It was there that he saw Felipa, or rather made sure that she saw him. He had made discreet inquiries about several young ladies, and learned much that was promising about her. Her father, Governor Perestrello, had been a man of some distinction and influence, with a tenuous claim on nobility that no one contested during his lifetime because he had been one of the young seafarers trained by Prince Henry the Navigator and had taken part with distinction in the conquest of Madeira. As a reward, he had been made governor of the small island of Porto Santo, a nearly waterless place of little value except for the prestige it gave him back in Lisbon. Now he was dead, but he was not forgotten, and the man who married his daughter would be able to meet seafarers and make contacts in court that could eventually bring him before the king.
Felipa's brother was still governor of the island, and Felipa's mother, Dona Moniz, ruled over the family -- including the brother -- with an iron hand. It was she, not Felipa, whom Columbus had to impress; but first he had to catch Felipa's eye. It was not hard to do. The story of Columbus's long swim to shore after the famous battle between the Genovese merchant fleet and the French pirate Coullon was often told. Columbus made it a point to deny any heroism. "All I did was throw pots and set ships afire, including my own. Braver and better men than I fought and died. And then ... I swam. If the sharks had thought I looked appetizing I wouldn't be here. Is this a hero?" But such self-deprecation in a society much given to boasting was exactly the pose that he knew he had to take. People love to hear the brag of the local boy, because they want him to be great, but the foreigner must deny that he has any outstanding virtue -- this is what will endear him to the locals.
It worked well enough. Felipa had heard of him, and in church he caught her looking at him and bowed. She blushed and turned away. A rather homely girl. Her father was a warrior and her mother was built like a fortress -- the daughter had her father's fierceness and her mother's formidable thickness. Yet there was a glint of grace and humor in her smile when she glanced back at him, once the obligatory blush had passed. She knew it was a game they were playing, and she didn't mind. After all, she was not a prime prospect, and if the man who wooed her was an ambitious Genovese who wanted to use her family connections, how was that different from the daughters of more fortunate families who were wooed by ambitious lords who wanted to use their families' wealth? A woman of rank could hardly expect to be married for her own virtues -- those had only a minor effect on the asking price, as long as she was a virgin, and that family asset, at least, had been well protected.
Glances in church led to a call on the Perestrello household, where Dona Moniz received him five times before agreeing to let him meet Felipa, and then only after the marriage was all but agreed upon. It was established that Columbus would have to give up openly practicing a trade -- his voyages could no longer be so obviously commercial, and his brother Bartholomew, who had joined him from Genova, would become the proprietor of the chart shop that Columbus had started. Columbus would merely be a gentleman who occasionally stopped by to advise his tradesman brother. This suited both Columbus and Bartholomew.
At last Columbus met Felipa, and not long afterward they were married. Dona Moniz knew perfectly well what this Genovese adventurer was after, or thought she did, and she was quite certain that no sooner would he have gained entree into courtly society than he would immediately begin to establish liaisons with prettier -- and richer -- mistresses, angling for ever more advantageous connections in court. She had seen his type a thousand times before, and she saw through him. So, just before the wedding, she surprised everyone by announcing that her son, the governor of Porto Santo, had invited Felipa and her new husband to come live with him on the island. And Dona Moniz herself would of course come with them, since there was no reason for her to stay in Lisbon when her dear daughter Felipa and her precious son the governor -- her whole family, and never mind the other married daughters -- were hundreds of miles away out in the Atlantic Ocean. Besides, the Madeira Islands had a warmer and more healthful climate.
Felipa thought it was a wonderful idea, of course -- she had always loved the island -- but to Dona Moniz's surprise, Columbus also accepted the invitation with enthusiasm. He managed to hide his amusement at her obvious discomfiture. If he wanted to go, then there must be something wrong with the plan -- he knew that was how she was thinking. But that was because she had no notion of what mattered to him. He was in the service of God, and while eventually he would have to present himself in court to win approval for a westward voyage, it would be years before he was prepared to make his case. He needed experience; he needed charts and books; he needed time to think and plan. Poor Dona Moniz -- she didn't realize that Porto Santo put him directly on the sailing route of the Portuguese expeditions along the African coast. They all put in at Madeira, and there Columbus would be able to learn much about how to lead expeditions, how to chart unknown territories, how to navigate long distances in unknown seas. Old Perestrello, Felipa's late father, had kept a small but valuable library at Porto Santo, and Columbus would have access to it. Thus, if he could learn some of the Portuguese skills in navigation, if God led him to hidden information in his studies of the old writings, he might learn something encouraging about his coming voyage to the west.
The voyage was brutal for Felipa. She had never been seasick before, and by the time they arrived at Porto Santo, Dona Moniz was sure that she and Columbus had already conceived a child. Sure enough, nine months later Diego was born. Felipa took a long time recovering from the pregnancy and birth, but as soon as she was strong enough she devoted herself to the child. Her mother viewed this with some distaste, since there were nurses for that kind of thing, but she could hardly complain, for it soon became obvious that Diego was all that Felipa had; her husband did not seem hungry for her company. Indeed, he seemed eager to get off the island at every opportunity -- but not for the sake of getting to court. Instead, he kept begging for chances to get onto a ship sailing along the African coast.
The more he begged, the less likely it seemed that he would get a chance to join a voyage. He was, after all, Genovese, and it occurred to more than one ship's captain that Columbus might have married into a sailing family as a ploy to learn the African coast and then return to Genova and bring Italian ships into competition with the Portuguese. That would be intolerable, of course. So there was never a question of Columbus getting what he really wanted.
With her husband so frustrated, Felipa began to pressure her mother to do something for her Cristovao. He loves the sea, Felipa said. He dreams of great voyages. Can't you do something for him?
So she brought her son-in-law into her late husband's library and opened for him the boxes of charts and maps, the cases of precious books. Columbus's gratitude was palpable. For the first time it occurred to her that perhaps he was sincere -- that he had little interest in the African coast, that it was navigation that inspired him, voyaging for its own sake that he longed for.
Columbus began to spend almost every waking moment poring over the books and charts. Of course there were no charts for the western ocean, for no one who had sailed beyond the Azores or the Canaries or the Cape Verde Islands ever returned. Columbus learned, though, that the Portuguese voyagers had disdained to hug the coast of Africa. Instead, they sailed far out to sea, using better winds and deeper waters until their instruments told them that they had sailed as far south as the last voyage had reached. Then they would sail landward, eastward, hoping that this time they were farther south than the southernmost tip of Africa, that they would find a route leading eastward to India. It was that deep-sea sailing that had first brought Portuguese sailors to Madeira and then to the Cape Verde Islands. Some adventurers of the time had imagined that there might be chains of islands stretching farther to the west, and had sailed to see, but such voyages always ended in either disappointment or tragedy, and no one believed anymore that there were more islands to the west or south.
But Columbus could not d
isregard the records of old rumors that once had led sailors to search for westward islands. He devoured the rumors of a dead sailor washed ashore in the Azores or Canaries or Cape Verdes, a waterlogged chart tucked into his clothing showing western islands reached before his ship sank, the stories of floating logs from unknown species of tree, of flocks of land birds far away to the south or west, of corpses of drowned men with rounder faces than any seen in Europe, dark and yet not as black of skin as Africans, either. These all dated from an earlier time, and Columbus knew they represented the wishful thinking of a brief era. But he knew what none of them could know -- that God intended Columbus to reach the great kingdoms of the east by sailing west, which meant that perhaps these rumors were not all wishful thinking, that perhaps they were true.
Even if they were, however, they would be unconvincing to those who would decide whether to fund a westward expedition. To persuade the king would mean ftrst persuading the learned men of his court, and that would require serious evidence, not sailors' lore. For that purpose the real treasure of Porto Santo were the books, for Perestrello had loved the study of geography, and he had Latin translations of Ptolemy.
Ptolemy was cold comfort for Columbus -- he had it that from the westernmost tip of Europe to the easternmost tip of Asia was 180 degrees, half the circumference of the earth. Such a voyage over open ocean would be hopeless. No ship could carry enough supplies or keep them fresh long enough to cover even a quarter of that distance.
Yet God had told him that he could reach the Orient by sailing west. Therefore Ptolemy must be wrong, and not just slightly wrong, either. He must be drastically, hopelessly wrong. And Columbus had to find a way to prove it, so that a king would allow him to lead ships to the west to fulfill the will of God.
It would be simpler, he said in his silent prayers to the Holy Trinity, if you sent an angel to tell the King of Portugal. Why did you choose me? No one will listen to me.
But God didn't answer him, and so Columbus continued to think and study and try to figure out how to prove what he knew must be true and yet no one had ever guessed -- that the world was much, much smaller, the west and east much closer together than any of the ancients had ever believed. And since the only authorities that the scholars would accept were the books written by the ancients, Columbus would have to ftnd, somewhere, ancient writers who had discovered what Columbus knew had to be the truth about the world's size. He found some useful ideas in Cardinal d'Ailly's Imago Mundi, a compendium of the works of ancient writers, where he learned that Marinus of Tyre had estimated that the great landmass of the world was not 180 degrees, but 225, leaving the ocean to take up only 135 degrees. That was still much too far, but it was promising. Never mind that Ptolemy lived and wrote after Marinus of Tyre, that he had examined Marinus's figures and refuted them. Marinus offered a picture of the world that helped build Columbus's case for sailing west, and so Marinus was the better authority. There were also helpful references from Aristotle, Seneca, and Pliny.
Then he realized that these ancient writers had been unaware of Marco Polo's discoveries on his journey to Cathay. Add 28 degrees of land for his findings, and then add another 30 degrees to account for the distance between Cathay and the island nation of Cipangu, and there were only 77 degrees of ocean left to cross. Then subtract another 9 degrees by starting his own voyage in the Canaries, the southwestern islands that seemed the likeliest jumpingoff point for the sort of voyage God had commanded, and now Columbus's fleet would only have to cross 68 degrees of ocean.
It was still too far. But surely there were errors in Marco Polo's account, in the calculations of the ancients. Take off another 8 degrees, round it down to a mere 60! Yet it was still impossibly far. One-sixth of the Earth's circumference between the Canaries and Cipangu, and yet that still meant a voyage of more than 3,000 miles without a port of call. Bend or twist them as he might, Columbus couldn't make the writings of the ancients support what he knew to be true: that it was a matter of days or at most weeks to sail from Europe to the great kingdoms of the east. There had to be more information. Another writer, perhaps. Or some fact that he had overlooked. Something that would persuade the scholars of Lisbon to respect his request and recommend to King Jodo that he give Columbus command of an expedition.
Through all of this, Felipa was obviously baffled and frustrated. Columbus was vaguely aware that she wanted more of his time and thought, but he couldn't concentrate on the silly things that interested her, not when God had set such a Herculean labor for him to accomplish. He hadn't married her to play at housekeeping, and he said so. He had great works to accomplish. But he couldn't explain what that great work was, or who had given it to him to accomplish, because he had been forbidden to tell. So he watched Felipa grow more and more hurt even as he grew more and more impatient with her obvious hunger for his company.
Felipa had been warned countless times that men were demanding and unfaithful, and she was prepared for that. But what was wrong with her husband? She was the only lady available to him, and Diego should have a brother or sister, but Columbus hardly seemed to want her. "He cares for nothing but charts and maps and old books," she complained to her mother. "That and meeting pilots and navigators and men who have ever had or might someday have the ear of the king."
At first Dona Moniz counseled her to be patient, that the insatiable lusts of men would eventually conquer Columbus's seeming indifference. But when that did not happen, she eventually gave her consent for them to move from isolated Porto Santo to a house the family owned on Funchal, the largest city on the main island of the Madeiras. The theory was that if Columbus could satisfy more of his hunger for the sea, he might, in his satisfaction, turn to Felipa.
Instead he turned even more devotedly to the sea, until he became one of the best-known men in the port of Funchal. No ship came into port without Columbus soon finding his way aboard, befriending captains and navigators, noticing the amounts of supplies taken aboard and how long they were expected to last, noticing, in fact, everything.
"If he's a spy," said one ship's captain to Dona Moniz, the widow of his old friend Perestrello, "then he's a clumsy one indeed, since he gathers his information so openly, so eagerly. I think he simply loves the sea and wishes he had been born Portuguese so he could join with the great expeditions."
"But he wasn't, and so he can't," said Dona Moniz. "Why can't he be content? He has a good life with my daughter, or he would have, if he simply paid attention to her."
The old fellow merely laughed. "When a man gets the sea in his blood, what does a woman have to offer him? What is a child? The wind is his woman, the birds his children. Why do you keep him here on these islands? He is surrounded by the sea all the time, and yet can't sail free. He's Genovese, and so he won't get to sail into the new African waters. But why not let him -- no, help him -- join with merchant voyages to other places."
"I see that you actually like this white-haired man who makes my daughter feel like a widow. "
"A widow? Perhaps a half-widow. For there are three types of men in the world -- the living, the dead, and sailors. You should remember. Your husband was one of us."
"But he gave up the sea and stayed home."
"And died," said the gentleman, with brutal candor. "Your Felipa has a son, hasn't she? So now let her husband go out and earn the fortune that he will pass on to that grandson of yours someday. It's plain that you're killing him by keeping him here."
So it was that two years after coming to the Madeira Islands, Dona Moniz at last suggested that it was time for them to return to Lisbon. Columbus packed up his father-in-law's books and charts and eagerly prepared for the voyage. Yet he knew even as he did so that for Felipa there was far less hope. The voyage to Porto Santo had been a dreadful one for her, even filled with hope in her new marriage as she was at the time. Now she would not be pregnant -- but she had also despaired of finding happiness with Columbus. What made it all the more unbearable was that the more aloof he became, the more
hopelessly she loved him. She could hear him speaking to other men and his voice, his passion, his manner were captivating; she watched him poring over books that she could barely understand and she marveled at the brilliance of his mind. He wrote in the margins of the books -- he dared to add his words to the words of the ancients! He dwelt in a world that she could never enter, and yet she longed to. Take me with you into these strange places, she said to him silently. But the silence with which he answered her was not filled with longing, or if it was, his longings did not include her or little Diego. So she knew that the voyage back to Lisbon would not bring her closer to her husband, or farther. She would never touch him, not really. She had his child, but the more she hungered for the man himself, the more she reached out to him, the more he would push her away; and yet if she did not reach out, he would ignore her completely; there was no path she could see that would lead her to happiness.
Columbus saw this in her. He was not as blind to her needs as she supposed. He simply had no time to make her happy. If she could have been content to share his bed and let him be with her whenever he was weary of his study, then he might have been able to give her something. But she demanded so much more: that he be interested in -- no, delighted about -- every clever childish thing that the incomprehensible Diego did! That he care about the gossip of women, that he admire her needlework, that he care what fabrics she had chosen for her new gown, that he intervene with a servant who was being lazy and impertinent. He knew that if he took interest in these things it would make her happy -- but it would also encourage her to bring even more of this kind of nonsense to distract him, and he simply had no time for it. So he turned away, not wishing to hurt her and yet hurting her all the same, because he had to find a way to accomplish what God had given him to do.
Pastwatch: The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus Page 13
