One of the men at the meeting must have been a traitor, or perhaps one of them spoke carelessly, where a traitorous servant overheard, but somehow the Adornos got word of the plans of the Fieschi, and when Pietro and his two bodyguards showed up beside the cylindrical towers of the Sant'Andrea Gate where the rendezvous was supposed to take place, they were set upon by a dozen of the Adornos. Pietro was dragged from his horse and struck in the head with a mace. They left him for dead as they ran away. The shouting could be heard in the Colombo house as clearly as if it had happened next door, which it almost had -- they lived scarcely a hundred yards from the Sant' Andrea Gate. They heard the first shouts of the men, and Pietro's voice as he cried out, "Fieschi! To me, Fieschi!"

At once Father took his heavy staff from its place by the fire and ran into the street. Mother got to the front of the house too late to stop him. Screaming and crying, she gathered the children and the apprentices into the back of the house while the journeymen stood guard at the front door. There in the gathering darkness they heard the tumult and shouting, and then Pietro's screaming. For he had not been killed outright, and now in his agony he howled for help in the night.

"Fool," whispered Mother. "If he keeps screeching like that, he'll tell all the Adornos that they didn't kill him and they'll come back and finish him off."

"Will they kill Father?" asked Cristoforo.

The younger children began to cry.

"No," said Mother, but Cristoforo could tell that she was not sure.

Perhaps she could sense his skepticism. "All fools," she said. "All men are fools. Fighting over who gets to rule Genova -- what does that matter? The Turk is in Constantinople! The heathens have the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem! The name of Christ is no longer spoken in Egypt, and these little boys are squabbling over who gets to sit on a fancy chair and call himself the Doge of Genova? What is the honor of Pietro Fregoso compared to the honor of Jesus Christ? What is it to possess the palace of the Doge when the land where the Blessed Virgin walked in her garden, where the angel came to her, is in the hands of circumcised dogs? If they want to kill somebody, let them liberate Jerusalem! Let them free Constantinople! Let them shed blood to redeem the honor of the Son of God!"

"That's what I will fight for," said Cristoforo.

"Don't fight!" said one of his sisters. "They'd kill you."

"I'd kill them first."

"You're very small, Cristoforo," his sister said.

"I won't always be small."

"Hush," said Mother. "This is all nonsense. The son of a weaver doesn't go on Crusade."

"Why not?" said Cristoforo. "Would Christ refuse my sword?"

"What sword?" said Mother scornfully.

"I'll have a sword one day," said Cristoforo. "I'll be 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 Cristoforo Colombo, on the moment when he made his decision. As always, her father praised it, criticizing only minor points. But she knew by now that his praise could conceal serious criticism. When she challenged him, he wouldn't tell her what his criticism was. "I say that this report is a good one," he told her. "Now leave me alone."

"There's something wrong with it," Diko said, "and you're not telling me."

"It's a well-written report. It has nothing wrong except the points I told you."

"Then you disagree with my conclusion. You don't think this was what made Cristoforo decide to be great."

"Decide to be great?" asked Father. "Yes, I think this is ahnost certainly the point in his life where he made that decision."

"Then what's wrong with it!" she shouted.

"Nothing!" he shouted back.

"I'm not a child!"

He looked at her in consternation. "You aren't?"

"You're humoring me and I'm tired of it!"

"All right," he said. "Your report is excellent and observant. He certainly decided on the night you pinpointed, and for the reasons that you laid out, that he would pursue gold and greatness and the glory of God. All that is very good. But there is not one breath of a hint in anything you reported on that would tell us why and how he decided that he would achieve those goals by sailing west into the Atlantic."