attention. Ferdinand and Isabella were in the process of restructuring their court to strengthen the position of their heirs, transferring the Infante Juan to a household of his own, strategically located at Almazán on the border between Ferdinand’s province of Aragon and Isabella’s of Castile. They had also arranged a double marriage that would link their house solidly to the ascendant House of Habsburg, betrothing their children to the heirs of Maxmilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor. Shortly before Columbus arrived at court an armada of 130 ships, bearing an estimated twenty-five to thirty-five thousand passengers, had departed from the Basque country to take the princess Juana to Flanders, where she would marry Duke Philip of Burgundy, and to bring back on the return trip Maximilian’s eldest daughter Margaret. For the princess’ private retinue of three thousand, they stocked two hundred cows, a thousand chickens, two thousand eggs, four thousand barrels of wine and nearly a quarter of a million salted fish. The fleet’s size was not only an expression of the great importance of the event: it was a necessary defence against aggression from the French, with whom Spain was at war as both countries sought to secure and extend their control over the Italian peninsula. The nuptial celebrations party had turned to horror, however, when as many as ten thousand of the Spanish party died of cold and illness during the harsh Flanders winter of 1495–6.13
If Hernando sensed his father’s showmanship was wearing thin when, presenting another assortment of wonders from the New World, he could offer only a small amount of gold ‘as earnest of what was to come’, the Admiral nonetheless found a way to use his peculiar talents to bring himself to the fore. Both Columbus and Hernando were later to recall in writing how in March 1497, during the fleet’s return from Flanders bearing Juan’s intended bride Princess Margaret, Columbus had convinced the worry-stricken Monarchs not to move with the rest of the court to the inland town of Soria, but instead to stay behind in Burgos to be nearer to Laredo, the port at which he predicted the fleet would dock, even forecasting the exact day they would arrive and the route they would take. This unusual mode of turning a portolan – the sailor’s description of the routes and distances between ports – into a form of prophecy served Columbus well, and both he and Hernando were over the coming years to exploit the almost mystical authority it conferred on them. As Hernando would later learn, the Italian polymath Angelo Poliziano even had a word for this practice, calling it a mixed science, falling halfway between the ‘inspired’ knowledge that came from divine revelation and the practical kind that comes from human invention.14
The wedding of Princess Margaret to the Infante Juan was celebrated in Burgos on Palm Sunday, 19 March 1497, after which the Monarchs moved quickly to secure further alliances, with Isabella leaving shortly after to celebrate the marriage of their eldest daughter Isabel to King Manuel of Portugal. The nuptial joy was to be short-lived. Juan fell ill while Isabella was away, and died soon after in the arms of his father, who tried to comfort his son by telling him God had reserved greater realms for him in the hereafter than those he would now never inherit on earth. It was said that Juan’s dog Bruto lay down at the head of his master’s coffin in Salamanca Cathedral and refused to move for any other reason than to make water outside the church. The dog was still to be found where he last saw his master long after the body was moved to Ávila for burial, though by then a pillow and food had been provided for him at his new post. It is also said Ferdinand joined Isabella for the marriage of their elder daughter but did not tell his wife of the death of their son until the festivities were over. Their daughter, the newly crowned queen consort of Portugal, was also to die, ten months later, only to be replaced as queen by her younger sister Maria who married the same Portuguese king after two years had elapsed.
During Columbus’ two-year residence back in Spain Hernando would have watched his father battle to push his plans forward through the fog of these family and dynastic events, which were themselves being played out in a European context of war against France in Italy, the Turks in the Mediterranean, and the north African Arabs along the Barbary Coast. Columbus followed the court in its cumbersome progress around Aragon, and then from Burgos to Valladolid, Medina del Campo, Salamanca and Alcalá de Henares. Slowly but surely the Admiral secured a further restatement of the Monarchs’ promises to him in the Capitulaciones de Santa Fe of 1492, procured desperately needed resupply for the settlers at Hispaniola, saw his sons Diego and Hernando transferred from the household of the dead prince to that of the queen herself, and gained permission to return to the New World on a third voyage. Yet Columbus was continually and understandably nervous about the ability of his fortunes to weather the onslaughts against him during his long absences, much less after his death, and in addition to the reiterated promises of Ferdinand and Isabella he took advantage of his presence in Spain to draw up an entail on his estate. This document not only further cemented the Admiral’s status by involving him in a legal procedure reserved for members of the nobility, it also vaulted Hernando into the highest elites of Spanish society. On the one hand it held out the promise of a very substantial revenue in the event of Columbus’ death – 1–2 million maravedís in annual rent, putting him on a footing surpassed only by a few heirs in the land – and on the other hand, perhaps more importantly for a ten-year-old boy, it named both Diego and Hernando in a single breath as mis hijos legítimos, ‘my legitimate sons’.15
Exactly what Diego and Hernando would be legitimate heirs to, however, was much less certain than Columbus’ entail tried to suggest. His lavish bequests were made on the basis of projected income that existed only in Columbus’ imagination, and would depend on the crown’s continued adherence to the agreements of 1492. While these agreements were notarised and Columbus was able to appeal in case of any doubt to the importance of the sovereign’s word within the chivalric code, in reality the Capitulaciones posed an unacceptable threat to the Spanish monarchy, conferring on Columbus and his heirs in perpetuity virtual autonomy over a kingdom beyond the sea and an income that would rival that of the crown itself.
The tenuousness of Columbus’ vision of the future became apparent during the Third Voyage, on which he departed at the end of May 1498. Unwilling simply to return to the islands of which he was governor and oversee their resupply, he had split his fleet in two at the Canary Islands, sending three ships on to Hispaniola and taking three himself south towards the equator before heading west in search of the elusive mainland. This expedition lasted five months and conferred on Columbus the distinction of being the first European to see the American continental landmass, a part of modern-day Venezuela that he called Paria, even if it is not wholly clear he recognised it as such at the time and though later cartography was famously to accord that honour to Amerigo Vespucci. But Columbus’ delay in arriving at Hispaniola was nothing short of disastrous: when he did land at the end of August 1498 in the town of Santo Domingo, founded by his brother Bartholomew on the west bank of the deep-drawing River Ozama and named after their father, he once again found the island in open revolt. This rebellion, like that of 1495, was directed first against Columbus’ brothers and stoked by poor conditions on the island, but increasingly and uncontrollably turned against the Admiral himself after his return.
Columbus’ sons were not in the least shielded from this complete collapse of their father’s power, his reputation and his prospects: instead, they were directly in the firing line as settlers from Hispaniola began to bypass the New World administration and present their complaints directly to the Monarchs. Hernando recalled many years later, with the vividness reserved for experiences of shame, the mob of fifty or so returned settlers who had installed themselves (with a barrel of wine) outside the gate of the Alhambra where the court was in residence. The mob took to shouting loud complaints about how the Admiral had ruined them by withholding their wages, and brayed their petition to Ferdinand every time he attempted to leave the palace, shouting ‘Pay us! Pay us!’ However, the most virulent of their attacks were reserved for Diego and the eleven-year-old Hernando, who in a rare instance quotes the direct speech hurled at them by the mob:
Look at the Sons of the Admiral of Mosquitos, of him who discovered the Land of Vanity and the Land of Deceit, to be the sepulchre and the misery of the Gentlemen of Castile!
Hernando remembers how after this he and his brother avoided the mob, presumably now leaving the palace only through the back doors.16
The length of time the Monarchs withstood this onslaught of complaints speaks of their fidelity to Columbus and the strength of his