Encounters Unforeseen- 1492 Retold

by Andrew Rowen

  Cristóvao had no cause or standing to meet d’Azambuja, but he succeeded nonetheless, introducing himself much as he had to Filipa, but with greater sophistication, approaching after church to recount how the trade at Mina compared to that at Scio and Thule. He learned of Caramanca, the local king, and observed at a distance when he met with d’Azambuja outside the fort, each man accompanied by his own guard. Cristóvão was impressed by the Caramanca’s dignity and the respect d’Azambuja afforded him when together. But he sensed neither friendship nor esteem of either man for the other, a relationship drawn by commerce and weaponry alone.

  One day, Cristóvão accompanied João’s traders north beyond the fortress into the jungle on a trail astride the river, passing the villages and farms of King Ansa’s people and spying women sifting the river’s sands for gold dust. They came to a hillside where King Ansa’s slave masters were supervising the excavation of a tunnel, a narrow shaft descending steeply into the earth. One by one, slaves crawled into the narrow shaft and vanished, returning minutes later with a sack of dirt that was emptied and sifted for gold to be brought to the fortress for trade. The traders remarked that the slaves were worked to exhaustion and frequently died. The mosquitoes swarmed, and Cristóvão and the traders soon retraced their steps to the fortress and the relief of sea breezes. Some of the traders grew sick—first feverous, then shivering and vomiting in agony, and finally falling into a coma and dying (malaria). Cristóvão realized that disease posed more risk to João’s settlement than the local people.

  The ships soon were loaded to return home with departing troops and João’s gold, which was carefully accounted—other than the private stashes—by royal scriveners. The fleet sailed first for the Cape Verde islands, where it harbored and watered, and then north toward Jesus Christo (Terceira, Azores) to achieve Portugal’s latitude in one tack, sailing to the west of the Canary Islands and Madeira.

  Cristóvão spent his time off duty on the port rail peering west, particularly at sunset. He observed that the wind and currents west of the Canaries continued to bear southwest. He searched for Antillia and St. Brenden’s islands and clues to decipher whether Antillia and the Cipangu of Marco Polo and Toscanelli were at the latitudes he passed. He mused that neither the church nor the ancients knew all truth, that the Lord’s design for all things remained to be fully revealed, and that his own observations would find explanation within that design.

  At night, he prayed for the health of his family—in Porto Santo, Genoa, and Savona. Filipa likely was dying, and he felt guilt for leaving her and Diogo to face her death without him. Giovanni Pellegrino had died the previous year, and he prayed for Giovanni’s soul.

  Cristóvão gazed across the moonlit ocean and realized he had changed forever and no longer cared to be a merchant’s agent. He was now certain his life was to pursue a greater calling—the discovery of islands to the west and, perhaps, a western route across the Ocean Sea to achieve Cipangu. He would seek nobility, wealth, and fame that way. Bartolomeu already understood and would assist. Isabel and Filipa would believe it dangerous and crazy. Domenico would find it utterly foolish, squandering a business that could prosper for a dream or illusion. Domenico would say that dreams and illusions were for noblemen, who could survive their failure, not a weaver’s son.

  The vast expanses of ocean before him and heavens above united in darkness at an indistinct and seemingly infinite horizon. Cristóvão reflected that the ocean’s beauty belied its mercilessness, and he startled himself to admit that death upon it no longer frightened him. He accepted the Lord could choose that fate for him rather than reward any of nobility, wealth, or fame—just as the Lord might take Filipa early and had taken Giovanni.

  Cristóvão gazed upward to the heavens. He would trust in the Lord and pursue his noble destiny.

  ISABEL AND FERNANDO

  Reconquista Resumed, 1482–1485

  With the Inquisition established, Isabel and Fernando remembered their dream, glory, and duty to complete the Reconquista. Their truces with Grenada’s Abū l’Hasan—extended multiple times during the Portuguese war—had facilitated the war’s resolution, and it had been convenient to ignore his refusal to pay tribute. But excuses for a truce no longer existed, and Mehmed II’s slaughter at Otranto and his empire’s ambitions reminded them of the justice and imperative of their duty. They appreciated that the hardship of this duty also would be well rewarded by the Granadan kingdom’s enormous wealth— substantial cities, ports, fortresses, and palaces filled with gold and silver, fertile cropland, orchards, and vineyards, and new vassals.

  Regardless of the ongoing truces, for centuries noblemen of the Hispanic and Granadan kingdoms had often raided the other’s neighboring towns for gold, horses, food, and other booty anyway, taking prisoners fit for sale as slaves or to be incarcerated indefinitely until exchanged for prisoners taken by the other, proclaiming the murder and plunder fulfilled a duty to God. In 1481, shortly after Christmas, Grenadan soldiers raided the Castilian town of Zahara, seizing the town’s mayor and his wife, slaying their small garrison, looting, and abducting many inhabitants back to Granada for sale as slaves. Isabel, Fernando, and most Castilians were incensed, perceiving the attack as substantially exceeding that fit to respond to Ponce de Leon’s most recent looting, thereby breaching the truce.

  In early 1482, Isabel and Fernando declared the resumption of Holy War against Grenada, requesting the nobility to proffer soldiers and arms and bear expenses. For centuries, the Reconquista had rewarded nobility participating with the hereditary governorship of lands reconquered and the vassalage of the vanquished Mohammedans. The Reconquista, perhaps as all wars since Creation, also included as reward for the troops participating the clothes, food, horses, and other possessions they looted from the vanquished.

  In February, Ponce de León led the reinstituted Holy War’s first engagement, penetrating twenty miles south of the frontier to capture the town of Alhama, slaughtering more than eight hundred residents and seizing more than three thousand to be sold into slavery or held prisoner. The corpses were thrown over the town walls to be fed upon by dogs. Abū l’Hasan counterattacked and trapped Ponce de León’s soldiers within the town. But Ponce de León’s former rival Guzmán came to his rescue, and Abū l’Hasan retreated, whereupon Ponce de León’s troops came to blows with Guzmán’s troops over the division of Alhama’s loot.

  Fernando and his army ceremonially entered the town, accompanied by prelates to attend to its Christianization. Alhama’s mosques were promptly converted into churches, and Isabel—then pregnant— provisioned the prelates with the necessary religious sacraments and prayer books for the new churches. Pope Sixtus IV had given the sovereigns a large silver cross, and it was hung on Alhama’s tallest minaret. Consistent with prior centuries’ practices, the sovereigns offered the ordinary houses and gardens of the vanquished to those Christians willing to settle in Alhama, and the houses filled with younger Christian families seeking their first home. Settlement was encouraged with an exemption from taxation and a pardon for murderers and other criminals.

  Regardless of her pregnancy, Isabel tirelessly organized Andalusia for an extended war, exhorting her noblemen and subjects of their duty to enlist and provisioning food, weapons, and ammunition. The sovereigns planned their next attack further north, at Loja. Isabel went into labor in late June while attending a war council. She soon delivered her fourth child, María, named in the Virgin’s honor, and, after an excruciating thirty-five hours, another daughter, stillborn.

  Isabel would not countenance the war’s delay. The next day, Fernando marched from Córdoba toward Loja, deep into hostile, mountainous territory. His army met the fierce guerrilla resistance of local Muslims who would rather die than lose their homes and succumb to Christians, as well as a fierce counterattack by Abū l’Hasan. Fernando’s troops were routed, and he narrowly escaped death while in hand-to-hand combat. Some Castilians felt that the stillborn had been a bad omen. Others, as Isabel,
believed the Lord tested one’s faith and perseverance. The Muslims of Loja felt Allah had answered their prayers and come to their defense.

  Abū l’Hasan’s natural heir was his son Boabdil, but Abū l’Hasan had left unclear whether he would name Boabdil as successor or choose another son. While Abū l’Hasan was fighting the Castilians, Boabdil anointed himself emir,13 exploiting discontentment with the escalation of hostilities with Castile. Similar to Castile just years before, there were now two emirs of Grenada, and a civil war commenced between father and son that would sap the emirate’s strength.

  Castile’s own strength to wage war was less than the sovereigns admitted. Their kingdom had been at war, either internally or externally, for almost twenty years, and their subjects were exhausted by the taxation supporting that. Isabel and Fernando searched for new revenue sources. The Inquisition provided some. They imposed an additional tax on the Jews and Mudejar. They secured Pope Sixtus’s bull proclaiming a crusade of Holy War against the kingdom of Grenada for which churches were authorized to sell indulgences. Soldiers could purchase absolution from sins incurred in battle and martyrdom if killed, and ordinary worshippers could purchase salvation.

  Isabel and Fernando understood the war would take years to prosecute. In 1483, Boabdil was captured and released on his agreement that Castilian troops could pass through his territory to attack his father. Grenada’s religious leaders condemned the release and advised continued loyalty to Abū l’Hasan and, when he became ill, to Boabdil’s uncle al-Zagal. In 1484, while Fernando was attending the Aragonese Cortes, Isabel directed their armies to cut a tala from the frontier south to the coast west of Málaga to destroy Grenada’s most fertile cropland, burning the food supplies supporting the infidel troops and undermining the populace’s support of their rulers. In 1485, Ponce de León besieged Ronda and, despite a zealous defense, inflicted severe devastation to the town.

  Fernando offered the Rondans surrender terms traditional of the Reconquista, being two choices: exodus, with safe passage to Africa or the city of Grenada, or submission to become the sovereign’s vassals, as the Mudejar in Castile, with the right to practice their religion and live under Islamic law. The town’s mayor and leadership—with whom Fernando discussed and quickly agreed the truce terms—were entitled to be resettled with their possessions in the outskirts of Seville in homes confiscated from those found guilty of heresy by the Inquisition. Their fortresses and villas near Ronda were awarded to the Castilian noblemen who fought the engagement.

  In December 1485, having returned north to winter at Alcalá de Henares, Isabel and Fernando celebrated the birth of their fifth child, Catalina. While the Lord had seen fit to deliver her but one son, Isabel honored the Virgin for providing yet another delivery where mother and child survived.

  ANACAONA

  Birth of Higueymota

  As her time approached, Anacaona consulted Attabeira frequently for a safe delivery and the health of her child. When contractions began, she rose from her hammock and, with a handful of her closest nitaínos and naborias, left the caney. They walked to a secluded spot by the village stream, where Anacaona had selected a tree with a branch low enough for her to grasp in her hands and hang in a wide squat below, her feet resting gently on the ground.

  Alerted, Caonabó chose to walk alone in his subjects’ yuca fields. He, too, honored Attabeira for Anacaona’s safe delivery, as a Taíno and grimly aware that his prestige would wane if Anacaona were lost.

  As the contractions strengthened, Anacaona hung from the branch and thought of her baby. She had decided on names for the child, with Caonabó’s consent. It would be a Xaraguán name and would not reflect the word caona (gold) in either Caonabó’s name (“Golden House”) or hers (“Flower of Gold”). Behecchio would approve. After hours of pain, Anacaona gave birth to a healthy baby girl and the news immediately spread throughout the village. Her name was Higueymota.

  Anacaona’s nitaínos and naborias washed her and the infant in the stream. Caonabó joined them there, knelt to embrace his exhausted wife, and then beheld the child in the arms of Anacaona’s nitaíno, also beaming with pride. Caonabó carried Anacaona, herself carrying Higueymota, back to the caney, and a wan Anacaona announced her name to those present. A number of Caonabó’s subordinate caciques were in the village, and they were invited to give their own names for the child.

  As the moon rose high, when others slept, Anacaona heard Higueymota’s tiny, precious cry, and the nitaíno brought the infant to be nursed. Anacaona cradled her babe to her nipple and, as the babe sucked, whispered that there was no rush, as Anacaona would be there forever. She delighted that she had born a child to whom the family possessions would descend in Xaraguá and, perhaps, Maguana.

  As with all Taíno infants, when Higueymota was but a few weeks old, Anacaona and naborias gently bound a wooden slat wrapped in cotton against her forehead to flatten it.

  Attabeira.

  CRISTÓVÃO AND JOÃO

  Audience and Review, 1484–1485

  Cristóvão returned to Porto Santo from Mina to find Filipa severely ill, and he brought her and the family to Lisbon to see doctors in a last attempt to find a cure. He and mother-in-law Isabel prepared little Diogo for Filipa’s death. With brother-in-law Pêro’s introduction, Cristóvão wrote King João and was granted an audience to discuss maritime discovery, the Perestelo and Moniz lineage worthy enough for such access.

  João’s transition to authority following his father’s death had not been seamless. In 1483, he had executed the kingdom’s most powerful nobleman,14 allegedly for plotting treason with the Castilian king Fernando. In 1484, during a private moment in the royal living chambers, João himself stabbed and killed his brother-in-law for suspected disloyalty.

  But João had remained constant in his enthusiasm for the circumvention of Guinea. In 1482, he had funded and dispatched Diogo Cão on a voyage further along the Guinean coast to discover its southern terminus. Cão reached a southern latitude of approximately thirteen degrees (Angola) and set a stone pillar dedicated by João to St. Augustine to mark the achievement. In 1484, João had appointed a committee of accomplished theologians, mathematicians, and cosmographers—the Junta dos Mathemáticos—to review and assimilate navigational knowledge learned in his discoverers’ voyages, chaired by Bishop Diego Ortiz de Vilhegas and including João’s Jewish physician Master Rodrigo, an expert in astrological instruments used for ascertaining longitudinal position.

  Ecstatic for the audience, Cristóvão purchased finer clothing. He and Bartolomeu debated their strategy, and Cristóvão was unequivocal. He would bring a map of the Ocean Sea—resembling Toscanelli’s— to depict the eastern extent of the Indies and Cipangu, the intended destinations. But he wouldn’t reveal their intended departure point, either the Cape Verde islands or just below the latitude of the Canary Islands in Portuguese waters, where the winds and currents were favorable. This viewpoint—their own, practical knowledge—would be shared only if and when a voyage were commissioned. If revealed earlier, João might simply usurp the idea by entrusting a native Portuguese mariner to implement it without the Colombos.

  Cristóvão, wrought with anxiety, traveled to meet João. He had never ventured on a voyage of discovery and now would propose one. He had little education and no family crest other than by marriage, and he would be surrounded by those who had both. He lived in modest circumstances and would now seek to impress those who lived immeasurably better. He had never met a doge in Genoa, but would now speak with the king of Portugal.

  Upon his arrival, João’s secretary ushered Cristóvão to the entrance to the meeting room, where João and Master Rodrigo were waiting. João invited him inward, Cristóvão knelt, and, after brief pleasantries, João invited him to present.

  “I am a Genoese merchant and have lived in your kingdom for eight years and married into the Perestrelo family long known to the Crown. In the Genoese merchant tradition, I have sailed much of the known world arranging shipments
of merchandise and become expert in navigation. I’ve sailed to the Levant at Scio and witnessed with my own eyes that the infidels imperil trade from the Orient. I’ve sailed to London and Galway and as far north as Thule, and understand the northern Ocean Sea.” Cristóvão studied João and perceived the slightest perk of his eyebrows. “I’ve trafficked in your possessions in the Azores and Madeira, and with the Castilians in the Canaries, and understand these waters, as well. Most recently, I have served your Lordship on a voyage supplying d’Azambuja, with whom I conferred regarding Mina’s trade.” He paused, confident he had captured a king’s attention. “I deeply admire your monumental effort to circumnavigate Guinea and pray often that you succeed.”

  João studied Colombo, unmoved by the flattery but surprised by the content and polish of his delivery. João remained silent, signaling Colombo to continue.

  “I requested this audience because my experience has convinced me there is a more direct route to reach the Indies. It is directly west across the Ocean Sea. The coast of the Indies is not so far from our coast as men have thought. Marco Polo also reports that the island of Cipangu lies east of the Indian coast, making the Indies even easier to achieve. Other islands may be discovered en route—perhaps Antillia—making the open sea distances even shorter, but that’s not necessary to achieve Cipangu.”

  “How do you know Cipangu even exists?” Rodrigo asked. “You believe Marco Polo?” Rodrigo glanced at João, puckering his lips, intimating disdain.