Toward the Setting Sun

by David Boyle

  When Cabot heard that instructions were arriving at the Milanese court to arrest him for debt, he must have despaired. In Milan, he had some kind of future, working on construction projects for Ludovico. He may not have bargained that his creditors in Venice—the former associates behind the English cloth deal that went so wrong—would be so determined. Milan was just too close to Venice. What could he do?

  Cabot chose the small but sophisticated kingdom of Savoy, partly cut off by the Alps, between Italy and France, and ruled at the time by King Charles I—known as “the Warrior”—and then, nominally at least, the hereditary exiled Christian king of Jerusalem.* We have no records of what Cabot did there, or how long he stayed, except that it was probably less than a year. But if he believed the Alps offered some protection, he was mistaken. Soon the news of where he was reached Venice and the letters demanding his arrest began to arrive in Savoy. There was little support he could expect as a newcomer, and once again, it was time for him to leave.

  We do not know when or why his arrangement with the Columbus brothers came to an end. Was it when they failed to engage the Portuguese court in 1484, or when Cabot failed to find the sources of the spice trade in 1485? Whichever, Cabot’s sojourn in Milan and Savoy—so far from the sea—implied that it was indeed over. If it was not, he would have been in Castile or somewhere else where he could have helped the cause. It is possible that he was trying to raise money in both those cities, but he could have made a greater impact in London where Bartholomew Columbus, who knew almost nobody, was still eking out a living among the Genoese. Cabot had connections in London—albeit through his creditors—and he should have been there to help. Instead, he was moving from city to city, dragging his wife and three children along with him.

  Even so, the decision about where to go next seems to have been influenced by his determination to get back into the race. And if it hadn’t been a race before—when he was working with the Columbus family—it was one now that he was working alone. There really was no alternative but to base himself somewhere on the Iberian peninsula, with access to navigators, merchants, and ocean-going investors. So, packing up his family once more and making his way to the coast—probably to Marseilles—he took a small ship down the coast to Valencia, the thriving seaport in Aragon with its plethora of printing presses.

  He chose Valencia because it was the center for the cloth and fur trade in the Mediterranean, which was his primary area of expertise, but also because there were possibilities for other kinds of development. The records of Cabot’s negotiations over a major harbor-building program there implies that he knew a development project was possible, and this kind of contracting seemed a suitable way of making money. It required no investment, used skills that he possessed, and paid a simple salary. Valencia may have been suffering from an outbreak of plague—as he discovered when he arrived sometime in the summer of 1490—but it was reassuringly distant from his creditors, and it was a potential base from which he could plan and equip an enterprise of the Indies all his own.

  II

  “Know then that this opinion is untrue,

  For it is possible to sail on,

  Since the sea everywhere is flat,

  Even though the earth be round of form.”

  LUIGI PULCI, a poet and friend

  of the Vespucci family, 1481

  Going over the accounts for the Popolano from their agent in Seville, Tommaso Caponi, Vespucci realized that there was something missing. There were irregularities everywhere and it was not clear where Caponi’s trade in velvets, satins, damasks, and taffetas for the Popolano ended and his business for other merchants began. Over a period of months, Vespucci asked for documents, but even those did not address his central questions.

  The Popolano were tough about money. They really trusted nobody but him with their business, and they were keen to rid themselves of Caponi altogether. Vespucci struggled with the vague answers he was receiving from Caponi and then suggested Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco consider replacing Caponi with a trader he’d heard of named Gianotto Berardi. “Find out what sort of person he is, and whether, in your opinion, he is trustworthy,” wrote Lorenzo as Vespucci prepared to leave. “If you decide he is, he could replace Tommaso.”

  Vespucci did not go to Seville himself. He was involved in a court action in October 1489 and could not get away, but he was finally able to immerse himself in Caponi’s documents. Double-entry bookkeeping was in its infancy, and most merchants kept what they called a ricordanze, a sort of business diary in which political developments, currency values, and investments were all recorded.* Caponi’s books, such as they were, only confirmed Vespucci’s concerns. Through intermediaries, he made contact with and approved of Berardi, who was just launching into a new business venture in the Canary Islands that dealt in indigo and also in the indigenous population, which had now been reduced to slavery. From then on, Berardi would also be the Popolano’s agent in Seville.

  All his life, Vespucci had dreamed of western exploration, and although he was not actually in Seville, the shadow of Columbus, who often was at that time, selling his remaining books and charts to raise a little money, was beginning to loom over his life. Now at last he was in contact with people who could almost smell the Atlantic, communicating to or about men who were taking practical steps to make the journey. He was now nearly thirty-seven years old. The distant whiff of Seville had got under his skin, and it seemed like the right moment to change his future and go to Seville himself.

  The homes of the two branches of the Medici family have gone down in history for their enlightenment, for the skeptical questioning philosophy they developed, and for the poetry and the extraordinary art they commissioned. They have been praised for their intellectual and prototypical liberalism, the way they fostered a taste for beauty, their satire, and their wisdom. But there was also a Medici dark side, and Vespucci—well acquainted with both Medici households—knew it as well as anybody. Florence was nominally a republic, but in the name of that ideal, the city was actually ruled by an oligarch, who though enlightened was an oligarch nonetheless. He was also one whose hold on the economic future of the city was faltering: Both the Medici bank, and the coffers of the Florentine state, were diminished and in decline. Repeated bad harvests and rumors of wars had taken their toll. Lorenzo may have been magnificent, but he never had the sure instincts his ancestors had for making money.

  Meanwhile, both the bright magnificence and dark underside of Medici Florence were producing personalities who would dazzle their contemporaries, and Vespucci must have known them. One was a young man named Michelangelo Buonarotti. His master Ghirlandaio never recognized his talents, but his friends did, and it was they who arranged for him to work in the gardens of the convent of St. Mark—where Vespucci’s uncle Giorgio kept the library—to help look after the sculptures made by Donatello that had been collected there.

  Under the benevolent eye of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the gardens had become a sculpture school, and it was here that Lorenzo and young Michelangelo came face-to-face for the first time. Discussing the head of a fawn, Lorenzo suggested that it should perhaps lack a few teeth. When the Magnificent found that a skillful cavity had been carved the next time he passed that way, he sensed the genius of whoever had done it and invited Michelangelo to live with him in the Medici palace so he could oversee his progress personally. The fifteen-year-old Michelangelo was given his own room, a black velvet mantle, and some pocket money, and there he wandered through the library, befriending the other members of the wider Medici circle like Ficino and Poliziano.

  The other extraordinary personality was Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican friar whose sermons on the corruption of the church had begun to attract attention in northern Italy—so much attention that Lorenzo the Magnificent had invited him back to Florence. He made the journey on foot, collapsing with exhaustion on the road south.* Savonarola began a new dramatic series of sermons in Florence in August 1490, describing a Roman Catholic Chu
rch corrupt to its very core and Italy as a spiritual wilderness. And, like an Old Testament prophet, he predicted a coming disaster. The sermons immediately began to either inspire or enrage his audiences in almost equal amounts.

  Savonarola

  By the following spring, he was one of the most famous people in Florence. At Easter, the Duomo, the striped cathedral at the heart of the city, was packed to hear him tearing into the morality of the Church—using lines that would a generation later be developed by Martin Luther—and terrifying his congregations with the moral force of his rhetoric. It was said that women in the congregation regularly began to scream and weep. Even the most cynical men began to shiver.

  Steeped in tolerance, and sympathizing with those Platonists around him working for the unity of Christianity and Islam, we can guess Vespucci’s distrust of the religious revival that began to grip his city. His old neighbor Botticelli even began to destroy his pagan paintings. Michelangelo’s elder brother was inspired to become a monk. Even the worldly, but now sick, poet Poliziano was a convert to the cause of purity. Women dressed in white, carrying red crucifixes, and parading through the city weeping for forgiveness became a familiar sight in Florence. This was the summer where the very public effort to build the gigantic Strozzi Palace in the center of the city left heaps of dust and rubble in the surrounding streets, a potent symbol of luxury and waste. But something extraordinary was happening as well, and one look at the papacy was enough to see why. The extremes of corruption suddenly became unbearable to a section of the population, many of whom had benefited the most. They sent their children out on demonstrations to purify the city. They lit bonfires and burned the accoutrements of luxury, Botticelli’s pagan pictures, Leonardo’s musical instruments, and anything else considered sinful.

  But not only was Savonarola predicting the destruction of the current papacy, he was also predicting an imminent end to the Medici rule over supposedly republican Florence. And when the monks of St. Mark’s, which was also home to Vespucci’s uncle Giorgio, elected Savonarola to lead them as prior that summer, he refused to carry out a diplomatic call on Lorenzo the Magnificent. He rose further in people’s estimation, and in the estimation of the Popolano family: Savonarola’s extraordinary rhetoric was also an opportunity to undermine the dictatorship of their Medici cousins. Even Giorgio began to support the friar.

  But Amerigo’s other mentor was fearful about where this religious hysteria would lead. Ever the diplomat, Guido Antonio Vespucci called on Savonarola with four other city leaders and urged him to meet Lorenzo the Magnificent. The new prior was not sympathetic. “You have come to tell me that you have come here on your own initiative,” he said from inside his cell. “You lie. You are here because Lorenzo has sent you here. Go back to him, tell him to comply with the will of God. Tell him he will go and I will remain here in Florence to purify it.”

  Back again in close contact with his brother, Bartholomew Columbus had decided that it was pointless to prolong his stay in London. King Henry VII had not absolutely closed the door on a commission to sail westward, but there was clearly little chance that he would help finance the voyage. Since Africa was recently found to have a southern tip, the Portuguese were unlikely to support an Atlantic voyage, and Columbus had almost given up hope in Castile. That meant going to the only other place with an Atlantic coast: France and the peripatetic court of the young French king Charles VIII.

  Charles was the son of the Spider King. He had inherited the throne six years earlier at the tender age of twelve. He was never strong physically, and he never looked like a king either, any more than his father had. He had bizarrely thick lips; a long, pointed nose, and long, spindly legs. He spoke very slowly and was extremely nearsighted. He was not the first choice of royal sponsor for the enterprise of the Indies, but who else was there?

  So Bartholomew crossed the English Channel, armed with whatever contacts he had managed to broker from the Genoese community in London with the French court. His finesse with the English did not single him out as especially skillful in selling himself. But he made an absolutely vital friend at the French court: the king’s sister. She was in contact with members of the Spinola family, who had an office in London’s Lombard Street where Bartholomew had wandered in search of support, and this was precisely the stroke of luck he needed.

  Anne of Beaujeu was twenty-eight and at the height of her considerable powers. Her husband was officially the regent while her brother was a child, but her father had known that by appointing him, he was actually handing over power to his formidable daughter. She had dark eyes, high intelligence, and the same long Valois nose that dominated her younger brother’s face. She also had enormous experience of the court under her father, and from an early age knew and learned from those who could remember riding into battle with Joan of Arc. She was brilliant at manipulating those who could have become more powerful than she. It was her decision to move the court so often, originally as a way of preempting any attempt by one of the rival factions in the French aristocracy to kidnap Charles while he was young.

  Traveling with the French court was an exhausting business. Every fortnight, when the long procession began to snake its way through the countryside, as many as four thousand members, with their merchants, servants, and horses, went by for a period of hours, watched by cattle, wild boar, and open-mouthed peasants staring from the fields. Also with them was Bartholomew, but in a place of greater honor and safety, with her vast array of dogs and parrots, was Marguerite of Austria, only a child, but betrothed to the young king.

  Bartholomew Columbus was an urban animal: He knew his way around the great ports of Europe—Genoa, Lisbon, and London—but France was his first real brush with rural life, and often it was an impoverished sight. The abandoned farms and churches, the result of the war, that Vespucci had seen ten years earlier were all still in evidence. But a new generation of chateaux was appearing too, built not by the nobles who were usually heavily in debt but by the new merchant classes. Thanks to his years in captivity and his winters in London, Bartholomew was beginning to get used to the perils of the cold in northern Europe. Vast quantities of wood were loaded up and fed into the fires. Too far away from a fire after nightfall in the long winter evenings, huddled in coats and hats, and you were liable to freeze. Too close to the fire and you were liable to fry.

  But despite this discomfort, Bartholomew had managed to entrance the clever Anne of Beaujeu, and so through the summer of 1490 and until the court finally moved to Moulins in the Auvergne for Christmas, Bartholomew was with them and encouraged by her. Anne was immensely strategic, but her grip on power was coming to an end. Charles was almost of age. Eight-year-old Marguerite of Austria was about to be sent home in tears when he decided to marry Anne of Brittany. Not only were Charles’s obsessive sexual conquests becoming more evident, but left to his own devices, that letter to him from the desperate doge of Venice suggesting an invasion of Italy still on his mind, he would choose not a voyage of westward discovery but a perilous military expedition across the Alps.

  As Bartholomew arrived in Moulins, his brother was facing yet another disappointment in Castile. Rousing themselves from their stupor, the Talavera Commision finally gave its verdict. They were aware that Isabella would have liked a more favorable report, but they were too nervous about the consequences of making a mistake. Both Columbus and the court were in Seville for Christmas in 1490, and as Christopher desperately awaited news from Bartholomew he must have begun to fear the worst about his own plans. According to Talavera and his advisers, the enterprise of the Indies was a concoction of “colossal errors.” The commission “judged his promises and offers were impossible and vain and worthy of rejection” and “not a proper object for their royal authority to favor an affair that rested on such weak foundations, and which appeared uncertain and impossible to any educated person, however little learning he might have.”

  That barb about “educated persons” was calculated to go straight to the
heart of Columbus’s insecurities, but the actual decision was worse. The western ocean was infinite and probably unnavigable, they said. If you reached the Antipodes, it would be impossible to get back again. Most of the globe was covered by water, and if there were any unknown lands left undiscovered in the world, they were unlikely to have any value. It was a complete trashing of his plan.*

  But Columbus was left with a glimmer of hope. Isabella refused to reject the idea outright and said it would be reconsidered once Granada was safely in Christian hands. But there was a limit to the length of time Columbus was prepared to wait for Isabella, and the early months of 1491 were spent trying to decide whether he should stay and beg the queen again for an audience or join Bartholomew to close the deal in France. Bartholomew was still moving pointlessly from chateau to chateau with the French court, snatching the very occasional audience with his patron, and made aware by the court gossip of the growing independence of the young king now that the main threat to his power, the pretender to the throne, Louis of Orleans, had been outmaneuvered. It was becoming urgent to make some kind of decision before Anne’s power and influence slipped away. By the summer of 1491, Christopher had decided to concentrate on France and made the grueling journey, mainly on foot—he could no longer afford any other mode of transport—to La Rábida to fetch Diego from the care of the friars, ready to leave Castile for good.

  Once more, Columbus arrived at Huelva and made the exhausting trip up the cliff by foot. For a second time he rang the bell on the door of the friary, penniless and exhausted.

  5

  TRIUMPH AND DISASTER

  “This night of October 11–12 was one big with destiny for the human race, the most momentous ever experienced aboard any ship in any sea.”