Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

The Governor


There was only one time when Columbus despaired of making his voyage. It was the night of August 23, in the port of Las Palmas on Grand Canary Island.
After so many years of struggle, his three caravels had finally set sail from Palos, only to run into trouble almost at once. After so many priests and gentlemen in the courts of Spain and Portugal had smiled at him and then tried to destroy him behind his back, Columbus found it hard to believe that it wasn’t sabotage when the rudder of the Pinta came loose and nearly broke. After all, Quintero, the owner of the Pinta, was so nervous about having his little ship go out on such a voyage that he had signed on as a common seaman, just to keep an eye on his property. And Pinzon told him privately that he had seen a group of men gathered at the stern of the Pinta just as they were setting sail. Pinzon fixed the rudder himself, at sea, but the next day it broke again. Pinta was furious, but he vowed to Columbus that the Pinta would meet him at Las Palmas within days.
So confident was Columbus of Pinzon’s ability and commitment to the voyage that he gave no more thought to the Pinta. He sailed with the Santa Maria and the Nina to the island of Gomera, where Beatrice de Bobadilla was governor. It was a meeting he had long looked forward to, a chance to celebrate his triumph over the court of Spain with one who had made it plain she longed for his success. But Lady Beatrice was not at home. And as he waited, day after day, he had to endure two intolerable things.
The first consisted of having to listen politely to thepetty gentlemen of Beatrice’s little court, who kept telling him the most appalling lies about how on certain bright days, from the island of Ferro, westernmost of the Canaries, one could see a faint image of a blue island on the western horizon—as if plenty of ships had not already sailed that far west! But Columbus had grown skilled at smiling and nodding at the most outrageous stupidity. One did not survive at court without that particular skill, and Columbus had weathered not only the wandering courts of Ferdinand and Isabella, but also the more settled and deeply arrogant court of John of Portugal. And after waiting decades to win the ships and men and supplies and, above all, the permission to make this voyage, he could endure a few more days of conversation with stupid gentlemen. Though he sometimes had to grind his teeth not to point out how utterly useless they must be in the eyes of God and everyone else, if they could find nothing better to do with their lives than wait about in the court of the governor of Gomera when she was not even at home. No doubt they amused Beatrice—she had shown a keen appreciation of the worthlessness of most men of the knightly class when she conversed with Columbus at the royal court at Santa Fé. No doubt she skewered them constantly with ironic barbs which they did not realize were ironic.
More intolerable by far was the silence from Las Palmas. He had left men there with instructions to tell him as soon as Pinzon managed to bring the Pinta into port. But no word came, day after day, as the stupidity of the courtiers became more insufferable, until finally he refused to tolerate either of the intolerables a moment longer. Bidding a grateful adis to the gentlemen of Gomera, he set sail for Las Palmas himself, only to find when he arrived on the twenty-third of August that the Pinta was still not there.
The worst possibilities immediately came to mind. The saboteurs were so grimly determined not to complete the voyage that there had been a mutiny, or they had somehow persuaded Pinzon to turn around and sail for Spain. Or they were adrift in the currents of the Atlantic, getting swept to some unnameable destination. Or pirates had taken them—or the Portuguese, who might have thought they were part of some foolish Spanish effort to poach on their private preserve along the coasts of Africa. Or Pinzon, who clearly thought himself better suited to lead the expedition than Columbus himself—though he would never have been able to win royal sponsorship for such an expedition, having neither the education, the manners, nor the patience that it had required—might have had the foolish notion of sailing on ahead, reaching the Indies before Columbus.
All of these were possible, and from one moment to the next each seemed likely. Columbus withdrew from human company that night and threw himself to his knees—not for the first time, but never before with such anger at the Almighty. “I have done all you set for me to do,” he said, “I have pushed and pleaded, and never once have you given me the slightest encouragement, even in the darkest times. Yet my trust never failed, and at last I got the expedition on the exact terms that were required. We set sail. My plan was good. The season was right. The crew is skilled even if they think themselves better sailors than their commander. All I needed now, all that I needed, after everything I’ve endured till now, was for something to go right.”
Was this too bold a thing for him to say to the Lord? Probably. But Columbus had spoken boldly to powerful men before, and so the words spilled easily from his heart to flow from his tongue. God could strike him down for it if he wanted—Columbus had put himself in God’s hands years before, and he was weary.
“Was that too much for you, most gracious Lord? Did you have to take away my third ship? My best sailor? Did you even have to deprive me of the kindness of Lady Beatrice? It is obvious that I have not found favor in your eyes, O Lord, and therefore I urge you to find somebody else. Strike me dead if you want, it could hardly be worse than killing me by inches, which seems to be your plan at this moment. I’ll tell you what. I will stay in your service for one more day. Send me the Pinta or show me what else you want me to do, but I swear by your most holy and terrible name, I will not sail on such a voyage with fewer than three ships, well equipped and fully crewed. I’ve become an old man in your service, and as of tomorrow night, I intend to resign and live on whatever pension you see fit to provide me with.” Then he crossed himself. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Having finished this most impious and offensive prayer, Columbus could not sleep until at last, no less angry than before, he flung himself out of bed and knelt again.
“Nevertheless thy will not mine be done!” he said furiously. Then he climbed back into bed and promptly fell asleep.
The next morning the Pinta limped into port. Columbus took it as the final confirmation that God really was still interested in the success of this voyage. Very well, thought Columbus. You didn’t strike me dead for my disrespect, Lord; instead you sent me the Pinta. Therefore I will prove to you that I am still your loyal servant.
He did it by working half the citizens of Las Palmas, or so it seemed, into a frenzy. The port had plenty of carpenters and caulkers, smiths and cordwainers and sailmakers, and it seemed that all of them were pressed into service on the Pinta. Pinzon was full of defiant apologies—they had been adrift for nearly two weeks before he was finally able, by brilliant seamanship, to bring the Pinta into exactly the port he had promised. Columbus was still suspicious, but didn’t show it. Whatever the truth was, Pinzn was here now, and so was the Pinta, complete with a rather sullen Quintero. That was good enough for Columbus.
And as long as he had the attention of the shipworkers of Las Palmas, he finally bullied Juan Nio, the owner of the Nia, into changing from his triangular sails to the same square rigging as the other caravels, so they’d all be catching the same winds and, God willing, sailing together to the court of the great Khan of China.
It took only a week to have all three ships in better shape than they had been in upon leaving Palos, and this time there were no unfortunate failures of vital equipment. If there had been saboteurs before, they were no doubt sobered by the fact that both Columbus and Pinzon seemed determined to sail on at all costs—not to mention the fact that now if the expedition failed, they might end up stranded on the Canary Islands, with little prospect of returning anytime soon to Palos.
And so gracious was God in answering Columbus’s impudent prayer that when at last he sailed into Gomera for the final resupply of his ships, the banner of the governor was flying above the battlements of the castle of San Sebastián.
Any fears he might have had that Beatrice de Bobadilla no longer held him in high esteem were removed at once. When he was announced, she immediately dismissed all the other gentlemen who had so condescended to Columbus the week before. “Cristobal, my brother, my friend!” she cried. When he had kissed her hand she led him from the court to a garden, where they sat in the shade of a tree and he told her of all that had transpired since they last met at Santa Fé.
She listened, rapt, asking intelligent questions and laughing at his tales of the hideous interference the king had visited upon Columbus almost as soon as he had signed the capitulations. “Instead of paying for three caravels, he dredged up some ancient offense that the city of Palos had committed—smuggling, no doubt—”
“The primary industry of Palos for many years, I’m told,” said Beatrice.
“And as their punishment, he required them to pay a fine of exactly two caravels.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t make them pay for all three,” said Beatrice. “He’s a hard loaf, dear old Ferdinand. But he did pay for a war without going bankrupt. And he has just expelled the Jews, so it isn’t as if he has anybody to borrow from.”
“The irony is that seven years ago, the Duke of Sidonia would have bought me three caravels from Palos out of his own treasury, if the crown had not refused him permission.”
“Dear old Enrique—he’s always had far more money than the crown, and he just can’t understand why that doesn’t make him more powerful than they are.”
“Anyway, you can imagine how glad they were to see me in Palos. And then, to make sure both cheeks were well slapped, he issued a proclamation that any man who agreed to join my expedition would win a suspension of any civil and criminal actions pending against him.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. You can imagine what that did to the real sailors of Palos. They weren’t going to sail with a bunch of criminals and debtors—or run the risk of people thinking that they had needed such a pardon.”
“His Majesty no doubt imagined that it would take such an incentive to persuade anyone to sail with you on your mad adventure.”
“Yes, well, his ‘help’ nearly killed the expedition from the start.”
“So—how many felons and paupers are there in your crew?”
“None, or at least none that we know of. Thank God for Martin Pinzon.”
“Oh, yes, a man of legend.”
“You know of him?”
“All the sailors’ lore comes to the Canaries. We live by the sea.”
“He caught the vision of the thing. But once he noised it about that he was going, we started to get recruits. And it was his friends who ended up risking their caravels on the voyage.”
“Not free of charge, of course.”
“They hope to be rich, at least by their standards.”
“As you hope to be rich by yours.”
“No, my lady. I hope to be rich by your standards.”
She laughed and touched his arm. “Cristobal, how good it is to see you again. How glad I am that God chose you to be his champion in this war against the Ocean Sea and the court of Spain.”
Her remark was light, but it touched on a matter quite tender: She was the only one who knew that he had undertaken his voyage at the command of God. The priests of Salamanca thought him a fool, but if he had ever breathed a word of his belief in God’s having spoken to him, they would have branded him a heretic and that would have brought an end to more than Columbus’s plan for an expedition to the Indies. He had not meant to tell her, either; he had not meant to tell anyone, had not even told his brother Bartholomew, nor his wife Felipa before she died, nor even Father Perez at La Rábida. Yet after only an hour in the company of Lady Beatrice, he had told her. Not all, of course. But that God had chosen him, had commanded him to make this voyage, he told her that much.
Why had he told her? Perhaps because he knew implicitly that he could trust her with his life. Or perhaps because she looked at him with such piercing intelligence that he knew that no other explanation than the truth would convince her. Even so, he had not told her the half of it, for even she would have thought him mad.
And she did not think him mad, or if she did, she must have some special love of madmen. A love that continued even now, to a degree beyond his hopes. “Stay the night with me, my Cristobal,” she said.
“My lady,” he answered, unsure if he had heard aright.
“You lived with a common woman named Beatrice in Cordoba. She had your child. You can’t pretend to be living a monkish life.”
“I seem doomed to fall under the spell of ladies named Beatrice. And none of them has been, by any stretch of the imagination, a common woman.”
Lady Beatrice laughed lightly. “You managed to compliment your old lover and one who would be your new one, both at once. No wonder you were able to win your way past the priests and scholars. I daresay Queen Isabella fell in love with your red hair and the fire in your eyes, just as I did.”
“More grey in the hair than red, I fear.”
“Hardly any,” she answered.
“My lady,” he said, “it was your friendship I prayed for when I came to Gomera. I did not dare to dream of more.”
“Are you beginning a long and gracefully convoluted speech that will, in the end, decline my carnal invitation?”
“Ah, Lady Beatrice, no decline, but perhaps postpone?”
She reached out, leaned forward, touched his cheek. “You’re not a very handsome man, you know, Cristobal.”
“That has always been my opinion as well,” he answered.
“And yet one can’t take one’s eyes from you. Nor can one purge one’s thoughts of you when you’re gone. I’m a widow, and you’re a widower. God saw fit to remove our spouses from the torments of this world. Must we also be tormented by unfulfilled desires?”
“My lady, the scandal. If I stayed the night.”
“Oh, is that all? Then leave before midnight. I’ll let you over the parapet by a silken rope.
“God has answered my prayers,” he said to her.
“As well he should, since you were on his mission.”
“I dare not sin and lose his favor now.”
“I knew I should have seduced you back in Santa Fé.”
“And there’s this, my lady. When I return, successful, from this great enterprise, then I’ll not be a commoner, whose only touch of gentility is by his marriage into a not-quite-noble family of Madeira. I’ll be Viceroy. I’ll be Admiral of the Ocean Sea.” He grinned. “You see, I took your advice and got it all in writing in advance.”
“Well, Viceroy indeed! I doubt you’ll waste a glance on a mere governor of a far-off island.”
“Ah, no, Lady. I’ll be Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and as I contemplate my realm—”
“Like Poseidon, ruler over all the shores that are touched by the waves of the sea—”
“I will find no more treasured crown than this island of Gomera, and no more lovely jewel in that crown than the fair Beatrice.”
“You’ve been at court too long. You make your compliments sound rehearsed.”
“Of course I’ve rehearsed it, over and over, the whole week I waited here in torment for your return.”
“For the Pinta’s return, you mean.”
“Both were late. Your rudder, however, was undamaged.”
Her face reddened, and then she laughed.
“You complained that my compliments were too courtly. I thought you might appreciate a tavern compliment.”
“Is that what that was? Do strumpets sleep with men for free if they say such pretty things?”
“Not strumpets, Lady. Such poetry is not for those who can be had for mere money.”
“Poetry?”
“Thou art my caravel, with sails full-winded—”
“Watch your nautical references, my friend.”
“Sails full-winded, and the bright red banners of thy lips dancing as thou speakest.”
“You’re very good at this. Or are you not making it up as you go along?”
“Making it all up. Ah, thy breath is the blessed wind that sailors pray for, and the sight of thy rudder leaves this poor sailor fullmasted—”
She slapped his face, but it wasn’t meant to hurt.
“I take it my poetry is a failure.”
“Kiss me, Cristobal. I believe in your mission, but if you never return I want at least your kiss to remember you by.”
So he kissed her, and again. But then he took his leave of her, and returned to the last preparations for his voyage. It was God’s work now; when it was done, then it was time to collect the worldly rewards. Though who was to say that she was not, after all, a reward from heaven? It was God, after all, who had made a widow of her, and perhaps God also who made her, against all probability, love this son of a Genovese weaver.
He saw her, or thought he saw her—and who else could it have been?—waving a scarlet handkerchief as if it were a banner from the parapet of the castle as his caravels at last set forth. He raised his hand in a salute to her, and then turned his face westward. He would not look again to the east, to Europe, to home, not until he had achieved what God had sent him to do. The last of the obstacles was past now, surely. Ten days’ sailing and he would step ashore in Cathay or India, the Spice Islands or in Cipangu. Nothing could stop him now, for God was with him, as he had been with him since that day on the beach when God appeared to him and told him to forget his dreams of a crusade. “I have a greater work for you,” God said then, and now Columbus was near the culmination of that work. It filled him like wine, it filled him like light, it filled him like the wind in the sails over his head.

Copyright ©1996 by Orson Scott Card

Excerpted from

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
by Orson Scott Card
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