Chapter 1

Arrival at Sevilla

Before I left Getaria, I entrusted Sean with the store of precious stones that I had obtained from the Maya king. I told him that he should sell them one by one in case Mari or my mother had need of money. I also gave him permission to sell a stone for his own needs in case the harvest of fruit and vegetables failed or if the Santa Maria required repairs that he could not afford. However, I also made it clear that such use of the stones for his own requirements would be considered a loan to be repaid in full, but without interest, at a time after I had returned. I trusted Sean, but I also felt that it was fitting to leave my financial affairs with him on a commercial basis rather than as an agreement between friends. In my life, I had seen too many instances of friendship being torn asunder when it became entangled with the details of trade.

Although I had previously journeyed to Sevilla by working my passage on a nao, this time I could not wait to find a ship that was bound for that city or that could drop me at Sanlucar at the mouth of the Guadalquivir river. The weather in the seas beating against the shores of Euskadi were still prone to storms bearing in from the Atlantic Ocean, so there were few traders who were interested in risking their lives, crew and cargo in the tempestuous seas off the north coast of Spain. Instead, I chose to travel by coach which I soon discovered was a mistake. Firstly, because of the distance involved there were no coach services that could transport me from Gipuzkoa to Sevilla, so I was forced to stop in several towns and search for a coach that would take me to the next town on my path. Secondly, although I had travelled extensively by sea, I had not ventured far inland from the shores of Euskadi. After I left Getaria, I discovered that the interior of Gipuzkoa was covered in dense forests which made travel difficult and also dangerous as there were many desperate men who preyed on unwary travellers, choosing, or being forced by poverty to choose, the life of an outlaw to that of a man working for an honest wage. The only advantage of having these dense forests so close to the sea was that there was a ready source of wood with which to construct ships. The same was true of the interior of much of Spain, with dense forests of oak and other trees covering the land between large towns and cities. Most of the people who lived in these forests were involved in using the fruits of the forest to provide their livelihood, whether that was as a coppicer of trees to provide stout lances from chestnut trees to be shattered by knights when they tested their prowess in the jousting arena, although this spectacle was no longer in favour at court, so it was in danger of dying and being replaced by the sight of a man facing a maddened bull in a contest of skill and bravery against unpredictable savagery; or as fletchers making arrows from the stems they so carefully selected from the living trees; or as producers of charcoal to sell to people as fuel for cooking or to warm their beds on cold winter nights. Officially, all the large animals in the forests belonged to the king, so it was a foolhardy or desperate man who would kill a deer to feed his family, since the penalty for such an act was death.

Therefore, I had to rely on coaches drawn by horses, or even at times by oxen, as my means of travel as they were always accompanied by an armed escort to ensure the safety of the passengers and valuables which were the treasures that the armed men lurking in the forests were anxious to part from their owners. In total, I must have caught eight or more coaches, and the journey took more than two weeks and involved considerable expense, discomfort, frustration and annoyance. Of course, what I should have done was agree with Sean that he would transport me in the Santa Maria, carefully keeping an eye on the weather and making for port when the signs were of an impending storm, while carrying a cargo of dried tomatls to sell at the court, and taking oranges and lemons back to Getaria where they would be a welcome addition to the tables of the wealthy merchants there and in other ports of the Atlantic coast or, as we had previously discovered, these fruits could also be sold easily in the lands of northern Europe because of their rarity value. But if we lived our lives with foreknowledge, we would never venture far from the security of our own hearth, and the exploration of the New World would never have taken place. Therefore, I endured the discomforts and delays of my travel by coach with ill grace and foul temper. This made me a very disagreeable companion to the other passengers who shared part of the journey with me on different coaches. But I had no inclination to reveal my final destination or the reason for my journey, or to share tales of my adventures, so for most of the time I pulled my cap low over my eyes and feigned sleep although the jolting of the coaches on the rough roads oft times made this impossible.