A Wind From the North (5 page)

The banks of the Douro and the Tagus were lined with craft refitting, taking aboard stores, rerigging, or newly launched and waiting for their masts and gear. Round the ships swarmed calkers, shipwrights, riggers, and sailmakers. The thump of the calking hammers was steady on the air, like the ceaseless dynamo of cicadas in midsummer. In the dusty ropewalks, under the eyes of the master ropemakers, the men spun the wheels. The long threads gathered, and twisted, and turned, forming the yarns of rope for standing and running rigging. In the Royal Ordnance, amid the smoke and smell of gunpowder, they were testing cannon and culverin. In the Royal Mint the hammers thudded, turning silver and gold into coin to pay the vast army of workmen, as well as the soldiers and sailors whom the princes were recruiting.

The slaughterers’ yards ran dark with blood as hundreds of cows and bullocks were dispatched. At their doors were piled great heaps of snow-white salt and tubs of brine for preserving the meat when it was put in cask. As the carcasses emerged from the slaughterhouses, one group of men seized them and began skinning them—the hides were needed for shoe leather, for leather doublets, and a hundred and one other things. The flayed carcasses then passed to the salters, and finally to the coopers who were waiting for them with barrels and casks.

At night the glare of Lisbon’s furnaces could be seen for miles around, casting eerie shadows over the hills behind the city. Molten iron spouted into casts of clay to form hollow bombards, or ran off into small sand castings where pike heads, ships’ fittings, and horse trappings were being formed. The red wine from the grapes of the Douro poured vivid into scoured barrels, while the greenish-yellow olive oil mounted high in vats. Tailors and weavers were as busy as the other tradesmen. It was a time when men went to war in silk and scarlet and rich embroidery. The colors and emblems of the nobility were emblazoned on the jerkins of their followers, and the standards of the great houses were worked with delicate needlework and silk threads. Carpenters were constructing chests for clothing, weapons, and victuals. They were making the mounts for cannon, and boxing the ammunition for the artillery. There was not a single trade that, in one way or another, was not involved in the preparations for war. The excitement mounted in the air like the tension of an impending thunderstorm.

Men who have lived through other wars know the strange exhilaration that seizes the heart when on every side is heard the rising hum of their country arming for battle. Even Prince Edward, deep in papers of state (his father had taken this opportunity to pass some of the burden of government over to his heir), heard it. Prince Peter, inspecting the shipyards of Lisbon at his father’s side, felt the strange glamour of war. North in Porto, shouldering his burden alone, Prince Henry learned for the first time something of the splendors and miseries of high command.

Before long the ambassadors began to arrive. They came from Castile first; then from Aragon; and then from the Moors of Granada. To the first two countries King John gave every assurance of his friendship and good will. He had no intention of attacking them, he said, and they might be sure that he would always respect his pledges to them. With the Moors he was less inclined to waste fair words. Beyond assuring them that he had no intentions on Granada, he left them with the uncomfortable feeling that he might well be lying. Accordingly, they tried to secure the Queen’s good graces by offering gifts to her young daughter Isabel. The suggestion that her interest might be secured behind her husband’s back was enough to incense Queen Philippa. She was English, and in the words of the chronicler Azurara, “England is one of those nations that hate all infidels.” So the ambassadors from Granada went back with their report. They said they had been told officially that nothing was contemplated against their kingdom, but that in private they suspected the Portuguese preparations boded them no good. Granada began to garrison her coastline.

Attracted by the news of an impending war, knights, men-at-arms, and mercenaries from many countries began to flock to Portugal. It was an era when the professional soldier, like the later condottieri of Italy, would fight under any standard, provided that it was made worth his while. Many of them could have taken as their motto the cry of the Spanish Foreign Legion, “Viva la Muerte!”■—“Long Live Death!”—for it was only on the battlefield, or in the smoke of burning cities, that such men could earn a living. Among them, we learn, were “a puissant Baron from Germany and three great lords from France.” Also, among the ships that sailed in the armada were four provided “by a rich citizen of London.” His name was Mundy, and the ships were manned by English archers, the dreaded longbowmen.

It was while inquiry, supposition, and conjecture as to the fleet’s destination were at their height, that King John evolved a further stratagem. In order to silence the curious, and allay the suspicions of other nations, he would openly declare an enemy. The direction in which he made his feint was Holland.

Dispatching ambassadors to the court of Count William of Holland, King John instructed them to complain in public audience of piracy carried out against Portuguese merchants by Dutch ships. In public the ambassadors declared war on Holland, and in public Count William accepted the challenge. In private, however, he alone among the European monarchs was let into the secret. There was an exchange of gifts and good wishes between the two rulers, and the Portuguese ambassadors returned to Lisbon. A sigh of relief seemed to echo through the courts of Europe, and the news was quickly passed by the Moors of Granada to their brothers in North Africa.

At the age of fifty-eight King John was at the peak of his career. Neither the victory of Aljubarrota, nor even the great reforms of law and custom that distinguished his reign, show him at a higher level of ability. It was at this moment that personal tragedy struck him in the sickness and death of his wife. Had it not been for her last words, it is possible, even at that late hour, that he would have countermanded the expedition. But the Queen herself had said—had prophesied—that the fleet would sail by the feast of St. James. Besides, in action he might forget his sorrow.

“Will the fleet need long preparation?” he asked Prince Henry.

“You may embark now, Sire. Give the order to sail when you will. The only thing that needs be done is weigh anchor and set sail.”

“We shall leave then on Wednesday. And since there should be no sadness, nor tears, when feats of arms are contemplated, I order you, your brothers, and your knights, to dress as you were before your mother’s death. Later, if God is willing, we shall find time to mourn.”

When Prince Henry announced that the fleet would sail, there were many among the people of Lisbon who murmured that it was the young Prince who was driving his father into a dangerous enterprise at a time when, by all custom and convention, he should be mourning the Queen. If this was the first time, it was not to be the last that an implacable quality in Henry’s nature made him disliked by the ordinary people. “The King,” they said, “has always held this son of his to be more of a man than his brothers, both in feats of arms and combats. But slaying wild boars in the forests of Beira is one thing, and meeting an armed foe face to face is another. Let us only pray that all this does not come to a bad end.”

The reaction in the fleet was quite different. Soldiers and sailors who have been keyed up for action are always loath to postpone it. So it was with pleasure, as well perhaps as some astonishment, that they saw the princes come down to the quayside in colorful clothes. It was with excitement that they heard the trumpets sound, and saw the boats of the captains make their way for a conference on the princes’ galley.

“In the morning the fleet was like a forest which had lost all its leaves and fruit. Then, suddenly, it was changed into a glowing orchard, brilliant with green leaves and many-colored flowers; for the thousands of flags and standards were of every color and shape. And in this floating orchard one might have imagined that strange birds had suddenly begun to sing, for from every ship there sounded musical instruments and the music did not cease all that day… .”

Three days later the fleet set sail. Queen Philippa’s prophecy had come true. It was July 25, the feast of St. James.

The wind was still in the north, and as the ships lifted over the bar at the river mouth, their new canvas began to crackle and fill. Square sails lifted in proud curves, lateen sails leaned like wings, ropes shook, and tackles sighed and squealed. The sunlight flared on armored men, on sailors sweating over Spanish windlasses as they boused in shrouds and standing rigging, and on the gay liveries and dress of the nobility and their attendants. The people of Lisbon gathered to watch them go. It was so fine, so noble a sight, that they stood all afternoon on the hills, along the riverbanks, and on the foreshore. It seemed as if they could not gaze long enough at these ships that symbolized their country’s power and pageantry.

As night fell, the last of the hulls were dropping below the horizon, and the watchers on the shore turned homeward. When they looked back, they could just see a faint twinkle along the dark rim where sky met sea—the lights of the fleet like starshine on the water.

Driven by the Portuguese trade winds, fifty thousand men were southward bound; twenty thousand of them men-at-arms, the remainder oarsmen and sailors.

The combined fleet was one of the largest that had ever been assembled; sixty-three transports, twenty-seven triremes, thirty-two biremes, and one hundred and twenty other vessels.

The Mediterranean oared galley was still in predominance. Within twenty years its place would be taken by more efficient ships, sailing ships that would be as at home in coastal waters as on the broad planes of the Atlantic. These galleys had been brought to a high degree of perfection by the Venetians and Genoese, who chartered them all over Europe as trading vessels. With two or three banks of oars—biremes and triremes— they differed from their classical prototypes by having longer oars or sweeps. This increase in the weight of the oars meant that more than one man was employed to each—in some cases as many as seven. A framework stood out on either side of the galley’s hull, in which were set the tholes against which the oars were rowed. The introduction of this framework to the medieval galley meant that the oars were arranged horizontally one above the other, instead of obliquely as in the ancient galleys. The bulk of the Portuguese fleet was of this type— vessels well suited to the long calms of the summer Mediterranean, but unwieldly in high seas or strong currents. Some of them carried no sails at all, but many stepped a mainmast from which they set a single square or lateen sail.

The fleet came slowly down the coast at two or three knots toward Cape St. Vincent. The sun was setting on the evening of July 27 when the bulk of the armada rounded the headland. Sacrum Promontorium, the Sacred Headland, the Romans had called it. It was from here, so they had said, that if you looked westward at the close of day, you could hear the sun sinking with a hiss into the terrible wastes of the Sea of Darkness. Beyond this promontory the unknown began.

If the great headland had been held sacred in classical days, it was equally so, though for different reasons, in the Middle Ages. The cape now took its name from an early Christian saint, Vincent, Deacon of Saragossa in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, who had been canonized for his fortitude under torture and martyrdom—a fortitude which, so legend had it, had converted his jailers. The martyr of Saragossa baptized them just before he died. During the Moslem invasion of Spain the relics of Saint Vincent had been placed in a ship and sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar to remove them to a place of safety. Accompanied by the Saint’s sacred ravens, the ship had been wrecked on the cape that forever after was to bear his name. Wind-washed and sea-whitened, this southwestemmost point of Europe is still awe-inspiring. In those days, hallowed by dim memories of its classical fame, it was doubly respected for its connection with the legend of Saint Vincent. Whenever ships passed this grim outrider of the Continent—where a wave forever breaks in a white curl at the bow—they lowered their sails and dipped their colors, and men knelt on the decks to pray.

As Prince Henry’s galley passed the grim rock, he too fell on his knees in prayer. Perhaps it was then that he dedicated himself to this ocean and to this wind-swept rock. He may have noticed, as the swell lifted under the galley’s stem, a narrow headland that juts into the sea three-quarters of a mile farther south. Sagres, its name corrupted from the ancient Sacrum Promontorium, is part of the main headland, and yet separate. Whereas Cape St. Vincent is 175 feet above sea level, the point of Sagres is only 120 feet. Even more remote from the world of men than the famous cape, Sagres is no more than a bare bone of rock. St. Vincent points southwest, but Sagres fronts into the Atlantic like the stem of a ship headed due south.

As the fleet passed under canvas and oars, Henry heard the boom of the sea as it made up against the desolate rocks. When the wind is strong, the sound of the breaking waves can be heard for miles around. On Sagres a great tunneled blowhole, which links the headland with the Atlantic, spurts its salt foam over the bleak flatlands of the cape whenever there is an onshore gale. This may well have been the place that the poet Camoens had in mind when he wrote “Onde a terra se acaba e o mar comega”—“Where the land has an end and the sea begins.” There is nothing beyond Sagres but the long swell of the ocean and the curve of the horizon.

The fleet came to anchor 15 miles east of Sagres, in the small port of Lagos. Clear of dangers, and open only to southerly winds, the Bay of Lagos is the best and almost only natural anchorage on this inhospitable coast. The town lies on the western side of its bay, and it was here that the fleet took aboard its final stores, water, and supplies. It was here too that the destination of the expedition was announced to the soldiers, sailors, and to the world at large. The speed of news was the speed of the fastest horse or the fastest ship, and it seemed safe to proclaim the fleet’s destination in its last port of call.