A Singular Captain

by John Regan

  Chapter 19

  Rajah Almanzor of Tidore could hardly have been more different from Rajah Siripada of Brunei although both were Muslim kings. Where Siripada was aloof and withdrawn, Almanzor, wearing silk robes and a silk scarf on his head surmounted by a garland of flowers, came out to meet them in his prau and beckoned them aboard to sit by him under the awning.

  “What do you think, Pigafetta?” the accountant said. “Is it safe? Should we go on his boat?”

  “We have to talk to them some time.”

  Espinosa ordered the pinnace and they pulled across to the royal barge, where the rajah greeted them with a big red smile. One of his sons held the royal sceptre, another had a golden urn to pour water over the king’s hands and a third held a gold box full of betel. The rajah offered them betel, which they accepted but did not chew, invited them to wash their hands, welcomed them warmly and said that long ago he had dreamed that ships would come to his island from far away and only last night he had looked into the Moon and saw they were coming. And now, they were here!

  “You have come to buy cloves. It is the only reason big ships come to my land but you are not Portuguese. You have different flags.”

  “Our king is Don Carlos, king of Spain,” the accountant said.

  “It is good you are not Portuguese.”

  “One of our friends who lives here is Portuguese,” Pigafetta said. “His name is Francisco Serrano.”

  The smile vanished from Almanzor’s face and he glared at Pigafetta.

  “Serrano is dead. You should not have such friends.”

  This news was a shock to Pigafetta. Serrano had in some respect been the reality of the almost mythical Spice Isles and Magellan had often spoken of him as a partner in the enterprise of the Armada de Moluccas. Serrano dead somehow made Magellan’s death even worse, but the rajah’s comment seemed strange.

  “Not my friend but the friend of a friend long ago,” Pigafetta said.

  “Ask the rajah if he wants to come aboard our ship,” Espinosa said. “Ask him if he wants to see our guns fired.”

  The rajah consulted his sons about this proposition and they evidently agreed, although on no account could a rajah be expected to travel in a boat with no awning and no cushions such as the one that had brought his visitors.

  The paddlers manoeuvred the royal barge alongside and the rajah ascended the companion ladder with dignity, to a trumpet salute from the side party. Espinosa ordered the red and yellow velvet chairs and matching robes reserved for important visitors, and the rajah and his sons were seated in state. Pigafetta pointed out it was bad manners for them to be standing while the rajah was seated because this elevated their heads above his. They sat at Almanzor’s feet, even Elcano, who had come across from Victoria.

  Once they were all seated, the rajah said that he and all his people wanted to be true and faithful friends to the king of Spain, whom he called Don Caros.

  “You may walk in my country as if in your own house and I will receive you as my sons.”

  “We have merchandise to trade,” the accountant said, and handed out scissors, a mirror, a hat, glass goblets, knives and strings of glass beads to the rajah and his sons until Almanzor called for a halt before he became overwhelmed by their generosity.

  He left them with expressions of great love and Espinosa ordered the cannons discharged, having first explained that this was an expression of respect and honour, not war.

  “Almost too good to be true, isn’t it?” Espinosa said as they watched the royal barge heading inshore with its paddles flashing in the sun and its gongs and cymbals playing.

  “Almost,” the accountant said. “Before we deal with this man we had better get a formal contract in writing.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Elcano said.

  “A pity Serrano is not here to advise us,” Pigafetta said.

  The five Spice Isles, Ternate, Tidore, Mutir, Macchian and Bacchian lay in a line straddling the equator. Two of them were perfect volcanos and Gunung Ganalama, the peak of Ternate, was hidden either in cloud or smoke. Each was surrounded by a narrow coral reef that dried at low tide and dropped away into unfathomable blue. Anchorage had to be carefully chosen and the reef negotiated to get ashore. Away to the east was the bigger island of Gilolo with distant mountains, steamy jungles and untold mysteries.

  The triumvirate of Mèndez, Espinosa and Elcano plus Pigafetta landed on Tidore next day and – no elephants here and no cannons – walked to the rajah’s palace outside the city of thatch houses. Almanzor greeted them like long lost brothers, seated them on mats and cushions among several chieftains and offered betel, which they held in their mouths without chewing. He reaffirmed his love for Don Caros and counted himself a citizen of Spain. Of course he was happy to trade cloves but his own crop was not sufficient to fill both ships and he would invite his friend, the rajah of Bacchian, to trade with the armada also.

  The accountant had brought with him a document which, he said, was a treaty between the king of Spain and the king of Tidore. “Sign this treaty and you become a partner of Don Carlos and part of his great empire, to guarantee peace between our two nations.”

  Almanzor was delighted and made his mark in the place indicated by Mèndez without reading the document, which was unintelligible to him anyway.

  “And you may now fly the royal standard of Spain, the personal banner of Don Carlos.”

  The accountant unfurled the Habsburg eagle in yellow and black and Almanzor clapped his hands, took the flag and waved it above his head.

  “Now my country, Tidore, belongs to Don Caros and my grandson, Colafapi, will become king of Ternate and my friend the rajah of Bacchian will swear obedience, and Mutir and Macchian will also join and we shall all become part of the kingdom of Spain as our protector.”

  Almanzor had two hundred wives, as Pigafetta discovered talking with the chieftains, plus one principal wife with whom he shared meals. Each noble family was required to give at least one daughter to marry the king and he had twenty-six children but only eight were boys, which was a disappointment to him. Each night he chose a different wife to sleep with. No one was allowed to look upon his wives and if anyone was found near them he would be killed.

  Pigafetta was intrigued by Almanzor’s remark that his grandson, Colafapi, would become king of Ternate, and he asked one of the chieftains about this.

  “Colafapi is the son of Almanzor’s daughter, who was the wife of Rajah Abuleis, who was king of Ternate but is now dead.”

  “Let me understand this,” Pigafetta said. “Almanzor’s daughter was the wife of the rajah of Ternate.”

  “One of the wives. Yes.”

  “She had a son, who is, of course, Almanzor’s grandson.”

  “Yes.”

  “So that grandson is a prince of Ternate.”

  “One of them. Yes.”

  “So, Almanzor’s grandson could become rajah of Ternate.”

  “Perhaps; but there are nine princes of Ternate.”

  “Thank you for your explanation. Now I understand.”

  What he understood was that the Armada de Moluccas had blundered into a situation probably more complex than the one between Cebu and Mactan. Almanzor’s great love for the king of Spain had much to do with his aspirations for his grandson. Pigafetta could not wait to get back to the ship before sharing this information and he passed it on to Espinosa, Elcano and Mèndez on the way out in the boat.

  “I think we need to be careful not to get caught up in local wars,” he said.

  “Yes, you are right, Pigafetta,” the accountant said. “We need to confine ourselves to strictly business and complete it as quickly as possible.”

  “And no baptisms,” Elcano said.

  “No baptisms,” they agreed.

  A regal barge approached the ship next day with a man of some rank dressed in red velvet, seated beneath an awning, his crew playing cymbals and drums as the boat circled around the two ships of the armada. They ignored a bec
koning invitation to come aboard and Espinosa said, “You had better go and see what they want, Pigafetta.”

  Coming alongside in Trinidad’s pinnace, Pigafetta was astonished to be greeted in Portuguese.

  “Bom dia, senhor.”

  He was a young man wearing a green sarong who introduced himself as Emmanuel and said he was the servant of Dom Pedro Affonso de Lorosa, a resident of Ternate. The gentleman in red velvet was Chechili Deroix, a son of the rajah of Ternate, and the woman and two children seated near the bow of the boat were the widow and children of Francisco Serrano.

  Pigafetta made his obeisance before the prince and then introduced himself to Serrano’s widow, who had a gold front tooth and wore a flower-patterned dress.

  “My husband said before he died that ships would come with his friend, Ferdinand Magellan.”

  “These are his ships but, alas, he is no more.”

  The woman thought about this and then said, “He wrote a letter before he died. He took a long time to die. Here is the letter. You may have it.”

  She extracted a folded paper from somewhere within her robe and handed it to Pigafetta.

  “Thank you. Are you well?”

  “I am well.”

  “And your children?”

  “They are well.”

  “Do you want to see my ship?”

  “No.”

  There didn’t seem much more to say. He tucked the letter into his pocket, nodded at the lady and then asked Emmanuel if he wanted to see the ship. Emmanuel asked permission of the prince and received a nod of approval.

  Elcano was absent from the meeting but Espinosa, Mèndez and Master Andrew met in the great cabin to hear Emmanuel.

  “My master is Dom Pedro Affonso de Lorosa,” he said. “He has lived many years in Ternate but now he wants to go home. Since Serrano died, he is the factor for trading cloves with ships that come from Malacca and other places. When he saw your ships he thought they were Portuguese but then he saw the flag of Castile. Dom Pedro wants to go home but he does not want to go in a Portuguese ship. He asks if he can go in your ship.”

  The committee saw no reason why Dom Pedro should not sail with the Armada de Moluccas and sent a message with Emmanuel that he had nothing to fear.

  Pigafetta retired to his cell of a cabin to read Serrano’s letter to Magellan, written on rice paper in brown ink, or perhaps it was just discoloured. It was dated 10 April, 1521, which was nearly the same day that the Armada de Moluccas had arrived in Cebu.

  ‘Esteemed cousin,’ Serrano had written, ‘I have waited many years for your arrival in Ternate and know not the state of your preparations. I have to inform you that I will not be here when you arrive unless you come within the next few hours, for I die. You can make your fortune in these islands but beware of treachery. God be with you. Your cousin, F. Serrano.’

  Pigafetta wondered at the fate that caused these two comrades to die within a few days of one another on the far side of the world from the land of their childhood. He showed this letter from the grave to Espinosa and Mèndez, who vowed vigilance against treachery, but he kept it for himself.

  Almanzor allocated a godown on shore for their trading post, a shed with bamboo walls and a thatch roof where they stored their merchandise of woven cloth, Turkish robes, Venetian glass, knives, scissors, mirrors and bells along with the Chinese porcelain, silk, gongs and jewel-studded weapons looted from junks in the Sulu Sea. Trade was brisk and, because each sailor had a personal interest in the cargo, bargaining robust. For one bihar of cloves, nearly 450 pounds, they gave fifteen hatchets or ten ells of very good quality cloth or thirty-five glass goblets or equivalent values of other goods. Every day, boats full of chickens, goats, coconuts, bananas and other things to eat came to the ships. As well as cloves, it was necessary to stock up with food for the long voyage home.

  Espinosa ordered an armed guard of three men-at-arms to watch over the godown at all times and Almanzor warned they should not venture away from their post at night for fear of bandits, whose weapon was a poison ointment.

  “These are wicked men who embrace you in friendship but in so doing rub their ointment on your skin without harm to themselves, and so the victim dies.”

  Almanzor had had several of these bandits hanged but, regrettably, many were still abroad.

  The accountant brought the three slave girls and sixteen hostages captured from various ships to the trading post but could not decide on a proper price. He gave them all to Almanzor, who said the girls would go into his harem and he would send the men with five of his own to spread the fame of the king of Spain. It had been necessary to place a guard over the girls and the accountant said he was glad to be rid of them. No record had been kept of the number of dead but Pigafetta estimated over a hundred had been killed since the death of Magellan.

  Almanzor requested they kill the pigs they still had on board because the pig is an unclean animal that offends against the laws of Mohammed, (Peace be upon him.). For every pig he would give a goat or chickens so they would suffer no loss. They killed all the pigs and hung them below deck but, when the people came aboard the ships, they covered their faces so as not to see them. There was no mosque here and the people said their prayers kneeling on mats facing approximately west. Some also believed that Gunung Gamalama was the local representative of the God of the Volcano.

  Pigafetta went to find where the cloves grow, on top of the mountains, nearly up to where smoke and steam and sometimes molten rock come out, as he was told. The cloves grow in the place where it rains every day because of the cloud that lives on the mountain. The trees are tall and the trunk as big around as a man. The leaves are like laurel and the bark is olive. When the cloves bud they are white, when ripe they are red and, when dried, black. They are harvested twice a year, at the solstices, because that is the coolest season at the equator and it was only by luck that the armada had arrived at harvest time. At the equator there are not four seasons but only the north-east monsoon and south-east monsoon, as all sailors know. Each family owns some clove trees and sells the cloves but they do not cultivate them.

  The people also gather nutmeg, found on these islands. They make bread from the pith of a certain tree and cloth from its bark, which they soak in water until it is soft and then beat it with sticks. The men are very jealous of their women and do not want the sailors to wear European style trousers because it appears they are always aroused for a woman.

  Pedro Affonso de Lorosa came aboard the ship in the afternoon; an old man, tall and thin, in a native sarong. He shook everyone’s hand and said he was very pleased to see them. It was not often he saw a European face and had almost forgotten what they looked like.

  Espinosa ordered velvet chairs on the poop, where they could see the praus going back and forth with trade while they talked, eager to hear the stories this veteran had to tell.

  “Ten years here in the Moluccas and sixteen years in India before that; these old bones are growing tired now. There is just so much a man can take.”

  “So you are going back to Portugal?” Pigafetta said. “What will you do when you get there?”

  “Perhaps a little farm around Sintra. Pass my days growing cabbages, which are less trouble than cloves, you can be sure. I may have to ask for a little space in the cargo hold, if that’s all right.”

  “I’m sure we can arrange that,” the accountant said, “but you will have to pay freight, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Emmanuel said you knew Serrano,” Pigafetta said.

  “Oh yes. I worked with him for years. He used to look after the shipping side of things and I was running the godowns and the supply side. You know, these islands are always at war with one another. We used to call Serrano ‘the admiral’ because he sailed with Albuquerque and Almeida.”

  “And Magellan,” Pigafetta said.

  “Yes. I never knew Magellan but Serrano talked about him all the time. When I saw your ships the other day I thought it wa
s Magellan.”

  “It would have been except he died.”

  “So Emmanuel told me. I knew Magellan was on the way because last year we had a Portuguese warship looking for him. Dom Manuel has a whole fleet out looking for the Armada de Moluccas.”

  “Yes, we know.”

  “Only last week we had a caravel from Malacca. They came to trade cloves with two junks. They went down to Bacchian Island to load, but apparently they were interfering with the rajah’s harem. Now, let me tell you; that is one thing you don’t want to do. They get very upset if you fool around with their women. Anyway, the Portuguese were banished and sailed back to Malacca in their caravel but they left the two junks behind. They are still down at Bacchian with a native crew and a full load of cloves; about four hundred bihars, I believe.”

  Here the numbers man spoke up. “Four hundred bihars already paid for by the Portuguese?”

  “That’s right. And about another hundred bihars’ worth in trade goods. You should be able to pick up those cargoes cheap.”

  “Almanzor told us yesterday he was doing some deal with the rajah of Bacchian.”

  “He’s a wily old devil, Almanzor. He killed Serrano, you know.”

  “Why?”

  “He hated Serrano. Ternate and Tidore have been at war for years. As I said, we used to call Serrano ‘the admiral.’ Every time they had a battle, Serrano’s praus destroyed Almanzor’s. Even now you will see Ternate has more boats than Tidore, and the rajah who rules these islands is the one with the strongest navy. Serrano offered a truce. Almanzor had to marry off his daughter to Ternate’s rajah, called Abuleis, and also give up twenty of his chieftains’ sons as hostages. You can imagine what Almanzor thought about that but he had no choice. Well, we were expecting a ship from Malacca to come and load cloves but we didn’t have enough for a full cargo, so, foolishly, Serrano went to Tidore to buy cloves and Almanzor gave him poisoned betel. It took Serrano four days to die. Then Abuleis was poisoned by his own daughter, who is the wife of the rajah of Bacchian and, as you know, the rajah of Bacchian is an old friend of Almanzor. But then, Almanzor’s daughter, who had married Abuleis, gave birth to a son, which is Almanzor’s grandson, Colafapi. And now Almanzor wants his grandson to become rajah of Ternate so he can own both islands. Did you follow all that?”

  “Mother of god,” the accountant said. “This story is worthy of the kings and queens of Europe. This Almanzor is on a level with Rodrigo Borgia.”

  Lorosa had a quiet chuckle.

  “One thing I have learned living all these years in the East is that Europe has no monopoly on evil.”

  “So, the war between Ternate and Tidore is really the war between Spain and Portugal.”

  “Exactly. And the Line of Demarcation is here.”

  Lorosa stood up, turned around, lifted his sarong and ran his finger down the crack in his arse.

  Two days later, Almanzor came aboard Trinidad and informed them he was sending his son to Bacchian to collect the cloves left there by the Portuguese. The son was also going to Mutir to see if they had any cloves to sell and he asked for presents to give its governors in the name of Don Caros. He did this in order to fill the ships more quickly. Mutir did not have a rajah but was ruled by its own people and for this reason there was often war between the two governors. The accountant gave him Habsburg eagles for the governors so they might regard themselves subjects of Don Carlos and stop squabbling.

  “And the king of Spain, Don Caros, is a great king because of ships like yours with big guns like yours. May I please observe how your guns are fired?

  The guns had already been fired several times but Espinosa agreed to a demonstration and Master Andrew called upon his men to fire the cannons. Then Espinosa called upon three men-at-arms to demonstrate the arquebus and crossbow and also the properties of Spanish armour which, as Magellan had once boasted, made a Spanish soldier in armour equal to a hundred without. Espinosa himself showed Almanzor how to cock, aim and fire the crossbow, making sure not to hit anyone.

  Next day, they received a visit from the rajah of Gilolo with many praus besides his royal barge. He was the most powerful of all the rajahs and had 600 children and his kingdom was rich in gold. He also wanted to see the weapons, especially the cannons, which he had not seen before.

  The accountant gave him a jacket of green silk, a length of red cloth, mirrors, scissors and other things and the rajah said that because they were friends of Rajah Almanzor they were also his friends and if they came to his land he would receive them as his sons.

  So soon after Lorosa’s revelations, this sudden interest in weaponry disturbed Pigafetta, as it did Espinosa, Elcano and Mèndez. The rajah of Ternate was notably absent from the visitors’ list, but one of his sons arrived one day with four praus full of cloves, wanting to trade, and the accountant called an emergency meeting of the council to decide.

  “Going by what Lorosa told us, I think it would be dangerous to start trading with Ternate. We saw what happened when Magellan meddled in native affairs.”

  “On the other hand,” Elcano said, “we could probably fill up the ships more quickly and escape from here.”

  “I don’t think it’s worth the risk,” Espinosa said. “We don’t know how many warriors Ternate has.”

  Pigafetta agreed with Espinosa. The matter was put to the vote and carried that the Armada de Moluccas should not trade with the rajah of Ternate.

  As the trade goods in the godown diminished, they were replaced by cloves in woven sacks, the scent so strong it could make a man drunk. The ships threw open their hatches to receive this bounty and slings of cargo were hoisted out of boats alongside, swung inboard and lowered into holds, where men packed each sack into the smallest space, sweating in dusty gloom and often climbing out to breathe clean air and douse themselves with buckets of seawater.

  With sailing day now in sight, riggers tended rigging, sailmakers inspected sails and patched where necessary, carpenters built extra pens for livestock and all worked towards the consummation of dreams of wealth and glory after so much pain.

  To celebrate the first hoist of cargo coming aboard, Trinidad and Victoria fired their cannons. Almanzor sent a message that, from the great love he bore them, all ships’ crew were invited to a banquet at his palace, which threw the council into a panic.

  “A banquet? I don’t think so,” Elcano said. “I wouldn’t be able to eat anything anyway. Surely, we have learned our lesson regarding banquets.”

  “And yet we can’t afford to offend him,” the accountant said. “We have not yet loaded all the spices we have paid for.”

  Pigafetta had the solution. “We could ask him to come to our ship and serve him paella.”

  “I’m not sure about the paella,” Espinosa said, “but he likes those Venetian goblets. We could give him some of them. That should keep him quiet.”

  Almanzor accepted the invitation and came aboard amazed that the armada could even contemplate leaving so soon.

  “Thirty days is the usual time for loading and here it is only two weeks gone by. It is not the right time for navigation because of reefs and storms and strong currents and you have no pilot and, besides, you might be caught by Portuguese ships and, besides, your ships are not yet full.”

  He called for his Koran from one of his chieftains who always attended him, like a bishop. He kissed the holy book, said a prayer in a language Pigafetta did not understand, placed the Koran on his head three or four times and swore by Almighty Allah, the Koran and the Prophet Mohammed, (Peace be upon him.), that he was a true and faithful servant of the king of Spain, Don Caros.

  Faced with such eloquent fervour, the council were persuaded to postpone departure for two weeks, but it occurred to Pigafetta that no one had thought to explain to Almanzor that Don Carlos was, or was soon to become, Holy Roman Emperor – secular defender of the Christian faith – which could get Almanzor into trouble with his Mohammed, (Peace be upon him.). Magellan might have tried to bring t
he Moor into the Christian faith but no one here had the stomach for it, or even the inclination.

  Nor was Almanzor made aware that the armada’s crew included Portuguese, as well as at least six other nationalities, even though the ships flew the flag of Spain. Pigafetta decided this was too complicated to explain to the rajah, who believed that the people of each island owed allegiance to their own king and no other. It would be impossible for Almanzor to understand that ships belonging to the king of Spain had been commanded by a Portuguese – Magellan.

  As the spices came in from other islands, trade grew even brisker and queues formed at the trading post on Tidore’s shore. Strangely, prices fell. A bihar of cloves could now be had for two brass chains worth next to nothing. When they had no more merchandise they traded their hats, cloaks and shirts. Things were going so well that Pigafetta grew uneasy, his eternal optimism straining to believe Almanzor’s hospitality. He welcomed the return of Affonso de Lorosa, this time accompanied by his native wife and a camphor wood chest carved all over with Chinese dragons. He arrived at night, himself paddling a prau, and only by responding to the anchor watchman’s hail in Portuguese did he escape being shot.

  “Ternate is getting too warm for comfort,” he said next morning as the day’s work began. Boats were already on their way out from shore, loaded with sacks of cloves, and Lorosa wanted his own shipment hoisted aboard before they arrived. His prau lay alongside with its cargo of four sacks, about two bihars. He supervised the seamen manning the derrick and noted the position in the hold where his cargo, marked with his own name, was stowed. The camphor wood chest was next hoisted aboard.

  “My worldly possessions,” he said with a sad sort of smile at leaving his home of ten years, “except for this one.” He put his arm around his wife, who gave a little curtsey. “You can cut that prau adrift if you like. I won’t need it any more.”

  Lorosa’s wife did not pose the same risk as the three nubile slave girls and there was no objection to her presence. She and her husband joined the senior officers at meals in the great cabin, which also served for council meetings.

  “I’m afraid things have got complicated since you rejected Momoli’s cargo the other day,” Lorosa said over breakfast.

  “Who is Momoli?” the accountant asked.

  “Momoli is the rajah’s number five son. You see, the sons are all pretty much independent and at the moment they are all at loggerheads. Some want to trade with Spain and some want to trade with Portugal. I don’t know how that is going to turn out. Momoli is in the Spanish camp, and he was furious when you turned him down the other day.”

  The accountant shook his head ruefully. “I thought we were steering clear of native politics, but it seems we have fallen right in.”

  “I can tell you that Almanzor is stirring the pot. There is a big wedding coming up in a few days, which could bring things to a head.”

  “A wedding?”

  “The brother of the rajah of Bacchian is marrying Almanzor’s daughter.”

  “Another daughter?”

  “Yes, but what makes it interesting is, the rajah of Bacchian’s wife is the one who poisoned her own father, Abuleis, who was rajah of Ternate. She is not popular with her brothers, like Momoli. In fact, they have threatened to kill her. This wedding means she becomes part of Almanzor’s family.”

  “It’s all too complicated,” Espinosa said. “They must be as inbred as the Habsburgs. It’s a wonder they don’t all have big chins like Don Carlos.”

  Crowds began assembling early on wedding day, on the shore and on the water. All work ceased aboard the two ships. From southwards came the biggest native craft they had yet seen, as big as a Venetian galley with no fewer than 120 men paddling in time to drums and gongs. Banners of red, white and yellow parrot feathers flew from stem and stern and also from the yellow and red awning under which sat the rajah of Bacchian, his wife and his brother, the bridegroom. From Tidore came Almanzor, his principal wife and one of his daughters, the bride, in equal pomp with drums, trumpets, gongs and stringed instruments while smaller praus flitted about like swallows. As the great canoes passed by, Espinosa, on Trinidad and Elcano, on Victoria, sent off salvoes of blank cannon fire, received with cheers and claps by the watching crowd.

  “They have to do it this way,” Lorosa explained, “because no rajah will ever set foot on another rajah’s territory except in war. The only place they can meet is on the water, but it looks like Ternate has not been invited. That could cause trouble.”

  Bacchian’s state barge was followed by two smaller praus full of girls. These, Lorosa said, were gifts to the bride, which really meant from the rajah of Bacchian to his own brother, the groom, since they were bound to join his harem.

  The two barges came together and Almanzor stepped aboard the Bacchian boat. Immediately, the rajah and his family got up from the red patterned rug where they sat and moved off to one side. Almanzor sat down on the opposite side so the rug remained unoccupied between them, representing their two kingdoms. From these positions of neutrality, the two rajahs exchanged gifts and vows of friendship. Almanzor received 500 patoles, – garments of embroidered Chinese silk highly prized among the islands.

  Next day it was the rajah of Bacchian’s turn to receive largesse presented by fifty bare-chested girls in silk sarongs two by two with a man between. Each woman carried a platter of food and each man an urn full of wine, all presented to the rajah seated under the red and yellow awning. The ceremony concluded with a round of cannon fire from Trinidad and Victoria, and Trinidad unfurled her main course on which was emblazoned the Cross of St James and an inscription reading, ‘This is the sign of our good fortune.’

  Lorosa presented the only sour note on this festive occasion, looking on from the bulwark with his arm around his wife, and there might have been a hint of a tear in his weary eyes.

  “I had two sons when I came here,” he said to Pigafetta. “They are buried over there on Ternate. Poisoned. It’s the way we do business. God gave the Portuguese a small country to live in and all the world to die in. Now I just want to go home.”

  Now it was time to leave. The hatches were battened down to ensure the precious cargo stayed dry. Water barrels were filled from hot water streams running down the mountainside, bundles of firewood stacked beside the cookbox and a last demonstration of crossbow and musket fire put on for Almanzor and the rajahs of Bacchian and Gilolo and for the governors of Mutir and Macchian.

  Amidst all this came a royal barge from Ternate. Lorosa saw it first and called Espinosa’s attention to it.

  “You may have a visitor from Ternate, Captain. I think it is Momoli.”

  “He is too late. We have ceased trading for cloves.”

  The boat came alongside and Momoli himself, wearing the velvet robes that distinguished him as a prince, hailed Lorosa.

  “We have come to take you home.”

  “I am going home in this ship.”

  “This is a Spanish ship and you are Portuguese.”

  “After more than twenty years in these lands, I have no nation.”

  “My father, Chechili, wants you to come home.”

  “I am going home in this ship.”

  Momoli sprang on to the companion ladder and began climbing. Lorosa stepped backwards and turned to Espinosa.

  “Captain, don’t let him come aboard, please. He is a dangerous man.”

  Espinosa blocked the gangway and called his men around him. Momoli stopped halfway up the ladder, counted the odds against him and decided to withdraw. He went back down into his boat and his crew dug their paddles into the water and headed back towards Ternate.

  “Thank you, captain,” Lorosa said, “but you can be sure Malacca will soon hear of your visit and so will Lisbon. You are not safe from Dom Manuel yet.”

  “Nor you,” Espinosa said.

  “Nor me,” Lorosa agreed.

  The prohibition on rajahs intruding upon one another’s territory did not extend to the sm
all, uninhabited island of Mare, off Tidore’s north-west coast. As the hour of departure approached, the rajahs of Tidore and Bacchian and the governors of Mutir and Macchian – those who had contributed to the armada’s cargo – gathered in their finery for the farewell ceremony on a sandy beach beneath the palm trees. Standing side by side, the two rajahs declared once again their loyalty to the king of Spain and said they would never again sell cloves to Portugal without the consent of Spain. To demonstrate their good faith, the rajah of Bacchian gave the armada a slave and an additional two bihars of cloves as a present for Don Carlos, and Almanzor gave two very beautiful dead birds with long, colourful tail feathers which, he said, came from the terrestrial paradise and were called birds of god. Anyone who wore the feathers of such birds in battle would be protected from harm as if by Spanish armour.

  In return, the accountant, on behalf of the armada, gifted what they craved most – crossbows and muskets and four kegs of powder and shot that would certainly give them the advantage over Ternate. Thus were the wars inflamed, Pigafetta noted, and this would be the armada’s lasting legacy.

  Returning in the longboat gave a rare opportunity for the officers to take a view of their own ship and, as they approached, Espinosa squinted critically at the waterline.

  “We might be overloaded,” he said. “See how low she sits in the water.”

  “Is it safe, Captain?” Pigafetta asked.

  “Should be all right. The hatches are well battened down.”

  Just to be on the safe side, as soon as he got back on board Espinosa ordered the master, Punzarol, to sound the well.

  “Captain, we have two feet of water in the bilge,” Punzarol reported back in a few minutes with alarm on his face and in his voice.

  “What? Check it again on the other side.”

  Punzarol lowered his sounding rod down the pipe that led to the bottom of the ship, pulled it back up and read the depth of water.

  “The same, Captain.”

  “Mother of god. Get the pumps going.”

  While men sprang into action on the pumps, Espinosa and the carpenter climbed down into the hold, black as pitch and packed with cargo, but soon returned to the deck.

  “Hopeless. We can’t see anything down there.”

  Victoria, having weighed anchor, now returned to the anchorage and Elcano came across in their boat.

  “You haven’t touched bottom have you?” he asked Espinosa.

  “No, we have plenty of depth under the keel.”

  Next arrival was Almanzor in his prau. As soon as he understood the problem, he ordered his boat’s crew over the side to search the ship’s bottom for a hole. They swam for nearly an hour, coming up for breath and spouting like whales, but found no hole. Now the ship had begun listing and was in danger of capsizing and the men on the pumps worked furiously, with sweat streaming from their bodies. In such heat they could work only fifteen minute shifts and threw buckets of sea water over their heads to cool off.

  “We are going to have to get some cargo out of her,” Elcano said. “I will bring some of my crew over.”

  Almanzor was nearly in tears. He had hoped the ships could sail, the quicker to return with more ships and more guns. He sent for some men who dived for pearls and could stay under water a long time, but even they could not find a hole in the bottom of the ship. While men pumped non-stop, the rest of the crew began unloading the precious cargo they had sailed all this way to find. Some was transferred to Victoria, but she was already nearly full, and some went ashore to the godown.

  The mariners among them concluded the most likely cause of the leak was that, strained by the full load, her hull had sprung the caulking out of her seams, the caulking of makeshift resin they had been forced to use for lack of pitch. In that case, the only solution was to beach the ship and recaulk the hull, a job that would take many weeks of work, assuming a suitable resin could be found.

  Talk turned to the possibilities. Victoria was not big enough to accommodate Trinidad’s crew as well as her own. Should she wait for Trinidad or proceed alone? Almanzor promised 250 carpenters to help with repairs, but what if the Portuguese arrived before Trinidad was seaworthy? They would all be dead men then. What if the natives turned ugly, having witnessed this humiliation of European power? They would all be dead men then.

  It was Elcano who pointed out that, assuming Trinidad’s repairs took several weeks, the monsoon should have turned by then. In that case, if she were to sail into a high enough latitude, she should find westerly winds that would take her clear across the Pacific Ocean to Darién, in the New World. Her cargo could be carried across Yucatan by horse or mule and transhipped to another Spanish ship heading for Seville. Victoria, meanwhile, would continue westwards and complete the circumnavigation of the world. The problem there was that if they should meet a Portuguese fleet, they would be dead men.

  Pigafetta weighed up the evidence as the arguments raged back and forth. Did he want to be an eastwards-travelling dead man or a westwards-travelling dead man? What decided him was the opportunity to continue around the world and complete the circumnavigation on which he had set his heart. He chose Victoria despite the risk of her falling into the hands of Dom Manuel’s spiteful fleet. He said goodbye to Lorosa, a man he had come to like in their brief acquaintance, and shifted his precious diary and few other possessions across to the smaller Victoria, where he occupied an even more dismal cabin.

  At the last minute before Victoria began heaving up her anchor, Almanzor came aboard with two pilots who, he said, were familiar with the Banda Sea and the islands as far as Java Major. After that, they were on their own. Almanzor paid for the pilots himself. Despite their suspicions, he had never shown anything but generosity in his dealings with the armada.

  Of the 270 men who had sailed from Seville, forty-three departed the Spice Isles in Victoria together with sixteen natives to help them work the ship. Trinidad, listing badly, fired a gun salute and Pigafetta raised his hand to wave goodbye.