Our Lady Of La Rabida - 2

Our Lady Of La Rabida - 2

 At the end of a fortnight, and much sooner than had been expected, the worthy pilot

returned with a letter from the Queen. Eager hands seized it and opened it; delight

beamed from the eyes of the good Prior. The Queen was most cordial to him, thanked

him for his intervention, was ready to listen to him and even to be convinced by him; and

in the meantime commanded his immediate appearance at the Court, asking that

Columbus would be so good as to wait at La Rabida until he should hear further from her.

Then followed such a fussing and fuming, such a running hither and thither, and giving

and taking of instructions and clatter of tongues as even the convent of La Rabida had

probably never known. Nothing will serve the good old busybody, although it is now near

midnight, but that he must depart at once. He will not wait for daylight; he will not, the

good honest soul! wait at all. He must be off at once; he must have this, he must have

that; he will take this, he will leave that behind; or no, he will take that, and leave this

behind. He must have a mule, for his old feet will not bear him fast enough; exconfessors

of Her Majesty, moreover, do not travel on foot; and after more fussing and

running hither and thither a mule is borrowed from one Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of

Moguer; and with a God-speed from the group standing round the lighted doorway, the

old monk sets forth into the night.

It is a strange thing to consider what unimportant flotsam sometimes floats visibly upon

the stream of history, while the gravest events are sunk deep beneath its flood. We would

give a king's ransom to know events that must have taken place in any one of twenty

years in the life of Columbus, but there is no sign of them on the surface of the stream,

nor will any fishing bring them to light. Yet here, bobbing up like a cork, comes the name

of Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer, doubtless a good worthy soul, but, since he has

been dead these four centuries and more, of no interest or importance to any human

being; yet of whose life one trivial act, surviving the flood of time which has engulfed all

else that he thought important, falls here to be recorded: that he did, towards midnight of

a day late in December 1491 lend a mule to Friar Juan Perez.

Of that heroic mule journey we have no record; but it brought results enough to

compensate the good Prior for all his aching bones and rheumatic joints. He was

welcomed by the Queen, who had never quite lost her belief in Columbus, but who had

hitherto deferred to the apathy of Ferdinand and the disapproval—of her learned advisers.

Now, however, the matter was reopened. She, who sometimes listened to priests with

results other than good, heard this worthy priest to good purpose. The feminine friends of

Columbus who remembered him at Court also spoke up for him, among them the

Marquesa de Moya, with whom he had always been a favourite; and it was decided that

his request should be granted and three vessels equipped for the expedition, "that he

might go and make discoveries and prove true the words he had spoken."—Moreover, the

machinery that had been so hard to move before, turned swiftly now. Diego Prieto, one of

the magistrates of Palos, was sent to Columbus at La Rabida, bearing 20,000 maravedis

with which he was to buy a mule and decent clothing for himself, and repair immediately

to the Court at Santa Fe. Old Perez was in high feather, and busy with his pen. He wrote

to Doctor Garcia Hernandez, and also to Columbus, in whose letter the following

pleasant passage occurs:

"Our Lord has listened to the prayers of His servant. The wise and virtuous Isabella,

touched by the grace of Heaven, gave a favourable hearing to the words of this poor

monk. All has turned out well. Far from despising your project, she has adopted it from

this time, and she has summoned you to Court to propose the means which seem best to

you for the execution of the designs of Providence. My heart swims in a sea of comfort,

and my spirit leaps with joy in the Lord. Start at once, for the Queen waits for you, and I

much more than she. Commend me to the prayers of my brethren, and of your little

Diego. The grace of God be with you, and may Our Lady of La Rabida accompany you."

The news of that day must have come upon Columbus like a burst of sunshine after rain. I

like to think how bright must have seemed to him the broad view of land and sea, how

deeply the solemn words of the last office which he attended must have sunk into his

soul, how great and glad a thing life must have been to him, and how lightly the miles

must have passed beneath the feet of his mule as he jogged out on the long road to Santa

Fe.