Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [207]
Despite these hardships and frustrations, Columbus retained a particular affection for El Alto Viaje—the High Voyage—perhaps because it gave him a chance to show off his navigational skills as never before, and to accomplish feats that would make less accomplished explorers gasp in wonder. Or perhaps because the hardships of the voyage, its reversals and privations and narrow escapes, brought him closer to God, to his son Ferdinand, and to his sense of mission.
It was now November 7, 1504. He planned to return to Seville to recover his health, and then journey once again, this time to make amends with the queen who had backed his voyages for a dozen years. As with many of his expectations, it was not to be.
Queen Isabella, still at Medina del Campo, continued her decline. Only weeks before, on October 4, she signed her will, in which she exhorted her husband and daughter to conquer Africa—considered by some to belong to the Spanish empire—and to complete the Crusade. There were other requests: she would be buried in a habit of St. Francis, and she appointed her daughter, Juana, her “universal heir.” As for King Ferdinand, she was thankful for his labors, and he would receive half the income flowing to Spain from the empire that Columbus discovered for them both—the Indies.
Beyond that, a codicil to her will maintained that “our main aim was to arrange the introduction there of our holy Catholic faith and to ensure that the people there accepted it, and also to send prelates, monks, priests, and other learned people who fear God to instruct the people in the faith and to teach and indoctrinate them with good customs.”
By this time she had given her blessing to a new mission to the Indies, led not by Columbus or one of his brothers, but by Juan de la Cosa, the mapmaker. Later, she assigned Alonso de Ojeda, whom Columbus considered a poacher on his demesne, as the governor of the bay of Urabá, between today’s Colombia and Panama. Although the mission, backed by an amalgam of conversos and nobles, was slow to start, its mere existence was enough to alarm the Admiral, who complained that “nobles of the realm now sharpened their teeth as if they had been wild boar, in the expectation of a great mutation of the state.”
Although Columbus was already sketching out another voyage in his fevered imagination, it was apparent that his remaining strength would not be equal to the demands of life at sea. He had deteriorated badly, like one of his ships too riddled with shipworms to endure another squall.
On November 26, nineteen days after Columbus had arrived in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Isabella I, Queen of Castile and Léon, died in Medina del Campo. She was fifty-three years old. With her went Columbus’s hopes of obtaining backing for another voyage. For all her reign’s brutality, she had been a powerful leader, bringing the nobility under control and a semblance of order to Castile. Reflecting the conventional opinion of the era, Peter Martyr described her as “the mirror of virtues, refuge of good things, scourge of evil.” But she would always be remembered as the sponsor of the Inquisition—and of the voyages of Christopher Columbus.
“Her death caused the Admiral much grief,” wrote his son, “for she had always aided and favored him, while the King he always found somewhat reserved and unsympathetic to his projects.” Ferdinand was not the only observer who noticed the disparity in the way the two monarchs treated Columbus. “The Catholic king,” Las Casas observed, “I know not why nor with what motive, not only failed to show him any material sign of gratitude but also, while very complimentary in what he said, did his level best to ensure that [Columbus’s] route to advancement was blocked.” The chronicler shook