The Columbus Affair: A Novel

CHAPTER SEVEN

BÉNE STOOD IN WHAT HAD ONCE BEEN A JEWISH CEMETERY. HOW long ago? Hard to say. He’d counted fifteen markers cracked to rubble, others lying embedded. Sunlight fluttered through the thick canopy of trees casting dancing shadows. One of his men had stayed with him, and the other, who’d gone in search of the dogs, now returned through the foliage.

“Big Nanny and her clan did the job,” his man called out. “They cornered him near a bluff, but he stayed still.”

“You shoot him?” he asked his man.

A nod confirmed what a gunshot a few moments ago had already told him. This time the prey had not resisted.

“Good riddance,” he said. “This island is free of one more stinkin’ parasite.”

He’d read with disgust newspaper articles about drug dons who imagined themselves Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich, giving to the poor. They were nothing close to that. Instead, they extorted money from struggling business owners so they could grow marijuana and import cocaine. Their soldiers were the most willing and ignorant they could find, demanding little, doing as told. In the slums of West Kingston, and the bowels of Spanish Town, they ruled as gods but, here, in the Blue Mountains, they were nothing.

“Do we let dem know how he’s gone?” one of his men asked.

“Of course. We send a message.”

His chief lieutenant understood and gestured to the other man. “Fetch da head.”

“Yes, indeed,” Béne said, with a laugh. “Fetch da head. That will make our point. We would not want to waste this opportunity.”

A dead drug don no longer concerned him. Instead, his attention was on what he’d accidently discovered.

He knew some.

At first only Christians were allowed in the New World, but as Spanish Catholics proved inept at colonization the Crown turned to the one group who could produce results.

The Jews.

And they did, coming to Jamaica, becoming merchants and traders, exploiting the island’s prime location. By 1600 the native Tainos were nearly wiped out, and most of the Spanish colonists had fled for other islands. What remained were Jews. Béne had attended a private high school in Kingston, started by Jews centuries ago. He’d excelled at languages, math, and history. He became a student of the Caribbean and quickly learned that to understand his home he had to appreciate its past.

The year 1537 changed everything.

Columbus was long dead and his heirs had sued the Spanish Crown, claiming a breach of the Capitulations of Santa Fé, which supposedly granted the family perpetual control over the New World.

A bold move, he’d always thought.

Suing a king.

But he could appreciate such nerve, something akin to kidnapping a drug don and hunting him with dogs.

The lawsuit dragged on for decades until 1537, when the widow of one of Columbus’ two sons settled the fight on behalf of her eight-year-old son, the next direct Columbus heir, agreeing to drop all legal actions in return for one thing.

Jamaica.

The Spanish were thrilled. By then the island was deemed a nuisance, since little precious metals had been found. Béne had always admired that widow. She knew exactly what she wanted, and she obtained both the island and something else of even greater importance.

Power over the church.

Catholics in Jamaica would be under the control of the Columbus family, not the king. And for the next century, they kept the Inquisition out.

That’s why the Jews came.

Here no one would burn them for being heretics. No one would steal their property. No laws would restrict their lives or their movements.

They were free.

He stared over at his men and called out, “Simon will have to see this. Take some photos.”

He watched as one of his men obeyed.

“Oh, Mrs. Columbus,” he whispered, thinking again of that widow. “You were one smart gyal.”

Of all the lands her father-in-law discovered, and all the riches she and her heirs may have been entitled to receive, she’d insisted on only Jamaica.

And he knew why.

The lost mine.

When forced in 1494, during his fourth voyage, to beach his ship in St. Ann’s Bay, on board was a cache in gold. Columbus had just come from Panama where he’d bartered the precious metal from the local population. Unfortunately his worm-eaten caravels could sail no longer, so he ran aground in Jamaica, marooned for a year.

Sometime during that year he hid the gold.

In a place supposedly shown him by the Tainos, its existence kept secret even from the Spanish Crown. Only Columbus’ two sons knew the location, and they took that secret with them to their graves.

How stupid.

That was the lot of sons, though. Few ever outshone the father. He liked to think he was the exception. His father died in a Kingston jail, burned to death the day before being extradited to the United States to stand trial for murder. Some said the fire was intentional, set by the police. Others said suicide. Nobody really knew. His father had been tough and brutal, thinking himself invincible. But in the end, nobody really cared whether he lived or died.

Not good.

People would care if Béne Rowe died.

He thought about the Jews lying beneath his feet. They’d been an ambitious people. Eventually, they welcomed England’s dominance over Jamaica. In return Cromwell had allowed them to live openly and practice their religion. They’d reciprocated and helped build the island into a thriving British colony. Once thousands of them lived here, their burial grounds scattered near the parish capitals or on the coasts.

Now only about three hundred Jews remained.

But the live ones did not concern him.

His search was for graves.

Or, more particularly, a grave.

He watched as his man continued to snap pictures with a smartphone. He’d send one of the images to Simon. That should grab his attention. Twenty-one documented Jewish cemeteries existed on Jamaica.

Now a twenty-second had been found.

“Béne.”

The man with the smartphone was motioning for him. Unlike the drug lords who liked to be called don, he preferred his name. One thing his father had taught him was that respect from a title never lasted.

He stepped across to his man, who said to him, “Look at dat one there in the ground.”

He bent down and studied the markings. The stone lay flat, facing the sky, its etchings nearly gone. But enough remained for him to make out an image.

He brushed away more soil. He had to be sure.

“It’s a pitcher,” he said.

He wanted to shout with joy. Nowhere in the other twenty-one graveyards had they found the image of a pitcher, held by hands, being poured.

Zachariah Simon had told him to look for this symbol.

Was this the grave?

“Fetch a shovel,” he ordered, “and dig it out.”