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Why had he told her? Perhaps because he knew implicitly that he could trust her with his life. Or perhaps because she looked at him with such piercing intelligence that he knew that no other explanation than the truth would convince her. Even so, he had not told her the half of it, for even she would have thought him mad.
And she did not think him mad, or if she did, she must have some special love of madmen. A love that continued even now, to a degree beyond his hopes. "Stay the night with me, my Cristobal," she said.
"My lady," he answered, unsure if he had heard aright.
"You lived with a common woman named Beatrice in Cordoba. She had your child. You can't pretend to be living a monkish life."
"I seem doomed to fall under the spell of ladies named Beatrice. And none of them has been, by any stretch of the imagination, a common woman."
Lady Beatrice laughed lightly. "You managed to compliment your old lover and one who would be your new one, both at once. No wonder you were able to win your way past the priests and scholars. I daresay Queen Isabella fell in love with your red hair and the fire in your eyes, just as I did."
"More grey in the hair than red, I fear."
"Hardly any," she answered.
"My lady," he said, "it was your friendship I prayed for when I came to Gomera. I did not dare to dream of more."
"Are you begi
"Ah, Lady Beatrice, not decline, but perhaps postpone?"
She reached out, leaned forward, touched his cheek. "You're not a very handsome man, you know, Cristobal."
"That has always been my opinion as well," he answered.
"And yet one can't take one's eyes from you. Nor can one purge one's thoughts of you when you're gone. I'm a widow, and you're a widower. God saw fit to remove our spouses from the torments of this world. Must we also be tormented by unfulfilled desires?"
"My lady, the scandal. If I stayed the night--"
"Oh, is that all? Then leave before midnight. I'll let you over the parapet by a silken rope."
"God has answered my prayers," he said to her.
"As well he should, since you were on his mission."
"I dare not sin and lose his favor now."
"I knew I should have seduced you back in Santa Fe."
"And there's this, my lady. When I return, successful, from this great enterprise, then I'll not be a commoner, whose only touch of gentility is by his marriage into a not-quite-noble family of Madeira. I'll be Viceroy. I'll be Admiral of the Ocean Sea." He gri
"Well, Viceroy indeed! I doubt you'll waste a glance on a mere governor of a far-off island."
"Ah, no, Lady. I'll be Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and as I contemplate my realm--"
"Like Poseidon, ruler over all the shores that are touched by the waves of the sea--"
"I will find no more treasured crown than this island of Gomera, and no more lovely jewel in that crown than the fair Beatrice."
"You've been at court too long. You make your compliments sound rehearsed."
"Of course I've rehearsed it, over and over, the whole week I waited here in torment for your return."
"For the Pinta's return, you mean."
"Both were late. Your rudder, however, was undamaged."
Her face reddened, and then she laughed.
"You complained that my compliments were too courtly. I thought you might appreciate a tavern compliment."
"Is that what that was? Do strumpets sleep with men for free if they say such pretty things?"
"Not strumpets, Lady. Such poetry is not for those who can be had for mere money."
"Poetry?"
"Thou art my caravel, with sails full-winded --"
"Watch your nautical references, my friend."
"Sails full-winded, and the bright red ba
"You're very good at this. Or are you not making it up as you go along?"
"Making it all up. Ah, thy breath is the blessed wind that sailors pray for, and the sight of thy rudder leaves this poor sailor full-masted --"
She slapped his face, but it wasn't meant to hurt.
"I take it my poetry is a failure."
"Kiss me, Cristobal. I believe in your mission, but if you never return I want at least your kiss to remember you by."
So he kissed her, and again. But then he took his leave of her, and returned to the last preparations for his voyage. It was God's work now; when it was done, then it was time to collect the worldly rewards. Though who was to say that she was not, after all, a reward from heaven? It was God, after all, who had made a widow of her, and perhaps God also who made her, against all probability, love this son of a Genovese weaver.
He saw her, or thought he saw her -- and who else could it have been? -- waving a scarlet handkerchief as if it were a ba
Chapter 2 -- Slaves
Though Tagiri did not put her own body back in time, it is still true to say that she was the one who stranded Christopher Columbus on the island of Hispaniola and changed the face of history forever. Though she was born seven centuries after Columbus's voyage and never left her birth continent of Africa, she found a way to reach back and sabotage the European conquest of America. It was not an act of malice. Some said that it was like correcting a painful hernia in a brain-damaged child: In the end, the child would still be severely limited, but it would not suffer as much along the way. But Tagiri saw it differently.
"History is not prelude," she said once. "We don't justify the suffering of people in the past because everything turned out well enough by the time we came along. Their suffering counts just as much as our peace and happiness. We look out of our golden windows and feel pity for the scenes of blood and blades, of plagues and famines that are played out in the surrounding country. When we believed that we could not go back in time and make changes, then we could be excused for shedding a tear for them and then going on about our happy lives. But once we know that it is in our power to help them, then, if we turn away and let their suffering go on, it is no golden age we live in, and we poison our own happiness. Good people do not let others suffer needlessly." What she asked was a hard thing, but some agreed with her. Not all, but in the end, enough.
Nothing in her parentage, her upbringing, or her education gave any hint that one day, by unmaking one world, she would create another. Like most young people who joined Pastwatch, Tagiri's first use of the Tempoview machine was to trace her own family back, generation before generation. She was vaguely aware that, as a novice, she would be observed during her first year. But hadn't they told her that as she learned to control and fine-tune the machine ("it's an art, not a science") she could explore anything she wanted? It wouldn't have bothered her, anyway, to know that her superiors nodded knowingly when it became clear that she was following her matrilineal line back to a Dongotona village on the banks of the Koss River. Though she was as racially mixed as anyone else in the world these days, she had picked the one lineage that mattered most to her, the one from which she derived her identity. Dongotona was the name of her tribe and of the mountainous country where they lived, and the village of Ikoto was her foremothers' ancient home.