.
“Indeed. An excellent opportunity to show the governor how well we can work together.”
From the corner of his eye, Ortiz saw Salamanca’s face screw up in a skeptical look.
“It’s a concern to me and Brother Salamanca that your soldiers and our Indian neophytes will be so close,” Ortiz continued. “As you said earlier, it may be difficult to keep them separated.”
“True,” De Alba nodded slowly. “Father Serra planned it this way and it’s not to my liking at all. Your mission should be in the valley to the east, away from the Presidio and pueblo, but Serra said there wasn’t enough water there. In truth, I think he was scared of the bears.” At this, De Alba gave a humorless, grunting laugh.
“But done is done,” he continued. “If the governor gets word to the viceroy we live without strife so close together, he may reward me with a recall to Mexico City—let’s work together for that, no? It’s your task to protect the Indians, not mine.” With that, he gave both missionaries a silent stare.
Ortiz took the measure of the Lieutenant in the ensuing pause. He judged Demetrio de Alba to be of only middling intellect. He might be able to command this small garrison but he wasn’t bright enough for bigger assignments. He didn’t seem to have the toughness or diplomacy Ortiz had seen in other leaders, certainly not the toughness and diplomacy Ortiz knew he had. In fact, he wondered if the Comandante didn’t show just a trace of fear. And yet de Alba might be useful.
*****
Esteben Salamanca mentally withdrew from the conversation in order to study the two men seated with him. He reached his hand up to smooth his bald pate, a reflex that often accompanied moments when he was deep in thought. He let his aging fingers comb through the sparse fringe of white hair. Who were these two men he might spend the rest of his life with?
De Alba was like other military men he’d known for almost forty years of doing the Lord’s work. He lacked all trace of humility. Salamanca had seen plenty of soldiers like this one. He knew how to handle them—stay humble, praise and pamper them like the hunting hounds they were. Throw them a bone now and then, but stand firm and strong in the name of the Christ when there were important matters at hand. De Alba could be handled, Salamanca decided. He drank too much and talked too freely… Too boastfully. So did Ortiz. In many ways they were two of a kind. De Alba had something on his mind, some scheme to get sent back to Nueva España. He’d need to be watchful.
And what about Fermin Ortiz? Salamanca pondered this young priest he’d been thrown together with. Look at him empty the tumbler again. Where is his moderation? How does he fit the mold Saint Francis cast for us? Poverty sits on Brother Fermin like a Jesuit sits on a mule.
“I’m sure you Padres will have your Indians growing crops here in Santa Barbara soon enough,” de Alba broke the silence. “Then you’ll supply my poor soldiers with all the food we need, no? And better aguardiente, I hope. These Indians are smart enough—they’ll learn quickly.”
“Soon enough indeed,” Salamanca nodded. “Gardens and orchards and vineyards will bloom as they’ve bloomed at other missions along the coast.” His face turned more serious. “But only after the mission is built and the neophytes are cared for.”
“You’ll have to do better than that,” de Alba snapped. “I urge you to move with due haste to produce food for us. My men are scrawny from our meager diet. Near starvation. The crops from El Pueblo de Los Angeles are insufficient. With your new mission so close, we look forward to eating better.”
“In God’s time.” Salamanca smiled.
De Alba laughed harshly, draining his tumbler of the port and refilling it. He handed the bottle to Ortiz who refilled his own glass.
Salamanca thought de Alba was starting to slur his words. “Brother Fermin,” he cautioned.
“If these heathens don’t work fast enough lemme know,” de Alba interrupted. “I’ll work ‘em. Keep ‘em under control, work ‘em hard, or they’ll overwhelm us.”
“The king commands us to care for these Indians,” Salamanca said.
“And feed my soldiers,” de Alba shot back at him.
Chapter Three
When Fermin Ortiz turned the key in the lock, Cayatu was alone in semi-darkness. She sat on the dirt floor with her back propped against a wall. In the dim light she could barely make out a statue of a woman and infant. The Franciscans’ mother spirit, she guessed, remembering Ortiz’s words. She held her own mother’s shell basket in both hands for several minutes, turning it slowly to inspect the intricate designs. She tried to picture her mother weaving it.
When darkness blanketed the Presidio, Cayatu could see Evening Star had followed her into this new world and was watching through the window. She heard the sounds of men, laughing and singing in the plaza outside. Then a shadow came between Evening Star and the window, almost invisible against the night sky. It peered in at her and stood silently watching. Then it disappeared. Moments later she heard sounds at the door. The door shook and slammed against the door frame for several minutes before it stopped. The shadow reappeared at the window, staring at her again. Then it was gone. Was it real?Had Coyote followed her?
*****
Fermin Ortiz unlocked Cayatu from the chapel the next morning.
“Last night something watched me,” she said, pointing to the window. “It tried to get in.”
“Mother of God! Los soldados are a scourge.” Ortiz spoke rapidly in Spanish, but reached out a consoling hand to touch her shoulder.
She flinched, backing away, and looking at him with questioning eyes. “It might have been Coyote. Do our spirits come to your fort?”
He stared at her. Cayatu’s large, dark eyes, sparkling with flecks of reflected sunlight, made him forget for that instant she was an Indian—made him forget he was sworn to celibacy. Her face was a soft oval, with full lips. He admired the way her black hair cascaded around her shoulders and down to the swell of her breasts. He felt sensations in his groin and thought about the other woman in the church in Mexico City.
“There are no spirits,” he told her, using gestures to fill in for the words he didn’t know. “But stay away from the soldiers.”
Her look told Ortiz she didn’t understand. “We need soldiers. To protect us from foreigners, protect us from Indian attacks,” he said. Then he shrugged. “No harm done.”
He willed his feelings away but asked no forgiveness for having them. “Be still now. Come along. We’ve a hill to climb,” he said, trying to make her understand.
When they reached the hilltop that looked down on the few mud-brown adobes that made up the tiny pueblo of Santa Barbara huddled around the fort, Ortiz let his horse browse the dry bunch grass while he studied the land stretching east and west along the coast. His gaze swept the broad bench lands behind the beach, flat to the western horizon but sloping gently from high mountain wall to teal-blue ocean. A man could become a lord with cattle on land like that. Praise God! Ortiz thought.
His horse gave a sudden whinny, side stepping and pawing at the ground.
“Coyote plays a trick on your horse,” Cayatu said, laughing.
“There are no spirits,” he told her sharply. “It was only a lizard.” He pulled himself back from his musings and allowed himself to admire her naked breasts again, enjoying the stirrings in his body.
“Find shelter here,” he told her. “We’ll build the mission on this hill.” Then he kicked his horse and rode off.
*****
Over the next weeks, the missionaries prepared Cayatu for baptism. They came regularly to instruct her at the sheltered spot she’d chosen along a stream in the canyon behind the mission site. It was in a stand of sycamore trees where the ground was carpeted with dried leaves and patches of low-growing wild grape. Redbud bushes spotted about lent privacy. Esteben Salamanca led the lessons as they sat beside the stream flowing down from the high mountains to its union with the ocean. With dappled, mid-afternoon light filtering through the leaf canopy, Salamanca used phrases he’d mastered at the mission in San Diego to teach the catechism, his words punctuated by the tapping sounds of woodpeckers in the live oak trees.
*****
One afternoon, Cayatu saw Salamanca coming alone along the path.
“As I approached I heard you singing,” he greeted her. “What was it you sang?”
She smiled at the old Franciscan who was smiling back at her. “When I’m alone I sing songs from my village. It was a song to Morning Star I sang to my nephew when he was a baby and I was a young girl.”
“Teach me your songs and about the spirits you sing to?” the priest asked her. “Your voice is as pure as a night bird’s call, Cayatu. It has the gentle sweetness I remember in my mother’s voice long ago. I hope you’ll sing in our mission choir.”
“Singing makes me happy,” she said. “I used to sing on the beach by our village when I collected shells.”
It seemed to her a lifetime, since she’d walked along the beach in her village, singing, picking up perfect limpet and purple olivella shells Tanayan fashioned into beautiful jewelry. Sometimes, as she collected, she stopped to watch her father building canoes with his men, and sometimes she took her nephew Massilili down to the water’s edge where his eyes delighted to the cold water tickling his toes.
“Ah,” Salamanca’s face beamed, “I used to sing on a beach, too, but my beach was far from here, on an island called Majorca in España. There I sang to a beautiful young woman, as lovely as you are now, Cayatu.” He stopped and she watched as his eyes took on a faraway look. After a pause he continued, “Tomorrow we’ll baptize you in the Presidio chapel. I’ve brought new clothes for you to wear. You’ll put aside your animal skin and dress like a Christian woman.”
He set the garments down on a nearby rock.
“When I put on these clothes I’ll be Christian?” she asked.
Salamanca grimaced. “Well, no, Niña. Being a Christian is more than clothes.”
*****
After he left, Cayatu delayed trying on the new clothes. When she finally did, the blouse restricted her arms. She tripped on the hem of the skirt walking to the stream, and recoiled at the sight of the reflected image she saw in the water. With just the tip of her finger she prodded her breast, and her stomach and her hip. In the slow-flowing waters, it looked to her as if she were touching some other woman. She despaired that her breasts were covered; despaired that the new skirt hung limply around her ankles. A feeling of sadness came over her. You’re not Chumash anymore, a voice in her head taunted her.
*****
Feeling uncomfortable in the white camisa and skirt, Cayatu stood with three Chumash men in the Presidio chapel. One, a younger man, smiled at her. She returned the smile and quickly looked away.
Lieutenant Don Jose Maria Demetrio de Alba stood beside her in his full dress uniform of dark blue pants and tunic, with ruffled white shirt and red velvet waistcoat. His blond hair was slicked back and the smell of his pomade tickled her nose. He stood erect, his hand on the golden hilt of his sword that jangled in its scabbard when he moved. Solemn-faced, he agreed to be her Godfather and promised to protect her Catholic faith. Cayatu sensed de Alba’s eyes straying to her from time to time. It made her tremble.
Behind him, the people of Santa Barbara, mostly soldiers and the wives who had come with them from New Spain, watched with smiles and approving looks.
Wrapped in a gray robe, with beggar sandals on his feet, Esteban Salamanca went to each of the converts, taking water on his fingertips from a bowl and pronouncing a new Christian name for each. “Tomas, Nuncio, Miguel,” he said to them in turn. Feeling his wet fingers on her forehead made Cayatu cringe. “Henceforth we will call you Clare,” he said to her, “in honor of Clare of Assisi, founder of the second order of Saint Francis.”
When the service ended, Comandante de Alba lifted his hand from his sword, tugged at his beard with thumb and forefinger, then reached out to clasp her shoulder. She flinched again, as she had when Fermin Ortiz touched her. She grew rigid, watching him as his expressionless blue eyes scanned her face and body; feeling shivers race up her back to the base of her neck, where the hairs seemed to bristle. He said nothing, but stood looking at her in silence. Cayatu felt his fingers tighten on her shoulder then slide across her blouse to touch her hair at the base of her neck. She felt faint. The moment passed. He gave her a quick smile and turned away to join the others outside the chapel.
*****
On the Presidio parade ground, Cayatu joined the small group milling around in the sharp, early winter sunlight that etched precise shadows on the hard-packed earth. De Alba walked over to Fermin Ortiz, who began gesturing to him and counting on his fingers as he spoke. She saw de Alba glance her way and say something to the priest.
In ones and twos, some of the olive-skinned Mexican women came shyly to her side, dragging their reluctant soldier-husbands and children behind them. They spoke words without meaning for her, but their smiles and the sing-song lilt of their voices told her they meant to be friendly. She watched white-haired Esteben Salamanca, across the parade yard, walk among the people, speaking a few words to each, smiling at the children, reaching out a hand occasionally to touch one of them. One woman, with dark ringlet curls cascading down to her shoulders, stopped him and pointed at her. Together they approached.
“Do I know you?” the woman said to Cayatu, using the priest to interpret her words. Before he could finish she went on, “Aí, I do. I do know you. From the feast in your village when I came with Guillermo and the other soldados to build the Presidio. That terrible journey.”
“You’re Josefa,” Cayatu said.
“You remember!” A smile lit the woman’s round face. “At the baptism I guessed it was you. You’ve left your village.”
Cayatu nodded.
“I’m pleased to see you again,” Josefa said. “Perhaps we’ll see each other often; we can be friends. I told you that night we feasted at your village your life would change, eh? Now it comes to pass. Already you wear civilized clothes. Soon you’ll be living a Christian life and all your old ways will be gone.”
Chapter Four
The young Chumash man, who had smiled at Cayatu at the baptism, fell in beside her as they walked along the horse path up the hill to the mission site.
“So, we all have new names from the priests today,” he said, offering her a smile. “They call me Tomas now. And you are Clare.”
“My name is Cayatu,” she said, with an edge to her voice.
“The Franciscans won’t allow that, you know. Everything is to be new. The old traditions, our spirits, names, all are gone now. Father Ortiz said we are born again in their God.”
Cayatu regarded the man, and judged him to be a summer or two older than she was, plain-looking, not handsome like Ysaga, but with gentle eyes.
“I am Cayatu,” she told Tomas again. “Muniyaut, my father, and the village seer named me at birth. Let the missionaries call me what they will, I’ll always be Cayatu. You should cling to your name, too. If you let them, they’ll take away all that is you.”
“I hope we can be friends at the mission,” Tomas said. “But you seem angry.”
Cayatu stopped walking and squatted down on her haunches on the path so that her skirt billowed around her. She looked up at him with an unblinking stare. A nascent smile slowly turned up the corners of her mouth but she still held him locked in her gaze.
“Angry? Yes, I’m angry, but not with you, Tomas,” she answered him. “I’m angry the missionaries place no value on the lives we lived before they came here. It’s as if we didn’t exist before they marched along our beach—the way they try to replace everything that is ours, like our names, the way we dressed.”
“Why did you come to the mission, then? Why did you choose to be a Christian?”
“I had no choice… But I don’t think I’m a Christian just because I have a new name and a cloth skirt.”
Looking at the baggy pants Tomas wore, with a shirt made of the same coarse cotton, Cayatu broke into laughter.
A hangdog look dropped over his face. “Why are you laughing?”
“Your clothes.”
“They’re fine clothes. The missionaries gave them to me.”
“I’ve never seen a Chumash man wear so many clothes. You don’t look like a man. You’re made of cloth. You’re hiding your man-thing.” She laughed again. “You’re a hiding man.”
“What about you, Clare?” Tomas reached down to take hold of the sleeve of her blouse, rubbing the material between his thumb and forefinger. “You’re just as strange-looking as I am. Where are your breasts? You’re a doll woman for little girls to play with.”
She looked Tomas up and down while her laughter grew. “Look at us,” she said, almost choking on her words. She stood and took his hand. “Look at us!” Her eyes accepted him. “You’re right, we’re dolls. Dolls for children. Not real anymore.”
They stood on the path, looking at each other, shaking with laughter. Together they stood close, holding on to each other, laughing until tears rolled down their cheeks.
“Like dolls,” he repeated, holding her hand just a little tighter as the laughter choked him.
“We’ll be friends,” she told him, offering another smile. She decided Tomas was a man she could grow to like. “Tell me why you came to the mission, Tomas,” she asked.
Tomas turned serious, dropping his hands to his sides as they started to walk again. “It seemed better than staying in my village,” he said. “My father wasn’t respected. He had no tomol and those who did wouldn’t let him fish with them. He couldn’t teach me to fish because he didn’t know how. My mother worked all day to gather enough food. She only wore a straw skirt—not even a deerskin. She was not respected. I left the village as soon as I heard about the mission, to have a better life.”
Cayatu took an involuntary step away from Tomas. She was annoyed with herself for taking it but it was done before she could stop. She felt her pride pushing her. “My father led the Brotherhood of the Canoe,” she said. “He built strong tomols for other men.” She paused, searching out his face for a reaction before going on. “He built a canoe for a man whose son was my friend. One day my father went out on the ocean with that man. They fished and my father caught a great one, perhaps the greatest fish our village had ever seen. It was ‘Elye’wun, the swordfish, his dream helper. ‘Elye’wun was so strong he pulled my father from the canoe.”
Tomas stopped walking to listen. His face soured. Cayatu saw dullness creep over it; his eyes went a little dim and the edges of his mouth turned down.
“The others tried to reach him,” she went on, wishing she could stop but knowing it was already too late, “but the swordfish dragged him a long way off. When the others got to him my father was no longer struggling, only floating in the water. Sun took him home that day. After that I lived with my sister and her husband.”
When she finished she studied him again, waiting for him to speak, hopeful she hadn’t killed their friendship before it had found roots. Tomas looked down the path toward the pueblo and rubbed his toes in the loose earth, before he looked back at her. Then in a hushed voice he told her, “It’s not right for me to walk with you.”
“Why not? I thought we could be friends.” She was hurt by the quick shift in his manner but not surprised. She looked away so she wouldn’t have to see the shame she had brought on him, silently cursing herself.
“My mother only wore a straw skirt. Your mother must have worn a sea otter skirt if your father was such an important man.”
“She did.” Cayatu paused and let her thoughts drift into the stillness of the trail for a moment. “I never knew her,” she said when she spoke again. “She died giving me life. My sister and I both had sea otter skirts…”
Cayatu reached out to take his hand. “At the mission we all wear the same clothes, Tomas. The missionaries say we’re all equal. Your family’s place in your village isn’t important here. It isn’t important to me.”
Tomas snatched his hand away. “It’s best if we don’t walk together,” he said, shaking his head as he moved up the path ahead of her. But after a few steps, Tomas turned back to face her. “Your father’s important place in your village came from his mother, just as my father’s low place came from his mother. No matter how hard I worked, my life would have been the same as my father’s. When the Franciscans told how everyone at their missions worked together, I decided to come. I’d like to have respect for a time in my life. Or at least know my children would not be laughed at.” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his cotton trousers and quickened his pace up the hill ahead of her. “Watch me,” he called back after a few more steps, “you’ll see that I can earn your respect at the mission.”
Chapter Five
Esteben Salamanca rose slowly from the crude bench on his side of the makeshift confessional. His aging joints ached from the damp chill of the Santa Barbara winter, but he was beginning to feel better now that spring was returning. Still, it took him a moment to straighten all the way up and adjust his robe.
Josefa emerged from the other side of the hastily built confessional that had only a screen of tules between the two benches. She dabbed a cloth handkerchief on her cheeks and waited until the old monk could walk outside with her.
“Pray for the soul of your lost child, Señora—you and Guillermo,” Salamanca told her as they walked from the church to the crest of the hill.
“We will pray, Padre.” She looked away but he knew her tears. They walked together in silence near the heavy cross on the brow of the hill that overlooked the infant pueblo of Santa Barbara and stood out like a warning beacon to intruders on the ocean. “The mission grows so fast,” she said when she could speak again. “Soon you’ll have a large ranchería of neophytes here.”
Salamanca nodded, but inwardly he grimaced at the thought. “These Chumash are clever. But they don’t take well to our discipline. They seem always going off on their own or finding a different way to do a thing. They’re the cleverest people I’ve worked with in my years as a missionary, but they need instruction. Brother Ortiz and I are like parents giving guidance to our wayward children.”
Josefa nodded. “The Indian woman I spoke with at her baptism?”
“Ah, you mean Clare. She has the voice of an angel. And a sweet face to match. We’re teaching her to weave.”
For a moment, Salamanca was seeing another pretty young woman back in Petra, the small farming village on Majorca where he was born sixty years before. Josefa’s dark curls cascading around her smiling face reminded him of that other woman. She had a full round face, too; a face burning with life, unafraid of her sexuality. At night, when the low hills drew the stars about them like a secret cloak, Esteben and the girl lay wrapped in each other’s arms. He played his guitar, singing her songs filled with his passion. She had returned the passion without guile, giving herself over to him.
That was before his boyhood friend, Miguel Jose Serra, coaxed and chided him to attend the University in Parma, and from there into the Franciscan Order. Miguel Serra had taken the name Junipero and Esteben had taken holy orders, sorrowfully saying farewell to the girl. For more than forty years he’d answered Serra’s call and toiled among simple people. At the start, he burned with zeal to bring them the word of God. Now, the fire burned with less heat, and he prayed often for an answer to the question of whether he had done the right thing.
“I’m teaching Clare to sing hymns for the Mass,” he told Josefa, returning from his reverie. “We’ll have a choir soon. The discipline of our music challenges her. She resists. She seems trapped in her old life.” Salamanca gave Josefa an optimistic smile. “Soon, though, they’ll all accept our ways, and our choir will sing for you here in our new church.”
“That will be good,” Josefa said, turning back to look at the wooden church the neophytes had built. “The women look forward to bringing their husbands to Mass here, and getting to know your Indians so we can be friends with them. I’ll bring my Guillermo. We’ll pray together to the Virgin for our lost child and ask her for a new one.”
Salamanca’s attention drifted from Josefa, whose face had turned somber again at the mention of the lost child. He watched a rider approach on a gray Arabian stallion, whose hoofs seemed barely to touch the ground as it galloped its way up the hill. The rider reined the horse to an abrupt halt that had it rearing on hind legs and snorting excitement as it pawed the air. Lieutenant Don Demetrio de Alba, Comandante of the Presidio jumped from the saddle and lifted his plumed, tri-cornered hat to Josefa.
“Buenos diás, Señora, Good day Padre.” De Alba bowed to each of them, then turned to inspect the work going on around him. “Your mission grows,” he said. “New buildings. Soon you and Father Ortiz will move up here from my fort, no? I’m anxious to have you gone so I can use your rooms for other purposes.”
“In time,” Salamanca answered, giving de Alba a look that said he would not be rushed out of the fort. It was also intended to tell de Alba Salamanca wasn’t intimidated by his disdain. “The neophytes are building rooms for Brother Ortiz and me, as well as storerooms and a kitchen. Already we must plan for a larger mission because the Chumash come to us freely. Brother Ortiz visits the villages and new converts come almost daily.”
“So, you’ve plenty of workers for your tasks,” de Alba said. “That’s good; the work will go quickly.” He turned to Josefa. “You’re Guillermo’s wife. I see you at the Presidio, but you don’t live there with the other families.”
“No, Comandante. Guillermo paid some Indians to build a small adobe outside the walls for us. So we could be alone.” She giggled.
Watching de Alba as he spoke with Josefa, Salamanca couldn’t help but feel the lieutenant’s look wasn’t proper for a man speaking to another man’s wife. He couldn’t put a name to his concern, it was more a sense of discomfort than anything tangible, but he thought he saw a look in de Alba’s eyes that seemed too intimate. Salamanca saw de Alba glance at the swell of Josefa’s breasts against her blouse—for an instant it took him back again to Petra and the swell of another breast—and it took more effort than he liked to bring himself back.
“Guillermo’s a good soldier,” was all de Alba said before his horse nudged him in his back to show impatience to be on the move again.
Josefa took Salamanca’s hand and kissed it, then gave the two men a quick curtsy and an animated farewell smile that took over and lighted her whole face. “I’ll go back to the pueblo now. Tell Clare hello. I hope to hear her sing when we come to Mass. I’m pleased to see you, too, Comandante.” She walked off down the hill and Salamanca watched de Alba’s eyes follow her.
When she’d gone, Salamanca turned to the lieutenant who was stroking the Arabian’s muzzle. “What brings you and that fine stallion up the hill today?”
“I need workers, Padre, if our plan to show the Governor how we prosper together is to go forward quickly.”
“Our plan, Comandante? We both have our work, is that what you mean?”
“My plan, then,” de Alba barked. “But I need the mission’s help. I can’t hire enough heathen Indians in the pueblo for the work so I need to borrow some of your neophytes to work for me.”
“I don’t think that will be possible,” the old priest said. He gave the soldier his sternest look. He heard the familiar warning in the back of his head telling him to go carefully. Here was just the beginning of the demands de Alba would make. If he gave in now his life, and the lives of all his neophytes, would be burdened. Why had Miguel—Junipero—been so foolish as to allow this mission so close to the Presidio? “The Indians are here to learn to grow crops and raise animals so they can have their own lands when they’re ready.” he told de Alba. “They’re not free labor for you.”