Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [208]
It is painful to contemplate Columbus entering into his final round of negotiations with King Ferdinand. Like Nicolás de Ovando, the king acknowledged the explorer’s accomplishments and service to the crown, without promising anything for the future. Refusing to recognize this reality, Columbus persisted in beseeching his Sovereign for confirmation of his titles, and even for backing of future voyages, although he was barely capable of traveling overland, let alone over the Ocean Sea. He had lived long enough to see his moment pass, all too briefly. Now he bargained with the king as with death itself for more time, money, and glory. Columbus regained enough strength to plan a visit to the movable Spanish court, guessing that it was at Valladolid. He proposed to travel aboard the ornate palanquin once used to transport a cardinal’s corpse to be interred at the Seville Cathedral, but put the plan aside in favor of journeying as he did so often overland, on the back of a mule.
After many delays, he finally set out, accompanied by his brother Bartholomew, in May 1505. It was imperative to persuade the Sovereign one last time to clear his name and to restore his privileges, his wealth, and his honor. He bluntly outlined his intentions in a letter that he wrote to the king the following month: “The government and the position that I had was the height of my honor”—the concept had become an obsession with him—“I was unjustly expelled from there; very humbly I beg Your Highness that you give orders to put my son in possession of the government I once had.”
When they met, the king “received him courteously and professed to restore all his rights and privileges, but it was his real design to take them all away,” his son observed, “and this he would have done but for his sense of shame, which is a powerful force to noble souls.” Now that the Indies, discovered by Columbus, were beginning to fulfill their promise, “the Catholic King begrudged the Admiral the very large share he had in them by virtue of his capitulations with the Crown.”
At the time of the original capitulation, Columbus had promised to find a maritime equivalent to Marco Polo’s trading route, and to establish trading relations with the Grand Khan, to Spain’s benefit. Dominion over the lands he might discover en route, and the wealth thereof, were granted to Columbus almost as an afterthought, a by-product of his voyage of commercial discovery, but the Admiral placed an entirely different emphasis on the Enterprise of the Indies, seeing himself as fulfilling a mission inspired and even directed by God. Under these auspices, Columbus believed himself the recipient of a great and lasting honor, one that extended beyond the laws and memories of mortals.
Once the Sovereigns became aware of his failure to deliver what he had originally promised and the overwhelming extent of all that he had discovered, they changed the terms of the agreement to ensure that Columbus remained in his place, as their servant rather than a rival. From their point of view, they were entitled to treat him as they wished; from his perspective, the Sovereigns had unaccountably breached their contract. Columbus rallied, and tried to persuade Ferdinand to maintain Columbus’s status and entitlements. “I shall serve you all the remaining days of my life, few though these may be,” and according to Las Casas he vowed that in the future, his service “will prove a hundred times more illustrious than I have done Your Highness to date.”
These promises restarted negotiations between Ferdinand and his tarnished Admiral, whose son realized that the king “wished to regain absolute control” over the Indies and “dispose