1492

CHAPTER XXXVII

JUAN LEPE lay upon the sand beyond Palos. The Admiral was with the court in Granada, but his physician, craving holiday, had borne a letter to Juan Perez, the Prior of Santa Maria de la Rabida.

I thought the Admiral would go again seafaring, and that I would go with him. Up at La Rabida, Fray Juan Perez was kind. I had a cell, I could come and go; he did not tell Palos that here was the Admiral’s physician, who knew the Indies from the first taking and could relate wonders. I lived obscure, but in Prior’s room, by a light fire, for it was November, he himself endlessly questioned and listened.

Ocean before me, ocean, ocean! Lying here, those years ago, I had seen ocean only. Now, far, far, I saw land, saw San Salvador, Cuba that might be the main, Hayti, Jamaica, San Juan, Guadaloupe, Trinidad, Paria that again seemed main. Vast islands and a world of small islands, vast mainlands. Then no sail was seen on far Ocean-Sea; now out there might be ships going from Cadiz, coming, returning from San Domingo. Eight years, and so the world was changed!

I thought, “In fifty years—in a hundred years—in two hundred? What is coming up the long road?”

Ocean murmured, the tide was coming in. Juan Lepe waited till the sands had narrowed, till the gray wave foamed under his hand. Then he rose and walked slowly to La Rabida.

After compline, talk; Fray Juan Perez, the good man, comfortable in his great chair before the fire. He had hungered always, I thought, for adventure and marvel. Here it happened—? And here it happened—?

To-night we fell to talk of the Pinzons—Martin who was dead, and Vicente who now was on Ocean-Sea, on a voyage of his own—and of others who had sailed, and what they found and where they were. We were at ease about the Admiral. We had had letters.

He was in Granada, dressed again in crimson and gold, towering again with his silver head, honored and praised. When first he came into the Queen’s presence she had trembled a little and turned pale, and there was water in her eyes. “Master Christopherus, forgive us! Whereupon,” said the letter, “I wept with her.”

Apparently all honors were back; he moved Admiral and Viceroy. His brothers, his sons, all his house walked in a spring sun. He had been shown the letters from Bobadilla, and he who was not lengthy in speech had spoken an hour upon them. His word rang gold; Christ gave it, he said, that his truth was believed. Don Francisco de Bobadilla would quit Hispaniola—though not in chains.

Fray Juan Perez stirred the fire. Upon the table stood a flask of wine and a dish of figs. We were comfortable in La Rabida.

Days passed, weeks passed, time passed. Word from the Admiral, word of the Admiral, came not infrequently to white La Rabida. He himself, in his own person, stood in bright favor, the Queen treasuring him, loving to talk with him, the Court following her, the King at worst only a cool friend. But his affairs of office, Fray Juan Perez and I gathered, sitting solicitous at La Rabida, were not in so fair a posture. He and his household did not lack. Monies were paid him, though not in full his tithe of all gains from his finding. What never shook was his title of The Admiral. But they seemed, the Sovereigns, or at least King Ferdinand, to look through “Viceroy” as though it were a shade. And in Hispaniola, though charged, reproved, threatened, still stayed Bobadilla in the guise of Governor!

“They cannot leave him there,” I said. “If the Colombos are not men for the place, what then is Bobadilla?”

Fray Juan Perez stirred the fire. “King Ferdinand, I say it only to you and in a whisper, has not a little of the King of the Foxes! Not, till he has made up his mind, doth he wish there a perfect man. When he has made it up, he will cast about—”

“I do not think he has any better than the Adelantado!”

“‘Those brothers are one. Leave him out!’ saith the King. I will read you his mind! ‘Master Christopherus Columbus hath had too much from the beginning. Nor is he necessary as he was. When the breach is made, any may take the fortress! I will leave him and give him what I must but no more!’ He will send at last another than Bobadilla, but not again, if he can help it, the old Viceroy! Of course there is the Queen, but she has many sorrows these days, and fails, they say, in health.”

“It may be,” said Juan Lepe. “I myself were content for him to rest The Admiral only. But his mind is yet a hawk towering over land and sea and claiming both for prize. He mingles the earthly and the heavenly.”

“It is true,” said Fray Juan Perez, “that age comes upon him. And true, too, that King Ferdinand may say, ‘Whatever it was at first, this world in the West becomes far too vast a matter for one man and the old, first, simple ways!’”

“You have it there,” I answered, and we covered the embers and went to bed in La Rabida.

Winter passed. It was seen that the Admiral could not sail this week nor the next.

Juan Lepe, bearded, brown as a Moor, older than in the year Granada fell, crossed with quietness much of Castile and came on a spring evening to the castle of Don Enrique de Cerda. Again “Juan Lepe from the hermitage in the oak wood.”

Seven days. I would not stay longer, but in that time the ancient trees waved green again.

Don Enrique had been recently to Granada. “King Ferdinand will change all matters in the West! Your islands shall have Governors, as many as necessary. They shall refer themselves to a High Governor at San Domingo, who in his turn shall closely listen to a Council here.”

“Will the High Governor be Don Cristoval Colon?”

“No. I hear that he himself agrees to a suspension of his viceroyalty for two years, seeing well that in Hispaniola is naught but faction, everything torn into ‘Friends of the Genoese’ and ‘Not friends!’. Perhaps he sees that he cannot help himself and that he less parts with dignity by acceding. I do not know. There is talk of Don Nicholas de Ovanda, Commander of Lares. Your man will not, I think, be sent before a steady wind for Viceroy again—never again. If he presses too persistently, there can always be found one or more who will stand and cry, ‘He did intend, O King—he doth intend—to make himself King of the Indies!’ And King Ferdinand will say he does not believe, but it is manifest that that thought must first die from men’s minds. The Queen fails fast. She has not the voice and the hand in all matters that once was so.”

“He is one who dies for loyalties,” I said. “He reverences all simply the crowns of Castile and Leon. For his own sake I am not truly so anxious to have him Viceroy again! They will give him ships and let him discover until he dies?”

“Ah, I don’t think there is any doubt about that!” he answered.

We talked somewhat of that great modern world, evident now over the horizon, bearing upon us like a tall, full-rigged ship. All things were changing, changing fast. We talked of commerce and inventions, of letters and of arts, of religion and the soul of man. Out of the soil were pushing everywhere plants that the old called heretical.

Seven days. We were, as we shall be forever, friends.

But Juan Lepe would go back to La Rabida. He was, for this turn of life, man of the Admiral of the Ocean-Sea. So we said farewell, Enrique de Cerda and Jayme de Marchena.

Three leagues Seville side of Cordova I came at eve to a good inn known to me of old. Riding into its court I found two travelers entering just before me, one a well-formed hidalgo still at prime, and the other a young man evidently his son. The elder who had just dismounted turned and I recognized Don Francisco de Las Casas. At the same instant he saw me. “Ha, Friend! Ha, Doctor!”

We took our supper together in a wide, low room, looking out upon the road. Don Francisco and Juan Lepe talked and the young man listened. Juan Lepe talked but his eyes truly were for this young man. It was not that he was of a striking aspect and better than handsome, though he was all that—but I do not know—it was the future in his countenance! His father addressed him as Bartolome. Once he said, “When my son was at the University at Salamanca,” and again, “My son will go out with Don Nicholas de Ovando.” Juan Lepe, sitting in a brown study, roused at that. “If you go, senor, you will find good memories around the name of Las Casas.”

The young man said, “I will strive in no way to darken them, senor.”

He might be a year or two the younger side of thirty. The father, it was
evident, had great pride in him, and presently having sent him on
some errand—sending him, I thought, in order to be able to speak of
him—told me that he was very learned, a licentiate, having mastered
law, theology and philosophy. He himself would not return to Hispaniola,
but Bartolome wished to go. He sighed, “I do not know. Something makes
me consent,” and went on to enlist Doctor Juan Lepe’s care if in the
island ever arose any chance to aid—

   The son returned. There was something—Juan Lepe
knew it—something in the future.

Later, Don Francisco having gone to bed, the young man and I talked. I liked him extraordinarily. I was not far from twice his age, as little man counts age. But he had soul and mind, and while these count age it is not in the short, earthly way. He asked me about the Indians, and again and again we came back to that, pacing up and down in the moonlight before the Spanish inn.

The next morning parting. They were going to Cordova, I to the sea.

The doves flew over the cloister of La Rabida. The bells rang; in the small white church sang the brothers, then paced to their cells or away to their work among the vines. Prior had a garden, small, with a tree in each corner, with a stone bench in the sun and a stone bench in the shade, and the doves walked here all day long. And here I found the Adelantado with Fray Juan Perez.

The Admiral was well?

Aye, well, and next month would come to Seville. A new Voyage.

We sat under the grape arbor and he told me much, the Prior listening for the second time. The doves cooed and whirred and walked in the sun and shadow. According to Don Bartholomew, half in his pack was dark and half was light.

Ovando? We heard again of all that. He was going out, Don Nicholas de Ovando, with a great fleet.

The Adelantado possessed a deal of plain, strong sense. “I do not think that Cristoforo will ever rule again in Hispaniola! King Ferdinand has his own measure and goes about to apply it. The Queen flinches now from decisions.—Well, what of it? After all, we were bred to the sea, I have a notion that his son Diego—an able youth—may yet be Viceroy. He has established his family, if so be he does not bring down the structure by obstinating overmuch! He sees that, the Admiral, and nods his head and steps aside. As for native pride and its hurt he salves that with great enterprises. It is his way. Drouth? Frost? Out of both he rises, green and hopeful as grass in May!”

“What of the Voyage?” asked Juan Lepe.

“That’s the enterprise that will go through. Now that Portugal and Vasco da Gama are actually in at the door, it behooves us—more and more it behooves us,” said Bartolomeo Colombo, “to find India of All the Wealth! Spain no less than Portugal wants the gold and diamonds, the drugs and spices, the fine, thin, painted cloths, the carved ivory and silver and amber. ‘Land, land, so much land!’ says King Ferdinand. ‘But wealth? It is all out-go! Even your Crusade were a beggarly Crusade!’”

“Ha! That hurt him!” quoth Fray Juan Perez.

“Says the King. ‘Pedro Alonso Nino has made for us the most profitable voyage of any who have sailed from Cadiz.’ ‘From Cadiz, but not from Palos,’ answers the Admiral.”

“Ha! Easy ‘tis when he has shown the way!” said Fray Juan Perez.

Don Bartholomew drew with the Prior’s stick in the sand at our feet. “He conceives it thus. Here to the north is Cuba, stretching westward how far no man knoweth. Here to the south is Paria that he found—no matter what Ojeda and Nino and Cabral have done since!—stretching westward how far no man knoweth, and between is a great sea holding Jamaica and we do not know what other islands. Cuba and Paria curving south and north and between them where they shall come closest surely a strait into the sea of Rich India!” He drew Cuba and Paria approaching each the other until there was space between like the space from the horn of Spain to the horn of Africa. “Rich India—now, now, now—gold on the wharves, canoes of pearls, not cotton and cassava, is what we want in Spain! So the King says, ‘Very good, you shall have the ships,’ and the Queen, ‘Christ have you in his keeping, Master Christopherus!’ So we go. All his future hangs, he knows, on finding Rich India.”

“How soon do we go?”

“As soon as he can get the ships and the men and the supplies. He wants only three or four and not great ones. Great ships for warships and storeships, but little ships for discovery!”

“Aye, I hear him!” said Fray Juan Perez. “September—October.”

But it was not until March that we sailed on his last voyage.