Chapter 37 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
THE ZENITH
It was over at last.
The great reception had reached its climax in that Te Deum, which addressing men’s words to God had served to focus their thoughts still more closely upon Colon.
After that the Admiral had been held a while in intimate talk by his grateful Sovereigns, friendly, intoxicatingly familiar talk which seemed to place all the resources of Castile and Aragon at his disposal.
Prince Juan was with them, and with Prince Juan was little Diego who, emboldened by his father’s manifest eminence, stood close, holding his hand even whilst Colon conversed with the Sovereigns. Then others had come with friendly greetings for the man whom their Highnesses honoured: that greatest of Spanish nobles, Mendoza, the Cardinal of Spain; Hernando de Talavera, Archbishop of Granada, ascetically formal, yet with compliments enough to make amends for past mistrust; the bluff Admiral Don Matias Rezende, frankly to confess the dullness of his sometime scepticism; and many others who when he was last at Court had looked askance at him. Of these were not, at least, Cabrera and his handsome wife. In felicitating Colon they could felicitate themselves upon a faith that had never wavered.
The Marchioness, with a warm pressure of her jewelled hand upon his arm, enveloped him in the affectionate regard of those languorous eyes that once had played such havoc with his senses.
“In justifying yourself you have justified us, Cristobal. So to us belongs a little of the satisfaction that must be yours.”
Cabrera’s yellow goat’s eyes twinkled at him. “Beware of her. Before all’s done she will claim a share in the discovery of the Indies.”
“She will thus claim no more than is her own,” Colon acknowledged. “Is she not the discoverer of the discoverer?”
The pressure upon his arm increased. “That is generous. Too generous. But I did what I could.”
“And here are the golden fruits of it,” said he.
Later, however, and to Santangel alone, he was to allude to those fruits in very different terms.
He was regally lodged and served in the palace itself, and in those apartments, aglow with splendid tapestries and carpets from Persian looms, he sat that evening with the old Chancellor who was indulging a limitless joy in the occasion.
“You know the faith I had in you, my son,” he was repeating. “But what you have accomplished goes far beyond all that I could have believed, and, I dare swear, beyond all that you expected yourself.”
Colon laughed freely. His mantle of magnificence was cast aside, and in this intimate hour he used Don Luis with the simple frankness that true affection prompts. “It is that and more. Fortune has been bountiful to me beyond my deserts, and, between ourselves, beyond my knowledge. May I die if even now I know what I have discovered.”
“One thing you know, at least,” Don Luis fondly approved him. “You know how to carry the burden of greatness. It asks a natural nobility.” He grew thoughtful. “You will meet envy and malice. They may be very active against you. But I believe that you are of a stature to confront them calmly and defeat them.”
“Bah! What do they matter? Whatever other things may be in store for me, of those I can be certain. But they shall not fret me.”
Yet as he spoke his tone became so heavy and sombre that Don Luis, who was pacing the chamber, paused to look at him. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees, staring gloomily at nothing.
Reaction was descending upon him. From the zenith to which it had that day been lifted by the enthusiasms of which he had found himself the object, the pendulum-swing of human emotion was now approaching the nadir.
“Why, Cristobal, what ails you now? What are your thoughts?”
Colon stirred. He smiled wistfully. “What would you? I have permitted myself to get drunk on the wine of adulation. It’s a draught for which I have thirsted, and the intoxication of it has been falsifying my outlook, magnifying the mean, glorifying the worthless. As the fumes pass off, vision becomes truer. That is what ails me, Don Luis.”
The Chancellor blew out his cheeks and made eyes of astonishment. “Now here’s stark ingratitude! Caressed by princes, with everything at your command, money, ships, friends, the service of all men, and, faith, the smiles of all women, and you find grounds for repining! You are voracious if you are not satisfied.”
“In other circumstances I should be surfeited. But of what avail all this when a man is . . . lonely?”
“Lonely! At such a time?”
“Aye, lonely. To sustain me out there in the perils of the ocean, to add to the glamour of my discoveries, there was the conviction that whilst I toiled afar, your search at home would not fail.”
“Beatriz?” Don Luis interjected.
Colon nodded. “Your letters at Seville crushed that hope. Pride and gratified vanity have sustained me, intoxicated me, and momentarily dulled the pain.” He rose. “Oh, it was a fine thing to be acclaimed wherever I passed, to hold the Sovereigns spellbound by the magic of my tale to-day, to lay my trophies at their feet, to know that I was dazzling a world by the marvel of my achievement. I was dazzled, myself, by the reflection of the wonder that I caused. But now, now that I am, as it were, alone with myself, I ache to think how poor a thing it all is compared with what it might be if I could lay it at the feet of my Beatriz. Without her, my glory becomes a handful of ashes.”
“She means as much to you as that!” Santangel’s eyes were compassionate.
“Just so much.”
The Chancellor came and set a hand upon his shoulder. “But why despair? The search goes on. Somewhere in Spain she must be, and sooner or later she will be found.”
“Somewhere in Spain? Why? The world is wide. She has been abroad before. Why should she not be abroad again, now that there is nothing to hold her here? Does she even live? And if she does, how does she live? Do you conceive the torture of that question to a lover? Without resources, to what shifts may she not have been driven; and by me, by my so ready unfaith.” For an instant he sank his face into his hands. “The horror of it! Who will assure me that she is not dead, or that living she would not be better dead? Will you still wonder that when the incense of adulation ceases to drug my senses, I count my gains cheap when set against my loss?”
“Courage, my son! Courage!” Santangel admonished him. “You torment yourself with imagined fears. You have no evidence of all this. Continue to have faith that Beatriz will be found.”
He had courage enough at least to let none but Santangel suspect the cankering pain that marred his triumph. In the days that followed he divided his time between the honours continually offered him and the society of his little son, in whose gentle, pious, affectionate nature he found a measure of solace for his unsuspected loneliness amid so much adulatory companionship.
He was much in the company of the Sovereigns in those Barcelona days and the object of their flattering affection. A grant of arms was made to him, in which the Lion of Aragon and the Castle of Castile were quartered with the device of his own choosing, a grant this to dismay some of the proudest of Spain’s stiff-necked hidalguia.
Often he was seen riding through the streets at the King’s side, with Prince Juan commonly on his other flank, and acclamations arose wherever he passed. The great Mendoza, the Spanish Primate, the very Pope of Spain and popularly known as the Third King, gave a banquet in his honour, attended, whether they liked it or not, by all that were noblest in the realms. The Marchioness of Moya sat on his right and flattered him by an engaging solicitude that defied evil tongues. His response was a model of courtliness. His esteem for her was deep and sincere, but gone was the magic of her glance to disturb his pulses or the white curves of her breast to quicken the flow of his blood. That power belonged now only to a ghost.
In attendance upon the Queen, the Marchioness was often present, too, during the long hours he spent closeted with the Sovereigns, when plans were laid for the discovery of those farther lands to be included in the great empire he bestowed upon Spain. Details of their colonization were discussed, and details of the great armament preparing at Seville; no little penurious matter this, of two or three small caravels, but a mighty fleet, of twenty or more ships, that should carry a thousand men to the New World.
There came a day when Santangel was called in to discuss the financial arrangements. The discussion was interrupted, to the great vexation of the Sovereigns, by urgent matters concerned with the Fueros of Aragon demanding King Ferdinand’s instant attention.
“You may leave me to continue the arrangements,” said the eager Queen out of her reluctance to postpone them.
“By your leave, Madam,” his Highness pleaded, “let me beg you to suspend until I can again be present. Take pity on my interest.”
Her amiability would not deny him. “As your Highness pleases. At noon to-morrow, then, Don Cristobal. And you shall stay to dine with us.”
Ferdinand smiled, well pleased. “That will be excellent. You are gracious, Madam. Until to-morrow at noon, Don Cristobal.”
Colon bowed. “I kiss your Highnesses’ feet.”