A Singular Captain

by John Regan



  A Singular Captain

  Mutiny, murder and mayhem on the first circumnavigation of the world.

  Thank you for purchasing this book. With the 500th anniversary of Ferdinand

  Magellan’s voyage coming up, you will gain an insight into what it was really like.

  copyright John Regan 2016

  https://talesfromthesea.com.au

  A Singular Captain

  Pigafetta arrived in Seville in the summer of 1518 prepared to believe everything he had been told about the city and distrust everything about its inhabitants. He was at a turning point in his life and not coping well. Friends and colleagues regarded him as an affable man, well respected and slow to take umbrage, but he’d shown signs of instability of late. Some tried to dissuade him from a reckless course of action but a few had recognised the strength of his determination. For this he was grateful but discontent still troubled his soul.

  The coachman had set him down near the bridge and said this was Triana but he did not know Calle San Jorge. The coach had been delayed and he was late. He was not sure whether Ana had received his last letter. Her directions had been less than helpful: Calle San Jorge in the barrio of Triana. No number. Ana was his only point of contact in The City of Gold, which had the reputation: ‘Who has not seen Seville has not seen beauty.’ Across the river he could see ships tied up at wharves and beyond them the famous Cathedral, the biggest in Christendom, a pretty enough scene but to Pigafetta it was a symbol of much that was wrong with the world.

  The heat had begun to dissipate as the sun sank low over the hills, people emerged from siesta and children came out to play. He had only one piece of luggage, having been warned to travel light, and set off along a cobbled street, a main thoroughfare through a prosperous village of whitewashed houses. His crimson tabard and his Italian shoes attracted some attention but he felt under no threat here. He accosted a family taking tapas at a table beneath a green and white canopy and asked directions to Calle San Jorge. The woman waved her hand in a general westerly direction and said “Arriba! Arriba!”

  “It’s the house of Don Francisco Velasquez,” Pigafetta said.

  “Si, si, si. Velasquez. Arriba. Arriba.”

  This didn’t clarify matters much but he continued towards the setting sun. He asked directions a couple more times and eventually arrived at a substantial establishment in a walled compound. The wrought iron gate was open. He walked through into a garden of roses heady with scent but had not taken five steps before he heard a squeal and Ana came running down the path, threw her arms around him and showered him with kisses.

  “I thought you were lost,” she cried.

  “No. One of the horses went lame and we had to wait for another.”

  “Anyway, you are here now.”

  “Yes. Wonderful.”

  He kissed her properly, long and sloppy, then pulled back to look at her; the cheeky, impetuous, outrageous, beautiful Ana. She wore her hair loose and her gown’s plunging neckline was scandalous. He had not seen her for two months but now, when he should be filled with joy, he felt uneasy.

  “I have missed you,” she said. “When will you go to your ship?”

  “Tomorrow, I expect. I was hoping to stay here the night.”

  “I have told my father about you. He says you can stay in my brother’s old room but no funny business.”

  “No funny business,” Pigafetta said with a grin. To Ana, everything was a game.

  “Come inside. You will have to meet my father.”

  She took him by the hand and led him inside; the door held open by a maid in livery who curtseyed. They passed through a hallway with a library on one side and came to a chamber that could have been a banquet hall. It had a long table and portraits of stern-looking men and frigid women around the walls. A large fireplace seemed to Pigafetta out of place in Seville. Heavy drapes blocked out the last of the daylight and the room was lit by candelabra. In one corner, as if trying to make himself inconspicuous, a grey-haired man sat in a wicker armchair with a white coverlet over his knees. He dropped the book he was reading into his lap.

  “Papa, this is Antonio Pigafetta that I told you about.”

  Sr Velasquez looked him up and down as if inspecting a work of art. His gaze lingered on the tabard that Pigafetta had chosen after careful thought. He had wanted to make an impression but perhaps this was a little flamboyant. Perhaps he should have selected the pale blue one for this meeting. Ana had described her father as a retired gentleman, a widower, a patron of the arts and a stalwart of the church.

  “You work for the pope, Ana tells me.”

  It sounded like he disapproved of something; whether the tabard or his former employer Pigafetta could not say.

  “Used to, señor, but now I’m going for a sailor.”

  A raised eyebrow was the limit of his reaction with no sign whether that meant approval or reproof. Pigafetta’s decision to resign as the Vatican’s second ambassador to the royal court of imperial Spain had not been taken lightly but he was not about to go into that matter here.

  “There comes a time when a man must seize the day, señor,” he said to Sr Velasquez, waiting for an answer to his raised eyebrow.

  “Very true. Very true.” The approval was less than wholehearted. Pigafetta wondered whether Sr Velasquez disapproved of him working for the pope or leaving the position.

  “Antonio has joined the Armada de Moluccas, Papa.”

  The old man seemed to brighten at this news.

  “Then you will know my friend, Juan de Cartagena. He is captain of a ship called after your namesake, San Antonio.”

  “I am not a saint, señor. I hope to join a ship called Trinidad.”

  “With the Portuguese, Magellan, in command.”

  “Yes.”

  The old man’s mood changed again.

  “Utterly disgraceful, putting a Portuguese in command of a Spanish armada. I can’t imagine what the king must be thinking.

  It wasn’t the king; it was his priestly advisers – Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht, Guillaume de Croy, Chancellor Sauvage – all of them foreigners like the king himself, born and bred in Flanders. The king of Spain could not even speak Spanish; just another absurdity in Pigafetta’s view, which again he kept to himself.

  “I can tell you one thing; he’s thinking: to marry off his sister to Dom Manuel.”

  “I heard that rumour. I could hardly believe it. So it’s true, is it? Is this what we are come to? A Spanish brothel for Portuguese kings? The king is a foreigner himself, a traitor. Goddammed German. Fortunately, there are still a few patriots left in the land.”

  Pigafetta was hearing alarm bells in his head at this kind of talk. He had heard it all too often back home during the Italian wars. When men start talking about traitors there is no telling where it might lead. It was like priests of the Inquisition talking about heresy. Pigafetta was uncomfortable with this conversation and decided to steer it in a new direction. He coughed to clear his throat.

  “I was admiring your rose garden as I came in, señor. I know Seville is famous for her roses but yours seem special.”

  “Ana looks after the roses.”

  “Yes, we have a rose competition every year around the time of the horse fair,” Ana chirped with a smile. “We did very well last year. We took out second prize but I hope to do better this year.”

  “I have an aunt who is a keen rose grower,” Pigafetta said. Having steered the conversation away from dangerous waters, he was determined to avoid further shoals. Fortunately, this statement was true and he was able to sustain the topic until dinner was announced and two black slaves lifted Sr Velasquez out of his chair and carried him to the table, his legs dangling like those of a rag doll.

/>   During dinner, Pigafetta kept the conversation focused on the portraits around the walls – ancestors and family members including at least three sea captains and one colonial governor, the brother of Sr Velasquez who was the current administrator of Cuba. Pigafetta was impressed. The most recent portrait was of Ana looking demure on the occasion of her confirmation. Pigafetta joked she was much prettier than her uncle and her father, both of them with prominent noses.

  Sr Velasquez picked at his food and by the end of the meal was nodding off, which was satisfactory to Pigafetta. Ana quietly got up and left the room, returning in a few moments with the two slaves.

  “Time for bed, Papa,” she said, and kissed him on the forehead.

  “What? Yes, all right.” The old man blinked several times as if to waken himself. This was clearly a nightly ritual in which Pigafetta was an intruder. “Italians are all right,” Velasquez said. “Columbus was Italian. I don’t mind Italians but I can’t stomach Portuguese. We should get rid of them, like the Jews.”

  “Good night, señor,” Pigafetta said. “Sleep well.”

  “I always do. It’s all I do. Eat and sleep. You have noticed my poor legs. The idiot doctors know nothing. ”

  The slaves picked him up and carried him away. Ana sat on Pigafetta’s lap and brushed his hair back from his forehead.

  “You have to excuse my father. He sometimes gets excited.”

  “I noticed. What’s wrong with his legs?”

  “Even the doctors don’t know. Some kind of tropical disease, they say. From Hispaniola. He says he caught it from the natives, who were dying like flies. He was captain of the ship that took my uncle out there.”

  “You really are a seafaring family, aren’t you.”

  “Oh yes, we know all about sailors in this family. My brother is also a sailor.”

  Ana had been right there in the throne room when Magellan presented his amazing proposal to the king, or at least the king’s minders: to find the Spice Isles. She was as excited as Pigafetta about the idea of sailing to unknown lands where, according to some stories, people had only one eye in the middle of their chest and ears so big they wrapped them around their bodies for a blanket. Some lands were populated by green and yellow cannibals 60 feet tall and an island called Amazon was home to a race of warrior women, an idea especially attractive to Ana. If only she were a man she too could embark on this adventure.

  She kissed him on the forehead, then on the nose and then on the lips, framing his face in her hands. His hands travelled up her back, pulling her body into him and found the smoothness of her shoulders and the silky strands of her hair. Her tongue came into his mouth and explored all around it, warm and wet and slippery.

  “I thought your father said no funny business.”

  “He did, but he has gone to bed and he can’t walk.”

  “What about the slaves?”

  “They know their place.”

  She stood, led him across the room and through a curtained doorway, her gown falling down around her ankles as she shut the door behind them.