Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (48 page)

T
rading for spices got under way with astonishing speed. The king of Tidore gave orders to prepare a trading house—probably recovered from the days of the Portuguese occupation—to accommodate the new arrivals, and by Tuesday, November 12, four days after they had dropped anchor in Tidore harbor, the Armada de Molucca was in business. “We carried almost all our goods thither, and left three of our men to guard them. We immediately began to trade in the following manner. For ten
brazas
of red cloth of very good quality, they gave us one bahar of cloves, which is equivalent to four quintals and six libras.” A quintal of cloves equaled one hundred pounds, and it was the most important unit for measuring the value of a spice shipment.

The men of the fleet valued their take according to the quintalada they received. A quintalada was a percentage of the storage space set aside for the crew members and officers. Following the instructions King Charles gave to Magellan on May 8, 1519, each significant member of the armada received a specific number of quintaladas. Once they paid one twenty-fourth of the amount to the king, they could keep the rest for themselves. Magellan, as the Captain General, was naturally awarded the largest amount: sixty quintals plus another twenty quintaladas. The other officers received almost as much, and on down through the roster of boatswains, gunners, caulkers, coopers, the barber, and the master-at-arms. Even the priests received allotments.

Over the next several days, trading continued at a feverish pace. “For fifteen
brazas
of cloth of not very good quality, one quintal and one hundred libras; for fifteen hatchets, one bahar; for thirty-five glass drinking cups, one bahar (the king getting them all); for seventeen catis of silver, one bahar; for twenty-six
brazas
of linen, one bahar; for twenty-five
brazas
of finer linen, one bahar; for one hundred and fifty knives, one bahar; for fifty pairs of scissors, one bahar; for forty pairs of caps, one bahar; for ten pieces of Gujarat cloth, one bahar; for three of those gongs of theirs, two bahars; for one quintal of bronze, one bahar.” The men of the armada traded the gongs, the knives, and other items pirated from the Chinese junks they had raided en route for the cloves. In return for these trinkets, they received a haul that a sailor might expect to see once or twice in a lifetime.

A detachment of well-armed crew members guarded the post, but as they knew from tragic experience, staying ashore overnight posed special hazards, even in a peaceful setting. Almanzor earned a measure of trust by warning them not to venture beyond the post at night, or they might encounter a renegade cult of men who appeared to be headless, and who carried with them a poison ointment. Anyone coming into contact with the ointment “falls sick very soon and dies within three or four days.” The king explained that he had tried to discipline these menacing presences, and even had many of them hanged, but they still posed a danger. Forewarned (if scared out of their wits), the guard successfully avoided them.

As trading proceeded, Almanzor did all he could to put the armada at ease, even when the officers revealed that they were holding sixteen captives, taken from islands they had visited. Perhaps their existence could no longer be concealed, or the space they occupied could be more profitably devoted to cloves or cinnamon. To the officers’ surprise, the confession delighted the king, and he asked to take possession of the captives “so that he might send them back to their land with five of his own men that they might make the king of Spain and his fame known.” There was also the ticklish matter of Carvalho’s harem of three captive women, whom the officers delivered to Almanzor for his personal use.

In return for his generous assistance, Almanzor asked only that the Europeans “kill all the swine that we had in the ships,” in accordance with Muslim dietary laws, “for which he would give us an equal number of goats and fowls.” Their food supply assured, the Europeans happily complied with the request. “We killed them in order to show him a pleasure and hung them up under the deck. When those people happen to see any swine they cover their faces in order that they might not look upon them or catch their odor.”

If any member of the Armada de Molucca paused in the midst of his chores to reflect on these days in the Spice Islands, he could only marvel at how fortune, after punishing the fleet for months, had now chosen to favor it.

O
n the afternoon of November 13, Pedro Alfonso de Lorosa, Francisco Serrão’s companion, hailed the fleet from a
proa.
He excitedly explained that the king of Ternate had given permission for the visit and instructed him to answer all questions truthfully, adding, in royal jest, “even if he did come from Ternate.” There followed one of the more remarkable reunions in the Age of Discovery. In a time when travelers separated from their native cultures were often never heard from again, here was the Portuguese explorer standing before the armada’s officers after a ten-year silence, in good humor and eager to impart vital intelligence concerning Armada de Molucca.

From Pedro Alfonso de Lorosa’s detailed recollections, the officers learned that the implacable Portuguese authorities had been pursuing the armada around the globe: “He told us that he had already been sixteen years in India, and ten in the Moluccas, and that it was many years since the Moluccas had been secretly discovered, and that one year less fifteen days ago a great ship from Malacca had come there and left with a cargo of cloves.” And this ship was still looking for the armada.

Her captain was Tristão de Meneses, a Portuguese. And he [Pedro Alfonso] asked him what news there was in Christendom; and he had replied that a fleet of five ships had sailed from Seville to discover the Moluccas in the name of the King of Spain, with Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese, as captain. And that the King of Portugal, in anger that a Portuguese should oppose him, had sent some ships to the Cape of Good Hope, and as many to Cape St. Mary, where cannibals lived, to guard and forbid the passage, and that he had not found them.

According to Pedro Alfonso de Lorosa, the Portuguese pursuit of the Armada de Molucca did not stop there, and he ended his tale with a bombshell: A few days earlier a caravel with two junks had been there to learn news of us. But the junks went to Bacan to load cloves with seven Portuguese. And because they did not respect the king’s wives and subjects, although the king had often told them not to behave thus, and since they refused to abstain and withdraw, they were put to death. And when the men of the caravel learned this, they immediately returned to Malacca, leaving the junks with four hundred bahars of cloves and as much merchandise as would purchase another hundred bahars. Moreover, he told us that every year many junks come from Malacca to Bandan to take and load mace and nutmeg, and from Bandan to Molucca to get cloves. And that these people go with their junks from Molucca to Bandan in three days, and from Bandan to Malacca in fifteen. And that the King of Portugal had already secretly enjoyed Molucca for ten years, that the King of Spain should not know.

This last piece of information explained why King Manuel had refused Magellan four times; a water route such as Magellan proposed, no matter how daring, threatened to disturb Portugal’s lucrative but clandestine trade in spices. Spain, with no such secret relationship, would naturally benefit from Magellan’s plan. How strange and wrongheaded to imagine, as did the mutineers and those whom they influenced in Spain, that Magellan attempted to subvert the fleet to aid Portugal. After fleeing Portugal, Magellan had been as loyal to Spain as he claimed to be.

The officers of the armada plied Pedro Alfonso de Lorosa with alcohol, so the revelations came thick and fast. Not until three o’clock in the morning did the exhausted wanderer reach the end of his tale. Amazed and persuaded by his stories, the officers begged him to join their number by “promising him good wages and salaries.” A man without a country, he agreed. After eluding the agents of the Portuguese crown for so long, he would live to regret this decision.

O
n Friday the fifteenth of November,” wrote Pigafetta, “the king told us that he was going to Bacan to fetch the said cloves that those Portuguese had left there, and he requested of us two presents to give to the two governors of Motir in the name of the king of Spain. And passing through our ships, he wished to see how we fired out hackbuts, crossbows, and culverins, which are larger than an arquebus, and the king fired three shots of a crossbow, for that pleased him more than the other weapons.”

Still more gunplay ensued when Iussu, the king of Gilolo—“very old, and feared through all those islands for the great power that he had”—also paid a courtesy call on the armada on Saturday, prompting another exchange of gifts. “Since we were friends of the king of Tidore,” he advised, “we were also his, because he loved him like his own son, and if any of us ever went into his country he would do him very great honor.”

He returned the next day to ask the armada to demonstrate its firearms, and the gunners gladly complied. “He took the greatest pleasure in it,” Pigafetta noted. “He had been a great fighter in his youth, as we were told.”

L
ater that day, Pigafetta finally had his chance to examine cloves carefully. These aromatic, humble bushes (
Syzygium aromaticum
) had inspired the voyage that had cost so many lives, and moved the destinies of empire around the world. Kingdoms in the East and West alike depended on them for economic support, and they provided the incentive for the emerging world economy. Centuries before Magellan, the Chinese had imported cloves, which were believed to have medicinal value. They were also used to flavor food and to sweeten breath. Europe found even more applications for the clove. Its essence, when applied to the eyes, supposedly improved vision. Its powder, when applied to the forehead, supposedly relieved fevers and colds. If added to food, it supposedly stimulated the bladder and cleansed the colon. If consumed with milk, it supposedly made intercourse more satisfying. It was miraculous, precious, and wonderful in all respects.

The word “clove” is derived from
clou,
the French word for nail, and the shape of its dried flowerbud is indeed reminiscent of a nail. The trees are slow to mature; from seedling to crop can take as long as seven or even eight years. Until it reaches the age of twenty-five or thereabouts, a clove tree will yield approximately eight pounds of the precious spice each year, depending on fluctuations in the climate. The ideal soil for growing cloves could be found in the Spice Islands: a deep, loamy, well-drained volcanic soil. Drenching rain is essential. The islands receive about one hundred inches of rain a year, ideal for cloves. The clove buds vary in length from one-half to three-quarters of an inch, and they contain up to 20 percent essential oil. The principal component is eugenol, an aromatic oil that imparts to cloves their distinctive, smoky flavor.

Harvesting cloves requires considerable care because the buds are fragile. The trick is to pull the buds away from the stems without damaging the branches; this was usually done by using the hand as a brush to sweep clusters of buds into waiting baskets or extended aprons. Once harvested, the buds were placed in the open for a few days to dry out. When desiccated, the stems and heads of the clove turn brown, and their weight is reduced by as much as two-thirds. Even after they are packed, they continue to lose moisture and weight, though at a much slower rate.

Now that Pigafetta was face-to-face with the source of all this wealth and struggle, he described it with obvious fascination:

The clove tree is tall and as thick as a man’s body or thereabouts. Its branches spread out somewhat widely in the middle, but at the top they have the shape of a summit. Its leaves resemble those of the laurel, and the bark is of a dark color. The cloves grow at the end of the twigs, ten or twenty in a cluster. Those trees generally have more cloves on one side than on the other, according to the season. When the cloves sprout, they are white, when ripe, red, and when dried, black. They are gathered twice per year, once at the nativity of our Savior and the other at the nativity of St. John the Baptist; for the climate is more moderate at those two seasons. . . .When the year is very hot and there is little rain, those people gather three or four hundred bahars in each of those islands. Those trees grow only in the mountains, and if any of them are planted in the lowlands near the mountains, they do not live. The leaves, the bark, and the green wood are as strong as the cloves. If the latter are not gathered when they are ripe, they become large and so hard that only their husk is good. No cloves are grown in the world except in the five mountains of those five islands. . . Almost every day we saw a mist descend and encircle now one and now another of those mountains, on account of which those cloves become perfect.

Nutmeg was almost as important and valuable as cloves, and Pigafetta offered this description of its appearance in the wild: “The tree resembles our walnut tree, and has leaves like it. When the nut is gathered it is as large as a small quince, with the same sort of down, and it is of the same color. Its first rind is as thick as the green rind of our walnut. Under that there is a thin layer, under which is found the mace. The latter is a brilliant red and is wrapped about the rind of the nut, and within that is the nutmeg.”

I
n the early hours of Monday, November 25, Almanzor sailed out to the fleet in his
proa
to the resonant accompaniment of gongs. As he passed between the armada’s ships, he announced that the cloves would be ready for delivery within four days. Overjoyed, the men of the armada fired their weapons to celebrate the event and to impress the king.

Later the same day, the men began to load what eventually amounted to 791 catis of cloves, about 1,400 pounds. “As those were the first cloves which we had laden in our ships, we fired many pieces.” The more spices they took on board, the more anxious the men of the armada became to return to Spain before another disaster befell them.