1492

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER VII

  DUSK was drawing down as I stole with little trouble out of the houseinto the street and thence into the maze of Santa Fe. That night I sleptwith minstrels and jugglers, and at sunrise slipped out of Cordova gatewith muleteers. They were for Cordova and I meant to go to Malaga. Imeant to find there a ship, maybe for Africa, maybe for Italy, though inItaly, too, sits the Inquisition. But who knows what it is that turnsa man, unless we call it his Genius, unless we call it God? I letthe muleteers pass me on the road to Cordova, let them dwindle in thedistance. And still I walked and did not turn back and find the Malagaroad. It was as though I were on the sea, and my bark was hanging in acalm, waiting for a wind to blow. A man mounted on a horse was comingtoward me from Santa Fe. Watching the small figure grow larger, I said,"When he is even with me and has passed and is a little figure again inthe distance, I will turn south."

  He came nearer. Suddenly I knew him to be that Master Christopherus whohad entered the wedge of shadow yesterday in the palace court. He wasout of it now, in the broad light, on the white road--on the way toFrance. He approached. The ocean before Palos came and stood againbefore me, salt and powerful. The keen, far, sky line of it awoke anddrew!

  Christopherus Columbus came up with me. I said, "A Palos sailor givesyou good morning!"

  Checking the horse, he sat looking at me out of blue-gray eyes. I sawhim recollecting. "Dress is different and poorer, but you are the squirein the crowd! 'Sailor Palos sailor'--There's some meaning there too!"

  He seemed to ponder it, then asked if I was for Cordova.

  "No. I am going to Malaga where I take ship."

  "This is not the Malaga road."

  "No. But I am in no hurry! I should like to walk a mile with you."

  "Then do it," he answered. "Something tells me that we shall not be illtravelers together."

  I felt that also and no more than he could explain it. But the reason, Iknow, stands in the forest behind the seedling.

  He walked his horse, and I strode beside. He asked my name and I gaveit. Juan Lepe. We traveled Cordova road together. Presently he said, "Ileave Spain for France, and do you know why?"

  Said Juan Lepe, "I have been told something, and I have gatheredsomething with my own eyes and ears. You would reach Asia by goingwest."

  He spoke in the measured tone of a recital often made alike to himselfand to others. "I hold that the voyage from Palos, say, first southto the Canaries and then due west would not exceed three months. YetI began to go west to India full eighteen years ago! I have voyagedeighteen years, with dead calms and head winds, with storms andback-puttings, with pirates and mutinies, with food and water lacking,with only God and my purpose for friend! I have touched at the court ofPortugal and at the court of Spain, and, roundabout way, at the court ofEngland, and at the houses of the Doges of Venice and of Genoa. Theyall kept me swinging long at anchor, but they have never given mea furthering wind. Eighteen years going to India! But why do I sayeighteen? The Lord put me forth from landside the day I was born. BeforeI was fourteen, at the school in Pavia, He said, 'Go to sea. Sail underthy cousin Colombo and learn through long years all the inches of saltwater.' Later He said, one day when we were swinging off Alexandria,'Study! Teach thyself! Buy books, not wine nor fine clothes nor favorof women. Study on land and study at sea. Look at every map that comesbefore you. Learn to make maps. When a world map comes before you, lookat the western side of it and think how to fill it out knowingly. Listento seamen's tales. Learn to view the invisible and to feel under footthe roundness of my earth!'

  "And He said that same year off Aleppo, 'Learn to command ships. Learnin King Reinier's war and in what other war Genoa makes. Learn to directmen and patiently to hear them, winding in and out of their counsels,keeping thyself always wiser than they.' Well, I studied, and learned,and can command a ship or ships, and know navigation, and can make mapsand charts with the best, and can rule seamen, loving them the while.Long ago, I went to that school which He set, and came forth _magister!_Long after His first speaking, I was at Porto Santo, well named, andthere He said, 'Seek India, going westward.'" He turned his face to thesun. "I have been going to India fifty-six years."

  Juan Lepe asked, "Why, on yesterday, were you not content with the Kingand Queen's terms? They granted honor and competence. It was the estateof a prince that you asked."

  Some moments passed before he answered. The sun was shining, the roadwhite and dusty, the mountains of Elvira purple to the tops and theresplashed with silver. When he spoke, his voice was changed. Neither nownor hereafter did he discourse of money-gold and nobility flowing fromearthly kings with that impersonal exaltation with which he talked ofhis errand from God to link together east and west. But he drew themsomehow in train from the last, hiding here I thought, an earthlyweakness from himself, and the weakness so intertwined with strengththat it was hard to divide parasite from oak.

  "Did you see," he asked, "a boy with me? That was my son Diego whom Ihave left with a friend in Santa Fe. Fernando, his half-brother, is buta child. I shall see him in Cordova. I have two brothers, dear to meboth of them, Diego and Bartholomew. My old father, Dominico Colombo,still lives in Genoa. He lives in poverty, as I have lived in povertythese many years. And there is Pedro Correo, to whom I owe much, husbandof my wife's sister. My wife is dead. The mother of Fernando is not mywife, but I love her, and she is poor though beautiful and good. I wouldhave her less poor; I would give her beautiful things. I have love formy kindred,--love and yearning and care and desire to do them good,alike those who trust me and those who think that I had failed them. Ido not fail them!"

  We padded on upon the dusty road. I felt his inner warmth, divined hislife. But at last I said, "What the Queen and King promise would giverich care--"

  "I have friends too, for all that I ride out of Spain and seem so poorand desolate! I would repay--ay, ten times over--their faith and theirhelp."

  "Still--"

  "There are moreover the poor, and those who study and need booksand maps that they cannot purchase. There are convents--one conventespecially--that befriended me when I was alone and nigh hopeless andfurthered my cause. I would give that convent great gifts." Turning inthe saddle he looked southwest. "Fray Juan Perez--"

  Palos shore spread about me, and rose La Rabida, white among vineyardsand pines. Doves flew over cloister. But I did not say all I knew.

  "There are other things that I would do. I do not speak of them to many!They would say that I was mad. But great things that in this age noneelse seems inclined to do!"

  "As what?" I asked. "I have been called mad myself. I am not apt tothink you so."

  He began to speak of a mighty crusade to recover the Holy Sepulchre.

  The road to Cordova stretched sunny and dusty. Above the mountains ofElvira the sky stood keen blue. Juan Lepe said slowly, "Admiral ofthe Ocean-Sea and Viceroy and Governor of continents and islands inperpetuity, sons and sons' sons after you, and gilded deep with a tenthof all the wealth that flows forever from Asia over Ocean-Sea toSpain, and you and all after you made nobles, grandees and wealthy fromgeneration to generation! Kings almost of the west, and donors to theeast, arousers of crusades and freers of the Sepulchre! You build a hightower!"

  Carters and carts going by pushed us to the edge of road and coveredall with dust. He waited until the cloud sank, then he said, "Do youknow--but you cannot know what it is to be sent from pillar to post andwait in antechambers where the air stifles, and doff cap--who havebeen captain of ships!--to chamberlain, page and lackey? To be calleddreamer, adventurer, dicer! To hear the laugh and catch the sneer! To bethe persuader, the beggar of good and bad, high and low--to beg yearin and year out, cold and warmth, summer and winter, sunrise, noon andsunset, calm and storm, beg of galleon and beg of carrack, yea, beg ofcockboat! To see your family go needy, to be doubted by wife and childand brethren and friends and acquaintance! To have them say, 'While youdream we go hungry!' and 'What good will it do us if there is India,while we famis
h in Spain?' and 'You love us not, or you would become aprosperous sea captain!'--Not one year but eighteen, eighteen, since Isaw in vision the sun set not behind water but behind vale and hill andmountain and cities rich beyond counting, and smelled the spice draughtfrom the land!"

  I saw that he must count upon huge indemnity. We all dream indemnity.But still I thought and think that there was here a weakness in him. Farinward he may have known it himself, the outer self was so busy findinggrounds! After a moment he spoke again, "Little things bring littlereward. But to keep proportion and harmony, great thing must bring greatthings! You do not know what it is to cross where no man hath crossedand to find what no man hath found!"

  "Yes, it is a great thing!"

  "Then," said he, "what is it, that which I ask, to the grandeur oftime!"

  He spoke with a lifted face, eyes upon the mountain crests and the bluethey touched. They were nearer us than they had been; the Pass of Elvirawas at hand. Yet on I walked, and before me still hung the far oceanwest of Palos. I said, "I know something of the guesses, the chances andthe dangers, but I have not spent there years of study--"

  He kindled, having an auditor whom he chose to think intelligent. Hechecked his horse, that fell to grazing the bit of green by the way. "Asthough," he said, "I stood in Cipango beneath a golden roof, I know thatit can be done! Twelve hundred leagues at the most. Look!" he said. "Youare not an ignoramus like some I have met; nor if I read you right areyou like others who not knowing that True Religion is True Wonder upwith hands and cry, 'Blasphemy, Sacrilege and Contradiction!' Earthand water make an orb. Place ant on apple and see that orbs may begone around! Travel far enough and east and west change names! Straightthrough, beneath us, are other men."

  "Feet against feet. Antipodes," I said. "All the life of man is takingWonder in and making Her at home!"

  "So!" he answered. "Now look! The largeness of our globe is at theequator. The great Ptolemy worked out our reckoning. Twenty-four hours,fifteen degrees to each, in all three hundred and sixty degrees. It isheld that the Greeks and the Romans knew fifteen of these hours. Theystretched their hand from Gibraltar and Tangier, calling them Pillarsof Hercules, to mid-India. Now in our time we have the Canaries and theKing of Portugal's new islands--another hour, mark you! Sixteen fromtwenty-four leaves eight hours empty. How much of that is water and howmuch is earth? Where ends Ocean-Sea and where begins India and Cathay,of which the ancients knew only a part? The Arabian Alfraganus thinksthat Ptolemy's degrees should be less in size. If that be right, thenthe earth is smaller than is thought, and India nearer! I myself inclineto hold with Alfraganus. It may be that less than two months' sailing,calm and wind, would bring us to Cipango. Give me the ships and I willdo it!"

  "You might have had them yesterday."

  To a marked extent he could bring out and make visible his innerexaltation. Now, tall, strong, white-haired, he looked a figure of anolder world. "The spheres and all are set to harmony!" he said. "I wouldhave fitness. Great things throughout! Diamonds and rubies without flawin the crown.--We will talk no more about abating just demand!"

  I agreed with a nod, and indeed there was never any shaking him here.Beneath his wide and lofty vision of a world filled out to the eternalbenefit of all rested always this picture which I knew he savored likewine and warmth. His family, his sons, his brothers and kindred, theaged father in Genoa, all friends and backers--and he a warm sun in themidst of them, all their doubts of him dispelled, shining out upon them,making every field rich, repaying a thousand, thousandfold every trustshown him.

  The day sang cool and high and bright, the mountains of Elvira had lightsnow atop. Master Christopherus began again to speak.

  "There came ashore at Porto Santo some years ago a piece of wood long asa spar but thicker. Pedro Correo, who is my brother-in-law, saw it. Itwas graved all over, cut by something duller than our knives with beastsand leaves and a figure that Pedro thought was meant for an idol. He andanother saw it and agree in their description. They left it on the beachat twilight, well out of water reach. But in the night came up a greatstorm that swept it away. It came from the west, the wind having blownfor days from that quarter. I ask you will empty billows fell a tree andtrim it and carve it? It is said that a Portuguese pilot picked up onelike it off Cape Bojador when the wind was southwest. I have heard aman of the Azores tell of giant reeds pitched upon his shore _from thewest_. There is a story of the finding on the beach of Flores the bodiesof two men not like any that we know either in color or in feature. Fordays a west wind had driven in the seas. And I know of other findings.Whence do these things come?

  "May there not be unknown islands west of Azores? They might come fromthere, and still to the west of them stream all Ocean-Sea, violent andunknown! The learned think the earth of such a size. Your Arabian holdsit smaller. What if it is larger than the largest calculation?"

  He said with disdain, "All the wise men at Salamanca before whom theKing set me six years ago thought it had no end! Large or small, theycalled it blasphemy for me, a poor, plain seaman, son of a wool-comberand not even a Spanish wool-comber, to try to stretch mind over it!Ocean-Sea had never been overpassed, and by that token could not beoverpassed! None had met its dangers, so dangers there must be of a moststrange and fearful nature! But if you were put to sea at fourteen andhave lived there long, water becomes water! A speck on the horizon willturn out ship or land. Wave carries you on to wave, day to night andnight to day. At last there is port!"

  All this time his horse had been cropping the scanty herbage. Now heraised his head. In a moment we too heard the horsemen and looking backtoward Santa Fe saw four approaching. As they came nearer we made outtwo cavaliers talking together, followed by serving men. When they werealmost at hand one of the leaders said something, whereat his fellowlaughed. It floated up Cordova road, a wide, deep, rich laugh. MasterChristopherus started. "That is the laugh of Don Luis de St. Angel!"

  Don Luis de St. Angel was, I knew, Receiver of the EcclesiasticalRevenues for Aragon, a man who stood well with the King. The horsemenwere close upon us. Suddenly the laugher cried, "Saint Jago! Here heis!"

  We were now five mounted men and a trudger afoot. The cavalier who hadlaughed, a portly, genial person with a bold and merry eye, laughedagain. "Well met, Don Cristoval. Well met, Admiral! I looked to find youpresently! You sailed out of port at sunrise and I two hours later witha swifter ship and more canvas--"

  "'Don' and 'Admiral'!" answered Master Christopherus, and he spoke withanger. "You jest in Spain! But in France it shall be said soberly--"

  "No, no! Don and Admiral here! Viceroy and Governor here--as soon as youfind the lands! Wealthy here--as soon as you put hand on the gold!" DonLuis de St. Angel's laughter ceased. He became with portentous swiftnessa downright, plain man of business. He talked, all of us clusteredtogether on the Cordova road.

  "The Archbishop kept me from that audience yesterday, leaving Don Alonsode Quintanella your only friend there! The Queen was tired, the Kingfretted. They thought they had come a long way, and there you stood,Master Christopherus, shaking your head! Don Alonso told me about it,and how hopeless it seemed! But I said, 'If you conquer a land don't youput in a viceroy? I don't see that Don Cristoval isn't as good asDon This One, or Don That One! I've a notion that the first might notoppress and flay the new subjects as might the last two! That is a pointto be made to the Queen! As for perpetuity of office and privileges downthe ages, most things get to be hereditary. If it grows to be a swollenserpent something in the future will fall across and cut it in two. Lettime take care of it! As for wealth, in any land a man who will bear aneighth of the cost may fairly expect an eighth of the gain. This settingout is to cost little, after all. He says he can do it with three smallships and less than a hundred and fifty men. If the ships bring back notreasure, he will not be wealthy. If there is a little gain, the Spainsneed not grudge him his handful of doubloons. If there is huge gain, theKing and Queen but for him would not have their seven eighths. The samere
asoning applies to his tenth of all future gain from continents andislands. You will say that some one else will arise to do it for us oneasier terms. Perhaps--and perhaps not for a century, and another Crownmay thrust in to-morrow! France, probably. It is not impossiblethat England might do it. As for what is named overweening pride andpresumption, at least it shows at once and for altogether. We are notleft painfully to find it out. It goes with his character. Take it orleave it together with his patience, courage and long head. Leave it,and presently we may see France or England swallow him whole. Hewill find India and Cathay and Cipango, and France or England will bebuilding ships, ships, ships! Blessed Virgin above us!' said I, 'If Icould talk alone to the Sovereigns, I think I could clench it!'"

  "'Then let us go now to the palace,' says Don Alonso, 'and begaudience!'

  "That did we, Don Cristoval, and so I hail you 'Don' and 'Admiral', andbeg you to turn that mule and reenter Santa Fe! In a few days you andthe King and Queen may sign capitulations."

  "Was it the Queen?"

  "Just. The King said the treasury was drained. She answered, 'I willpawn my jewels but he shall sail!' Luis de St. Angel says, 'It does notneed. There is some gold left in the coffers of Aragon. After all,the man asks but three little ships and a few score seamen and offershimself to furnish one of the ships.'"

  "With Martin Alonso Pinzon's help, I will!"

  "'Never,' said I to their majesties, 'was so huge a possible gainmatched against so small a sending forth! And as for this Genoese whotruly hath given and gives and will give his life for his vision, saithnot Scripture that a laborer is worthy of his hire?' At which the Queensaid with decision, 'We will do it, Don Luis! And now go and find MasterChristopherus and comfort him, whose heart must be heavy, and indeedmine,' she saith, 'was heavy when he went forth to-day, and a voiceseemed to say within me, "What have you done, Isabella? How may you havehindered!"'"

  The Gatherer of Ecclesiastical Revenues laughed again with thatcompelling laughter. "So forth we go, and Don Alonso sends for you tohis house. But you could not be found. Early this morning came one andinformed us that the ship had put out of harbor, whereupon my nephew andI set sail after!"

  The Admiral of the Ocean-Sea turned his face to the west. Not knowing,I think, what he did, he raised his arm, outstretched it, and the handseemed to close in greeting. His face was the face of a man who sees theBeloved after long and sorrowful absence. So did thought and passionand vision charge his frame and his countenance, that for a moment trulythere was effulgence. It startled. Don Luis held his speech suspended,in his eyes wonder. Master Christopherus let fall his arm. He sighed.The out-pushing light faltered, vanished. One might say, if one chose,"A Genoese sea captain, willing to do an adventurous thing and make apurse thereby!"