Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [167]
The sails of La Gorda slipped below the horizon one day in early October. The Admiral of the Ocean Sea was now a prisoner on his own vessel, waiting to be judged by his Sovereigns.
At sea, the shipmaster offered to strike the chains binding Columbus’s wrists and ankles, but Ferdinand reported that his father “would not permit it, saying only that they had been put on him by royal authority and only the Sovereigns could order them struck off.” He drew strength from this humiliation, becoming stronger in defeat than in victory. The explorer in chains represented the ideal tableau to express his sense of martyrdom, and he would sustain it as long as possible. Columbus knew the dynamics of redemption, and played his part, even as he resented it. Said his son, “He was resolved to keep those chains as a keepsake of how well he had been rewarded for his many services.” Columbus never forgot the ordeal. “I always saw those irons in his bedroom,” Ferdinand revealed, “which he demanded be buried with his bones.”
On landing in Cadiz, Columbus chose to exhibit himself in chains to elicit sympathy from the curious crowds that had gathered there to watch him and who were duly impressed by the sight of the great explorer humbled. Later, when the chains were finally removed, he would substitute the habit of a Franciscan friar, keeping the sleeves short enough to reveal the marks made by manacles on his wrists as signs of mortification. The spectacle he made of himself was not as bizarre as it sounded, not in a country in which pilgrims on bare, bloody knees paraded through the streets of Seville as part of their Easter observance. Columbus knew what notes to strike with his public acts of penance, and to appear both pious and loyal.
Still manacled, Columbus arrived at the monastery of Santa María de las Cuevas, a fortress of faith on the island of La Cartuja, near Seville. According to legend, an image of the Virgin had appeared in a cueva, or cave, beneath the monastery in the thirteenth century.
On December 12, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered Columbus freed from his shackles, provided him with funds, and invited him to court, located, for the moment, at Granada.
Five days later, Christopher, Bartholomew, and Diego Columbus received a cordial reception by the Sovereigns. They let it be known they had not ordered the Admiral to be imprisoned; responsibility belonged to Bobadilla, who had exceeded his authority. Throughout the poignant tableau, “the most serene queen was the one who excelled in consoling him about this and assuring him of her pain for, in truth, she was always the one who favored and defended him more than the king.” It was no wonder that “the Admiral placed all of his hope in her.”
Columbus’s emotions, held in check for months, suddenly burst forth. He knelt before the queen, sobbing. At length, the Sovereigns commanded him to rise, and in a halting voice he conveyed his “deep love and desire to serve them with all the faithfulness that he had always had.” He avowed that he had never done anything to give them offense, echoing a letter he had written to them in which he declared, “I swear . . . that I have been more diligent in serving Your Highnesses than in gaining paradise.”
In this act of mutual absolution, Columbus acknowledged that he had permitted the misdeeds exposed by Bobadilla’s investigation, revealed the pain of being shackled and publicly humiliated, professed his undying love for and loyalty to the Sovereigns, excusing his lapses and abuses on the basis of excessive zeal rather than malice, and begged forgiveness, thereby setting the stage for the possibility of a fourth voyage, as unlikely as that seemed after the lapses of the previous three. His honor was at stake, as were his titles, riches, and role in the Enterprise of the Indies, and he wished to redeem them all before it was too late.
Ferdinand and Isabella undid the work of Bobadilla and restored the Admiral’s rights and privileges, at least on paper, by forcing the investigator to disgorge the items he had confiscated. “We command