And Columbus, for his part, looked at Felipa as the years of marriage aged her, as her lips turned downward into a permanent frown, as she spent more and more of her time in bed with nameless illnesses, and he knew that he was somehow causing this, that he was harming her, and that there was nothing he could do about it, not if he was going to fulfil his mission in life.

Almost as soon as Columbus returned to Lisbon, he found the book that he was looking for. The geographic work of an Arab named Alfragano had been translated into Latin, and Columbus found in it the perfect tool to shrink those last 60 degrees to a reasonable voyaging distance. If Alfragano's calculations were assumed to be in Roman miles, then the 60 degrees of distance between the Canaries and Cipangu would amount to as little as 2,000 nautical miles at the latitudes he would be sailing. With reasonably favorable winds, which God would surely provide for him, the voyage could be made in as few as eight days; two weeks at the most.

He had his proofs now in terms the scholars would understand. He wouldn't come before them with nothing but his own faith in a vision he couldn't tell them about. Now he had the ancients on his side, and never mind that one of them was a Muslim, he could still build a case for his expedition.

At last his marriage to Felipa paid off. He used every contact he had made, and won the chance to present his ideas at court. He stood boldly before King Joao, knowing that God would touch his heart and make him understand that it was God's will that he mount this expedition with Columbus at its head. He laid out his maps, with all his calculations, showing Cipangu within easy reach, and Cathay but a short voyage beyond that. The scholars listened; the King listened. They asked questions. They mentioned the ancient authorities that contradicted Columbus's view of the size of the earth and the ratio of land to water, and Columbus answered them patiently and with confidence. This is the truth, he said. Until one of them said, "How do you know that Marinus is right and Ptolemy is wrong?"

Columbus answered, "Because if Ptolemy is right then this voyage would be impossible. But it is not impossible, it will succeed, and so I know that Ptolemy is wrong."

Even as he said it, he knew that it was not an answer that would persuade them. He knew, seeing their polite nods, their not-so-covert glances at the King, that their recommendation would be squarely against him. Well, he thought, I have done all I could. Now it is up to God. He thanked the King for his kindness, reaffirmed his certainty that this expedition would cover Portugal in glory and make it the greatest kingdom of Europe and bring Christianity to countless souls, and took his leave.

He took it as an encouraging sign that, as he waited for the King's answer, he was given permission to join a trading expedition to the African coast. It wasn't a voyage of exploration, so no great secrets of the Portuguese crown were being laid before him. Still, it was a sign of trust and favor that he was allowed to sail as far as the fortress of Sao Jorge at La Mina. The King is preparing me to lead an expedition by letting me become acquainted with the great achievements of Portuguese navigation.

Upon his return he eagerly awaited the King's answer, expecting to be told any day that he would be given the ships, the crew, the supplies that he needed.

The King said no.

Columbus was devastated. For days he hardly ate or slept. He did not know what to think. Wasn't this God's plan? Didn't God tell kings and princes what to do? How, then, could King Joao have refused him?

It was something I did wrong. I shouldn't have spent so much time trying to prove that the voyage was possible; I should have spent more time trying to help the King catch the vision of why the voyage was desirable, necessary. Why God wanted this to be achieved. I acted foolishly. I prepared insufficiently. I was unworthy. All the explanations he could think of left him spiraling downward into despair.

Felipa saw her husband suffering and she knew that in the one thing that she had ever provided him that he desired, she had failed. He had needed a connection at court, and the influence of her family name was not enough. Why, then, was he married to her? She was now an intolerable burden to him. She had nothing that he could possibly desire or need or love. When she brought five-year-old Diego to him, to try to cheer him up, he sent the boy away so gruffly that the child cried for an hour and refused to go to his father again. It was the last straw. Felipa knew that Columbus hated her now, and that she deserved his hatred, having given him nothing that he wanted.

She went to bed, turned her face to the wall, and soon became exactly as ill as she declared herself to be.

In her last days, Columbus became as solicitous of her as she had ever desired. But she knew in her heart that this did not mean that he loved her. Rather he was doing his duty, and when he talked to her of how sorry he was for his long neglect, she knew that this was said not because he wished her to live so he could do better in the future, but rather because he wanted her forgiveness so that his conscience could be free when at last her death freed him in every other way.

"You will have your greatness, Cristovao, one way or another," she said.

"And you'll be there beside me to see it, my Felipa," he said.

She wanted to believe it, or rather wanted to believe that he actually desired it, but she knew better. "I ask only this promise: Diego will inherit everything from you."

"Everything," said Columbus.

"No other sons," she said. "No other heirs."

"I promise," he said.

Soon afterward she died. Columbus held Diego's hand as they followed her coffin to the family tomb, and as they walked, side by side, he suddenly lifted up his son and held him in his arms and said, "You are all I have left of her. I treated your mother unfairly, Diego, and you as well, and I can't promise to do any better in the future. But I made her this promise, and I make it to you. All that I ever have, all that I ever achieve, every title, every bit of property, every honor, every scrap of fame, it will be yours."

Diego heard this and remembered it. His father loved him after all. And his father had loved his mother, too. And someday, if his father became great, Diego would be great after him. He wondered if that meant that someday he would own an island, the way Grandmother did. He wondered if it meant that someday he would sail a ship. He wondered if it meant that someday he would stand before kings. He wondered if it meant that his father would leave him now and he would never see him again.

The following spring, Columbus left Portugal and crossed the border into Spain. He took Diego to the Franciscan monastery of La Rdbida, near Palos. "I was taught by Franciscan fathers in Genova," he told his son. "Learn well, become a scholar and a Christian and a gentleman. And I will be about the business of serving God and making our fortune in the process."

Columbus left him there, but he visited from time to time, and in his letters to the prior, Father Juan Perez, he never failed to mention Diego and ask after him. Many sons had less of their fathers than that, Diego knew. And a small part of his dear father was far greater than all the love and attention of many lesser men. Or so he told himself to stave off the humiliation of tears during the loneliness of those first months.

Columbus himself went on to the court of Spain, where he would present a much more carefully refined version of the same unprovable calculations that had failed in Portugal. This time, though, he would persist. Whatever Felipa had suffered, whatever Diego was suffering now, deprived of family and left among strangers in a strange place, it would all be justified. For in the end Columbus would succeed, and the triumph would be worth the price.