“And I direct him [Diego] to
make provision for Beatriz Enriquez, mother of
D.
Fernando, my son, that she may be able to live
honestly, being a person to whom I am under very
great obligation. And this shall be done
for the satisfaction of my conscience, because
this matter weighs heavily upon my soul. The
reason for which it is not fitting to write here.”
About the condition of Beatriz, temporal and spiritual,
there has been much controversy; but where the facts
are all so buried and inaccessible it is unseemly
to agitate a veil which we cannot lift, and behind
which Columbus himself sheltered this incident of
his life. “Acquainted with poverty”
is one fragment of fact concerning her that has come
down to us; acquainted also with love and with happiness,
it would seem, as many poor persons undoubtedly are.
Enough for us to know that in the city of Cordova
there lived a woman, rich or poor, gentle or humble,
married or not married, who brought for a time love
and friendly companionship into the life of Columbus;
that she gave what she had for giving, without stint
or reserve, and that she became the mother of a son
who inherited much of what was best in his father,
and but for whom the world would be in even greater
darkness than it is on the subject of Christopher
himself. And so no more of Beatriz Enriquez de
Arana, whom “God has in his keeping”—and
has had now these many centuries of Time.
Thus passed the summer and autumn of 1487; precious
months, precious years slipping by, and the great
purpose as yet unfulfilled and seemingly no nearer
to fulfilment. It is likely that Columbus kept
up his applications to the Court, and received polite
and delaying replies. The next year came, and
the Court migrated from Zaragoza to Murcia, from Murcia
to Valladolid, from Valladolid to Medina del Campo.
Columbus attended it in one or other of these places,
but without result. In August Beatriz gave birth
to a son, who was christened Ferdinand, and who lived
to be a great comfort to his father, if not to her
also. But the miracle of paternity was not now
so new and wonderful as it had been; the battle of
life, with its crosses and difficulties, was thick
about him; and perhaps he looked into this new-comer’s
small face with conflicting thoughts, and memories
of the long white beach and the crashing surf at Porto
Santo, and regret for things lost—so strangely
mingled and inconsistent are the threads of human
thought. At last he decided to turn his face
elsewhere. In September 1488 he went to Lisbon,
for what purpose it is not certain; possibly in connection
with the affairs of his dead wife; and probably also
in the expectation of seeing his brother Bartholomew,
to whom we may now turn our attention for a moment.
After the failure of Columbus’s proposals to
the King of Portugal in 1486, and the break-up of
his home there, Bartholomew had also left Lisbon.
Bartholomew Diaz, a famous Portuguese navigator, was
leaving for the African coast in August, and Bartholomew
Columbus is said to have joined his small expedition
of three caravels. As they neared the latitude
of the Cape which he was trying to make, he ran into
a gale which drove him a long way out of his course,
west and south.
