Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette Volume XI

"Well, we won't have to worry about any Inuit attacking us as happened with Frobisher," Luke said. "That is why we have Antonio and his soldiers, right, Esteban?"

I snorted. "Just because a people are primitive does not mean they aren't intelligent… and dangerous." I pulled my shirt down and pointed to my left shoulder. "See this gash? Three times we butchered the Indians on the plains of Valdivia in Chile. And the fourth time? They butchered us. I had three arrows in me, and this from a lance. If reinforcements hadn't arrived, I and my brother and all our companions would have died there. Only the mercy of God permitted me to live."

Esteban smiled. "The way I heard the story told, Antonio, was that you earned the gash chasing down the Indian chief who had stolen your company flag."

I frowned. "And who told you that?"

Esteban laughed. "You did, when you were drunk last week."

Father Amancio and Luke joined Esteban in laughter and after a brief flare of temper, I did as well.

"Well, whatever the truth of the story is, the moral is the same, gentlemen. We will not underestimate the Inuit."

Our expedition left the port of Pasajes in the middle of April, 1633. The miners, carpenters, stone masons and supplies were on the San Juan, a 450 ton whaling vessel that Esteban had picked up from a bankruptcy. Our escort was the Santiago, an eighteen gun, 300 ton cruiser from the Spanish Netherlands. Our scout ship was the 100 ton yacht Viscaya. The voyage to Greenland was uneventful except for the icebergs we had to avoid as we approached the coast near Cape Desolation. It took us almost a week to find the opening to Arsuk Fjord because of the weather, the ice and the fog. At the first protected flat area inside the fjord, we began construction of a stone fort, moving the six nine-pounder guns off the deck of San Juan and onto the shore.

To protect the secret of what we were actually attempting, we had spread the story that we were setting up a whaling station to hunt whales in the Davis Strait with new technology obtained from Grantville. We had also spread rumors that we were hunting gold and silver deposits based on information from Grantville maps. Thus our hunt for cryolite was doubly secure, or so we hoped.

The few Inuit we saw fled quickly, and after a week in the fjord Father Amancio went on the Viscaya to make contact with the larger concentrations we knew were in the year-round ice free areas two days sail north of us. It was the night after his return that I found him on the deck of the San Juan, staring across the water of the fjord.

A brief blizzard in the evening had been followed by a low sun in a dark blue sky, and I couldn't sleep with all the light. I found myself on the deck, settling in for a smoke with my pipe, when I noticed Father Amancio.

"Did your expedition go well, Father?"

It was then that I noticed the tears in his eyes.

"Father?"

Father Amancio took a deep breath. "What am I doing here, Antonio? What?"

I sucked at my pipe. "From what you've said, you are here because Father Miguel de Seville thinks you should bring God to the Inuit."

Father Amancio shook his head. "Yes, a promise I made to a dying man. My patron, my friend, for twenty years. But how am I to do that?" He shook his head again, only savagely. "They are heathens! Godless dwellers in darkness, as I was twenty years ago. Or rather, not godless, but with too many gods! Nerrivik, goddess of the sea. Sila, the weather god, who can only be appeased when a shaman flies into the sky and tightens his caribou-skin diaper. A whole array of pestiferous spirits! I have nothing in common with them anymore." He looked at his hands with disgust. "I can't even hunt seal anymore. All the skills I knew, everything I took pride in as a young man, are gone. Replaced instead by a knowledge of books, languages, and Catholicism."

He looked into my face. "Have I ever told you what my name was among the Inuit?"

I shook my head.

"Seekoo Amaruq," he said. "Which means 'wolf who hunts among sea-ice.' I was the best seal hunter of my village. I was respected, sought after. One season I caught more seal than the next best five hunters combined."

"What happened?"

Father Amancio grimaced. "Hubris. I became vain, arrogant. Selfish." He looked down at his feet, than back up. "The Inuit are very communal, Antonio. Such selfishness cannot be tolerated, for the good of the village, no matter how expert the hunter. I was banished forever. I became… a kivitog. On the brink of madness, living alone on the edge of the ice. Where the Basques and Father Seville found me."

I said nothing, watching Father Amancio struggle with his demons. Finally he looked up at me again.

"Can I ask you a question, Antonio?"

I nodded. "Of course, Father."

"When did you know?"

"Know what?"

He waved his hands. "When did you know you were Antonio, and not Catalina?"

I laughed. Not heartily. But with that brittle core you get in your voice when distant, painful memories come stalking through your mind.

"Ah, now that is an easy question to answer, Father Amancio. For a year after my escape from the Dominican convent of San Sebastian the Elder I traveled around Spain, and it was in Estella in the province of Navarre that I became a page to Don Carlos de Arellano. It was a good life and I was well-fed and well-clothed. After two years in his employment I grew restless and found myself heading for San Sebastian. There I attended a mass at my old convent, the same mass as my mother attended. I don't know why, but deep inside I wanted my mother to recognize me, to see me for who I really was."

"She didn't recognize you, did she?"

I smiled. "Of course not. She saw nothing but a handsome young gentleman with a vague resemblance to a daughter she had placed in a convent at the age of four. It was then I knew that there was no going back. That I truly was Antonio de Erauso, not Catalina."

Father Amancio was silent for several minutes, and I thought to leave him, but I knew I couldn't. Not without some word of encouragement. It doesn't take much. Many times I have been in despair, alone, wanting a touch, a smile or just a simple gesture from a friend that says "You are not alone, Antonio. We're here for you." I could not leave Father Amancio with nothing.

"It is not black or white, Father Amancio."

He looked up at me. "What?"

"You don't have to just be Father Amancio or Seekoo Amaruq. If there is one thing that I have learned in my travels, it is that God really does give us free will. We can choose more than a single path in life, nothing is set in stone. You can be Father Amancio, or Seekoo Amaruq, or even someone else." I clasped his shoulder. "You decide. Not Father Seville, not me, not Esteban. The choice is yours. And whatever your choice, I will support you. You have my word as a Spaniard and as Antonio de Erauso."

For a moment Father Amancio eyes bore into mine. Then he smiled. "Thank you, Antonio."

It was in the middle of July when Father Amancio returned from what we were beginning to call "New Seville" with a village elder, Uutaaq, and his three daughters, Apa, Pipaluk and Sigoko.

They were exotic, attractive women dressed in light seal-skin jackets and breeches and tanned seal-skin boots that nearly reached to their hips. The youngest one, Sigoko, barely sixteen, kept smiling at me. I admit I found her attractive, despite the half-dozen black-blue stripes that extended from her lower lip to below her chin. I even wondered if what Father Amancio had said about their underwear being made of feathers was really true, and what it might feel like. But her smell quenched my desire.

"Comely wenches," I said to Father Amancio at the meeting that night on the Santiago where we were hosting a feast for Uutaaq. "But the smell… " I wrinkled my nose. "Especially the hair… "