in the shadow behind him, but found a chance-left lane of vision down which much might be seen.
The Queen composed herself, in her chair. “This is the position, Master Manuel?” The fair man, so fine and quick that I loved to look at him, bowed and stepped back to his canvas, where he took up his brush and fell to work. The Queen and the Archbishop began to speak earnestly together. Words and sentences floated to Juan Lepe standing by the arras. The Queen made thoughtful pauses, looking before her with steady blue eyes and a somewhat lifted face. I noted that when she did this Manuel Rodriguez painted fast.
There fell a pause in their talk. Something differing from the subject of discourse, whatever in its fullness that might be, seemed to come into her mind. She sent her glance across the room.
“Don Enrique de Cerda—”
The tone summoned. When he was before her, “It was in my mind,” said the Queen, “to send for you within a day or two. But now you are here, and this moment while we await the King is as good as another. We have had letters from the Bishop of Seville whom we reverence, and from Don Pedro Enriquez to whom we owe much. They have to do with Jayme de Marchena who has long been suspect by the Holy Office. He has fled Seville, gone none know where! Don Pedro informs us, Don Enrique, that years ago this man stood among your friends. He does not think it probable that this is yet so—nor do I, Don Enrique, knowing that you must hold in abhorrence the heretic!” She looked mildly upon him. “In youth we make chance friendships thick as May, but manhood weeds the garden! And yet we think it possible that this man may in his heart trade on old things and make his way to you or send you appeal.” She paused, then said in a quiet voice, “Should that happen, Don Enrique, on your allegiance, and as a good Christian, you will do all that you can to put him in the hands of the Holy Office.”
She waited with her blue eyes upon him. He said, and said quietly, “It was long ago, Madam, when I was a young man and careless. I will do all that lies in me to do. But Spain is wide and there are ships to Africa and other shores.”
She said, “Yes, I do not see such an one daring to come to Santa Fe! But they say that ten demons possess a heretic, and that he crosses streams upon a hair or walks edges of high walls.”
With her ringed hand she made gesture of dismissal. He bowed low and stepped back to his former place.
The sun flooded in at window. Manuel Rodriguez painted steadily. The Queen sat still, with lifted face and eyes strained into distance. She sighed and came back from wastes where she would be Christian, oh, where she would be Christian! and began with a tender, maternal look to talk with her daughter.
CHAPTER VI
THE door giving upon the great corridor opened. One said, “The King, Madam!” King Ferdinand entered quietly, in the sober fashion of a sober and able man. He was cool and balanced, true always to his own conception of his own dues. The Queen rose and stepped to meet him. They spoke, standing together, after which he handed her to her chair and took beside her the other great chair which the pages had swiftly placed. After greeting his daughter and the Archbishop he looked across to the painter. “Master Manuel Rodriguez, good day!”
There fell a moment of sun-drenched quiet in which they all sat for their picture. Then said the King, “Madam, we are together, and here are those who have been our chief advisers in this affair of discoveries. Master Christopherus is below. We noted him in the court. Let us have him here and see this too-long-dragging matter finished! Once for all abate his demands, or once for all let him go!”
They sent a page. Again there was sunny silence, then in at the door came the tall, muscular, gray-eyed, silver-haired man whom I had met the day King Boabdil surrendered Granada.
He made reverence to the Queen and the King and to the Archbishop. It was the Queen who spoke to him and that gently.
“Master Christopherus, we have had a thousand businesses, and so our matter here has waited and waited. Today comes unaware this quiet hour and we will give it to you. Here with us are the Archbishop and others who have been our counsellors, and here is Don Alonzo de Quintantella who hath always stood your friend. In all the hurly-burly we yet took time, two days ago, to sit in council and come to conclusion. And now we give you our determination. In all reason it should give you joy!” She smiled upon him. “How many years since first you laid your plan before us?”
He answered her in a deep voice, thrilling and crowded with feeling. “Seven years, Madam your Highness! Like an infant laid at your feet. And winter has blown upon it, and sunshine carrying hope has walked around it, and then again the cold wind rises—”
The King spoke. “Master Christopherus, in war much else has to cease! In much we have had to find patience, and you have to find it.”
“My lord King, yes!” replied the tall man. “It is eighteen years since in Lisbon, looking upon the sea one day, I said to myself, ‘Is there a question that is not to be answered? This ocean is to be crossed. Then why do not I cross it? There is Cipango, Cathay and India! Gold and spices are there, and here lie ships, and between, when all is said, is only sea! God made the sea to be sailed! Yonder they worship idols, here we worship Christ. There are idols, here is Christ. Once a Christopherus carried Christ across water!’ Eighteen years ago. I said, ‘I can do it!’ I say it to-day, my lord and my lady. I can do it!”
Of the seated great ones only the Queen’s spirit appeared to answer his. He seemed to enchant her, to take her with him. But the King’s cool face regarded him with something like dislike. He spoke in an edged voice. “Saint Christopher asked no great wage. That is the point, Master Christopherus, so let us to it! At last the Queen and I say ‘We agree’ to this enterprise, which may bring forth fruit or may not, or may mean mere empty loss of ships and men and of our monies! Yet we say ‘yea.’ But we do not say ‘yea ‘, Master Christopherus, to the too great ferry fee which you ask! I say ‘ask’, but verily the tone is of command!”
The man whom they called Master Christopherus made a slow, wide gesture of deprecation. The Archbishop took the word. “Too much! You ask a hundred times too much! I must say to you that it is unchristianly arrogance. You talk like a soldan!” An assenting murmur came from the other ecclesiastics.
The Queen spoke. “Master Christopherus, if it be a great thing to do, is not the doing it and thereby blessing yourself no less than others—is not that reward? Not that Castile shall deny you reward, no! Trust me that if you bring us the key of India you shall not find us niggardly! But we and they who advise us stumble at your prescribing wealth, honors and gifts that they say truly are better fitting a great prince! Trust us for enrichment and for honor do you come back with the great thing done! Leave it all now to Time that brings to pass. So you will be clearer to go forth to the blessed carrying of Christ!”
She spoke earnestly, a Queen, but with much about her of womanly, motherly sweetness. I saw that she greatly liked the man and somewhere met his spirit. But the King was gathering hardness. He spoke to a secretary standing behind him. “Have you it there written down, the Italian’s demand?”
The man produced a paper. “Read!” But before it could be unfolded, Master Christopherus spoke.
“ ‘Italian!’ Seven years in Spain and ten in Portugal, and a good while in Porto Santo that belongs to Portugal, a little in England and in Ultima Thule or Iceland, and long, long years upon ships decked and undecked in all the seas that are known—fourteen years, childhood and boyhood, in Genoa and at Pavia where I went to school, and all my years of hope in Christ’s Kingdom, and in the uplands of great doers-and your Highness says to me for a slighting word, ‘Italian!’ I was born in Italy, but to-day, for this turn, King Ferdinand, you should call me ‘Spaniard’! As, if King John sends me forth be will call me Portuguese! Or King Henry will say, ‘Christopher the Englishman’ or King Charles, to whom verily I see that I may go, shall say, ‘Frenchman,