Pastwatch- The Redemption Of Christopher Columbus - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,40

it be wonderful if I found it while ... while Kemal was here. And then I did. I think."

No one said anything for a long moment. Until Kemal rose to his feet and said, "What are we doing here, then? Show us!"
Chapter 5 Vision
It was more than Cristoforo could have hoped for, to be included on the Spinola convoy to Flanders. True, it was just the sort of opportunity that he had been preparing for all his life till now, begging his way onto any ship that would carry him until he knew the coast of Liguria better than he knew the lumps in his own mattress. And hadn't he turned his "observational" trip to Chios into a commercial triumph? Not that he had come back rich, of course, but starting with relatively little he had traded in mastic until he came home with a hefty purse -- and then had wit enough to contribute much of it, quite publicly, to the Church. And he did it in the name of Nicolo Spinola.

Spinola sent for him, of course, and Cristoforo was the picture of gratitude. "I know that you gave me no duties in Chios, my lord, but it was nevertheless you who allowed me to join the voyage, and at no charge. The tiny sums I was able to earn in Chios were not worth offering to you -- you give more to your servants when they go to market to buy the day's food for your household." A ludicrous exaggeration, they would both know. "But when I gave them to Christ, I couldn't pretend that the money, meager as it was, came from me, when it came entirely from your kindness."

Spinola laughed. "You're very good at this, " he said. "Practice a little more, so it doesn't sound memorized, and speeches like that will make your fortune, I promise you."

Cristoforo thought that he meant he had failed, until Spinola invited him to take part in a commercial convoy to Flanders and England. Five ships, sailing together for safety, and one of them devoted to a cargo that Cristoforo himself was in charge of trading. It was a serious responsibility, a good-sized chunk of the Spinola fortune, but Cristoforo had prepared himself well. What he hadn't done himself, he had watched others do with a close eye to detail. He knew how to supervise the loading of the ship and how to drive a hard bargain without making enemies. He knew how to talk to the captain, how to remain at once aloof and yet affable with the men, how to judge from the wind and the sky and the sea how much progress they would make. Even though he had actually done very little of the work of a sailor, he knew what all the jobs were, from watching, and he knew whether the jobs were being done well. When he was young, and they were not yet suspicious that he might get them in trouble, the sailors had let him watch them work. He had even learned to swim, which most sailors never bothered to do, because he had thought as a child that this was one of the requirements of life at sea. By the time the ship set sail, Cristoforo felt himself completely in control.

They even called him "Signor Colombo." That hadn't happened much before. His father was only rarely called "signor," despite the fact that in recent years Cristoforo's earnings had allowed Domenico Colombo to prosper, moving the weaving shop to larger quarters and wearing finer clothing and riding a horse like a gentleman and buying a few small houses outside the city walls so he could play the landlord. So the title was certainly not one that came readily to one of Cristoforo's birth. On this voyage, however, it was not just the sailors but also the captain himself who gave Colombo the courtesy title. It was a sign of how far he had come, this basic respect -- but not as important a sign as having the trust of the Spinolas.

The voyage wasn't easy, even at the outset. The seas weren't rough, but they weren't placid, either. Cristoforo noticed with secret enjoyment that he was the only one of the commercial agents who wasn't sick. Instead he passed the time as he did on all his voyages -- poring over the charts with the navigator or conversing with the captain, pumping them for all the information they knew, for everything they could