1492 - Mary Johnston (best novels to read in english txt) 📗
- Author: Mary Johnston
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“All seamen were to be given good pay,” said Sancho. “And if anybody going was in debt, or even if he had done a crime—so that it wasn’t treason or anything the Holy Office handles—he couldn’t be troubled or held back, seeing it was royal errand. That is very convenient for some.”
Pedro lost patience. “You’d make the best of Hell itself!”
“He’d deny,” put in Fernando, “Holy Writ that says there shall be sorrows!”
They embarked upon loud blame of Sancho, instance after instance. At last I cut them across. “What further happened at Palos?”
They put back to that port. “Oh, it didn’t seem so bad that day! One and another thought, `Perhaps I’ll go!’ Him they call The Admiral is a big figure of a man, and of course we that use the sea get to know how a good captain looks. We knew that he had sailed and sailed, and had had his own ship, maybe two or three of them! Then too the Pinzons and the Prior of La Rabida answered for him. A lot of us almost belong to the Pinzons, having signed to fish and voyage for them, and the Prior is a well-liked man. The alcalde folds up the letter as though he were in church, and they all come down the steps and go away to the alcalde’s house which is around the corner. It wasn’t until they were gone that Palos began to ask, `Where were three ships and maybe a hundred and fifty men going?’ “
“We found out next day,” said Fernando. “The tide went out, but it came back bearing the sound of where we were going!”
“Then what happened in Palos?”
“What happened was that they couldn’t get the ships and they couldn’t get the men! Palos wouldn’t listen. It was too wild, what they wanted to do! It wouldn’t listen to the Prior and it wouldn’t listen to Doctor Garcia Fernandez, and it wouldn’t even listen to Captain Martin Alonso Pinzon. And when that happens—! So for a long time there was a kind of angry calm. And then, lo you! we find that they have written to the Queen and the King. There come letters to Palos, and they are harsh ones!”
“I never heard harsher from any King and Queen!” said Fernando.
“There weren’t only the letters, but they’d sent also a great man, Senor Juan de Penelosa, to see that they got obedience. Upshot is we’ve got to go, ships and men, or else be laid by the heels! As for Palos, her old sea privileges would be taken from her, and she couldn’t face that. Get those ships ready and stock them and pipe sailors aboard, or there’d be our kind Queen and King to deal with!”
“Wherever it is, we’re going. Great folk are too tall and broad for us!”
“So there comes another crowd in the square, before the church. Out steps Captain Martin Pinzon, and he cries, `Men of Palos, for all you doubt it, ‘tis a glorious thing that’s doing! Here is the Nina that my brothers and I own. She’s going with Don Cristoval the Admiral, and the men who are bound to me for fishing and voyaging are going, and more than that, there is going Martin Alonso Pinzon, for I’ll ask no man to go where I will not go!’
“Then up beside him starts his brothers Vicente and Francisco, and they say they are going too. Fray Ignatio stands on the church steps and cries that there are idolaters there, and he will go to tell them about our Lord Jesus Christ! Then the alcalde gets up and says that the Sovereigns must be obeyed, and that the Santa Maria and the Pinta shall be made ready. Then the pilots Sancho Ruiz and Pedro Nino and Bartolomeo Roldan push out together and say they’ll go, and others follow, seeing they’ll have to anyhow! So it went that day and the next and the next, until now they’ve pressed all they need. So I say, we are here, brother, flopping in the net!”
“When does he sail?”
“Day after to-morrow, ‘tis said. But we who don’t live in Palos have our orders to be there tonight. Aren’t you going too, mate?”
I answered that I hadn’t thought of it, and immediately, out of the whole, there rose and faced me, “You have thought of it all the time!”
Sancho spoke. “If you’ll go with us to Captain Martin Pinzon, he’ll enter you. He’d like to get another strong man.”
I said, “I don’t know. I’ll have to think of it. Here is Palos, and yonder the headland with La Rabida.”
We entered the town. They would have had me go with them wherever they must report themselves. But I said that I could not then, and at the mouth of their street managed to leave them. I passed through Palos and beyond its western limit came again to that house of the poorest where I had lodged six months before and waking all night had heard the Tinto flowing by like the life of a man. Long ago I had had some training in medicine, and in mind’s medicine, and three years past I had brought a young working man living then in Marchena out of illness and melancholy. His parents dwelled here in this house by the Tinto and they gave me shelter.
RISING at dawn, I walked to the sea and along it until I came at last to those dunes beneath which I had stretched myself that day of grayness. Now it was deep summer, blue and gold, and the air all balm and caressing. The evening before I had seen the three ships where they rode in river mouth. They were caravels, and only the Santa Maria, the largest, was fully decked. Small craft with which to find India, over a road of a thousand leagues —or no road, for road means that men have toiled there and traveled there—no road, but a wilderness plain, a water desert! The Arabians say that Jinn and Afrits live in the desert away from the caravans. If you go that way you meet fearful things and never come forth again. The Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina. The Santa Maria could be Master Christopherus’s ship. Bright point that was his banner could be made out at the fore.
Palos waterside, in a red-filtered dusk, had been a noisy place, but the noise did not ring genially. I gathered that this small port was more largely in the mood of Pedro and Fernando than in that of Sancho. It looked frightened and it looked sullen and it looked angry.
The old woman by the Tinto talked garrulously. Thankful was she that her son Miguel dwelled ten leagues away! Else surely they would have taken him, as they were taking this one’s son and that one’s son! To hear her you would think of an ogre—of Polyphemus in the cave—reaching out fatal hand for this or that fattened body. Nothing then, she said, to do but to pinch and save so that one might pay the priest for masses! She told me with great eyes that a hundred leagues west of Canaries one came to a sea forest where all the trees were made of water growing up high and spreading out like branches and leaves, and that this forest was filled with sea wolves and serpents and strange beasts all made of sea water, but they could sting and rend a man very ghastly. After that you came to sirens that you could not help leaping to meet, but they put lips to men’s breasts and sucked out the life. Then if the wind drove you south, you smelled smoke and at night saw flames, and if you could not get the ship about—
In mid-afternoon I left the sands and took the road to La Rabida. By the walled vineyard that climbs the hill I was met by three mounted men coming from the monastery. The first was Don Juan de Penelosa, the second was the Prior of La Rabida, the third was the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea.
Fray Juan Perez first saw me clearly, drawn up by wall. He had been quoting Latin and he broke at Dominus et magister. The Admiral turned gray eyes upon me. I saw his mind working. He said, “The road to Cordova—Welcome, Juan Lepe!”
“Welcome, Excellency!”
I gave him the name, seeing him for a moment somewhat whimsically as Viceroy of conquered great India of the elephants and the temples filled with bells. His face lighted. He looked at me, and I knew again that he liked me. I liked him.
My kinsman the Prior had started to speak to me, but then had shot a look at Juan de Penelosa and refrained. The Queen’s officer spoke, “Why, here’s another strong fellow, not so tall as some but powerfully knit! Are you used to the sea?”
I answered that I had been upon a Marseilles bark that was wrecked off Almeria, and that I had walked from San Lucar. He asked my name and I gave it. “Juan Lepe.” I attach you then, Juan Lepe, for the service of the Queen! Behold your admiral, Don Cristoval Colon! His ships are the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina, his destination the glorious finding of the Indies and Cipango where the poorest man drinks from a golden cup! Princes, I fancy, drink from hollowed emeralds! You will sail to-morrow at dawn. In which ship shall we put him, Senor?”
“In the Santa Maria,” answered the Admiral.
So short as that was it done! And yet—and yet—it had been doing for a long time, for how long a time I have no way of measuring!
Juan de Penelosa continued to speak: “Follow us into Palos where Sebastian Jaurez will give you wine and a piece of money. Thence you will go to church where indeed we are bound, all who sail being gathered there for general confession and absolution. This voyage begins Christianly!”
Said Fray Juan Perez, “Not to do that, Juan Lepe, were to cry aloud for another shipwreck!”
He used the tone of priest, thrusting in speech as priests often do, where there is no especial need of speech. But I understood that that was a mask, and could read kinsmanly anxiety in a good man’s heart. I said, “I will find Sebastian Jaurez, and I will go to church, Senors. A ship is a ship, and a voyage a voyage!”
“This, Juan Lepe,” said the Admiral in that peculiarly warm and thrilling voice of his, “is such a voyage as you have never been!”
I made reply, “So be it! I would have every voyage greater than the last.” And as they put their steeds into motion, walked behind them downhill and over sandy ways into Palos. There I found Sebastian Jaurez who signed me in. I put into my pocket the coin he gave me and drank with him a stoup of wine, and then I went to church.
It was a great shadowy church and I found it full. Jaurez piloted me to where just under pulpit were ranged my fellow mariners, a hundred plain sailormen, no great number with which to widen the world! A score or so of better station were grouped at the head of these, and in front of all stood Christopherus Columbus. I saw again Martin Alonso Pinzon who had entered the Prior’s room at La Rabida, and with him
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