Apalachee

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

‘‘To San Augustı́n or to Mobile,’’ he said. ‘‘We have our choice. To the Spaniards or the French. ‘‘Or north to the English.’’ ‘‘No,’’ he said firmly. ‘‘I will never live with the Creeks. Not after what they have done to us. I saw Ayubale and now I have seen this. I want nothing from the Creeks unless it be revenge. They are more our enemies than the Spaniards are.’’ ‘‘Many of our people are among them.’’ ‘‘They are not my people,’’ Carlos said bitterly. ‘‘Not any more.’’ ‘‘Then you would go with the Spaniards?’’ ‘‘Yes, that is where I think we should go. We feel nothing for the French. We do not know their language. With the Spaniards we can get along.’’ She nodded. ‘‘And will the White Sun Woman leave Apalachee?’’ he asked. ‘‘Yes,’’ she answered softly. He looked down at her and brushed his fingers over her cheek. ‘‘It makes you sad.’’ ‘‘Yes, but I am tired of trying to stay here. It will almost be a relief to go.’’ ‘‘You can still sing the song in the mornings.’’ She nodded. ‘‘I can, it is true. The Sun will come the same every morning no matter where we are.’’ ‘‘And the song is very lovely.’’ ‘‘Yes. Perhaps I will still do that.’’ There was silence all around them in the forest, the air hot and still. In the distance they could hear the raucous cries of the crows as they squabbled with the buzzards for the carrion. 129 chapter seventeen The day was overcast, as if a blanket of gray had been draped across the sky. Later there would be the misery of rain, but for now Father Juan de Villalva welcomed the relief from the beating sun. He lay on the jolting litter, his head turned to one side as he listlessly watched his people in their flight. Two men carried him, two Spaniards from San Luı́s who could have been put to better use carrying precious food that all these people would need when they reached San Augustı́n. That city was already starving even without this new burden of refugees. Perhaps it was a blessing that most of the Indians at San Luı́s—as many as 800—had gone west to join the French at Pensacola and Mobile. The priest would have understood if he had been left behind. It would have been reasonable, a man so ill as he, with no hope of recovery, especially after the horses and cattle were driven away. That had been the final blow for them at San Luı́s, the sabotage of Manuel Solana’s plan for an orderly evacuation. There were to have been horses to carry food and belongings and the sick and the old. And cattle were to be driven along to provide meat, both for the journey and for later at San Augustı́n. But then the loyal Indians, the ones with whom they had shared the walls of Fort San Luı́s, the ones who were supposed to be pious Christians and loyal servants, those very ones absconded in the night with horses and cattle that they themselves had been sent out to round up. That betrayal was the final blow. When Juan heard in the morning that the horses were gone, he had given up all hope of ever leaving that place. He would die at San Luı́s, left behind to be murdered by the pagans. Although it frightened him, he had accepted it. Then Solana had come to the little room where the priest had lain ill for more than a month on a hard bed in a corner among a store of empty barrels. Those barrels would remain empty now and never again be filled with wheat and carried to the port to be shipped to San Augustı́n and— illegally, but more profitably—to Cuba. Solana had come there, to that dark little hole where the priest was contemplating his death, and had stood beside his bed and told him that two men would carry him on a litter. Juan had tried to refuse. He would die no matter what, he explained, and it would make little difference whether it were in San Luı́s or San Augustı́n. But Solana was firm, and the priest had given in at last with thankfulness in his heart. And now he was here in the train of Spanish and Indian refugees, his suffering almost as...