By Fire, By Water (35 page)

None of that mattered much to Luis de la Cerda. Colón possessed skills rare for one of his ilk. He could read, not merely nautical charts but demanding works of literature, including that most subtle and complex of compositions, the Bible itself. He knew how to perform difficult arithmetical operations. He was savvy enough not to betray the trust of his benefactor.

When he was neither at sea nor at the duke’s house, Colón’s office was a table at the harbor. There, he hired sailors, paid them for a day’s work, and double-checked paperwork.

One foggy morning, a woman came to this desk and asked, “Señor Cristóbal Colón?” Like him, she spoke with an accent.

The captain rose. “Señorita, how may I assist you? Is there something you’re looking for? In this place, one often encounters seaweed blooms, but rarely such lovely roses.”

She smiled. “I have something for you.” From under her cloak, she removed Santángel’s letter.

Colón gestured toward the empty chair. “Please, my lady.”

She sat down. When he finished reading, he looked up at her and nodded. “So the chancellor is well. I’m glad to hear it. And you?” asked the captain. “You and your nephew have been traveling for months, yet you look as fresh as an April morning.” He beckoned a sailor. “Dumitru, bring the lady a cup of hot wine, will you?”

Dumitru, the boy Colón and Santángel had saved from slavery, had grown as big as his father. Life on the sea and in rough ports had hardened him. Sucking on a little stick, he approached them. Judith shook her head. “That won’t be necessary.”

Colón waved Dumitru away. He perused Santángel’s note a second time. “Do you have samples?”

“We’ve sold everything we brought, except this.” She showed him the lustrous bracelet on her wrist.

Colón moved his face closer, marveling at its delicacy, its graceful curves. He folded Santángel’s letter and placed it on the table. “I can sell your silver. But getting the items to me, from an enemy kingdom…” He waved Dumitru back over. “What are you doing? Counting flies?”

Dumitru knew better than to answer.

“Can you get past the border, into Granada?”

“There are ways,” said Dumitru. “But it may not be cheap.”

“I want you to accompany this beautiful lady and her nephew back to Granada. You’ll be paid regular wages, just like you were rigging the
Santa Juanita.”

Dumitru glanced at Judith, then back at the captain, and nodded without enthusiasm.

“When you get there, she’ll give you a box of merchandise.” He turned back to Judith. “How much do you have for him?”

Judith smiled. “Right now? Perhaps one small crate.”

“Come back with her crate,” Colón instructed Dumitru. “And if this works out, it could be a regular job. Land, land, all the way. You hate sailing, don’t you?”

Dumitru took the stick out of his mouth and threw it down. “I hate sailing.”

“You are very kind,” Judith told the captain.

Colón waved Dumitru away. “Anything for a friend of the chancellor,” he told Judith. “He arranged my audience with the queen.”

“Your audience with the queen?”

“In Cordoba. In a few months, at most. You’ll be hearing all about it. Everyone will. But for now, why don’t we draw up some sort of agreement, you and I.”

He jotted down Judith’s name and other information, more for the sake of his records than to protect himself legally. In his letter to Colón, Luis de Santángel had provided all the necessary guarantees.

Some five hundred years prior to the reign of Ysabel and Fernando, when the Moors ruled a large portion of the Iberian Peninsula, the city of Cordoba was Europe’s most important capital. The greatest thinkers of the age, Maimonides and Averroës, were born there. Its alcazar housed the largest library in the world. Cordoba’s Great Mosque preserved the holiest relics in the Islamic world, one of Mohammed’s arms and the original Koran. Pilgrims, scholars, and diplomats traveled to Cordoba from Damascus and Paris.

Under Ysabel and Fernando, soldiers occupied much of the diminished city. They used the alcazar as a military command post, making it inaccessible to foreigners and scholars. The New Inquisition converted its once-famous baths and towers into torture chambers and burned vast heaps of precious manuscripts from its library in the public squares.

A parade, celebrating the conquests of Malaga and Almeria, wound from the southernmost gate of Cordoba to its alcazar. Twelve trumpeters blew silver horns. Five jesters, with pointed shoes and tight headpieces, danced while juggling painted balls. Several high officials and wealthy merchants rode on steeds draped in silk.

The king and queen, in velour, silk, and ermine, rode rare, high-stepping Andalusians with harnesses of vermeil, nodding and waving at the crowds. Beside Ysabel rode Talavera, draped in his simple Jeronymite habit. Behind the monarchs, their five children sat on ponies. The royal guard followed on foot, shields and spears rattling.

As the procession neared the alcazar, a frenzy possessed the crowd. Craftsmen, farmers, even knights and their squires, seeing in Ysabel and Fernando the saviors of Christianity, longed to touch their robes and hear their voices. They flooded the street, blocking the path, shouting “Hail Ysabel! Hail Fernando! Long live the king and queen!” The procession halted in disarray.

The royal guard began marching forward to disperse the crowd, but the queen held up her hand. “Let us give them what they so ardently desire.” She climbed down from her horse, into the throng. The citizens knelt before her, thanking her. She returned the compliment: “It is from you, the common folk, that we derive our courage.” Her husband joined her, patting the men on their shoulders and exclaiming, “Good people, let us pass!”

The gates of the royal palace slowly swung open. King Fernando and Talavera walked through, but as the queen followed, a dark-skinned, lanky man emerged from the crowd. “Beware,” he warned Ysabel, fixing her with his coal-black eyes.

The feverish intensity in his regard could only denote lunacy, thought the queen. In the ravings of lunatics, she knew, lurked truths inaccessible to ordinary mortals. She decided to hear him out. “Beware of what?”

The lanky man began in an emotionless monotone:

Where dazzling flames of conquest are blown,
And in the ravaged fields, sumptuous crops are grown,
There shall madness and death be sown
.

“Let’s go, now.” A guard pulled him away. Ysabel watched him disappear into the crowd.

After the queen and her husband settled in the throne room of the alcazar, the duke of Medina-Celi introduced Cristóbal Colón, who laid out his vision of territorial conquest, spiritual redemption, and prosperity.

“Where does all wealth come from?” he began, kneeling before the queen. “Spices—cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger. Costly dyes—indigo, gallnut, cramoisie. Gold. Where do
all precious things
come from? Where is
paradise
located? Where’s the holy city of Jerusalem, which in our wretched age has been so cruelly degraded by the infidel Muslims? The East, Your Royal Highness. The East.”

Queen Ysabel found his Genoese accent annoying. It caused him to corrupt the elegant rhythms and soft consonants of her beloved Castilian dialect. His earnest diction, however, and the well-rehearsed ardor of his delivery softened her.

“Please continue, Señor Colón.”

“We no longer live in the time of Marco Polo, when a man could cross all the way to the Indies on foot. Today, the Saracens control the routes. But there’s a better way.”

“A better way, señor?”

“Your Highness, Marco Polo’s
Book of Wonders
, Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly’s
Imago Mundi
, Pope Pius the Second’s
Historia Rerum
, Ptolemy’s
Geography
. They all agree on one thing.”

The queen smiled graciously. “And what is that?”

“It would be faster to go the other way, from the Canary Islands to the Indias, across the Western Sea.”

“If all those authorities,” asked the queen, “agreed on such a finding, why has no one tried before?”

“Perhaps some have, but didn’t know what to make of what they found. Maybe they chose never to come back, seduced by the pleasures of the East. But I’m ready to do this. In the name of Christendom.” He cleared his throat. “All I need, Your Majesty, are four ships.”

Although the captain knew every word of this presentation by heart, his enthusiasm sounded as fresh and genuine as that of a child for a promised toy.

“You put forth your views with great conviction,” the queen praised, adjusting her lace collar. “If our memory doesn’t deceive us, we have previously heard mention of this, or of a similar enterprise.”

“Don Enrique de Guzman,” confirmed Colón, pleased. If she recalled her brief and inconclusive meeting with Don Enrique, did that not imply she found merit in Colón’s idea?

“And what did Don Enrique report back to you?”

“He told me Your Highness listened attentively.”

“Was that
all
he told you?”

“Don Enrique also said that, engaged as Your Highness was in a noble and heroic military struggle, she could not at present devote to this project all the attention it deserved.”

“As you surely know, Señor Colón, we are still very much engaged in that endeavor.”

“I have been following the conflict with great interest, Your Highness. Velez-Malaga, Malaga itself, Almeria. In nearly every fight, with the help of God, Your Highness’s forces overwhelm the unrighteous enemy. And I wholeheartedly pray for the day when not only Andalusia, but the entire world resides in the care of the Christian crowns.”

His vehemence surprised the queen. Ordinarily suspicious of sycophants’ flattery, Ysabel was equally capable, when she detected something raw and sincere in a man’s demeanor, of suspending her natural distrust. Nevertheless, the war and its financial pressures made further consideration of this aging Genoese sailor’s proposal difficult. “In that case, señor, you should understand we must have our priorities. Maritime exploration, with no promise of immediate profit, cannot at present stand among them.”

“If I may, Your Highness,” insisted Colón. “The investment that I propose, it is in no way distinct from your selfless and holy combat.”

“How so?” Ysabel asked with the begrudging smile she reserved for her most obstinate petitioners.

Colón glanced at his patron, the stone-faced duke of Medina-Celi, then turned back to Ysabel.

“Both are about defeating the heathen, Your Highness. Both are about advancing Christianity in this world, in the hope of procuring a better world to come.” He considered adding, “Both are about retaking Jerusalem,” but thought better of it.

“So they are,” observed Ysabel. “But if such things were easy to accomplish, our holy struggle would be no struggle at all. As it is, our resources are stretched to the limit.”

The sailor pressed on. “Your Highness, my venture would divert almost nothing from the war, while potentially bringing not only a great victory to Christendom, but eternal honor, as well as all the wealth of the Indias, to the Crown.”

“Potentially,” echoed the queen. “Please, señor, do not try our patience.”

In a rare moment of discouragement, Colón cast his eyes downward.

This moment of vulnerability touched Ysabel. What she glimpsed was not only the testing of a man’s purpose. She saw something of herself.

Like Colón, Ysabel believed in the rightness of her undertaking with a certainty that ignored others’ opinions and even so-called facts. Like him, she took no credit for the authorship of her plan, but believed God Himself had conceived it. Like him, she felt both destitute and desperate. The war against Granada had more than depleted the royal coffers, and her world—even Christendom itself—was still so untidy, sorrowful, fragile.

When Colón looked up, about to take his leave, she stopped him. “Señor Colón, you must never lose faith.”

Perplexed, he waited for more.

“Place your ideas on paper. We will ask the learned Talavera to study them.” In what seemed a flight of magnanimity, she added, “While you await the outcome, we’ll provide you with a stipend to keep you, and your ideas, attached solely to this Court.”