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Land of Ice and Sun

Written by Kim Mackey

The match was tied at four games apiece when I looked up and saw the priest talking to Esteban's navigator, Luke Foxe. He was a strange looking fellow. Oh, he wore the clothing of a priest, but his face was too dark and his cheekbones too high to be a Spaniard or a Basque. He was a forlorn looking man with a black mongrel of a dog for a companion that seemed as forlorn as he.

"Who's that?" I pointed with my chin.

Esteban looked up. He too was catching his breath. Esteban was younger than I, but his time as a whaling captain and successful merchant had made him more portly.

"The priest?"

I nodded.

Esteban smiled. "Father Amancio. He will be quite an asset on our expedition to Greenland."

"Not when I win the next game, Esteban. Then it is back to Cartegena for me. You promised."

He laughed. "Indeed I did, dear cousin Antonio. As did you. And if I win the game, you join us on our adventure to the north lands."

I shuddered. The last thing I wanted was to journey to a land of cold, dark and ice. But if this was the way to settle my debt . . .

I should have stayed in Cartegena.

I had moved there in 1630 after my dispensation from the pope, Urban VIII. But lady luck, or God, had smiled on me and my gambling had finally earned me a handsome sum. Early in 1632 a coin flip had decided my next destination: heads, Mexico, tails, San Sebastian to pay my respects to my family and perhaps do some traveling in France and Germany before returning to the New World.

It was in San Sebastian that I met my cousin, Esteban Eguiño. One night melancholy (and strong drink) got the better of me and I told Esteban the story of how I had secretly been his father's cabin boy in 1603 and stolen five hundred pesos from him before jumping ship in Nombre de Dios in Panama. At first Esteban merely laughed, but then his scheming brain decided to rope me into the plans of his new patrons, the Dutch banker, Balthasar Coymans, and the industrialist, Louis de Geer.

I resisted of course. But Esteban played me like a fish, and eventually I agreed to help him. I blame my sense of honor. For decades I had felt guilty about stealing from my uncle. But still, I was a wily fish, and I agreed to do only part of Esteban's bidding. The rest of it was negotiable. Thus the pelota match.

Esteban smiled at me. "My serve I believe?"

I tossed him the ball. "And none of your tricks this time, Esteban. Play by the rules!"

Esteban laughed and served.

We were playing the classical version, of course, partido. The first person to win five games, each game to seven points. Our front wall was the back of a church, the side wall the back of the church's brewery. We had started to draw a crowd after the sixth game, and a number of bookmakers were in the crowd. Along with a few tittering whores and the young bucks who were chasing them.

Esteban had used the pause well and reeled off three straight points before I got the serve. We were both tired by then, the crowd was getting more raucous, and we both wanted nothing more but to finish and go quench our thirst in the tavern a block away.

But we were both honorable. Neither of us gave an inch and we fought like lions in the afternoon sun.

Finally the score was tied at six apiece and Esteban's serve came at me. I'd seen this one before and had positioned myself well. It was then that the whores' cries broke my concentration.

"Miss, Catalina. Miss it!"

I missed. Esteban threw his arms up in triumph, then around me.

"A match well-played Antonio, well-played indeed!"

"Except for the last point," I grumbled.

The crowd began to disperse and Foxe and Father Amancio came forward. Esteban introduced me to the priest.

"Antonio, Father Amancio. Father Amancio, Antonio de Erauso, my cousin. A true adventurer who will be joining us on our expedition to the northlands."

I clasped Father Amancio's arm. He had strong hands. "A pleasure to meet you, Father."

"And you, Antonio de Erauso. So you are an adventurer?"

I shrugged modestly. "I have been a few places, I admit."

Esteban laughed. "A few! Father, there is no stone Antonio has left unturned in all of South America, especially in Peru and Chile! His exploits are famous!"

We had begun to move down the street towards the tavern, and one of the two whores still leaning against a wall, perhaps emboldened by the three young bucks she was trying to attract, called out to me.

"Señora Catalina, where are you going? Feeling lonesome tonight?"

"My dear whores," I said, drawing my blade, turning to face them, "I have come to give fifty strokes to your bottom and a hundred gashes to any man who would defend your honor." I advanced on them slowly.

Terrified, the harlots ran away, their bucks in tow.

Esteban grinned as they rounded the corner. "So fierce, Antonio! You have quite a temper, my dear cousin!"

I snorted. It was true, of course.

I turned to Father Amancio. "Sorry about that, Father. I have a certain notoriety in San Sebastian."

Father Amancio nodded. "I had not made the connection until the . . . uh, young lady had spoken. You are the famous transvestite, Catalina de Erauso, then?"

My smile was a thin smile, I admit, but a smile none the less. "Call me Antonio, Father. My life as Catalina ended long ago."

The priest looked at me thoughtfully, then smiled himself. "Of course, Antonio. And, if you would permit, let me offer to buy the first drink to ease the pain of your loss at pelota."

One maxim I had always lived by was to never turn down a free drink. I nodded graciously.

"Onward, my friends," Esteban said, putting his arms around my shoulder and Father Amancio's, "We have a night of drinking, plans, and stories ahead of us!"

****

The tavern was cool and dark. The owner, Manuel Ortega, escorted us to our usual corner table. Within minutes we were slaking our thirst on Manuel's beer. Rosalita, Manuel's wife, brought out bowls of stew and loaves of bread.

It was an hour before conversation got around to the topic of Grantville.

"So you have actually been to Grantville, Señor Foxe?" Father Amancio asked.

Luke nodded. "For three months. An intensive course of study set up for me by De Geer's niece, Colette Modi. Geology, mostly. But mathematics and geography as well. And as much as they had on Greenland, which wasn't a lot."

"So they aren't devils as some in the Church would have us assume?"

Luke laughed. "Not at all, Father. Except for the vehicles and roads, you might just think it to be an odd little German town, especially now that the German population outnumbers the original Americans."

He shook his head. "No, what is most startling about Grantville is the information you glean from their libraries and from just talking to the American residents. It is then that you truly start to believe that they come from the future . . . or some future."

"Some future?" I asked. "Not ours?"

Luke shrugged. "How could it be from our future? With the arrival of Grantville everything they knew about their past is changing, and changing rapidly. In Grantville's history Gustavus Adolphus died this past November, and there is nothing in their history books about the formation of the CPE with him as the emperor."

Esteban smiled and leaned in toward the center of the table, motioning us to do likewise. The tavern was beginning to fill now, and while the noise level had risen, it was still possible to understand conversations from other tables nearby.

"We are definitely going to be changing history from what is in the Grantville books," Esteban said quietly. "In their history the mineral we will be seeking, this cryolite, was not discovered by the Danes until 1794. If we can get there before anyone else and stake a claim . . ."

Father Amancio tilted his head. "Cryolite? Frozen stone?"

Luke smiled. "Exactly right! The mineral is very translucent. In fact, it was written that pure samples can almost disappear in water because of what is called it's 'refractive index.' Did your people know of this mineral?"

Father Amancio shook his head. "I don't know. Certainly not under that name."

"Your people?" I asked. "Are you from Greenland, Father Amancio?" And how would a native of Greenland have become a priest? There must be quite a story there.

"No." For a second Father Amancio's face darkened. "I am of 'The People' or the Inuit as they . . . we, call ourselves, but from across the Davis Strait in what is now labeled Labrador on the maps, although I was born further north, on what is now called Baffin Island."

"Inuit? Not Eskimo, Father?" Luke asked.

Father Amancio showed his teeth. "Eskimo is what the Abnaki call my people. An insult. It means 'eaters of flesh.'" Father Amancio's bared teeth turned into a grin. "As far as I can remember from the stories our angakok told us . . ." Seeing our looks of incomprehension, he waved his hand. ". . . Shaman, gentlemen. The most powerful member of the tribe, even more so than the village elders. Anyway, according to our angakok, it was only during the starving times when cannibalism was practiced. But before that point was reached we would eat our dogs and boil our sealskins to make soup."

Father Amancio's face turned thoughtful. "Although some say parts of my grandfather were eaten when he died, because of the strength of his spirit."

"Grandfather?" My skin crawled at the thought. Wonderful. Cold, dark, ice and now cannibals.

Father Amancio nodded. "One of my grandfathers was an Englishman, a member of the Frobisher expedition. Inuit women are promiscuous by European standards."

A darkness flashed across Father Amancio's face once again. I was beginning to become fascinated by this man. What inner demons were kept contained inside his head?

"So long as the woman does so with her husband's permission, it is accepted. But if the husband didn't know, the wife would be stripped, dragged outside the village, and beaten."

"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 ...