I would ride a dragon across the Fire Mountains before crossing an ocean in a boat. For three weeks we were tossed like a cork on waves the size of mountains, blown by winds sent by the gods to punish me for my innumerable transgressions. The sea's vomit-sickness ravaged me. What little I could eat, I vomited. By the time we reached the peninsula that housed Spain and Portugal, I had lost weight and any interest I ever had in being a sailor.
Mateo had served on both land and sea for the king. He was singularly unaffected. 'I was just a boy when I had to leave the city of my birth and find sanctuary from a blood feud and the king's constables,' he told me during the voyage. 'A fleet was leaving to fight the Turkish sultan, and I had a berth on one of the ships.'
He declined to reveal what had caused his youthful flight from justice, but my experiences with Mateo told me that a woman was somewhere in the comedia of his early life.
'The captain disliked me instantly, no doubt for some youthful indiscretion, and assigned me to the fireboats during the battle with the Infidel fleet. The boats were equipped with wooden cannons painted black, but we were the vanguard of a great naval victory over the Turks.'
Wooden cannons? Fireboats? I had never heard of these machines of war and found Mateo's tale fascinating.
'In our age of ships that are the size of small castles, it is hard to sink a ship in battle. A lucky shot to the powder room will send a ship to the bottom, in pieces. But ships are made of wood and wood
A 'fireboat,' he explained, was a ship refitted so it burned quickly and easily. 'Ships are equipped to minimize the flammable material on board. But a fireboat is equipped to maximize burning.'
The refitted ships were typically merchant vessels of little value in a battle. 'We gutted the ship below deck and built wood chimneys from the hole to above the main deck. We constructed wood troughs in the hole that led to the portholes and the chimneys; then we packed the hole with anything that would burn easily.
'But we had to keep a ship looking like a man-of-war. We painted logs black and mounted them at gunports to make it appear that we were heavily gunned when, in fact, we were unarmed.'
'What was the purpose of the troughs under the deck?'
'We poured oil in the troughs and lit it. The oil fires ran down the troughs, spreading the fire throughout the hole, even pouring out of the portholes to put the sides of the ship ablaze. The chimneys were stuffed with flammables and a little black powder.'
When the sea battle began, the fireship would set a course for its victim. It would take many hits as it came at the opposing ship, but by the time the enemy realized the danger, that it was not engaging an ordinary warship, the fireboat was beside it. When it came alongside, topside grappling hooks would snag the other ship's rigging, locking them in a lethal embrace.
'We had to set the fires before our lines tangled with those of the other ship, and the timing had to be perfect,' he said. 'We had to abandon ship in a rowboat and were at the mercy of the enemy guns if we left too soon. We would be consumed by fire and explosions if we were too late.'
Once the hooks had tangled the other ship's masts, a powder charge in the chimneys was ignited. 'That blasted fire out of the chimneys' mouths into our own sails and the other ship's rigging. The flaming sails meant the end of both ships. Only half a dozen of us manned the vessel; and as soon as the chimneys blew, we jumped into a longboat we had been towing.'
Fireboat crews got double pay and bonuses. 'But our casualty rates were 50 percent. Most often the crews consisted of men like me who were being punished.'
Mateo stared out at the sea, remembering the past. 'We Spaniards were the masters of the fireboats, using them against the Infidels in many battles, but we became victims of our own cunning when we fought the English.'
A great armada of ships and troops had been assembled by the Spanish king to invade England and restore the Catholic religion to that blasphemous country, Mateo said. 'We were the greatest power in the world then and now. We ruled the land and sea, and our empire embraced the world. The great fleet our king amassed for the invasion was the Armada Invencible, the largest and most powerful ever assembled. And it was defeated. But it was not English guns that caused our fleet to break formation and paved the way for a storm to overpower our ships. It was five miserable fireboats. When our fleet was anchored off Calais, the English sent five blazing ships into their midst. Our captains were so terrified of the fiery ships that many of them pulled anchor and fled without firing a shot.'
We were a week at sea when Mateo shocked me with an attack.
I awoke to find him bending over me with his dagger in his hand. Before I could move, he slashed my face. I came out of bed with my arms flailing, blood flying from my face.
I grabbed my own dagger and crouched in a corner. 'This is what it has come to, eh, compadre? All the treasure is better than half?'
Mateo sat on his own bed and wiped blood from his dagger. 'You will thank me when we arrive in Seville, and you no longer have a mine brand.'
My hand went to the bleeding cut on my cheek.
'Sailors know that fresh salt air and seawater heals wounds with less infection than foul miasma of cities.' He stretched out on his berth. 'If you do not bleed to death by morning, you should be thinking of a story to tell the women in Seville about how your face got scarred.'
My first surprise as we came upon Seville was that the great port was not on the sea but was about twenty leagues up the Rio Guadalquivir, pass the marshy plains of Las Marismas.
'Seville is the biggest city in Spain. Perhaps only Rome and Constantinople are equal in size to it in all Europe,' Mateo said. 'It is a city of riches. Through its gates poured the gold of the Incas and the silver of the Aztecs. Stored in the Archivo de Indias are the documents of every nature concerning the discovery and conquest of the New World, from the shipping manifesto of its discoverer, Cristobal Colon, to letters from Cortes to the king and the few Aztec codices that had survived the wrath of the priests. Everything that is sent to the New World and sent back must pass through Seville. The Casa de Contratacion, the House of Trade, controls all aspects of shipping, from what ships may sail, to what they may carry and how much they must pay. Even a Portuguese slave ship must get a license from them to ship slaves from the west coast of Africa to the New World.'
Amigos, Seville was more than I could ever have imagined. The City of Mexico was an elegant gem set on a blue lake. Seville was the bulwark of empire. It was larger, grander, greater, not just in size but in stature. Its massive fortifications were built to withstand armies and the ravages of time—thick, high, defiant. When we disembarked and walked the crowded streets, I played the role of colonial simpleton, my mouth agape, my ears open to every sound. If Mateo had not been beside me, the rapacious street people would no doubt have stripped me of my money, clothes, and honor in a few blocks.
'That's the Torre del Oro,' Mateo said, pointing to a ten-sided stone tower near the river, the Tower of Gold. It appeared strong enough to have flaunted the armies of even the Great Khan, a safe haven of the riches that poured in from the New World and Far East.
'You could ransom a king with its floor sweepings,' Mateo said.
In the heart of the city was the Alcazar Palace, the fortress-castle of kings. It had stood for hundreds of years, built even before Tula was sacked by barbarians. I had thought the viceroy's palace in Mexico was an edifice for kings, but it was a peon's hovel compared to the Seville palace. The Alcazar did not even house the king.
'His palace in Madrid is of a much grander scale,' Mateo said.
After sainted King Ferdinand III conquered Seville, he made the city his capital. But the Moorish influence in architecture gave the city a taste of the alien to me, a cast I found provocative. Until I saw that city's Moorish heritage, the Infidels had been little more than a name to me. I saw now that they were a race imbued with grace and beauty, its architects designing buildings with the grace used by poets and artists.
Near the palace was the Cathedral of Santa Maria, exotic and venerable, with Gothic and Moorish influences. Said to be the second church of Christendom, only San Pedro's in Rome was more colossal. San Sophia in Constantinople was not comparable, of course, now that it was in the hands of the Infidels and turned into a mosque. Like the cathedral in the City of Mexico, which rose from the site of an Aztec temple, Santa Maria was built
