Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [73]
A festive atmosphere reigned on the day of departure, September 25, 1493, in the port of Cadiz. “The parting embraces were exchanged, the ships were decked out with flags, while streamers wound about the rigging and the colors of the sovereigns adorned the stern of every ship,” recalled one of the passengers, Guillermo Coma, a “nobleman of Spain.” All the while, musicians, “playing the flute and the lyre, dumbfounded the very nereids, seanymphs, and sirens with their mellifluous strains. The shores rang with the blare of trumpets and the blast of horns, and the bottom of the sea re-echoed to the roar of cannon.”
A fresh breeze sped the seventeen ships toward their destination. “On September 28, being one hundred leagues from Spain, many small land birds, turtledoves, and other kinds of small birds came to the Admiral’s ship; they appeared to be flying to winter in Africa.” They had their fixed route, to the south, and Columbus had his, to the south and east. Holding on his course, on Wednesday, October 2, he reached Grand Canary, a verdant landmass rising from the sea. He set his anchors, but not for long. By midnight, he was sailing for Gomera, and reached the small, lush island three days later.
Gomera had been settled since Roman times, and the island’s isolated inhabitants communicated with one another by means of a peculiar whistled language of rising and falling pitches known as Silbo Gomero. Columbus had no time to admire the curious tongue. His mission consumed his attention, as he obtained necessary supplies, especially animals. The transatlantic menagerie included pigs and sows, sheep and goats, twenty-four stallions, ten mares, and three mules. Unable to survive the long weeks at sea in the ships’ fetid holds, the animals occupied privileged space on the bridges. Arrayed against the sky, heads bobbing, they imparted a resemblance to that biblical ship, Noah’s Ark.
There was one other distraction on the island of Gomera: Doña Beatriz de Bobadilla. Or, as she was known in the Canaries, “Bobadilla the huntress, a woman of rare distinction.”
On the outward-bound leg of his first voyage, Columbus had paused at San Sebastián, Gomera, from September 3 through 6, 1492, long enough for a romantic encounter with the island’s ruler, Beatriz de Bobadilla. A thirtyyear-old femme fatale, she claimed noble lineage from Castile, and served Queen Isabella as a seventeen-year-old maid of honor; in this role she fell under the spell of King Ferdinand. (Despite his professed loyalty to his wife, Ferdinand carried on a series of clandestine liaisons.)
At about this time, the court was visited by Hernán de Peraza, who had the unpleasant task of accounting for the death of a commander associated with him. He received a pardon from Queen Isabella in exchange for vowing to conquer Grand Canary island in the name of Spain. And there was one other condition, a “less onerous penance,” as it is traditionally described: to marry young Beatriz de Bobadilla, and thereby distance her from Ferdinand. At one stroke Isabella won Peraza’s loyalty and removed the younger and more attractive rival for her husband’s affections. Beatriz de Bobadilla and Hernán de Peraza quickly wed and returned to Gomera, where her husband was killed by the indigenous people there, known as Guanches, to protest his tyrannical rule.
As a widow, Beatriz de Peraza proved to be no less cruel. She lured knights and local figures to her castle. Some survived their encounters with her, and others did not. One of her visitors, it was said, spread indiscreet rumors about the viuda’s scandalous behavior. She invited him to the castle, where they chatted a bit, and then summoned her servants, who arrested her visitor. He admitted his misdeeds and apologized, to no avail. She ordered her servants to place a noose around his neck and hang him from a tower