Chapter 25 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
TERMS
That summer the great camp in the Vega was consumed by fire. To house his army, King Ferdinand replaced it by a solid city of brick and stone, built in the shape of a cross, which he named Santa Fé. It was to be a symbol to the Moor that Spain was permanently established there.
The siege was sternly pressed, and at last at the New Year King Bobadil rode out to surrender. To receive this the Christian host went out from Santa Fé in glittering splendour, led by the Cardinal of Spain.
On the Feast of the Epiphany the silver cross that had been blessed in Rome rose to replace the fallen crescent on the Colmares Tower, flanked by the royal standards and the banner of Santiago.
With the proud consciousness that ten years of arduous warfare were at last ended and the overthrow of the Moor completed, the last of his jewels incorporated in the Spanish crown, the Sovereigns rode into the Saracen stronghold, so sharply outlined against the mass of the Sierra that sparkled white in the clear January sunshine.
Colon, a morose and weary ghost, came somewhere in the tail of that triumphant train. He was growing shabby again; but it was now from loss of interest in himself; and with it went loss of interest in others. He was no longer eager to rub shoulders with the great, or exalted at finding in their company the place in life that properly belonged to him. The vanities of the world were all that he now discovered in it, and he was liberal only in his scorn of them. In scorn he pondered the occasion of this vast glittering cortège, of which he was so insignificant a fraction. This marching host with waving banners and blaring trumpets celebrated the conquest of a city, culminating the conquest of a little kingdom. A little thing indeed, compared with the conquests Colon could add to the crown of Spain. It moved his contempt to contrast the great exultation of these Sovereigns with the cool apprehensive caution in which they approached an enterprise that would bring them not a city but a world.
Within Granada the Christian host wound its way upwards by a narrow sinuous street, whose white walls, following Arab custom, were broken by no windows, and came at last, by the great sculptured gateway crowned with stone pomegranates, to a broad steep avenue of elms and the tinkle of running water, everywhere decoratively used with such cunning by the Moors. Up this avenue they streamed to the wide terrace, at the foot of which the riders dismounted; and so, between the twin towers that form the Gate of Justice, they entered the fortress-palace of the Alhambra.
The transition from the stern blankness of the embattled red walls to the delicate tracery and marble beauties of the interior was one to dazzle the eye and amaze the spirit. A quadrangle where pillars that seemed too slight and delicate to carry their burden of arches of a tracery fine as lace, enclosed the Court of Myrtles. Clipped, fragrant hedges from which this derived its name flanked a long basin of water that was of the clear colour of the tourmaline. Thence, through the palace, to the Court of Lions and the halls that open from it, all was a splendour of eastern beauty, of colonnades, mosaics, glazed tiles, gilded vaulted ceilings of honeycomb design, marble pavements spread with silken rugs, and walls hung with tapestries from the looms of Persia and Damascus.
Colon passed with the throng into the vast Mexuar Hall, and into the Mosala beyond, where an altar had hurriedly been raised and consecrated, and where as a first act of thanksgiving a High Mass was sung by the Cardinal of Spain. Kneeling there, disregarded and lost in that courtly press, he asked himself if he should yet live to hear a Te Deum intoned in thanksgiving for the conquests which it lay in his power to make. If his hour was ever to come, it was now. If there was any steadfastness in the word of princes, his long waiting should at last be ended.
Coming forth again after Mass into the graceful arcades that surrounded as with a cloister the Court of Lions, he found himself singled out by Doña Beatriz de Bobadilla and her husband.
“You wear too sad a countenance for a day of such rejoicing,” she chided him.
“What would you, madam? Waiting begets weariness, and weariness sadness.”
“But that is over. You have the promise of the Queen, who never broke a promise yet. If you had no other cause to rejoice in the conquest of Granada, you would still have that.”
“Promises are so easily forgotten.”
“Have you so little faith in your friends?”
“I have so few, and to these I fear to become importunate.”
“Us you would offend by such a fear,” Cabrera assured him.
“I hoped he might have guessed it,” laughed the Marchioness. “But here’s another promise for you. The Queen shall see you within the week.”
As she promised, so it fell out. On the following Monday, the fifth day after the entry into Granada, Don Lope Peralta, the Queen’s own alguazil, brought Colon a command to wait upon her Highness.
She received him in the Cuarto Dorado, that rich chamber of the black and gold ceiling that had been a part of the harem of the Moslem Kings. In a tall chair upholstered in red velvet, with a red velvet footstool to her feet, she sat enthroned, attended only by three of her ladies, the Marchioness of Moya, the Duchess of Medina-Sidonia and another.
The interview if brief was fruitful. To his formal assertion that he kissed her feet, she offered him her hand, and as he knelt, she gave him welcome.
“We have kept you waiting long, Master Colon; much longer than was our wish; but at last, now that the war is ended, I can redeem my promise. I have sent for you to assure you of it.”
Under that assurance and her kindly smile, he recovered something of the erstwhile swagger that had lately been eclipsed.
“Ignorance, Highness, has spoken of my project as a dream. But I dare to prophesy more happy success and durable renown for the Sovereigns who undertake this enterprise than ever was obtained by prince the most valorous and fortunate.”
It was as if he expressed his conviction that by comparison with what he went to do, this conquest of Granada which had delayed it, should come to appear a deed of small significance.
“You are of a high confidence,” she told him. “But perhaps no higher than the enterprise demands.”
“Nor higher than its fruits shall warrant,” answered he.
“May it be so for the greater glory of our Faith. To-morrow you shall treat with my agents what is yet to be settled, so that we may launch the undertaking.”
When at last she dismissed him, he went in better heart than he had known for months, finding in the imminence of action an anodyne for his abiding sorrow, a measure of blessed distraction from the tormenting thought of his lost Beatriz. In a lightened mood he returned to Santa Fé and the house of Don Alonso de Quintanilla, where he was again lodged.
To Santa Fé on the morrow came the Court, returning from Granada, and there that evening Colon was waited upon by those agents whom the Queen had mentioned. There were four of them, of whom Quintanilla, as the Chancellor and Accountant-General of Castile, was one. The other three were Hernando de Talavera, who moving from eminence to eminence was now Archbishop of Granada, Don Juan de Fonseca and the Admiral Don Matias de Rezende.
Colon sat down with them at a table in that spacious room, warmed by the fragrant fir-cones that smouldered in a brazier.
Talavera, dutifully representing a still mistrustful and reluctant King, opened the proceedings in a few words of austere and chilly courtesy. Then Rezende, as a man of practical experience in matters of the sea, desired to know what exactly would be Colon’s requirements.
It was Colon’s view that fewer than four ships well-found and well-manned, with a total complement of some two hundred and fifty hands, would hardly meet the needs of the undertaking. Here, at the very outset, he met opposition from Talavera, expressing the parsimonious nature of his master. Rezende, of whom the Archbishop had sought the information, had put the cost of such an expedition at forty to fifty thousand gold florins, whereupon the Archbishop’s long face grew longer.
“Unless you can moderate that demand, sir, I fear that it will defeat your ends. All the world knows that the war has drained the treasury and that at this moment their Highnesses are harassed for supplies.”
Colon was aware of it, just as he was aware of the bitter struggle that was joined between the Inquisition and the Jews. The fiery, fanatical Torquemada was inveighing against the Judaizing practices attributed to the conversos, and clamouring for the wholesale expulsion of the Jews, on the ground that there would be no peace in Spain whilst they abode there. If the Jews were expelled, the property they must leave behind would enormously enrich the treasury, and in the temptation which this must offer the hard-pressed Sovereigns lay the strength of Torquemada. Aware of it, the Jews, championed by Abarbanel and Senior, whose admirable equipment of the army that had conquered Granada alone deserved the gratitude of the Sovereigns, were offering now a gift of thirty thousand ducats to cover the whole cost of the war. The matter hung thus in the balance. Torquemada was yet to make his terrible gesture of hurling the crucifix at the Sovereigns, bidding them sell Him again for thirty thousand pieces as Judas of old had sold Him for thirty. It was still the hope of such conversos as Santangel who stood high in the favour of the Sovereigns that the possibility of great wealth to accrue from Colon’s adventure allied with the gold now offered by the Jews should outweigh the insidious prospect of replenishing the royal coffers by persecutive measures.
Meanwhile, until choice was made between the present alternatives, empty the treasury remained, and the fact must be recognized.
“Upon what equipment may I count, then?” Colon inquired.
Talavera was looking at Rezende, as if referring the matter to him, when Fonseca intervened. “What need to adventure more than one ship?”
It was Colon’s turn to look at Rezende in an appeal made eloquent by a little smile of scorn.
Rezende was prompt to shake his head. “No, no. That is not practical. It is too perilous. Two ships at least, and that is not enough. With three I think that Master Colon might be content.”
“Be it so, then,” Colon agreed, “provided that they are sound vessels and well-found.”
Talavera made a note, and they passed on to ask him if he had considered what recompense he would require for his services. The readiness of his answer showed how well, indeed, he had considered it.
“One-tenth of all gains resulting from my discoveries.”
“One-tenth!” The Archbishop was taken aback, and did not dissemble it. “One-tenth!”
“You expect their Highnesses to be munificent,” sneered Fonseca.
“Is that munificence? If so I’ll be munificent with you. I’ll give you ten maravedis for every hundred that you bring me.”
“There is no parallel,” said Talavera. “In this it is their Highnesses who provide the means.”
“Who adventure their gold,” added Fonseca, “upon a gamble in which you adventure nothing.”
Colon answered him with the utmost mildness. “Only my life, my skill and experience as a navigator, the courage to confront whatever perils may lurk in the unknown, and the idea upon which the whole enterprise is based. That is all that I bring to it, Don Juan. A modest contribution, for which I ask a modest tenth. If in addition I am to bear some part in the cost of equipment, let it be added that I receive an additional share in the same proportion.”
Fonseca’s jaundiced look may have inspired Quintanilla to anticipate him. “In my view, sirs, we might agree to this, subject to approval by their Highnesses.”
“Subject to that,” Fonseca stressed it.
“Very well,” said Talavera. “That, then, I think, will be all.”
“All?” Colon raised his brows. “All?” He looked from one to the other of them, and found their faces blank. “Consider, sirs! That were to treat me as a hireling. This is no more than a beginning, my Lord Archbishop.”
“But what else can there be? What else could you require?”
“The title of Admiral in all the lands I may discover or acquire in the ocean, with the honours and prerogatives enjoyed in his district by the High Admiral of Castile.”
“God save us!” ejaculated Fonseca, whilst the others stared, and none in greater disgust than Don Rodrigo Rezende.
Undeterred Colon went calmly on: “And I shall require this office and honour not only for myself, but for my heirs for ever.”
“What have your heirs to do with it?” asked Quintanilla.
“What any nobleman has to do with a title won by the deeds of a forefather.”
“Again I beg leave to say—there is no parallel,” cried Talavera.
“Of course not,” Fonseca scornfully supported him.
“I’ll make it clearer. My discoveries will be a heritage to Spain forever, and as long as that heritage endures, so long is it just that I should have my portion of its yield. But since I am not immortal, that portion must go to my successors.”
Despite the faultless logic of the claim, it remained in their eyes detestable that a man of obscure and foreign birth should dare to make it.
“To yield you this,” Fonseca objected, “would be to raise you to an eminence as great as was ever filled by any grande of Spain.”
“No grande of Spain has ever so well deserved it.”
“Mother of God! You talk of your discoveries as if they were already made.”
“Surely not. When they are made I shall require something more.”
“More?” Talavera frowned, and Rezende laughed. “What more would be possible?”
“Viceroyalty over all the lands of my discovery, with all a viceroy’s powers of life and death.”
There was a silence of stupefaction, broken at length by Fonseca’s sneer. “I suppose that only modesty prevents you from asking for the crown of Spain?”
Then the Archbishop contented himself with inquiring, on a note of irony: “Have you any further demands, Master Colon?”
“None other occurs to me at present.”
“But you may think of something else when you’ve had time,” gibed Fonseca.
Talavera heaved a sigh. “Let us give thanks that we have reached an end. I will be frank, sir. These demands far exceed anything to which I could recommend their Highnesses to agree. My colleagues here will each use his own discretion as to that. Then it will be for the Sovereigns to pronounce. But I can hold out no hope to you unless you can materially moderate your views.”
The sarcasm of the cold level voice was as a scourge to Colon’s pride. The scorn with which this rigidly upright, but autocratic prelate sought to humble a presumption which he found insufferable, produced in Colon the very opposite effect.
He rose abruptly, and stood straight and tall, looking down his nose at them, proud as Lucifer himself. “By no single jot will I abate my demands. That it should be suggested betrays unfitness to judge the glory of this enterprise. Give me leave, sirs.” With a haughtily careless bow, he turned and stalked out.
He left them in a gaping silence, from which Talavera was the first to recover. “There goes an untamable spirit fed on dreams.”
“A presumptuous, insolent upstart, whose pride is an empty bubble,” was Fonseca’s angry opinion.
“Let us,” Quintanilla gently rebuked the ecclesiastics, “practise a little charity in our judgments.”
Talavera became almost heated. “Charity, sir? Charity does not demand that arrogance be met by meekness, or that we stifle righteous indignation at the pride by which the angels fell.”
“Fortunately,” said Rezende, “our concern is not with casuistry, but with the demands of a man who has a high sense of the value of what he has to sell. That he will not abate the price is what every huckster begins by saying. If their Highnesses refuse to pay it, he may become more reasonable.”
“If?” questioned Talavera, so scandalized that he raised his voice. “The question does not admit of doubt.”
He did not intend that it should; nor yet did Fonseca, however the motives inspiring them might differ.
It was a full week, in the many preoccupations concerned with Granada, to which was added the burning question of the Jews, before the Sovereigns were able to receive the report of the Archbishop and his three colleagues.
Quintanilla, who by his long association with Colon had been brought under the spell of the man’s personality, alone had no arguments to offer. Rezende kept to his tolerant view that the price was one put forward as a basis for negotiation. But Fonseca displayed an acrid, and Talavera a cold, indignation.
“These are his demands,” he said. “It needs not that I indicate their effrontery to your Highnesses.”
Ferdinand laughed the terms to scorn. “A shrewd dog, as I’ve always judged him. He would make sure of a certain gain with nothing to lose if he should fail to make good his boasts.”
But the Queen was thoughtful.
“He may lose his life,” she said, as Colon himself had said. “He may never return from this dark voyage into the unknown.”
“Which is to admit that our support of him is a gamble at a time when we can spare no pieces.”
“We are pledged already to support him.”
“We were. But his exorbitant demands relieve us of the pledge. To me it seems an intervention of Providence.”
“That, Highness, is how I view it,” said Talavera.
“An unfortunate view, I think,” the Queen rebuked them both. “I could never regard Providence as supplying me with a pretext for dishonouring a promise.”
Talavera’s attitude suggested a withdrawing within himself. But Fonseca could not conceal impatience.
“The question, Highness, is not one of dishonouring a promise, but of its being rendered impossible of fulfilment because of the conditions demanded. If this man were to ask for the crown of Spain as his reward, it would hardly be yielded to him because of a promise to support his venture.”
“But he has not asked for the crown of Spain.”
“True,” snapped the King. “And we may marvel at his restraint. For he has only just stopped short of it. He is to be a Viceroy, with all a viceroy’s royal powers. Does our dignity permit us to grant that?”
She sat, chin in hand, considering. Reading hesitation in this, and presuming upon the circumstance that he was now her confessor and ghostly adviser, Talavera struck in to support the King.
“Madam, with no concern but for the honour and dignity of your crown, I declare it my considered view that so to magnify a nameless foreign adventurer would be derogatory to both. This triumph of the cross over the crescent has brought great and well deserved lustre to your reign. Would your Highness imperil that, incur the risk of tarnishing it by the ridicule that would fall upon your credulity if a man so exalted by you were ultimately to fail, as well he may?”
Her brows came together. Her eyes were cold. “Is it possible that you are questioning me?”
He humbled himself before that stern reminder that even a Queen’s confessor is still her subject. “My zeal betrays me, Highness.”
“And not only your zeal. Your very arguments. Are they based on quicksand that they shift so easily? First it is the lack of money, and then it is the honours demanded by this man that supplies a reason for his dismissal.”
The King intervened with laughter. “Nay, madam. You shall not make a whipping-boy of my Lord Archbishop. Those inconsistencies are mine, which he loyally supports, perceiving them to be closely intertwined. This man asks too much. That is to be admitted. Is it dishonest in me to be glad that he does so, since that relieves us of burdens which I cannot think that we are in case to carry?”
She shook her head. “It is a satisfaction that I will not share. The enterprise is a fine and worthy one. If it should succeed it would enable us splendidly to serve God by spreading the True Faith among those who dwell in darkness.”
“If it succeed, madam,” murmured Talavera. “But after all, at present it is but a dream.”
She looked at him with an odd smile. “A dream? So it was said once before, to his face. You were present, my Lord Archbishop. Do you remember the answer that he made? You thought it almost heretical. An illuminating heresy.”
He flushed in silence under her indulgent mockery, and again the King intervened. “Yet the Archbishop is right when he says that if we support Colon, and his dream remains unfulfilled, we are in danger of becoming a laughing-stock to the world.”
“I think this victory over the Moor, ending a struggle that has endured for years, makes us secure from easy ridicule. However,” she turned to those four counsellors, only one of whom had really expressed her own view, “we have heard, I think, all that you can urge, sirs. It will now be for his Highness and me to determine. You have leave to go.”
Their Highnesses were a long time determining. The duel between the Queen’s fidelity to her word and the King’s cautious reluctance was long-drawn. And in all that time Colon continued to cool his heels in Santa Fé, scornful of the rejoicings all around him, wearied by its varied manifestations in which the Court and army took such unrestrained delight.
The early days of February were reached, and the first palpitations of Spring were already stirring in the womb of the Vega before a compromise was reached permitting the Sovereigns to return Colon an answer by Talavera. The Queen, her strength of purpose maintained by her favourite, the Marchioness of Moya, who worked constantly and loyally for Colon, had prevailed to the extent of a counter-proposal being offered.
Colon should have the one-tenth he demanded for his lifetime and the title of Admiral for the expedition. But his interest should perish with him, and no viceroyalty could be conferred, as this would raise a subject too near to the awful dignity of the throne, itself.
This came so near to what Talavera could approve that he was a willing messenger. He stood in Quintanilla’s house, and, tall and gaunt in the black and white monkish garb which he retained in spite of his archiepiscopal dignity, he delivered in his level emotionless voice the royal message.
Colon, standing even taller than the Archbishop, heard him with weary ears, and when he had spoken pondered him with weary eyes. It affronted him that after all this waiting the Sovereigns should send him a message instead of commanding him to audience.
“Is it possible,” he asked, “that your lordship neglected to inform their Highnesses that my demands admitted of no abatement?”
The ghost of a smile fled across the prelate’s thin lips. “Be sure that I informed them.”
“Then, my lord, you need not waste your time in waiting. I have nothing more to say.”
“How, sir?” Talavera was stirred to indignation. “Is that an answer to return to a royal message?”
“You misapprehend me. It is I who have received an answer. I bow to it so completely that I shall be leaving Spain at once.”
Quintanilla, who was present, intervened solicitously. “Never that, Colon. It would ruin you.”
Colon laughed. “Ruin me? Oh no. It is not I who will be ruined; the loss is Spain’s.” He crossed to the door, and held it. “My lord Archbishop, I kiss your hands.”
Talavera started as if he had been prodded. “I am dismissed, then, with no more than that.” He raised his shoulders.
“Take time to think,” Quintanilla begged Colon.
“All eternity could not change me. The man who offers such service as mine does not accept a hireling’s wage.”
Talavera began to move towards the door. “Blessed are the meek,” he said with sarcasm.
“For they shall be trodden underfoot,” Colon completed. “I know.”
Talavera checked, and his eyes kindled. “Blasphemer!”
“Your lordship’s servant.” Still holding the door, Colon inclined his head.
The Archbishop reached the threshold. There he paused, and looked Colon steadily between the eyes. “To so proud a man the opinion of a poor friar can matter little. But I take the view that their Highnesses are to be felicitated upon your refusal.”
“Your lordship does not state it accurately. The refusal is not mine but their Highnesses’.”
“God be with you,” said the Archbishop, passing out.
“God be with your lordship,” answered Colon tartly, to add after the door had closed, “but the devil take you, nevertheless.”
As he came slowly back, Quintanilla’s dark velvety eyes were full of sorrow. “Ah, Colon! To fling all away like this!”
“An incredible folly in their Highnesses.”
“Their folly?” Quintanilla was scandalized. “I speak of yours.”
“You conceive that I have no pride, no sense of what I offer, or of what is due to me. Am I not even worth an audience, that messages are sent to me by a stiff-necked priest, so purblind that he rejoices in my discomfiture?” His passion increased. “If the light of God’s grace endowed me with a vision denied to other men, can the Divine Will suffer it to be frustrated? It would be blasphemy to think it. Be sure that others will profit by the parsimony of the Spanish Sovereigns.”
By this mood he reduced Quintanilla to despair, and then left him, to go in quest of Santangel, and afflict in turn the Chancellor by his woes, and still more by his resolve to depart at once from Spain.
“Your unfaltering goodness to me, Don Luis, is the only happy memory that I carry away.”
“Where will you go?” Santangel asked him.
Out of the depths of his chagrin Colon still reared his head with unabated pride. “To enrich France by the gifts that Spain rejects.”
Santangel paced the luxurious room that was resplendent with the Moorish treasures Granada had yielded him. “This must not be. Can you surrender nothing of your demands?”
“What I offer is worth far more than I have asked. I am refused. So there is nothing now to keep me.”
Santangel came to stand over him where he sat. “And Beatriz?” he asked softly.
The grey eyes clouded. “An added reason for my going.”
“An abandonment of hope.”
“Hopes that remain unfulfilled are better abandoned. They supply only pain.”
“And is there no pain in despair? What else is the abandonment of hope? As long as you are in Spain the chance of finding her again will always exist. You must not go. I will do what I can to induce the Queen to grant you another audience.”
“Have I not had audiences enough? Procrastinations, postponements, slights, juntas to examine and insult me, branding me a mountebank, juntas to arrange conditions, and now, finally, a cold message by an insolent cleric, offering me a journeyman’s wages. That is enough, I think.” He stood up. “I am for Cordoba, to assemble the few rags I left with Bensabat, and then I shall set out for France.”
“Will you wait, at least, until I have seen the Queen?”
Colon shook his head. “Not even your sweet concern can conquer me. I am weary of offering service as one asks for alms.”
There were no arguments to turn him from that proud resolve, and on the morrow he slipped quietly away, Santangel and Quintanilla being the only witnesses of his departure. He was dejected at the end, so dejected that he would stay to take leave of none of the few to whom he owed it, but begged Don Luis to be his deputy with them.
Santangel was brought to the verge of tears as he watched him ride away into the mists of that February morning. Only now, perhaps, in the thought that he was never likely to see him again, did he realize how much that stalwart dreamer had come to count for in his life. This was like parting with a son.
He heaved a grievous sigh. “Poor lad! He deserves better of Fate than this.”
“Perhaps,” said Quintanilla, who was not, himself, unmoved. “But he raises barriers by his intractable pride.”
Santangel turned impatiently. “If we had been vouchsafed his vision it may be that our pride would not be less.”
He went off, taking little heed of the noisy, jostling crowd that thronged this main street of Santa Fé, to convey Colon’s valedictory messages to Cabrera and the Marchioness.
They were breaking their fast when he came upon them in their house, adjacent to that which did duty as a royal palace. Resentment tinctured their concern at the news he brought.
“That he should go without a word to us!” the Marchioness exclaimed.
Santangel excused him. “The poor fellow carries a broken heart under a show of proud confidence. His only allusion to it was when he charged me to tell you that he would not add to his pain by coming to take leave of you.”
“You should not have permitted his departure.”
“I did what I could.”
“He must be brought back,” said Cabrera. “Suppose that France were to profit by our sluggishness.”
The Marchioness rose. “Come with me, Don Luis. We will see the Queen together.”
There was no hour at which the favourite was denied admission, and the Queen received her now in her tiring-room. She was seated before her mirror, two of her ladies in attendance, selecting a jewelled caul for her head from a casket at her elbow, a coffer covered in rose brocade and clamped by bands of gold.
She smiled through the mirror at the Marchioness. “You are early, Beatriz.”
“I kiss your Highness’s hands.” And without preamble she added: “Colon has left Santa Fé. He is going to France.”
The Queen sat thoughtfully frowning for a moment. Then she set down the caul, and slewed herself half round on the stool, so as to face the Marchioness. “Ah! It is hardly what I expected in spite of what the Archbishop told me. A proud, intractable man, I fear.” She sighed. “Still, if that is his decision, he must abide by it.”
“The decision is scarcely his, madam. Rather was it your Highness’s in refusing his conditions.”
“Do you know what his conditions were?”
“I do, madam.”
“And you think we should have accepted them?” The Queen smiled. “I am sorry to deserve your disapproval, Beatriz.”
“Oh, madam!” Doña Beatriz protested, and then added: “But is it wise to allow him to depart? Don Luis is in the antechamber. Will your Highness receive him?”
The Queen reflected a moment. Then, “Why not?” she agreed. “Call him.”
As the Marchioness was obeying, the door leading to the King’s cabinet was pushed open, and Ferdinand, robed to the feet in a furred gown of royal blue, made an appearance that was none too welcome to either of Colon’s sponsors. He checked on the threshold, but the Queen beckoned him forward.
“Come in, sire. Come in and take your share of censure for our treatment of Colon. They tell me that he is leaving Spain, and has already started for France.”
Ferdinand moved slowly forward. “May he prosper there,” was his careless answer.
“If so,” said the Marchioness boldly, “France will prosper with him at the expense of Spain.”
Ferdinand put up his brows, to stare at indignant loveliness. Then he laughed. He almost conveyed that the news put him in a good humour. He fingered the gold chain that hung across his breast. “I rather think that our expense would be to have retained him. And an expense of dignity as well as gold. You look glum, Santangel. You don’t agree, perhaps.”
“Since you ask me, sire, I do not. I should be indifferent to your interest if I could bear to see others profit by the opportunity we neglect.”
The Marchioness came stoutly to support him. “There was the chance of glory and profit such as never yet came the way of any prince in the world.”
“As for glory, we have found all that we need of it here in Granada. The profit will follow. Meanwhile, as you well know, the war has been costly, and we have no money to set upon a gamble.”
“No, no,” the Queen disagreed. “That is not the reason, as I have said before. At least not a reason that would absolve me from my promise.”
“None could suppose it, Highness,” said Don Luis shrewdly. “Sovereigns with the spirit to launch such perilous and glorious enterprises could not be suspected of boggling at one in which the loss would be trifling and the gain might be incalculable. Dare we doubt the gain?”
“There are those who do,” the King reminded him.
“Of course there are,” said the Marchioness. “There are always doubters for everything; timid men who will advance no opinion that might be disproved by the events.”
“And what in any case,” ventured Don Luis, “are the doubts of our doctors worth when set against the word of Toscanelli?” He turned again to the Queen. “Your Highness well knows the fame, the wealth, the credit earned for Portugal by navigators less intrepid. Colon offers your Highnesses the opportunity to surpass all that.”
“We have heard all this before,” said the King.
“And I have weighed it all,” said the Queen. “That is why I deplore Colon’s decision. But the conditions he made are impossible, inadmissible. A man of unknown extraction, he demands honours and dignities which we should be slow to confer upon the noblest of our grandes.”
“Suffer me to ask your Highness,” the Marchioness cut in, “what noblest of your grandes offers such service in return?”
The King, standing now against her Highness’s dressing-table, shook his head, smiling. “That service is still in the realm of dreams.”
“So are the titles he claims,” was the quick answer. “They remain mere shadows until, himself, he supplies a substance for them.”
The Queen’s prominent eyes reflected a sudden illumination. “Why, that suggests a compromise. Let him have the title of Admiral, but only after his discoveries have made good his claims; and let him be our Viceroy, but only when he has added to our dominions the lands over which to execute the office. That is a solution that should content all parties. Whatever happens, none can say that our credulity has been abused by making payment in advance.”
She looked at Ferdinand for confirmation. But his face had darkened. Slowly he wagged his heavy head.
“You forget that the ships will have to be paid for in advance.”
“To that we were already committed.”
He chose to deny it vehemently. “Not I, madam. Not I. I entered into no such commitment. I engaged myself to do no more than consider the proposal. When eventually I yielded to your request that I should sponsor it with you, it was on certain terms. These terms Colon has refused. For me that ends the matter.”
“You have been listening to the Archbishop,” the Queen complained.
“Could you wish me a better counsellor than your own confessor?”
“In matters of the Faith.”
“By St. James, is not this very much a matter of faith?”
“Now you make it a matter for jesting, which does not help me. Does your Highness mean that we should let him go?”
“Or else, as you suggest, let him have his titles of Admiral and Viceroy when he shall have earned them, but with the condition that he, himself, shall find the money for his quest.”
It was an intentionally flippant answer, and she made it plain that it did not please her. “Is that your Highness’s last word?” she asked.
“My very last,” he answered pleasantly.
“So be it,” she said, and sighed. But at once and on a firmer tone she added: “Since that is so, I will, myself, undertake the venture independently, for my own crown of Castile.”
It struck them all silent with astonishment for a moment, and there was almost consternation in Ferdinand’s blank stare. Then the Marchioness broke out on a thrill of enthusiasm: “Madam, the decision will bring you greater honour than has ever been earned by any Queen.”
But Ferdinand was almost sneering.
“And the cost, madam?” he interjected. “How will you provide it?”
She looked at Santangel. “At what do you set the cost, Don Luis?”
“It is no such ruinous matter, when all is said. Colon would be willing at need to sail with no more than two ships. Three thousand crowns should cover such an equipment.”
“That, at least, I can provide.”
She set her hand upon the jewel-casket that stood at her elbow.
“Take these, Don Luis, and pledge them for me for the necessary funds. They should easily yield them.”
“Highness!” Santangel was startled by the proposal, and showed it. Then he made a gesture of deprecation. “There is no need for that. I can advance the money. From the Treasury of Aragon.”
Ferdinand moved violently forward. “Santiago!” he roared. “You can do what?”
Don Luis was calm. “I can advance the money from the Treasury of Aragon,” he repeated, adding: “to be refunded from the first gold or other merchandise that Colon may bring back. Thus he will, himself, in a sense, be providing the funds.”
“In a sense!” Ferdinand was grim. “I am fortunate in my treasurer. A subtle magician in finance, are you not, Santangel? And what if he brings nothing back? What if he never returns at all?”
“I will, myself, stand surety for the money, and refund it in either case.”
His Highness glared at him a moment, still frowning. Then his features relaxed, and he shrugged.
“On my soul, Santangel, I don’t know which to envy more, your wealth or your faith. However, on those terms you may make as free as you please with what’s left of my treasury.”