Chapter 10 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
THE RESCUE
Cristobal Colon idled in his lodging over the shop of the Marrano tailor, Bensabat, reviewing the past and pondering the future, and discovering no satisfaction in either.
They were at the end of May, and the white city of Cordoba lay baking under the ardent Andalusian sun. Soon the mountains that screened the city from the north would be covered again as with snow by the blossoms of the orange-trees that clothed the long slopes, and the gardens of the Alcazar would be aflame with flowering pomegranates.
Through the open window the sounds of the street came up to him on the tepid air: the tinkle of mule-bells, the cry of a water-seller, the voices and laughter of children, the whirr of a spinning-wheel industriously plied in a doorway across the street.
Disgruntled, he lounged on a day-bed of interlaced leather in that small, low-ceilinged room, from which an alcove containing his bed was shut off by a curtain of faded tapestry.
The furniture was mean and scanty. An oaken table of diminutive conventual design stood in the middle of the bare floor. A rude clothes-press of chestnut-wood was ranged against a wall; a plain, low coffer of the same timber stood beneath the latticed window. A couple of straight chairs, their seats of interlaced leather like the day-bed, completed the mean equipment.
For only adornment of the roughly plastered, whitewashed walls there hung above the day-bed a brass oval set in an eight-pointed star as wide as the length of a man’s hand and as long as it was wide. The oval panel bore a craftily painted picture of Our Lady. Ending at the waist, it was mantled in ultramarine over a rust-coloured corsage; fair-skinned and golden-headed, the face was one of delicately featured youthfulness. It was Colon’s own property, purchased years ago in Italy, as much because of his devotion to the Virgin as for the sake of the feminine sweetness it expressed. It was the work of one Sandro Filipepi, known as Boticelli, who was greatly esteemed in Rome. It had been with Colon ever since on all his travels, and it had looked serenely down upon him at his prayers, even as he hoped that Our Lady, Herself, might look.
With brooding eyes he considered his surroundings, and found them poorly adapted to a man of his ambitions, or to one who moved at ease in Courts. Though, to tell the truth, he was moving less at ease than formerly at the Court of Spain; indeed, since the return to Cordoba he scarcely moved there at all. He had grown conscious that men still nudged one another as he passed, as they had nudged one another on his first appearance eighteen months ago, but with this difference now that the nudges were accompanied by contemptuous smiles. He had wearied of blinding himself to these slights. He had even begun to fear that the control in which he curbed a temper by no means cool might slip from him and betray him into a rashness to justify the malevolence that mocked him. Because of this, and because his fine doublet of russet brocade had worn as threadbare as his patience, he had discontinued a futile attendance at a Court in which the war with the Moors, political chicanery with France, and the spirit of persecution afoot against the Jews left no room for consideration of his lofty enterprise.
Thus in his jaundiced mood he began to think that it was time to make an end. His quarterly stipend had been sent him that morning by Quintanilla, and reckless of the dishonesty of the thought, he was considering buying himself a mule and setting out for France, there to begin again. But who could say that in France a like frustration might not await him? Frustration was his portion. The powers of evil were at work to delude him with hopes before raising obstacles to their fulfilment. Who would care if he went? Probably the Court would not even remark his absence.
There he checked. Two there were, at least, to whom such a step would bring regret: Santangel, who held him in such warm regard, and the Marchioness of Moya. On the thought of the Marchioness he lingered in a day-dream. In what esteem did she hold him? His imagination conjured a vision so vivid as to seem palpable: the languorous smile on the moist red lips, the intent yearning eyes that seemed to look deep into his soul, the noble shape, the white alluring throat. A sensitive, sensuous woman whom he might have taken to be a solace to the loneliness that was inevitable to such a temperament as his. But there were barriers between them; barriers which he might have broken down but for considerations less perhaps of honour than of the master-interest of his existence. A want of circumspection in that quarter might have jeopardized his chances with the Sovereigns. Therefore circumspection he had practised, but in a vain hope, as it now seemed to him.
A step upon the crazy, creaking stairs dispelled her image. It was as if she, herself, had fled in alarm before this intrusion. Someone rapped on his door. Without rising, he bawled a command to enter, and looked over his shoulder to see who came.
In a bound he was on his feet, as the portly figure of Don Luis de Santangel filled the doorway, ushered with obsequious gestures by old Bensabat.
The Chancellor came forward, the door was closed, and the little room seemed rendered more bare and shabby by his presence and the sober richness of his apparel. “You hide yourself, Cristobal,” was his reproachful greeting.
Colon took the proffered hand. “It is more profitable than to display myself for the amusement of apes.”
“Out of humour, eh?” Don Luis tapped Colon’s cheek lightly with two fingers.
“Unreasonably, you’ll say.”
“Oh, reasonably enough. But I bring you news.”
“That the Sovereigns are moving upon Granada, that they have decided to make war on France, that they preside at the battle raged with gold by Abarbanel against the rack and fire of Frey Tomas de Torquemada. I know it all, you see.”
Santangel smiled tolerantly. “There happens to be something more to-day. Your friend, Frey Diego Deza, has come to Court. He asks for you, and he has stormed the Queen on your behalf. He dares, with a Dominican’s audacity, to reproach her for her neglect of you after what she promised. The Moya supported him, and between them they have so shaken her Highness that messengers have gone to Salamanca, to summon the doctors who are to sit in judgment upon your theories. Do I give you news?”
“You announce a miracle. As well as my need to perform one, so as to give sight to souls that are blind.”
“I believe you equal to performing it.” Santangel sat down on the day-bed, leaving Colon standing. “Meanwhile, I’ve said that Deza asks for you. It were ungracious and unwise to neglect so good a friend.”
“I’ve rubbed myself shabby against the doors of antechambers. In a world that values the coat above the man I must go shamed.”
“That is provided for. Bensabat is putting the last stitches in a coat of brocade that every fop will envy you. Never look so fierce. Men speak of you as my friend, and a shabby friend diminishes a man’s own credit. So forgive the liberty.”
“If the coat has been made for me, then, by St. Ferdinand, I’ll pay for it.”
“So you shall if you insist: out of the treasures of the Indies, on your return. God avail me! Can’t your pride accept a gift from an old man that loves you?”
Colon became humble. “I am so much in your debt already.”
“For what, pray? What have you had from me besides faith?”
“If there were nothing else, would that be nothing? Who else has given me as much?”
“I could name one or two. And now there is Diego Deza imperilling his favour on your behalf. The good man does not fight for you alone. A fervent Christian and a Dominican, he is none the less a converso. He looks to this discovery of the Indies and its treasure to stay the present persecution of the Jews.” Between question and assertion he added: “You’ll wait upon him to-morrow at the Alcazar. His effort must not be lost.”
“You urge it out of the same compassion.”
“And you should yield for the same reason if you had no other.”
Colon confessed that he would be not only a curmudgeon but a fool if he did not hasten to return thanks for this rescue from oblivion, and the following morning found him in the halls of the ancient Moorish palace, braving the covert sneers of the courtly throng in a splendour of black and gold that restored him some of his swagger.
Some may have wondered whether they had sneered too soon when they saw him in close and intimate talk with the influential Dominican who was the prince’s tutor.
Diego Deza, a little paunchy man with a brown fringe of hair about his tonsure, and pale short-sighted eyes in a face that was round and red and glossy, went his ways at last, leaving Colon enheartened by assurances that soon now there would be an end to his long season of waiting.
In this good mood the Count of Villamarga found him; a tall sallow gentleman, this, whose black velvet cloak bore in red embroidery the lily-hilted sword of a knight of St. James of Compostella. He had for companion a large florid man, with fair hair and prominent blue eyes, whom he presented as Messer Andrea Rocca, a gentleman in the following of the Venetian Envoy to the Court of Spain, newly arrived in Cordoba.
Colon, caring nothing for either of them and lacking excuse to leave them, was constrained by courtesy to stand and receive their idle chatter. Matters were only half improved when Villamarga, with a lift of the hand to a passing courtier, excused himself.
“Give me leave to say a word to Don Ignacio,” he begged, and was gone.
Alone with Colon, the Venetian became effusive in Italian.
“Our native tongue should better serve between us. Spanish is a language in which I grope a clumsy way.” Under Colon’s haughty stare he laughed. “I hoped that you would remember me, Messer Cristofero. But I see that you do not. Indeed, why should you? My part in the affair was of so little account, whilst you were the hero of it. I speak of the sea-fight at Tunis, ten years ago, when your worthiness’s valour achieved the rout of the Turkish galleys.”
“You were at Tunis?”
Della Rocca sighed and smiled in one. “That you should ask it! I was an officer serving under Captain Lamba, that other great Genoese. I have often thought of you since and wondered how you prospered. Conceive my surprise to see you here. And Villamarga tells me of a great enterprise ahead of you in Spanish service. On my life, I envy those that sail with you. What honour to share the undertaking, and what honour to serve under so great a captain!”
To parry the effusive flattery Colon spoke lightly. “My difficulty is to persuade the world of it.”
“So thinks your modesty, sir. You’ll never lack for followers.”
“I was thinking of ships. They are less easy to come by.”
“Ships?” The Venetian took him by the arm familiarly, and drew him away to the seclusion of a window embrasure. “I understood from Villamarga that the Sovereigns are to provide the ships. But if there is room for any other share in the venture, why, sir, I am not so wealthy but that I should welcome such a chance to increase my possessions, yet wealthy enough to provide one ship. And, like me, there should be many.”
He paused there, his prominent eyes intently questioning. Colon was reminded of Pinzon who, at La Rabida, had made a similar proposal, a proof, indeed, that there were others, as della Rocca said.
His answer now was much what it had been to Pinzon, that this thing could not be undertaken save with the weight and authority of a crown behind it. Before they could carry the discussion further, a blare of trumpets came to herald the arrival of the Sovereigns.
Through the lofty double doors under the cusped Moorish arches at the hall’s end, the royal couple entered, preceded by two chamberlains. King Ferdinand, a rather sombre figure in a dark velvet gown that fell to his heels, a flat cap of black velvet on his fair head, was attended by the tall, elegant figure of the Cardinal of Spain, by the portly Duke of Medina-Sidonia in black, and by the black and white gauntness of Hernando de Talavera. Queen Isabel, sedate and placid, her train borne by a stripling page, with a castle escutcheoned in gold on the breast of his short red doublet, was followed by the Marchioness of Moya and Medina-Sidonia’s deep-bosomed Duchess.
They advanced slowly through the lane that opened before them in the courtier throng, with occasional pauses for a word here or there with one or another of those who made up the attendance.
It fell to Colon, who was not expecting it, to be thus honoured by the Queen.
“Ah, sir navigator, you have been much in our thoughts. You have waited too long, but you may look now to hear from us soon.”
He bowed low. “I kiss your Highness’s feet.”
Under the battery of eyes that were turned upon him as she passed on, he was careful to mask his elation, blessing his brocade and its donor for the figure that he cut.
The bright eyes of the Marchioness of Moya saluted him with a smile as she moved on in the Queen’s wake, whereby the warmth in his breast was so much increased that he wanted to laugh at the sidelong scowl he got from Talavera.
Rocca’s hand was on his arm. The Italian’s voice was sibilant in his ear.
“A word in passing from the Queen, and a smile from the loveliest lady of the Court! Did I not say that you suffer from an excess of modesty?”
Colon, made gay by this fresh ignition of hopes that had been almost spent, laughed lightly. “I suffer from many things, but not from that, as you would say if you knew me better.”
“To know you better, sir, is what I most desire. I shall look for you soon again here.”
And so, with compliments, they parted.