Chapter 20

Sean suggested that we should sell a barrel in different places and not concentrate all our efforts on the market at Convent Garden. For example, we had seen that there were many houses built on London Bridge and they all had shops on the ground floor. As this was the first bridge across the Thames, it was used by hundreds of people every day to cross from one side of the river to the other. That is why the more than 100 shops on the bridge seemed to be very busy and able to attract many customers. Sean had seen that there was a shop selling fruit and vegetables, so he suggested that we should see if that merchant would be interested in buying a barrel of fruit.

By showing the merchant a few oranges and lemons and letting him taste them, Sean convinced him to buy a barrel of each type of fruit for a very high price. Now we had sold 5 barrels of oranges and 1 of lemons with another promised for the next day, so I was more hopeful that we could sell all in a short time. As we rested, we were hailed from the river bank. Sean went to the side of the nao and enquired what the visitor wanted. The reply was that he wanted to come aboard to collect the fee for mooring and unloading our goods.

The man came aboard and showed us a paper that bore several seals and signatures certifying that he was an inspector of customs and ports. That was what Sean told us, although it was unclear if Sean could read the document in spite of speaking English. However, he assured me that he had seen similar papers when his ships had unloaded wine from Portugal, so I had no choice but to accept that the man was an agent of the port and not some thief who saw the chance to prey on a foreign nao whose crew did not speak his language. The fee to be collected for mooring was reasonable according to Sean, but then a problem arose over how much to charge for unloading the barrels of fruit. The problem was that the official did not know how to calculate the amount due as he had never seen such fruit before. However, in the end, he concluded that these were apples, and he charged us a modest fee accordingly.

As a gift for charging us a small sum for unloading our cargo, I presented him with 2 sweet and 2 bitter oranges from the small store I had brought with us as fruit for the crew to eat, and he left us well satisfied with the exchange. I thought that we would not see him again, but I was mistaken, although he did not return for a few days.

The next day, after we had delivered a barrel of lemons to the shop in Convent Garden, we visited another market near where we had moored. This was known as Borough Market, but it was much smaller than the market at Convent Garden, so we did not have any luck in persuading the merchants there to buy our fruit. I again started to feel that we would not be able to sell our fruit because it would start to spoil if it was stored for too long.

That’s when the port official helped to solve our problem. He returned two days after he had left us, but this time he was accompanied by two well-dressed men who seemed to be gentlemen and not officials from the port. Having asked for and been given permission to come aboard, the three men spoke first to Sean. The port official introduced them, and then they explained why they had come to visit us.

However, I was able to understand their explanation because they spoke in Castilian. I was amazed to hear that language spoken on the banks of the River Thames, but it soon became clear why they were in London.

The two men were members of the household of the Queen of England. She was Catherine of Aragon, the youngest daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. She had married Arthur, the oldest son of King Henry VII, in 1501 but he had died five months later. She remained in England and in 1509 she married her former brother-in-law, when he became Henry VIII on the death of his father.

These two men had good connections with the officials in the port of London who had instructions to inform them if any ship from Spain arrived. I later discovered that the reason for this was to see if there were any letters or other documents from Spain, and especially from the father and mother of Catherine. If there were any, they would insist that the papers be surrendered to their custody for safekeeping before delivering them to the Queen. Of course, in reality, they wanted to see if there were any messages about themselves so that they could take any necessary action to take advantage of the knowledge of the contents of the documents. In private, they would open letters and other documents, read them, reseal them and then deliver them to the court.