"Grantville Gazette Volume XI" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)
Land of Ice and Sun 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 Eguino. 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.
"Senora 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, Senor 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 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… "
Father Amancio laughed. "I know. They wash their hair with urine. It is worse in New Seville. I had forgotten what it was like. In summer a village always stinks of seal guts, unwashed Inuit and dog shit. You get used to it after awhile."
I shuddered. "Better you than me, Father."
Uutaaq pointed in my direction and jabbered away at Father Amancio, who laughed and then turned to me.
"Uutaaq says he noticed your interest in Sigoko. If you would like her for a wife, he is willing… and so is she. Or simply as a kifak, which means housekeeper, if you prefer." Father Amancio's eyes danced with amusement.
"And how would she feel when she discovered the true sex of her husband?" I asked drily.
Father Amancio waved his hand. "Not a problem, so long as you provided for her and her children." He smiled. "And so long as you followed Inuit custom and gave her permission to lay with men occasionally."
I sighed. I admit, I was tempted, but three times in my years in South America I had been nearly trapped into marriage, which would have been a disaster for me. But I had always found a diplomatic way to avoid entanglements. Even if that "diplomatic way" was to get myself onto a fast horse at midnight.
I shook my head. "Tell Uutaaq I'll consider it carefully. But what about you, Father? Apa certainly seems smitten with you."
Father Amancio's smile vanished. Now it was his turn to sigh. "I know, and a relationship with her may be unavoidable, given the additional things that Uutaaq wants."
Esteban had been listening. "Which is what? I thought you said Uutaaq would lead us to the cryolite in exchange for more harpoons, knives and mirrors?"
Despite the fact that we had been actively searching for almost a month, we had not yet discovered the cryolite, the local word for which, Father Amancio had discovered, was orsuksiksaet, "the stone that looks like seal blubber." Both the weather and the terrain had hampered our efforts. Fortunately, the building of the fort at the mouth of Arsuk fjord had gone well. But if we were to depart Greenland on time at the end of August, we would have to find the cryolite deposit quickly to get even a few tons of ore out of the deposit.
"Uutaaq will lead us to the orsuksiksaet," Father Amancio said, and at the sound of the word Uutaaq smiled, "But only if we help him banish the village's angakok, Kinalik."
At the sound of the shaman's name Uutaaq scowled and a dozen sentences in the Inuit language blistered our ears. Father Amancio help up his hand and spoke softly.
"Wonderful," I muttered. "I assume that means they aren't up to the job themselves?"
Father Amancio shook his head. "They are afraid of him. He is said to practice black magic, especially with the ierqat, the mountain spirits." Amancio sighed. "He is also not happy with me, since I have converted several elders and a number of women to the Catholic faith. I think he feels that I am usurping his power." He waved toward the deck where the faint sounds of female laughter and singing could be heard. "Apa thinks he is preparing a tupilait to send against me."
"What's a tupilait?" Esteban asked.
"A tupilait is a potent evil made of animal parts. Very powerful magic. When I was a boy my own angakok said that a shaman had to have great confidence in his abilities or the misfortune intended for the victim would recoil and kill the originator of the spell."
Esteban looked at me. "I think Antonio can arrange such a recoil, if this Kinalik gets feisty. How many soldiers would it take?"
"Ask Uutaaq," I grunted. "He'll know how many followers this Kinalik has."
Father Amancio sent the query at Uutaaq, who held up four fingers.
"A dozen soldiers in armor should be sufficient," I said. "Three with muskets, the rest with swords, armor and helmets. Nice and shiny. It should look impressive. Being confident is sometimes more than half the battle."
Esteban shook his head. "A dozen Bosqueros for four savages? That seems like overkill to me."
I smiled. "And how many Indians have you killed, Esteban, in your many whaling adventures? Uutaaq may be merely underestimating to get us to commit to helping him. Suppose he has twenty or thirty followers instead? Indians are not stupid. Nor are they necessarily trustworthy. A dozen it shall be. And no young hotheads like Sanchez or your brother Christobal. Veterans, men I can depend on when all the plans go to hell." I thought for a moment. "Ricardo, Juan, Julio and Felix, for a start. They will form the core. I'll come up with the rest later."
I looked over at Father Amancio. "But that's not all Uutaaq wants, is it?"
Father Amancio nodded reluctantly. "There have been difficult times along the coast. Not as much ice, which means that more men have been killed seal hunting. In addition to helping to banish Kinalik, I will have to marry two of Uutaaq's daughters. Probably Apa and Sigoko, now that you've turned her down."
I laughed. "So much for a priest's vows of celibacy. Assuming you are willing, of course."
Father Amancio shrugged. "Father Seville told me I might have to make compromises to bring God to the Inuit. And if I am to stay with them, I must re-learn some of the old ways of thinking."
Esteban shook his head in amusement. "Sounds like you may be going native on us, Father."
"Perhaps." Father Amancio looked over at me and smiled. "Or maybe I am simply finding a different path to take."
We landed at high tide on the rocky beach in front of New Seville three days later. The location was close to the town of Fredrickshaab on the maps Luke Foxe had copied in Grantville. It was petty of me to think it, but I still took pleasure in the thought that perhaps our presence would prevent the dour Danes and their Lutheran heresy from making inroads among the Greenlanders.
There were several dozen kayaks and umiaks on the beach. The village itself was larger than I had imagined, several score of rectangular buildings made of wood, stones and turf. As we passed by the large dance hall in the center of the village, however, I noticed that there were very few Inuit about; a few mothers with infants in the hoods of their jackets, a few small girls playing with ivory dolls dressed in fur, a couple of young boys with small bows made of caribou horn and sinew.
As Uutaaq and his daughters led the way along a well-worn path through the willow scrub not too dissimilar from the birch scrub we were accustomed to on Arsuk fjord, I turned to Father Amancio.
"Where are the Inuit, Father?"
Father Amancio smiled. "Did you imagine that only rich Spanish nobles have separate summer and winter homes, Antonio? In the summer the Inuit here move into skin tents on a hill near the lake. Better access for caribou hunting, and breezes to keep off the mosquitos. It's less than two miles."
"I don't like it," Felix Gonzalez, my sergeant, muttered next to me as a willow branch snapped against his helmet. "We can't see shit in this."
"I know, a good place for an ambush, this scrub," I said, watching Father Amancio's back disappear around a bend in the trail. "Pass the word. Tell the men to keep the interval, be alert. Especially the musketeers."
But the scrub soon disappeared and we found ourselves on a small ridge, headed northeast. Off in the distance we could make out the skin tents of the Inuit next to a large lake. When we were half a mile from the summer village, the path descended once again into willow scrub, only denser than what we had already passed through.
The attack came less than fifty yards later.
"Antonio!"
A wave of spears flew from the scrub.
My sword was already half-drawn when the spear aimed for my heart bounced off my breast-plate.
Thank God, stone point, not iron.
My sword was fully drawn as an Inuit came at me from the left, stabbing with one of the basque harpoons we'd sold them.
Not this time, piglet.
I parried the thrust with my sword and then spitted him in the stomach. He folded into a ball when I withdrew my sword.
The muskets went off behind me and I began to turn to shout at my men when a blow to my helmet turned the world black and red and I fell to my knees, then onto my side. I rolled over onto my back.
God, not like this, damn it.
An Inuit warrior stood over me with his spear held high, eyes mad with pleasure, and my body refused to respond to my commands.
The triumphant expression on the warrior's face turned to pain when the tip of a harpoon burst through his stomach.
He fell across my legs.
Father Amancio reached down next to me and picked up the dead warrior's spear just as my Bosqueros came forward along the path.
"Father… Amancio?"
He helped me to my feet. "I see you've met Kinalik the angakok," Father Amancio said drily, pointing to the body with the harpoon in its back. "Apparently Kinalik had a few more followers than Uutaaq thought."
My head began to swim and I staggered.
"Careful, Antonio, that was a strong blow you took."
My arm went around Father Amancio's shoulder as my Bosqueros deployed around us.
"I am in your debt, truly, Father Amancio."
Father Amancio shook his head. "I think not, Antonio. It was merely a payment for a debt I owed you. Thanks to your words, I know what path I will follow." He smiled at me. "And I think from now on I shall be called Father Wolf. Time for a new beginning."
It was the end of October when we finally arrived with the cryolite in Essen. A bribe to a Basque naval officer in Oquendo's fleet in Rotterdam had eased our path up the Rhine.
"That went well," I said smugly, patting the pocket that held the letter of credit Balthasar Coymans had given me. "Now I can return to Cartegena in style while I look for this platinum ore they want me to find."
I looked over at Esteban. "They weren't as happy as I'd thought they'd be with the cryolite. Although they seemed to accept the idea of calling it orsuksite as Father Wolf requested."
Esteban shrugged. "It suits their purpose. It will be hard to keep the mining expedition a secret, but calling it orsuksite will at least misdirect a few people. But you're right, they weren't too happy. They expected us to bring back a lot more."
I snorted. "More than eighty tons? The first season? In those conditions?"
"Well, they were thinking of Frobisher, obviously, who brought back nearly a thousand tons of ore in a single season. But I explained to them that it was more important to get the infrastructure of the mine established this first season than to bring back a large amount of cryolite… orsuksite."
"Well," I said, "It seems to have altered their plans."
"Indeed," Esteban said. "They'll be doing more experimentation, apparently, in hopes that they can develop the processes they want."
"Just one question, Esteban."
Esteban looked at me. "What?"
"What in the hell is a zeppelin?"
Author's note: The narrator of the story, Antonio de Erauso, born Catalina de Erauso, is an actual historical down-timer. Here is some information from the book
Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World
"Catalina de Erauso led one of the most wildly fantastic lives of any woman in history. Refusing to be regimented into the quiet habits of a nun's life, she escaped from a Basque convent at age fourteen dressed as a man, and continuing her deception, ventured to Peru and Chile as a soldier in the Spanish army. After mistakenly killing her own brother in a duel, she roamed the Andean highlands, becoming a gambler and a killer, and always just evading the grasp of the law. Distinguished for her fighting skills and cursed with a quick temper, Catalina de Erauso spent much of her life balancing precariously between valor and villainy. She is an adored folkloric hero of the Spanish-speaking world."