Encounters Unforeseen- 1492 Retold

by Andrew Rowen

  _______________

  1 About 120 miles.

  2 Cay is derived from the Taíno word for island.

  3 The Jagua being a tree species from which Taínos extracted dye for body paint.

  4 Corral de los Indios, San Juan de la Maguana, Dominican Republic.

  5 Álvaro de Luna, executed in 1453.

  6 María of Aragón.

  7 The Aragonese Blanca of Navarre.

  8 Beltrán de la Cueva.

  9 Mudejar refers to Muslims living in a Christian kingdom, practicing Islam while vassal to a Christian sovereign.

  10 The Franciscan friar Alonso de Espina.

  11 René d’Anjou (René le Bon), who opposed Aragonese domination of Genoa and Catalonia, uncle of the French King Louis XI and father of Jean d’Anjou.

  12 As descendants of Juan I of Castile.

  13 Sharing Juan I of Castile as their great-grandfather.

  III

  1470S, ASCENSION

  CRISTOFORO

  Scio (Chios, Greece), (1470–1474)

  At dawn in May 1474, two ships bound for Scio slipped slowly from Savona’s harbor into the Ligurian Sea some twenty-five miles west of Genoa, a warship and a merchant vessel bearing carpenters, weavers, and traders. A scion of Genoa’s Spinola merchant family commanded each vessel. Cristoforo stood on the deck of the merchant ship, enlisted as a common seaman and assistant to a Spinola trader. Near twenty years old, Cristoforo had grown tall, sturdy, and handsome, retaining his red hair and pinkish complexion. Years before, Domenico had enrolled him in the small grammar school run by the Genoa wool weavers’ guild, and he knew to read, write, and draw, as well as arithmetic and a little Latin, the language of the scriptures and their ancient heritage.

  After conquering Constantinople, Mehmed II had spared the Genoese colonies at Scio and Lesbos in return for receiving annual tributes, as well as the Venetian colony at the Negroponte (Euboea). He had since subjugated Lesbos (1462) and, irked by continued foreign presences within his Aegean empire, in 1470 he had directed a substantial expansion of his fleet and invaded and subjugated the Negroponte. The Sciots had dutifully sent caulkers to assist the fleet expansion. But, with the specter of their own subjugation looming, they also prepared to defend themselves, petitioning the pope and the Genoese for assistance.

  The Spinolas and other Genoese merchants were roused by the appeal and bent on expanding their trade with Scio, rather than forsaking it. Scio served as the world’s principal source of mastic and a key source of Genoa’s slave trade. The Genoese sold mastic gum, harvested from Scion mastic trees, to Christians and infidels throughout the Mediterranean and Europe for use as a digestive medicine, cure for rheumatism, and breath freshener or perfume for the women of their courts and harems. Year-round, Mehmed’s armies sold war captives—of any people, skin color, or religion—in the large slave market in Scio, and the Genoese resold them to purchasers—of any people, skin color, or religion—throughout the Mediterranean.

  Cristoforo waved farewell to Domenico, who stood on the quay, having relocated to Savona some years before with the family, now seven—with two more surviving sons, Bartolomeo (b. ca. 1461) and Giacomo, and a daughter, Bianchinetta. His weaving business hadn’t met their budget in Genoa. Collectives and factories of weavers in Milan and other foreign principalities produced finer-quality cloth at lower prices, and Domenico had worked longer hours to produce more cloth only to earn less. He had started an additional business as a cheesemonger. He also sold wine and recently had opened a tavern. Cristoforo had assisted him dutifully, sailing as a passenger on small boats along the coast of the Ligurian Sea to inspect, purchase, and retrieve shipments of raw wool, cheese, and wine.

  Cristoforo now carded wool and often referred to himself as a wool merchant. He hadn’t apprenticed to become a weaver when attaining the age permitted by the guild. Whether disappointed by this or not, Domenico understood from the merchants to whom he introduced Cristoforo that his son was courteous, well spoken, and affable, possessing the aptitude to become a trader.

  As the ship gained speed, the captain laid a sheepskin chart of the Mediterranean on his table and, together with his pilot, began to navigate the route to Scio, more than twelve hundred miles distant. They set the compass coordinate for sailing the first half hour, measured by the run of an ampolleta (a sand clock), and, when the sand had run, reckoned the distance traveled in light of the shoreline or their sense of the ship’s speed and entered the ship’s estimated position in the ship’s log. A ship’s boy promptly turned the ampolleta and called a prayer or psalm for all to hear, and the captain or pilot adjusted the compass course for the next half hour. The process and prayers would continue day and night, every half hour, until they anchored safely at Scio.

  Cristoforo had learned the mechanics of sailing—how to catch the wind, tack, run against or with the wave—when retrieving Domenico’s shipments on smaller boats, and he was ready and eager to do whatever was now commanded, be it raising, trimming, or reefing the sails, bailing the bilge, or washing the deck. He was assigned a shift for the entire voyage, each of the crew’s two shifts working four hours and then resting four except for two two-hour slots that allowed the shifts to exchange time slots every twenty-four hours. They would sleep in their clothes and all would be summoned to duty when necessary if the sea grew rough. The captain would lead a prayer to the Virgin every dawn seeking her protection for the upcoming day. Every evening before sunset, the crew would sing “Salve Regina” or another hymn seeking her protection through the night.

  The ships sailed the coast south beyond Rome, and Cristoforo eagerly embraced the new and unknown. He had ventured beyond the Ligurian Sea but once, and the experience had taught him more about captains and crews than distant seas. Father’s loyalty to Genoa’s Fregoso family had assisted Cristoforo’s enlistment on a warship their ally1 dispatched to capture another warship off Tunis. Most of the crew had succumbed to fear while off Sardinia and refused the chase, demanding reinforcements before they continued. But the mission leader had continued south toward Tunis regardless, deceiving the crew at night with Cristoforo’s assistance by misaligning the ship’s compass to feign that the ship was sailing north. At dawn, the crew was stunned to behold Cape Carthage on the horizon. Cristoforo had learned crews did expect—short of mutiny—the right to disapprove a course they felt jeopardized their safety and that a captain’s deception was a means for managing them.

  As they approached Sicily, Cristoforo gazed across the starboard rail to the western horizon, far beyond which lay the Pillars of Hercules2 and the Sea of Darkness. He recalled learning, as every Genoese child, that long ago the city’s Doria merchant family had sponsored the Vivaldi brothers to sail to the Indies and Cathay to trade for gold and spices.3 Marco Polo, the legendary Venetian, already had ridden there overland,4 but the route was arduous and required passage through kingdoms of the infidel, which the Dorias sought to avoid. Sadly, after sailing beyond the Pillars, the Vivaldis were never heard from again, and the Genoese still debated why. Ever practical, Domenico always said their ships likely foundered in a storm or on unseen shoals. Others claimed the ocean boiled and the air burned their skin when they turned south along Africa’s coast, as it was so hot there that people had to lie in streams up to their necks during the day to survive. A few concluded the crews were eaten by people, landing on an island where the men had heads like dogs, ate snakes, and hissed like them. As many, Cristoforo wondered whether the Vivaldis had survived and reached the Indies after all, but just couldn’t get back because the winds or currents were too contrary.

  Cristoforo’s excitement grew when the ships navigated the Straits of Messina between Sicily and the mainland, and he observed the captain and pilot plotting the course across the Ioanian Sea, reckoning to achieve Cape Matapan at Greece’s southern tip. He overheard the pilot expound to officers of the watch where the winds blew from or to shore, how the sun’s heat affected the wind’s strength, and when the Lo
rd caused storms. He befriended the pilot and sought his wisdom, learning that seamen tempt disaster if they proceed when the weather is uncertain. The ships encountered strong winds in the Ioanian Sea and were buffeted by waves more severely than Cristoforo had experienced. At dusk, he sang the “Salve Regina” with greater conviction than before.

  The expedition passed Cape Matapan, traversed the Laconian gulf, veered north past Aristotle’s, Alexander’s, and now Mehmed’s Athens, and sighted Cape Sounion, where Cristoforo beheld the Temple of Poseidon high atop its cliffs. He understood Poseidon to be but a false god of the ancients and that it was the Lord who moved the sea—not a god of the sea itself. But he allowed there was logic to the ancients’ pagan worship given the sea’s awesome ferocity. The expedition veered east to Scio, and he listened to the captain recount stories of sailing the Aegean as a boy, anchoring at Patmos where St. John the Evangelist wrote the Apocalypse, at Patera where St. Nicholas—the sailors’ patron saint—was born, at Cos where Hippocrates had lived, and, of course, at Scio, which claimed itself as Homer’s birthplace. Cristoforo marveled that he sailed in lands of prophets, saints, and ancient heroes.

  The expedition warily skirted the crags of Scio’s Cape Mastika and turned north. A sailor in the crow’s nest spied alertly for reefs and a sounding lead was held ready on the bow if the ship entered shallows. They arrived off the town of Scio after dusk and anchored close offshore, to be quarantined. Cristoforo gazed a few miles east to the dark shores of the infidel’s Anatolia and then west into the island’s small port, which was chained shut for the night. High stone walls encircled the town, once built to defend the Sciots from pirates and raiders, be they Christian, heathen, or Mohammedan, and now serving in defense against Mehmed II. Torches burned atop the walls, a breeze bore the scent of mastic, and the dark contour of Scio’s mountains undulated north and south into the distance beneath starry heavens.

  The next two mornings, a customs official rowed alongside to inquire about illnesses among the crew, and the captains reported they were aware of none and that the crews were Savonans and Genoese, whereupon the ships were permitted to berth in the harbor and enthusiastically met by Scio’s leading citizens. After unloading the cargos, the crews were released for rest.

  Cristoforo strolled through the thick city wall at a narrow archway by the port and wandered into the town’s central bazaar, which teemed with peoples of many principalities, with skin and clothing of many colors. Mohammedans from Africa, Turks from Anatolia, Tartars from the Crimea, and Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans from the Holy Land bargained with one another to trade foods and wares arriving from ports throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea. There were Genoese and others who spoke Ligurian, and there were numerous other tongues, including some Cristoforo did not recognize. The scent of mastic, the sounds of music, and the babel of scattered peoples filled the air.

  He came to a narrow alley of brothels serving the harbor and spied crewmates but did not join them, expecting to be offered women later, when assisting the merchants. Instead, he found a small basilica dedicated to St. Nicholas and entered to thank the Virgin for the safe passage from Savona.

  He continued outside the city wall to the unprotected village and entered a slave market, far larger than he had ever beheld, and was stunned. Rows and rows of vanquished peoples—Greeks, Bulgars, Bosnians, and Serbs from the west, and Tartars and Circassians from the north and east—were shackled in chains, awaiting their fate. The stench of vomit, urine, and excrement smothered the scent of mastic. A pall of terror and despair engulfed them, their voices mute but for the wail of women and infants and the anguished murmurs of prayers or disbelief. Cristoforo was unnerved to recognize pleas to his own God and Virgin. He beheld families huddled wretchedly together, with fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters like his own, and he shuddered to imagine Domenico, Susanna, and his siblings— and himself—so vanquished.

  Cristoforo was overpowered by the recognition that there was no essential difference between these conquered people—commoners— and himself. But he admitted to himself that he would have enlisted on the voyage to Scio even had he known these peoples were to be the return cargo instead of mastic. He studied a delegation of Genoese traders negotiate a price with Turkish slave masters, puzzling what the amount was and how it compared with the resale price achievable in Genoa.

  The next day, the Spinola traders, Cristoforo, and their hosts mounted horses and mules and rode south under a blazing Aegean sun, ascending into orchards of nut trees on arid hillsides. They halted to pray and rest at the oasis of a small church nestled in the shade of tall pines beside a gushing mountain spring.5 Both regenerated and refreshed, they wended southwest into the parched mountains and valleys where the mastic flourished, arriving by dusk at a village fortified with thick stone walls near Scio’s southern shore but invisible from the sea and enemies afloat. That evening, the hosts served a banquet of fish, rice, vegetables, sweets, and nuts and boasted of the profits that could be obtained by selling mastic in the northern principalities of Europe. They offered a girl to each visitor, purchased at the slave market to serve as chambermaids, washerwomen, and gifts for trading partners.

  Cristoforo’s girl led him through a narrow, stone alley barely lit along the city wall to a tiny chamber and bid him enter as she undressed. She spoke a few words of Ligurian, learned from previous traders, and dutifully invited Cristoforo to her. He wondered from where she came, how old she was then and when taken from her parents, whether she had brothers who missed her, and the price she had commanded in the slave market. But he quickly remembered she was one piece of the trade, and he welcomed his lust to drown his thoughts and enjoyed his gift.

  As the Spinolas pursued their Sciot mastic venture, Mehmed ordered his fleet to subjugate the Genoese colony on the Black Sea at Kaffa, whose trade had already been eviscerated by his control of the Bosporus. Kaffa had served as a principal trading post for obtaining goods from the courts of the Grand Khan of Cathay, including pepper and other spices that were important for preserving, curing, and flavoring meats from rapid spoliation, and it surrendered quickly (1475).

  As he discovered the Orient, Cristoforo ceased referring to himself merely as a wool merchant. He came to perceive a larger world in which to seek a greater fortune. The narrow boundaries of the Ligurian Sea vanished into the greater Mediterranean, and to even beyond. The large ships, varied cargos, and lengthy voyage of an organized expedition invigorated him, and he lost any desire to return to Domenico’s wool, wine, and cheese business. He was captivated by the adventure of exotic lands in hostile territory, filled with diverse peoples speaking strange languages. He saw for himself that the Dorias’ attempt to sail to the Indies was born not of fancy, but to achieve a solution to a merchant’s problem. He grasped, as he never had before, the primacy and imperative in life of being the conqueror.

  Chios, by Cristoforo Buondelmonti, ca. 1465–1475.

  ISABEL

  Disorder and Hatred in Castile, 1470–1474

  Isabel and Fernando quickly became young lovers, infatuated with each other’s company, and within months, she was pregnant. The labor pains began one midnight in October 1470, and midwives and witnesses were summoned.

  Isabel was frightened but ready, having prayed for a healthy son for months. As the contractions strengthened, she beseeched the Lord for the mercy of a quick delivery. Yet the Lord obliged neither.

  Labor was protracted, and, as the pain grew terrible, she asked for a veil to hide her face and struggle. After sunrise, she moved to squat on a birthing stool, terrified that death could claim both her and the child, but firm in her faith that the Lord would not allow it. Fernando and his advisers grew alarmed, and Fernando prayed gravely. He cared for her, and his future succession to Castile’s throne through her would be abrogated if she and the child perished.

  Finally, before noon in Dueñas north of Valladolid, Isabel gave birth to a girl, whom she and Fernando named Isabel, honoring the materna
l lineage from Grandmother. They were disappointed with the sex, but Fernando was immensely relieved and supportive, content to know his wife healthy and fertile and his right to Castile’s crown intact. That night, as she cradled her precious firstborn to her nipple, Isabel whispered she would love and stand with her always— regardless of what men thought.

  Enrique openly celebrated. He disinherited Isabel for marrying without his consent, obtained a papal dispensation absolving the nobility from prior oaths recognizing her as heir, and, together with Queen Juana, swore to little Juana’s legitimacy before Castilian nobility in Segovia’s great cathedral. Castile again descended into lawlessness and anarchy as the opposing factions disputed succession.

  Isabel and Fernando did not challenge Enrique’s right to be king, as Alfonso had, but sought support for Isabel’s succession, a struggle that deeply fortified their partnership. A new pope, the Ligurian Sixtus IV, affirmed the legality of their marriage. Isabel impressed the nobility with her Castilian virtue, in striking contrast to her brother. Fernando assisted his father in crushing the Catalan rebellion, and his military stature grew. The Valencian Cardinal Rodrigo Borja, vice-chancellor of the church in the Vatican, convinced Castile’s bishops and nobility that Isabel should succeed Enrique, and, in return for his support, Enrique’s longtime defender Pedro González de Mendoza was appointed Cardinal de Santa María and known as the Cardinal of Spain. Queen Juana openly lived with another man, eventually bearing him two children, and support for little Juana evaporated.

  Isabel did suffer disappointments. As for her husband, Fernando simply frolicked with other women when absent from court, including mistresses in Aragón, and it was almost unbearable to embrace and love him at times, knowing her own intimacy meant so little to him that he readily found satisfaction with scores of others. She swelled with bitterness and jealousy often, ceaselessly studying his expression as he eyed the women who occasioned court—many more attractive than herself—and scrutinizing whether their smiles in return revealed a flirtation, or worse.