Spain for the Sovereigns (34 page)

He met the Christian forces on the banks of the Xenil, and the fighting was fierce.

Boabdil had not been born to be a fighter. He was a man who longed for peace; and but for his forceful mother he would never have found himself in the position he was in that day. His men sensed the lack of resolution in their leader; and the Christians were determined.

And there on the banks of the Xenil, Boabdil saw his Moors defeated and, realising that he himself in his rich garments and on his milk-white horse was conspicuous as their leader, he sought a way to hide himself and escape death or what would be more humiliating, capture.

He saw his men mowed down, his captains slaughtered; and he knew the battle was lost.

The river had risen during the night and it was impossible for him to ford it; so he dismounted and, abandoning his horse, hid himself among the brush which bordered the river.

As he cowered there among the reeds, a passing soldier caught a glimpse of the bright scarlet of his cloak and came to investigate.

Boabdil stood up, his scimitar in his hand, and prepared to fight for his life. But his discoverer, a soldier named Martin Hurtado, realising that here was a man of high rank, yelled to his comrades and, at once, Boabdil was surrounded.

Now his scimitar was of no use against so many and, in an endeavour to save his life, he cried: ‘I am Boabdil, Sultan of Granada.’

That made the soldiers pause. Here was a prize beyond their wildest hopes.

‘Stay your swords, my friends,’ cried Martin Hurtado. ‘We will take this prize to King Ferdinand. I’ll warrant we’ll be richly rewarded for it.’

The others agreed, although it went against the grain to relinquish that scarlet velvet cloak, that shining armour and all the other treasures which, it was reasonable to believe, such a personage might have upon him.

So in this way was Boabdil brought to Ferdinand a prisoner.

Isabella was at the frontier town of Logrono, when news was brought to her of the death of Louis.

She fell on her knees and gave thanks for this deliverance.

The King of France, she heard, had died in great fear of the hereafter, for he had committed many sins and the memory of these tortured him.

Yet, thought Isabella, he worked for his country. France was put first always. Perhaps his sins would be forgiven because of that one great virtue.

His son, Charles VIII, was a minor and there would be troubles enough in his country to keep French eyes off Navarre for some time.

It is yet another miracle, pondered Isabella. It is further evidence that I have been selected for the great tasks before me.

Now she need no longer stay on the borders of Navarre. She could join Ferdinand; they could prosecute the war against the Infidel with all their resources.

As she travelled towards Cordova more exhilarating news was brought to her.

The Moors had been routed on the banks of the Xenil, and Boabdil himself was Ferdinand’s prisoner.

‘Let us give thanks to God and his saints,’ cried Isabella to her attendants. ‘The way is being made clear to us. Our Inquisitors are bringing the heretic to justice. Now we shall drive the Infidel from Granada. If we do this we shall not have lived in vain, and there will be rejoicing in Heaven. Our sins will be as molehills beside the mountain of our achievements.’

And she was smiling. For the first time since she had heard of it she was no longer disturbed by the thought of bright and beautiful Francis Phoebus, lying dead at the hand of a poisoner.

Chapter IX

I
n a small shop in one of the narrow streets of the town of Lisbon a man waited for customers, and on his face was an expression of frustration and sorrow.

‘Will it always be thus?’ he asked himself. ‘Will my plans never come to fruition?’

He had asked the question again and again of Filippa, his wife, and she had always replied in the same way: ‘Have courage, Christoforo. One day your dreams will be realised. One day you will find those who will believe you, who will make it possible for you to carry out your plan.’

And he had said in those days: ‘You are right, Filippa; one day I shall succeed.’

He had smiled at her because he had known that in her heart she was not displeased. When the great day came she would stand at the door of the shop, little Diego in her arms, waving to a husband who was going away on his great adventure, an adventure which would, more likely than not, end in death.

Yet she need not have feared on that account. She was the one who had gone to meet death – not on the high seas, but in the back room of this dark little shop which was crowded with charts and nautical instruments.

Little Diego came and stood beside him. Patient little Diego, who now had no mother to care for him, and tried so hard to understand the meaning of the dreams he saw in his father’s eyes.

Few people came into the shop to buy. Christoforo was not a good salesman, he feared. If they came, if they were interested in sailing the seas, he would invite them into the room beyond and there, over a bottle of wine, they would talk while Christoforo forgot the need to sell his goods that he might provide food for himself and his son.

It was nearly ten years since he had come to Lisbon from Genoa. He was even then nearly thirty years old. He often talked now to little Diego, who had been his chief companion since Filippa had died.

Diego would stand, his hands on his father’s knees, listening.

Diego thought his father the most handsome man in Lisbon, indeed in the world, for Diego knew nothing of the world beyond Lisbon. When his father talked his eyes would glow with a luminosity which Diego did not understand – and yet it thrilled his small body. His father talked as no others talked; and his talk was all of a land that lay somewhere across the oceans, a land which existed and yet about which no one on this side of the world knew anything.

Diego looked into the face of a man who saw visions. A tall man, a broad man, with long legs, blue eyes which seemed made for looking over long distances, and thick hair which had a touch of red and gold in it.

‘Father,’ Diego would say, ‘tell me about the great voyage of discovery.’

Then Christoforo would talk, and as he talked those light, luminous eyes swept across the past to the present and on into the future, and it was as though he saw clearly what had happened, what was happening and what the future held.

‘I came to Lisbon, my son,’ he would begin, ‘because I believed that here in this country I might find more sympathy for my schemes than was given me in Italy. In Italy . . . they laughed at me. My son, I think they begin to laugh at me here.’

Diego listened intently. They laughed at his father because they were fools. They did not believe in the existence of the great land across the water.

‘Fools! Fools!’ cried Diego, clenching his fists and bringing them down on his father’s knees.

Then Christoforo remembered the youthfulness of his son and he was unhappy again, for he thought: What if they listened to me with serious attention? What if they smiled on me? What would become of this small boy?

It had been different when Filippa was alive. He could no longer see himself setting out while Filippa waved farewell with their son in her arms.

He would take the boy on his knee and tell him of the journeys he had made. He would talk of voyages to the coast of Guinea and Iceland, to the Cape de Verd Islands. He talked of the time when he had first come to Lisbon. Filippa had come with him; and she had known what he planned; he had made no secret of his ambitions. She had understood. She was her father’s daughter and
he
had sailed the seas;
he
understood the desire of men to discover new lands. So Filippa Muñiiz de Palestrello understood also.

She had watched her husband and her father bending over the charts, growing excited, talking of what lay beyond the wastes of water so far unexplored by Europeans.

When her father died all his charts and all his instruments were left to Christoforo, who had by then married Filippa.

One day Christoforo, who had vainly been trying to interest influential men in his projects, heard that an adventurer was more likely to get a sympathetic understanding in the maritime port of Lisbon than anywhere else, for King John II of Portugal was interested in expeditions into the unknown world.

‘Pack up what we have, Filippa,’ he had said. ‘This day we leave for Lisbon.’

And so to Lisbon they had come, and found a home here among its seven hills. But Filippa had died, leaving him only Diego to remind him of her – Diego, that precious and beloved creature, who because of the dream must be an anxiety.

Wandering along the banks of the Tagus, walking disconsolately through the Alfama district, gazing up to the Castle of Sao Jorge set on the highest of the hills, he dreamed continually of the day when he would leave Lisbon; for his dream had become an obsession which tormented him, and had grown to such proportions that it obliterated even the love of his wife and child.

‘But one day, Diego, my son,’ said Christoforo, ‘they will not laugh. One day they will honour your father. Mayhap they will make him an Admiral and I shall ask a place at Court for you, my little son.’

Diego nodded; he had no idea what a place at Court would mean to him, but he was pleased that his father did not forget him; for young as he was, Diego understood the force of his father’s ambition.

‘Father,’ he said, ‘will it be soon that you sail away?’

‘Soon, my son. It must be soon. I have waited long. And while I am away, you will be good?’

‘I will be good,’ said the boy, ‘but I shall long for your return.’

Christoforo was smitten with remorse afresh. He lifted the boy in his arms and held him tightly. Little Diego had such confidence in his father who was preparing to leave him, and indeed longing to do so. He did not doubt that provision would be made for him during his father’s absence, and in the event of his father’s not returning at all.

And it shall be! Christoforo assured himself. Even if I have to take him with me.

Yet what sort of a father-was he, to expose a tender child to the hazards of the sea!

I am not a father, Christoforo told himself, any more than I was a husband. I am an explorer-adventurer – and there is little space in one lifetime to be more than that. Yet, I swear, Diego shall be cared for.