The Discoveries of Mrs. Christopher Columbus: His Wife's Version by Paula DiPerna | eBook

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The Discoveries of Mrs. Christopher Columbus

His Wife's Version

By Paula DiPerna

The Permanent Press

CHAPTER 1

The Alien Sea

The cabin boy knocked, and I put my pen and paper away before letting him come in. I hadn't felt the time pass. He gently opened the narrow door, took the one creaking step down carefully, and steadied himself like a supple dancer against the slight lift and fall of the wide and unknown ocean that carried us swiftly away from home.

He reached for the hourglass on the Admiral's table, carefully loosening the leather brace as the last tiny white cascade of sand drizzled from the top chamber to the bottom. We counted on Juan to turn the clocks, so we could compare the hours and the passage of the sun. The thin glass tinkled against the scrolled hardwood dowels meant to protect it, a shapely fragile form housed in what looked like a small Greek temple rattling in the boy's hands, and he glanced at me with the taut, timid face of a young man possibly afraid he had been given too much responsibility. He didn't want to drop the glass, certainly not as I watched. His young lean body shook slightly with the effort of keeping balance against the roll, but he deftly rotated the fragile timepiece and the sand fell anew.

I followed him above deck and into the brilliant sunshine of our third full day at sea.

The Admiral, my husband, talked with Chachu, the boatswain, a wiry swarthy Basque who crouched in the hot afternoon sun replaiting fat gray ropes and neatly coiling them like a snake in a pile.

"He was a good choice, orderly and energetic," the Admiral observed to me, moving out of Chachu's hearing.

"Yes. Lucky for us Pinzon knew him," I answered, speaking of the Captain of our sister ship, Pinta. She was the nimbler, faster vessel, but I regretted mentioning the other captain as soon as I'd done it. Already the Admiral had had to order Pinzon to stay closer so that the three ships could travel shoulder to shoulder. My husband only nodded at the mention of Pinta, raising the collar of his maroon woven shirt as he did against the rising breeze. Though the Admiral was still a young man, his long thick hair had grown pure white, and it billowed in the wind like moving clouds. His glinting blue eyes drifted from mine.

He said nothing before leaving me on the foredeck with Chachu to fill the silence. The boatswain chatted on in his familiar, extravagant way.

"It is possible, I suppose, Madame, that we will sail on and on to nothing, or that great green monsters will rise from the waves and swallow us whole." Chachu gulped on his words, as if he had just seen the very creatures, rasping hot tongues on the horizon. Chachu had tapestry for imagination. But he was right to wonder. We had all heard of the great Sea of Darkness where none had ever sailed, of phantom virgin islands that tease and disappear before all who come too close, of the great wild whirlwinds of water that could suck us to the black bottom of the Ocean Sea. But the Admiral was convinced that valleys of gold lay ahead, a shining world of palaces inlaid with gems.

It was a tempting, magnificent prospect across untouched waters beyond all previously known.

Strangers bound on the same bold adventure, we comprised countless dreams, fears and feelings, and these made the vastness for me as much as the sea surrounding us that takes my eyes as far as they can go.

Here, the only real companion is a clear blue openness. The lodestone of our ship seems to cut azure glass, so luminescent does the water seem.

The Admiral writes down much that happens, as do I, though I haven't told him. My record is my own, to keep note of our impressions on a trip no one has made before, to float a frame on the moving sea of my mind to which random thoughts can cling before drowning, unheard or unshared.

And on a small ship, writing might be my only privacy.

Still, the Santa Maria can at times seem large, as one gradually gets to know its many nooks and corners. Underway, with full white sails against the sky, the emerald cross and herald of the Spanish Sovereigns unfurled and full, we look like a page boy in billowing blousy sleeves moving across a marble blue floor of court.

But at our departure, we had none of this elegance. There was only oppressive windless heat, and so our three ships left Spain pulled away by the ebb tide, our only hope in the dense, unmoving air.

We had all made confession, and attended mass to ask divine protection on our route. A small stone fountain shaped like a scallop shell caught a sparkling spring near the church, and the men filled the last remaining cask for our journey while the sunlight danced on the bubbling holy water. Then the quietude of St. George's gave way to the throngs of local people who stood on the river bank to see us off, cheering and shouting goodbye — goodbyes bequeathed in a touch, a wave, a word, hundreds of goodbyes from hundreds of faces — sailors, families, friends, wives. Could we really be off at last?

Then a man's hand reached above the tumult, and he tossed a single fresh red rose. The Admiral picked it up, somewhat surprised, and passed the flower to me. The people engulfed me in loud approving cheers, "God bless Dona Felipa," which filled my ears and trembled my bones, as if the crowd had climbed inside my body and we were, for one quick second, headed on the discovery as one.

"Long live the Admiral Colon," they shouted again as our tender was rowed out to our ship. Were we mad to leave the safety of this port, the godspeed of so many? Another rose landed in the water alongside us, floating easily, and whole, for awhile. Then the sea peeled the velvet petals loose one by one. Soon, as person after person tossed a flower, the blue sea surface rippled with magenta blossoms and petals, each a tiny fragrant ship, each a token of our leaving.

But the flowers cast to us soon drifted among other travelers, others also putting Spain behind, others setting out not on fantasies to a wide new world, but on shattered hopes to the limitless unknown of exile. Our great moment was not unmarred.

Months ago, the Sovereigns began expelling the Spanish Jews, and by ugly coincidence, the deadline for the departure of all the Jews remaining was the very day we left. Refugees poured into Palos from all over Spain. Around the harbor as we prepared our trip, I had heard that nearly 8,000 families had left in the months following the decree, and that thousands more had continued to be forcibly sent away before the terms of the order had been fully met.

All during our days in Palos, great dirty barges carried away Jews, human beings who, from a distance, looked like piles of ragged cloth. The Crown stripped them of their Spanish citizenship, though many had lived in Spain for several generations. If they would not convert to Christianity, they had to leave.

Some local shipowners raised the price of passage to lurid levels to take advantage of the desperate circumstances. Meanwhile, few Spaniards offered the Jews the true value of their property and belongings and so, having no choice, the Jews were required to leave much behind, or accept a pittance for their wealth. The port of Palos wrung good money from the exodus, the demand for ships and crew much outstripping the supply.

Shortly after our arrival in Palos, I had asked the Admiral about the Jewish question. "Where are they going to go?" I wondered looking from our window as tender after tender rowed the new outcasts to their stinking vessels. "I have no way of knowing that," he replied, adding, "It is partly because of the demands of the Jewish arrangements, I suppose, that the Sovereigns did not pay prompter attention to me. All this has cost us much in time."

It was true that Ferdinand and Isabella had taken little interest in the Enterprise when the Admiral first proposed it. His bitterness laced his words as he said, "We cannot question the Sovereigns, and it is better the Jewish matter is behind us."

"But isn't Luis a Jew?" I asked. The Admiral had hired Luis Torres of Seville as voyage translator.

"Yes, but he has converted," the Admiral justified. "And he speaks Arabic." My husband had his reasons, I assumed, for thinking Arabic could be a useful language on this exploration.

I know the Admiral noticed the degrading state in which the Jews were travelling, for he lowered his eyes as one of their ships passed ours as we sailed away from Spain. We heard sad chants emanating, sung by those whose faces we could not quite make out, their deep voices rumbling like forsaken drums.

Not wishing to spoil the Admiral's greatest moment, I did not insist on the subject. As he says, the Jews, after all, are not our problem, and I had been writing of our leaving.

Our outfitting mission took place in Palos because two of the ships we would use were in port there. Palos had recently tried to shirk taxes by hiding the full value of its merchant income from the Crown. The Sovereigns found out, and fined the village the use of two caravels for one year, plus all food and sundries. These benefits were then assigned to us. Honest citizens had to bear the cost of the crime of their dishonest officials, but perhaps the whole town will gain in the long run from our journey, since a western route to the east would bring the Palos harbor many more years of shipping transactions.

Palos is an alchemist's child — a spicy cauldron of Spain and Africa and Arabia. Vessels of every size bob in the port, with hundreds of deckhands scurrying like insects and hunched under the burden of an infinite list of cargo. I had watched a very young boy balance on his head a wooden crate packed with urns of oil each at least his own height, negotiating the shaky plank walkway with bare feet.

The laden ships voyaged to Guinea, and the equator of Africa, exotic scented lands of a dark and distant continent about which I had been hearing, it seemed, for all my life.

The Admiral had hoped to provision in ten days, but the task in fact consumed ten weeks! True, disarray ruled the port in part because of the Jewish movements, but our greater obstacle was being strangers in the region and unknown to the many people with whom we had to work.

Which is how we came to know Sir Martin Alonso Pinzon, captain of the Pinta, and his younger brother, Vicente Yanez, who is in charge of Nina, the ships provided us in Palos. The Admiral also chartered Santa Maria to be our flagship.

The Pinzon brothers had been in Palos all their lives, and so were familiar to all on the streets and the port. Martin Alonso was a gentleman equal to any adventure, tall in bearing and charming in speech, able to turn a phrase to his advantage and quickly win a listener's goodwill. Pinzon had known my husband for several years and had discussed with him the idea of the Enterprise, although whether the Admiral had confided in Pinzon was not clear to me at the outset of the voyage.

Pinzon, on hearing that the Sovereigns had assented at last to the expedition and that we would leave from Palos, offered to join us and help the Admiral recruit men of good repute.

Pinzon is clearly keenly intelligent but at times enigmatic, even mysterious, though I could not say precisely why. He has very dark brown eyes that fix their subject in a stare, then loosen their hold with a sudden flicker of warmth.

His thick brown hair curls slightly at his collar, and he frequently winds his fingers through his full black beard. The Admiral and I spent hours with Pinzon at the harbor, and he introduced us as his lifelong friends with a major mission ahead. He approached each potential recruit as if the man were a partner already, as if Pinzon's words were the most important being uttered in Palos that day.

Pinzon dispensed compliments like sugar cubes, up and down the quay. "How well you handle that mast hoist, my comrade.... What are you fabricating there, good sailor. ... Meet the Admiral Colon, surely you have heard of him. ... A sailing? Yes. ... Perhaps I could arrange it." In this way, Pinzon spread the word of the Enterprise, and we soon became as recognized on the Palos harbor as if we too had been born there. I wondered if the Admiral disliked the way Pinzon tended to draw attention to himself, for usually it was the Admiral who held center stage. But then, we had little choice if we wanted to be underway.

The Admiral assigned to me the business of securing foodstuffs. The staple was mainly of ship's biscuit, a ground bread of grain, oil and syrup — dull and dry to eat, but nutritious and long lasting. Plus sacks of beans and peas, wine, olive oil, vinegar, plenty of water of course, dried fish, salted meat and pork, live hens and pigs for fresh meat en route, salt, rice, cheese, figs, almonds — oh the list! It was my gathering of these pounds and gallons that led to what I would call the first Pinzon incident.

One morning when the sun was already hot yellow and high at only eight o'clock or so, I visited an oil merchant to sample his stock. The rotund man, not much smaller than the smooth heavy barrels lining his busy shop, amiably greeted me, perhaps knowing already who I was and the significant sale I represented. Tightly slipping sideways between his wares, he cheerfully let me taste from this or that urn. "This one, gracious Madame, will keep its texture even in the great heat of summer," he boasted, passing me a spoonful and holding his palm under my chin as I sipped. The oil indeed tasted lovely, like honey without sweetness.

As I was calculating as best I could how much to order, Chachu the Basque passed the shop, noticed me and came inside to be of help. He had been a member of Santa Maria's original crew before the Admiral obtained her.

Chachu and the merchant worked out a delivery date, but Chachu set the conditions. "The lady will pay you after I have inspected the cargo once it reaches the ships. But don't worry," Chachu reassured the eager dealer, "all the charges are guaranteed payable by the order of the Sovereigns."

"Let me escort you home, my lady," Chachu then offered. A proper Andalusian would never have been so forward, but the more liberal Basque had no qualms. He was always gentlemanly, if somewhat lavish in his gestures, using his hands as much as words to convey his thoughts. "Do you see that wonderfully fertile hill?" he waved and traced the golden landscape across and up over the harbor. "Beyond all that, I was born."

Chachu spoke freely, as if he had always known me. "Frankly, Madame," he confessed, "I had my doubts about this voyage, and I had thought of leaving the Santa Maria to work on one of the Jewish ships." And, he further explained, a Basque to the core, "I didn't want to sail with so many Spaniards." Perhaps he already knew I was Portuguese.

"Well, Chachu," I answered, not taking offense, "how fortunate for us you changed your mind."

"Actually, Madame, it happened by mere coincidence. Just before I was to resign my ship, I spent an evening with some Palos sailors. They told me about Master Pinzon's idea, so I decided to stay, for it isn't every day such an expedition sets out."

I was startled at the words, "Master Pinzon's idea," but I did not interrupt. Chachu admitted that the thought of misty islands to the west en route to Japan appealed to him, as did the promise of an opulent court presided over by the Great Khan himself.

"Who would mind rubies for the picking?," Chachu speculated. "I might someday wish to marry, Madame, or maybe just please myself with the wealth."

He finished his saga by saying it was only the confidence the people of Palos seemed to have in Pinzon which induced him to join us. Then he added in doubtless afterthought of courtesy, "Though I had not heard of the Admiral before, I am sure his reputation must be as distinguished as Pinzon's, perhaps even more so."

He bowed deeply as he left me at my door. I decided to give Pinzon the benefit of the doubt, but what could Chachu have meant with "Pinzon's idea"? I thought perhaps Chachu had merely embellished or misheard, but a subsequent conversation set me wondering again.

One day not long after my talk with Chachu, Pinzon and I stood alone, watching cargo being loaded on to Pinta. Chachu talked gaily with his counterpart, giving sharp-eyed suggestions about the distribution of weight. Pinzon remarked good-naturedly that he envied our ship the services of the Basque.

"Chachu was so eager for the voyage, he barely needed convincing," Pinzon told me offhandedly, adding "He was most impressed with the Admiral's thinking and skill."

This was the opposite of the boatswain's own account. Which version to believe, words changing like quicksilver as they pour from one person to the other on the waterfront, impressions melting into facts.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Discoveries of Mrs. Christopher Columbus by Paula DiPerna. Copyright © 1994 Paula DiPerna. Excerpted by permission of The Permanent Press.
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The Discoveries of Mrs. Christopher Columbus: His Wife's Version

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His Wife's Version

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The Discoveries of Mrs. Christopher Columbus: His Wife's Version

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The Discoveries of Mrs. Christopher Columbus

His Wife's Version

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