LITMIR.BIZ

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del Rio,” replied Pedro who was at his best when designing and executing a plan, “you’ll have to avoid the Moorish bridges and the river is the most shallow there. I’ll have lines strung across the Tagus at the great rock. We’ll use them to steady the cart and to pull you across. Look for the towers of Malpica, Luis. Use them to guide you,” he stated emphatically as he held and kissed his wife for the final time. “Day after tomorrow, Luis,” he said as he stuffed several items including his journal into a leather bag. “Wait for light, Luis,” he added as he and Adan moved though the open doorway. “Wait for light.”

      ***

      As Catalina and Luis approached the river, they traversed the barren slopes of the Castilian meseta, a high tableland of fertile plains, broken here and there by a lone olive tree, piled gray stones, sparse scrub, and a tangle of undergrowth all dusty-gray but excellent cover for game. As they rode in the darkness, Catalina confirmed what Luis had been hearing for some period—hounds in full cry apparently in pursuit of game. They tried to assure themselves that these were the sounds of an early hunting party, but both knew this to be unlikely. They were, they feared, the ones being hunted.

      Catalina and Luis had for some period been picking their way through a riverine forest of tamarisk and willow in their attempt to reach the river. Luis, who was holding his three-year-old cousin of the same name, flailed at the oxen with his right hand. The cart, which was filled with the two adults and a locust of children, rose and fell with great jolts as it bumped and rocked its way towards the steep bank.

      Suddenly—almost miraculously—they emerged from the tangle and were at the water’s edge where they were confronted by a raging torrent now swollen with rain. Luis dismounted and entered the slower water that flowed near the bank, testing its depth with his oaken pole.

      “Here, Tia,” he said urgently. “We can enter the water here.”

      “How do you know this is the right place, Luis?” his aunt asked in a whispered tone as he reentered the cart. “Your Tio said to wait for light, and we don’t have the towers to guide us.”

      “It will be all right, Tia,” Luis replied. “We may be a little above the rock, but the current will carry us downstream where the lines will stop us.”

      “No, Luis,” his aunt said, holding her son Luis and his four-year-old sister Lucia to her side. “Let’s wait. It will only be a short time till light. Then we can see.”

      “We have no choice, Tia,” Luis replied as he prodded the oxen with the point of his long goad. “They’re behind us. We’ve got to go!”

      The oxen were balky. The sound and the smell of the muddy water, which carried a river of debris, frightened them. They required the whip to compel them to enter the raging stream, a dark swirling torrent which they could now also feel, taste and see . . . and it was terrible. Luis immediately realized he had made the wrong decision, that he had chosen the wrong time and place which was more than two harquebus shots above the spot suggested to him by his uncle. His frightened beasts, tethered to an oaken shaft that was but an extension of the framework of the cart’s body, plunged into a deep hole. His beasts, with only their horns and eyes visible, bellowed with fright as they sought firm ground. Luis again entered the water where, holding on to the horns of the nearest beast, he attempted to turn his team toward shore. Momentarily, the docile animals quieted and began to turn with the current. The cart, however, snagged on an obstruction, lurched forward, and then overturned, dragging its massive beasts below the surface. The wooden frame and the bows of their harness, which had assured their bondage and servitude, now guaranteed their death.

      As the cart overturned in the intense current—with the frame yet bumping and reeling as it dragged along the ragged bottom—Diego was thrown into the turgid stream. He was pressed against one of the wheels, a solid barrier of three pieces, which was attached to the one axle. He struggled to remain upright as he held onto his five-year-old sister, Ana, who had entered the water on his side of the cart.

      “My babies! My babies!” His mother cried as she desperately flailed in the raging water. Diego could not see her for both she and Lucia were on the other side of the second wheel.

      “I’ve got Ana, Mama,” he cried as he fought to hold on to her. “I’ve got Ana.”

      “And Luis?” she screamed.

      “I don’t know, Mama,” he cried as he searched the water around him. “I don’t see them.”

      Diego, six-years-old, and the oldest of the four children, held Ana around her waist as the water worked to tear her from his grasp. In an instant, the rushing water pulled her thin body from beneath his arm.

      “Diego,” she said quietly. Just his name. Nothing else.

      “Hold on to my neck, Ana!” he cried as he tried to work his way around the wheel, his move encumbered by his hold on her wrist. “Hold on to me, Ana!” he yelled in desperation. “Don’t let go!” he cried as the first light of dawn came up on his face.

      As he inched his way around the ancient wheel, the Stygian water filled his mouth and nostrils with mud, and he feared that both he and Ana would also be swept away. It was beginning to become light now, and he thought he could see the distant shore, although the muddy water which cascaded over his back and shoulders made it difficult to see. Ana’s thin arms encircled his neck while the cart reeled and groaned, turning this way and that as it moved down the streambed. In the dim light he could see the oxen’s yoke. One of the two bow-shaped pieces of wood which had been inserted from beneath the neck of one of the oxen had broken. Its occupant was now gone, and hanging from below the horizontal bar was a hook to which a draw line was still attached. He released his grip on Ana’s wrist and reached for it, hoping to put it to some use. “Hold on, Ana,” he begged. “papa will get us.”

      As he reached for the rope, Ana began to lose her hold on him. He could feel her small hands grasping and tearing at him as she slowly slid from her place on his back. And when he turned, he could see her, a beautiful elfin doll, who appeared to be suspended on a cushion of air, the cold black water revealing a deep gash on her forehead. He reached for her. She looked back at him with eyes seemingly filled with wonder, said nothing, and then she was gone.

      ***

      Pedro stood with his father-in-law’s overseer, Tonio, on the south bank of the river as the sun came up shining on the red of his hair and beard. He was distressed by what he saw. The lines which he and Tonio’s men had strung across the water the previous evening were now largely submerged by the flood waters, their ends only apparent where they emerged from the angry waves and were tethered to a tree. It was a bad plan, he said to himself, his blue eyes searching the far bank. He realized that these floodwaters should have been anticipated. They might be coming from as far away as the Sierra de Albarracin. The river, which cut into limestone rocks there, flowed through narrow, sinuous valleys with deep canyons and abundant ravines and was often in flood from unseen storms. It runs more peacefully here, Pedro said to himself. But above—and also below Toledo where it again flows through narrow, steep-edged trenches formed by quartzites and shales—the river could be deadly. “I should have anticipated this,” he said to Tonio as they surveyed the far bank. “We must signal them and tell them not to cross.”

      Pedro pulled at his beard in apprehension as he searched the far bank in the early light. He was concerned that his family had not yet arrived. He could see various items of flood debris—logs, a market basket, an unshorn lamb—as they moved downstream. He had not taken notice of a circular shaped object that now broke the surface, but as the object moved slowly down the streambed and lodged on a rock directly across from him, he realized that it was a segmented wheel, and that it was attached to a cart. Pedro immediately entered the water but then retreated, reaching back with his right hand at the rope being offered him by Tonio. He then again entered the water as did Tonio and two of Tonio’s men, pressing their lean, muscular bodies against the tow ropes but unable to move forward due to the tumble of the water.

      Eventually, the men were able to attach a rope to the upturned cart and to drag it ashore. Ana’s body lay but a short distance

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