A Singular Captain

by John Regan

  Chapter 4

  Pigafetta had not expected to see the captain general for days or even weeks after his wedding but the very next day he arrived on board and called Pigafetta into his cabin and invited him to sit.

  “Da Costa sniffing around is not a good sign,” he said, walking up and down as he spoke so that Pigafetta’s head swivelled left and right. “It’s a remarkable thing: Spain and Portugal are not at war and yet are enemies despite all the fancy talk.”

  “It’s called diplomacy, Captain General.”

  “I call it lies. I want you to be doubly vigilant. I am getting the master-at-arms to post a guard on the charts and navigation instruments. I also want you to make yourself known to Diogo Ribeiro at the Casa de Contratación.”

  “Who is he?”

  Magellan took a deep breath as if fortifying himself.

  “This is how stupid the whole thing has become. Ribeiro is Portuguese but he is working on the Padròn Real for Spain. He is one of the best map-makers in Europe; a Portuguese making maps for the Spanish Empire.”

  Magellan threw his arms in the air in exasperation.

  “And they call me a traitor! The fact is, all the best Spanish sailors are Portuguese. You only have to look at Cartagena to see the kind of fool who becomes a Spanish captain just because he is a bishop’s bastard. He has never been to sea in his life and yet he’s appointed captain of a capital ship.”

  “So, what is my business with Ribeiro?”

  “First tell him to watch his back because da Costa is on the prowl. Then I want you to find out if he has any later information than the globe by Martin Behaim. Santa Isabella arrived from the Indies yesterday. I want to know if they have made any new discoveries and if they have any new information about winds and currents. I believe the Spaniards are building ships on the other side of the New World, on the sea discovered by Balboa. Where are they sailing to? How far have they explored the west coast? Do they have any new charts? Obviously, I can’t be seen anywhere near the Padròn Real but you can mingle and find out these matters. Put on your Italian accent. Tell them that Columbus was your uncle.

  “But that wouldn’t be true, Captain General.”

  “No, it’s diplomacy.”

  “Very well. I’m good at diplomacy.”

  Pigafetta had watched Santa Isabella arrive on yesterday’s tide. She was bigger than any of the ships of the Armada de Moluccas and a crowd had gathered on the dockside to watch and cheer as she warped alongside. Some sailors jumped ashore even before she tied up and embraced their wives or lovers or children in noisy, tearful reunions.

  More restrained were the businessmen standing back awaiting their chance to go aboard and tally the cargo of gold, silver, mahogany and slaves. Customs officials of the Casa de Contratación were the most relaxed of all. Their task was to collect the king’s quintal, or one fifth, the twenty per cent tax on all cargo moving through the port of Seville. If the king was paying 14 per cent interest to his creditors he was getting a mere six per cent for himself, out of which he had to pay for the wars against the French, upkeep on the palace and other royal residences and bribes for the German electors to ensure his elevation to Holy Roman Emperor. Pigafetta was beginning to feel almost sorry for him. No wonder he was interested in the Spice Isles, where money grew on trees, poor fellow.

  The Casa de Contratación was not a casa, or house, but a government department that occupied several buildings in the vicinity of the cathedral. Pigafetta had noticed that traders and merchants doing business with the Casa tended to congregate in the cathedral grounds, especially in the heat of the day, when they struck their deals in shady cloisters. He had watched an auction of slaves there and noted the going price for a healthy white male slave was a mere two ducats. Black slaves were more expensive because they were known to be less troublesome. Pigafetta wondered what Jesus Christ might have made of this commerce in the grounds of the second biggest cathedral in Christendom – a slave market in the Kingdom of God. Jesus got himself worked up over money lenders. What would he have said about slave traders in the temple?

  He went first to the Triana market and there purchased a black, hooded cassock from an old gypsy woman. At another stall he purchased a leather belt and a pair of scuffed sandals. A third gypsy woman happened to have a crucifix and a set of rosary beads among her assortment of trinkets, jewellery, crystal balls and Tarot cards. He carried his purchases bundled in the cassock back to the ship, where he divested himself of his doublet and hose and emerged from his little cabin a Dominican monk.

  The sentry at the door of the main cabin had his sword half out of the scabbard before recognising him.

  “It’s just me,” Pigafetta said. “Just me. Just going for a walk.”

  By the look on his face, the sentry was not convinced but let him pass.

  Walking out on deck, the first person he met was Duarte, who stared at him with his mouth open.

  “Bless you, my son,” Pigafetta said just for practice, and made the sign of the cross over him.

  “What….?” Duarte said.

  “Don’t ask.”

  With a new ship in port, the Casa was busy. Traders of many nationalities lived in Seville to pounce on bargains when a ship came in. With hands folded around his crucifix and head bowed within the hooded cassock as if in prayer, Pigafetta wandered among the crowd picking up snatches of conversation in different languages. He paused to eavesdrop on one group when he heard the name Balboa mentioned. He surreptitiously learned that Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, discoverer of the South Sea, had got his head chopped off by the governor of Darièn. Magellan would be interested in that news and it would be all over town by tomorrow. If the Spaniards were chopping off the heads of their own explorers, a Portuguese would need to tread carefully. For the matter of that, Italians like Columbus had not fared well either.

  Pigafetta’s eavesdropping was interrupted by a dishevelled, haggard woman tugging at his sleeve.

  “Bless me, father, for I have sinned. My children starve and I grieve.”

  She went down on her knees and wept into the folds of Pigafetta’s cassock, her shoulders shaking with the spasms of her grief.

  “My children starve; the little ones. For the sake of God, give the Lord’s blessing and the strength to feed my children.”

  He had not counted on this. It was rare to see beggars in this part of the city. Officials of the Casa regularly moved them on. The woman’s hair was tangled and dirty, her feet bare and she stank. Pigafetta’s mouth opened but he had no idea what to say. He could probably rid himself of this embarrassment by making the sign of the cross and uttering the blessing but he never even made the sign of the cross on his own behalf. The businessmen who had been discussing Balboa’s fate turned to watch the little drama playing for their amusement. Two of them came forward and laid hands on the woman to drag her away.

  “Sorry, father,” one of them said. “We’ll get rid of her for you.”

  He watched her hustled out of the cathedral grounds, dismayed that he had been so tongue-tied and incapable of responding to her need. He had to sit quietly for a while to recover from the experience, fearing he might be accosted by a real priest, although they were all charlatans from the pope down in Pigafetta’s view. It would have been easy to give her a few coins but that seemed an act of charlatanism too. Her need was deeper than anything that could be met by charity or a priest.

  Asking directions, he found the office building housing the Padròn Real next to the Customs House where a crowd waited patiently for service. He passed down a corridor of clerks shuffling along with armfuls of parchments and came to a chamber like a schoolroom where men huddled over desks in rows, intent upon their work. One man stood at an easel applying watercolour to a painting of a coastline somewhere, his shirt a splatter of colour.

  “Good afternoon, father,” the artist said. “Can I assist you?”

  “I wonder if I might speak with Señor Diogo Ribeiro.”

  “You are spe
aking to him, father.”

  “My son, my abbot has determined the natives of the Indies must be brought to a knowledge of Our Saviour. He plans to send members of our order to the colonies, but of course he needs to know the nature of those lands. He asks whether we might be able to obtain a map of those places and some description so he can better prepare our brothers for their mission of mercy.”

  “Certainly, father, we can assist you with that.”

  “And not only the islands, but I understand civilisation is spreading beyond Darièn to new lands.”

  “Yes, there is good work being done by Cortès and Pizarro and others, pushing back the boundaries.”

  “And ships being built on the west coast of the New World?”

  “Yes indeed. I expect before long we shall have an armada operating in the South Sea.”

  “I notice the Santa Isabella is newly arrived from the Indies. I wonder if she has brought new information.”

  “Yes, we are always improving our charts with new discoveries. We are working through Isabella’s logbook. There is a very strong ocean current around the Indies, which has brought more than a few of our ships to grief.”

  “That’s interesting. Where is that?”

  Ribeiro unrolled a chart on a table top. It was only half-completed and lacked the portolan lines, compass roses and decorative touches that would adorn the finished product. It covered the Indies and parts of the New World and Ribeiro enthusiastically explained how ocean currents circulated around the region and how the winds blew in different seasons. Pigafetta struggled to comprehend all this and only hoped he would be able to remember it for the captain general.

  “My abbot would be very interested in this map.”

  “I can’t let you have this one but I have another that might be useful.”

  He extracted a similar chart from a pile, rolled it up and presented it to Pigafetta.

  “Thank you very much.”

  “As for Santa Isabella, we may not be getting much more from them, at least not from the present crew.”

  “Why not?”

  “There is a bit of funny business going on. I shouldn’t be telling you this but the Customs boys are interested in Santa Isabella.”

  “What for?”

  “They found about half a million worth of gold that was not on the manifest, and not mentioned in the logbook. The manifest was signed off by the governor of Cuba himself, so it’s a delicate situation. The Velasquez family has a lot of influence in high places.”

  “Velasquez family?”

  “The captain is a relative of the governor of Cuba. A nephew, I think.”

  “Oh,” Pigafetta said.

  “And by the way, father, I notice you are Italian judging from your accent. Have you met Sebastian?”

  “Sebastian who?”

  “Sebastian Cabot. He is our chief pilot. He’s Italian. He comes from Venice.”

  “So do I. Well, Vicenza, anyway.”

  “I will take you around to meet him if you like.”

  “Not right now, thank you my son. I must get back to the abbot.”

  Clutching the rolled-up cosmographical treasure, Pigafetta emerged into the cathedral precinct where men haggled over the price of slaves. The Velasquez family has a lot of influence in high places. Just how high? Pigafetta wondered. He yearned to take Ana in his arms and have her explain all this to him, at the same time dreading what he might hear.

  The captain general was waiting for him back on board and took the chart and spread it on the table to study. After a few minutes he dismissed it with a wave of the hand.

  “This is old stuff, and it’s nearly all Portuguese. Look at this,” he said, pointing to a section of the New World. “That is a straight copy of Cabral’s chart, so Ribeiro has been busy in the service of Spain.”

  “Ribeiro also tells me Santa Isabella may be in trouble with the Customs officials.”

  “That’s interesting, but it doesn’t surprise me. Her captain is the nephew of the governor of Cuba.”

  “Yes, Ribeiro told me that also.”

  “Didn’t you say your lady friend was named Velasquez?”

  “I did, Captain General.”

  “Probably just a coincidence.”

  “Yes, sir. The other news I have which might interest you is that Vasco de Balboa has been executed by the governor of Darièn.”

  “Mother of God, what for?”

  “I don’t know, Captain General.”

  “Is Fonseca behind this? Who knows what tangled web he weaves?”

  “I don’t know, Captain General.”

  “What does he do with his wealth, I wonder? He must be nearly as rich as the king.”

  ”If he is anything like the pope he throws it away on his male lovers, his cousins, writers of obscene poetry, huge banquets and parades through the streets riding on his white elephant.”

  “I don’t think that describes Fonseca. His vices are more secretive.”

  Days went by with Pigafetta unable to summon the courage to confront Ana. In moments of honesty he would admit to himself that he was waiting for the Customs officers to clear Santa Isabella’s captain of suspicion or else arrest him and bring the matter into the open. On occasions he loitered on the dock by the ship, which lay astern of San Antonio and Concepción, watching slaves and freemen discharge logs, fruit trees in pots, sacks of maize and cassava carried away in donkey carts. He saw the captain only once. Although looking older than his portrait, he was unmistakable by the distinctive Velasquez nose.

  Meanwhile, the ships required hauling down to clean their bottoms and paint them with pitch to foil the worms that live in the sea and eat ships. For this purpose, the captain general chose Arroyo Tagarete, a stream that flowed into the river by the city wall near the Alcàzar. Beginning two hours before the peak of the rising tide, three longboats each with half a dozen strong rowers manoeuvred Trinidad into the creek, the captain general bellowing orders from the ship.

  Pigafetta had no role to play in this but watched with interest as Magellan ordered cables run ashore to be secured to trees and another run from the top of the mainmast down to the shore. As the tide peaked and then began to fall the ship was left stranded, exposing the area normally submerged. Punzarol, the master, had a problem.

  “Excuse me Captain General; we are unable to find the royal standard to fly at the masthead.”

  “So what?”

  “It is a matter of strict custom that we must display the royal standard from the masthead and the captain’s colours from the poop.”

  “Well, if we don’t have a flag you can’t fly it, can you?”

  “Clearly, sir, and yet it is laid down in the regulations that the royal standard must fly from the masthead and the captain’s colours on the poop.”

  “I am aware of the regulations but since we have no flag we shall have to proceed without it.”

  Punzarol went away to see the captain general’s colours posted on the poop: on a field argent three bars checky, gules and argent quartered with the five wounds of Christ, crest an eagle with spread wings. He returned and said, “Excuse me, Captain General, it is a point of contention mentioned by the chaplain that these are the arms of the king of Portugal.”

  “In the name of Santiago and St Vincent,” the captain general said, with the famous eyes flashing fire, “will you stop harping about ceremonial and get on with hauling the ship down? For your information, my family is related to the da Souzas and hence to the royal family of Portugal. For that reason my colours also feature the five wounds of Christ, like Dom Manuel’s. I can assure you I have no personal relationship with, nor any love for, the king of Portugal. Now, I want to hear no more discussion of flags and escutcheons.”

  “A thousand pardons, Captain General.”

  A crowd gathered on the banks to watch the crew scrape off barnacles and scrub her bottom. Shoreside supervisors gave advice on anchoring, navigation and seamanship aimed at bettering the way the task was do
ne by Trinidad’s men, up to their knees in mud. Then someone noticed the shield with the five wounds of Christ on the poop, and the absence of a royal standard at the masthead. Fists were shaken in the air. Clearly, this ship, Trinidad, was a spy ship on a secret mission for those shit-eaters of Portugal. Expatriates of Portugal were likened to the excrement of diseased dogs. The kingdom of Portugal was a latrine overflowing its filth to other lands. The port captain, an officer of the Casa de Contratación, appeared on the bank of the arroyo and, careful of his doublet and hose, demanded to know why the royal standard was absent from the masthead. Behind him, flanked by Juan de Cartagena on one side and the Portuguese ambassador on the other, was a green and gold sedan chair. Pigafetta was almost certain it was the one that had brought Ana to Magellan’s wedding. He could not see who, if anyone, was inside.

  “Are you ignorant of the regulations, Captain General?” the port captain asked with a sneer.

  Splattered with mud, the captain general retorted, “Not as ignorant as those of the Casa de Contratación who fail to supply me with a flag.”

  “You are nothing but a traitor to your own country and a menace to ours. It were better you returned to where you came from.”

  “In your capacity as port captain you will be aware the tide has now begun to rise. If you don’t give up this foolishness and let me get on with my work you may watch the ship fill up through the open hatches and then you may write a letter to the king explaining why.”

  “You dare speak to me of the king? Of my king?” The port captain reached for his sword. At the same time another official arrived with his sword half out of its scabbard, the jeering crowd surged forward and Magellan was forced back.

  Pigafetta, still aboard the ship, feared for the captain general’s life. Trinidad’s crew were unarmed except for the sentry on guard duty outside the main cabin. Pigafetta climbed down the ladder into the mud and entered the fray as Trinidad’s seamen engaged the crowd on shore and Magellan grappled with the port captain while Duarte tackled the other one.

  Pigafetta stumbled and fell, picked himself up and then grabbed at the feet of a man climbing the ladder to board the ship. He got a kick in the head for his trouble. He grabbed the man’s legs and this time held on, and wrestled him down off the ladder into the mud.

  He heard Magellan roar “Enough! Enough!” and saw him wrench the sword out of the port captain’s hand and swing it in an arc that would have taken off the port captain’s head had that been his intention. At the same time, the sentry jumped down from the ship and came to Pigafetta’s aid, pinning the intruder down with the point of his sword.

  It was sufficient to cool the conflict and the combatants backed off, snarling and growling at one another. The port captain retreated up the embankment and retired in fuming dignity, leaving his sword behind. The sedan chair had disappeared.

  Magellan was so furious he could hardly speak. He grabbed the intruder by the shirt collar and hauled him to his feet, pushed him up against the side of the ship. He was only a boy.

  “Who is your master?”

  “Please sir, I meant no harm.”

  “Why were you trying to climb aboard my ship?”

  The boy attempted to speak but no sound came. Magellan lifted him off his feet by his shirt front and repeated the question.

  “To get the charts.”

  “I thought so. Bishop Fonseca put you up to this, didn’t he?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Who then?”

  “It was Captain Cartagena’s orders, sir. He said he needed the charts for navigation.”

  “Navigation? He couldn’t navigate a wheelbarrow.”

  The master-at-arms had now arrived too late with an armful of weapons.

  “Lock him up,” Magellan said, “until I decide what to do with him.”

  Pigafetta washed off the worst of the mud with buckets of water over his head. As the tide came in Trinidad returned to the upright and then refloated. Not until they were back alongside their berth at the Dock of Mules did the captain general call Pigafetta and Duarte into his cabin. He told them to sit down but remained standing himself and paced up and down as was his habit.

  “So, it’s coming to a head, is it?

  “It’s a clear indication, brother in law,” Duarte said. “Perhaps you can get rid of Cartagena now.”

  “Let’s hear what the diplomat has to say. Pigafetta?”

  “If Cartagena aspires to become captain general he needs those charts. They are your best defence. You must keep them secret, Captain General.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that. Didn’t I see da Costa up on the bank with Cartagena?”

  “You did, and that is an interesting point. We have a captain of the armada dealing with the enemy’s ambassador. I wonder what the king would make of that. What would Fonseca do about it?”

  “Nothing,” Duarte said with a snort.

  “I think our first step is to make the king aware of exactly what happened here today and see if it opens his eyes in regard to Fonseca.”

  “Fonseca was appointed by this king’s grandfather. He will be difficult to dislodge. But you write the letter, Pigafetta, and I will sign it.”

  “I suggest you should release that boy, Captain General. He is only a pawn in this game.”

  The concerning thing to Pigafetta was the green and gold sedan chair. Who was inside? It could have been Ana or her father or anyone else. A deep despondency descended on his soul. ‘Ana, what are you doing? Are you part of this or just a victim?’ he asked himself and found no answer.

  Pigafetta knew that, although addressed to the king, Magellan’s demand for justice would be filtered through the Flemish bishops, Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht, Guillaume de Croy, Seigneur de Chièvres and Chancellor Sauvage all of them foreigners, much to the disgust of Sr Velasquez as he had made clear. For that reason, Pigafetta carefully worded the letter to imply that foreigners in the service of the king required protection as much as his native-born subjects. He mentioned that Cartagena and the Portuguese ambassador had been seen together in the vicinity. He described how one of the insurgents had actually climbed aboard the ship but did not mention the charts.

  The letter evoked a quick response. The port captain was dismissed and other officials of the Casa de Contratación were punished but the real culprits, Fonseca and Cartagena, received no censure and the Portuguese ambassador had no news to report to Dom Manuel.

  On the same day that the king’s reply arrived, Pedro Velasquez was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of Gold to await trial on smuggling charges. Whether these events were related or merely coincidental, Pigafetta could not say, but, together, they prompted him to clear up what he had come to think of as the Ana problem.

  The gate at the Velasquez residence was locked and Pigafetta rattled the bars until one of the slaves came to open it for him. He found Sr Velasquez in exactly the same place as on previous visits, although he seemed to have a new book to read.

  “I was hoping to see Ana,” Pigafetta said after the salutations.

  “She is not here.”

  “May I enquire where I could find her?”

  “You can’t.”

  “She is not ill, I hope.”

  “Not physically ill.”

  “Then in what way is she ill?”

  “Spiritually ill.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand, señor.”

  “You should, since you are spiritually ill also.”

  Pigafetta sat on the same red couch where Ana had once sat beside him.

  “Perhaps you could explain for me what form this spiritual illness takes, señor.”

  “You should know. You are the one who violated her.”

  “Violated?”

  “You think I don’t know what you two were doing?”

  “What we were doing was loving one another.”

  “You call it love. I call it filth.”

  Pigafetta felt a spasm something like panic.
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  “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

  “She is in a safe place.”

  “What sort of safe place?”

  “A place of serenity, where she can live a life of purity.”

  Pigafetta’s jaw fell open and he stared at the old man, who seemed to be vaporising before his eyes.

  “You have put her away somewhere, haven’t you?”

  Velasquez did not answer but merely looked at him with a mocking half-smile on his lips.

  “You’re not her father at all, are you? The nose gives it away.” He pointed at the portraits on the wall. “She doesn’t even look like you or her so-called brother or any of your clan. Who is she really?”

  Still Velasquez failed to answer.

  “She’s not your daughter at all. She’s Alonso’s daughter, isn’t she? You are all part of Fonseca’s conspiracy.”

  By his silence, Sr Velasquez admitted the truth of this. Pigafetta took a couple of deep breaths.

  “Where is she? You have put her in a convent or a monastery somewhere, haven’t you?”

  “She will learn obedience through work and prayer. Now you will leave.”

  Sr Velasquez rang his bell and almost instantly one of the slaves appeared. Pigafetta left with no further remonstrance.