Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,27

a gentleman!"

"How, when you have no gold?"

"I'll get gold!"

"In Genova? As a weaver? As long as you live, you'll be the son of Domenico Colombo. No one will give you gold, and no one will call you a gentleman. Now be silent, or I'll pinch your arm."

It was a worthy threat, and all the children knew well enough to obey when Mother uttered it.

A couple of hours later, Father came home. The journeymen almost didn't let him in, just from his knocking. Not until he cried out in anguish "My lord is dead! Let me in!" did they unbar the door.

He staggered inside just as the children raced after Mother into the front room. Father was covered with blood, and Mother screamed and embraced him and then searched him for wounds.

"It's not my blood," he said in anguish. "It's the blood of my Doge! Pietro Fregoso is dead! The cowards set on him and pulled him from his horse and struck him in the head with a mace!"

"Why are you covered with his blood, Nico!"

"I carried him to the doors of the palace of the Doge. I carried him to the place where he ought to be!"

"Why would you do that, you fool!"

"Because he told me to! I came to him and he was crying out and covered with blood and I said, 'Let me take you to your physicians, let me take you to your house, let me find the ones who did this and kill them for you,' and he said to me, 'Domenico, take me to the palace! That's where the Doge should die -- in the palace, like my father!' So I carried him there, in my own arms, and I didn't care if the Adornos saw us! I carried him there and he was in my arms when he died! I was his true friend!"

"If they saw you with him, they'll find you and kill you!"

"What does it matter?" said Father. "The Doge is dead!"

"It matters to me," said Mother. "Get those clothes off." She turned to the journeymen and began giving orders. "You -- get the children to the back of the house. You -- have the apprentices draw water and heat it for a bath. You -- when I get these clothes off him, burn them."

The other children obeyed the journeyman and fled to the back of the house, but Cristoforo did not. He watched as his mother undressed his father, covering him with kisses and curses the whole time. Even after she led him into the courtyard for his bath, even as the stench of the burning bloody clothing came into the house, Cristoforo stayed there in the front room. He was on watch, guarding the door.

Or so the old accounts of that night all said. Columbus was on watch, to keep his family safe. But Diko knew that this was not all that was going through Cristoforo's mind. No, he was making his decision. He was setting before himself the terms of his future greatness. He would be a gentleman. Kings and queens would treat him with respect. He would have gold. He would conquer kingdoms in the name of Christ.

He must have known even then that to accomplish all of this, he would have to leave Genova. As his mother had said: As long as he lived in this city, he would be the son of Domenico the weaver. From the next morning he bent his life toward achieving his new goals. He began to study -- languages, history -- with such vigor that the monks who were teaching him commented on it. "He has caught the spirit of scholarship," they said, but Diko knew that it wasn't learning for its own sake. He had to know languages to travel abroad in the world. He had to know history to know what was in the world when he ventured into it.

And he had to know how to sail. Every chance he got, Cristoforo was down at the docks, listening to the sailors, questioning them, learning what all the crewmen did. Later he focused on the navigators, plying them with wine when he could afford it, simply demanding answers when he could not. Eventually it would get him aboard a ship, and then another; he turned down no chance to sail, and did any work that was asked of him, so that he would know all that a weaver's son could hope to learn about the sea.

Diko made her report on