Orson Card - Pastwatch - The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus

Suddenly a terrible blast shattered the quiet evening. Almost at once the earth shook under him and a shock of wind from seaward knocked Pedro down. He fell right across Pinzўn, and almost at once the man was hitting and cursing him. Pedro got off him as quickly as possible, and it soon became clear even to Pinzўn that it wasn't Pedro's clumsiness that had caused their collision. Most of the men had been bowled over by the blast, and now smoke and ash filled the air. It was thickest toward the water.

"The Pinta!" cried Pinzўn. At once everyone else took up the cry, and ran through the thickening smoke toward the shore.

The Pinta wasn't on fire. It simply wasn't there at all.

The evening breeze was gradually clearing the smoke when they finally found the two men who were supposed to be on watch. Pinzўn was already laying on them with the flat of his sword before Colўn could get a couple of men to pull him off.

"My ship!" cried Pinzўn. "What have you done to my ship?"

"If you stop beating them and shouting at them," said Colўn, "perhaps we can learn from them what happened."

"My ship is gone and they were supposed to watch it!" cried Pinzўn, struggling to get free of the men who restrained him.

"It was my ship, given me by the King and Queen," said Colўn. "Will you stand alone like a gentleman, sir?"

Pinzўn furiously nodded, and the men let go of him.

One of the men who had been on watch was Rascўn, who was part owner of the Pinta. "Martin, I'm sorry, what could we do? He made us get into the launch and row for shore. And then he made us get behind that rock. And then the ship -- blew up."

"He?" asked Colўn, ignoring the fact that Rascўn had reported to Pinzўn instead of to the Captain-General.

"The man who did it."

"Where is he now?" asked Colўn.

"He can't be far," said Rascўn.

"He went off that way," said Gil Perez, the other watchman.

"Se¤or Pinzўn, would you kindly organize a search?"

His fury properly focused now, Pinzўn immediately divided the men into search parties, not forgetting to leave a good contingent behind to guard the stockade against theft or sabotage. Pedro could not help but see that Pinzўn was a good leader, quick of mind and able to make himself understood and obeyed at once. That only made him more dangerous, as far as Pedro was concerned.

When the men had dispersed, Colўn stood on the shore, looking out over the many bits of wood that were bobbing on the waves. "Not even if all the gunpowder on the Pinta exploded all at once," said the Captain-General, "not even then could it destroy the ship so completely."

"What could have done it, then?" said Pedro.

"God could do it," said the Captain-General. "Or perhaps the devil. The Indians know nothing about gunpowder. If they find this man who supposedly did it, do you think he'll be a Moor?"

So the Captain-General was remembering the curse of the mountain witch. One calamity after another. What could be worse than this, to lose the last ship?

But when they found him, the man wasn't a Moor. Nor was he an Indian. He was white and bearded, a large man, a strong one. His clothing had obviously been bizarre even before the men tore much of it from him. They held him, a garrotte around his neck, forcing him to his knees in front of the Captain-General.

"It was all I could do to keep him alive long enough for you to speak to him, sir," said Pinzўn.

"Why did you do this?" asked Colўn.

The man answered in Spanish -- thickly accented, but understandable. "When I first heard about your expedition I vowed that if you succeeded, you would never return to Spain."

"Why?" demanded the Captain-General.

"My name is Kemal," said the man. "I'm a Turk. There is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is his Prophet."

The men muttered in rage. Infidel. Heathen. Devil.

"I will still return to Spain," said Colўn. "You haven't stopped me."

"Fool," said Kemal. "How will you return to Spain when you're surrounded by enemies?"

Pinzўn immediately roared out, "You're the only enemy, infidel!"

"How do you think I got here, if I hadn't had the help of some of these." With his head, he indicated the men around him. Then he looked Pinzўn in the eye and winked.

"Liar!" cried Pinzўn. "Kill him! Kill him!"

The men who held the Turk obeyed at once, even though Colўn raised his voice and cried out for them to stop. It was possible that in the roar of fury they didn't hear him. And it didn't take long for the Turk to die. Instead of strangling him, they pulled the garrotte so tight and twisted it so hard that it broke his neck and with only a twitch or two he was gone.

At last the tumult ended. In the silence, the Captain-General spoke. "Fools. You killed him too quickly. He told us nothing."

"What could he have told us, except lies?" said Pinzўn.

Colўn took a long, measured look at him. "We'll never know, will we? As far as I can tell, the only people glad of that would be the ones he might have named as his conspirators."

"What are you accusing me of?" demanded Pinzўn.

"I haven't accused you at all."

Only then did Pinzўn seem to realize that his own actions had pointed the finger of suspicion at him. He began to nod, and then smiled. "I see, Captain-General. You finally found a way to discredit me, even if it took blowing up my caravel to do it."

"Watch what you say to the Captain-General." Segovia's voice whipped out across the crowd.

"Let him watch what he says to me. I didn't have to bring the Pinta back here. I've proved my loyalty. Every man here knows me. I'm not the foreigner. How do we know that this Colўn is even a Christian, let alone a Genovese? After all, that black witch and the little whore interpreter both knew his native language, when not one honest Spaniard could understand it."

Pinzўn hadn't been present on either occasion, Pedro noted. Obviously there had been a lot of talk about who spoke what language to whom.

Colўn looked at him steadily. "There would have been no expedition if I had not spent half my life arguing for it. Would I destroy it now, when success was so close?"

"You would never have gotten us home anyway, you posturing fool!" cried Pinzўn. "That's why I came back, because I saw how difficult it was to sail east against the wind. I knew you weren't sailor enough to bring my brother and my friends back home."

Colўn allowed himself a hint of a smile. "If you were such a fine sailor, you'd know that to the north of us the prevailing wind blows from the west."

"And how would you know that?" The scorn in Pinzўn's voice was outrageous.

"You're speaking to the commander of Their Majesties' fleet," said Segovia.

Pinzўn fell silent for the moment; perhaps he had spoken more openly than he intended, for now at least.

"When you were a pirate," said Colўn quietly, "I sailed the coast of Africa with the Portuguese."

From the growling of the men, Pedro knew that the Captain-General had just committed a serious mistake. The rivalry between the men of Palos and the sailors of the Portuguese coast was intensely felt, all the more so because the Portuguese were so clearly the better, farther-reaching sailors. And to throw in Pinzўn's face his days of piracy -- well, that was a crime that all of Palos was guilty of, during the hardest days of the war against the Moors, when normal trade was impossible. Colўn might have buttressed his credentials as a sailor, but he did it at the immediate cost of losing what vestiges of loyalty he might have commanded among the men.

"Dispose of the body," said the Captain-General. Then he turned his back on them and returned to the camp.

The runner from Guacanagari couldn't stop laughing as he told the story of the death of the Silent Man. "The white men are so stupid that they killed him first and tortured him afterward!"