Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,23

in a linear way, seeing what caused this son of an ambitious Genovese weaver to take to the sea and tear up all the old maps of the world.

That Cristoforo was one of the great ones could not be doubted, whether Mother and Father approved of him or not. So ... when was the decision made? When did he first set foot on the course that made him one of the most famous men in history?

She thought she found the answer in 1459, when the rivalry between the two great houses of Genova, the Fieschi and the Adorno, was coming to a head. In that year a man named Domenico Colombo was a weaver, a supporter of the Fieschi party, the former keeper of the Olivella Gate, and the father of a little redheaded boy who had within him the power to change the world.

Cristoforo was eight years old the last time Pietro Fregoso came to visit his father. Cristoforo knew the man's name, but he also knew that in Domenico Colombo's house, Pietro Fregoso was always called by the title that had been wrested from him by the Adorno party: the Doge. Pietro Fregoso had decided to make a serious play for power again, and since Cristoforo's father was one of the most fiery partisans in the Fieschi cause, it was not too surprising that Pietro chose to honor the Colombo house by holding a secret meeting there.

Pietro arrived in the morning, accompanied by only a couple of men -- he had to move inconspicuously through the city, or the Adornos would know he was plotting something. Cristoforo saw his father kneel and kiss Pietro's ring. Mother, who was standing in the doorway between the weaving shop and the front room, muttered something about the Pope under her breath. But Pietro was the Doge of Genova, or rather the former Doge. No one called him the Pope. "What did you say, Mama?"

"Nothing," she said. "Come in here."

Cristoforo found himself being dragged into the weaving shop, where the journeymen's looms rocked and banged as the apprentices carried thread back and forth or crawled under the loom to fold the cloth that the journeymen were weaving. Cristoforo had a vague awareness that someday soon his father would expect him to take his place as an apprentice in the shop of some other member of the weavers' guild. He did not look forward to it. The life of the apprentice was one of drudgery and meaningless labor, and the journeymen's teasing turned into serious torment when Father and Mother were not in the room. In another weavers' shop, Cristoforo knew, he would not have the protected status he had here, where his father was master.

Soon Mother lost interest in Cristoforo and he was able to drift back to the doorway and watch the goings-on in the front room, where the bolts of cloth had been cleared from the display table and the great spools of thread pulled up like chairs. Several other men had drifted in during the past few minutes. It was to be a meeting, Cristoforo saw. Pietro Fregoso was holding a council of war, and in Father's house.

At first it was the great men that Cristoforo watched. They were dressed in the most dazzling, extravagant clothing he had ever seen. None of Father's customers came into the shop dressed like this, but some of their clothing was made from Father's finest cloth. Cristoforo recognized the rich brocade one gentleman was wearing as a cloth made not a month ago by Carlo, the best of the journeymen. It had been picked up by Tito, who always wore a green uniform. Only now did Cristoforo realize that when Tito came to buy, he was not buying for himself, but rather for his master. Tito was not a customer, then. He merely did what he was sent to do. Yet Father treated him like a friend, even though he was a servant.

This got Cristoforo thinking about the way Father treated his friends. The joking, the easy affection, the shared wine, the stories. Eye to eye they spoke, Father and his friends.

Father always said that his greatest friend was the Doge -- was Pietro Fregoso. Yet now Cristoforo saw that this was not the truth, for Father did not joke, showed no easiness in his manner, told no stories, and the wine he poured was for the gentlemen at the table, and not for himself at all. Father hovered at the edges of