Part VIII · The Spice Islands
Chapter 26
Tadore
Tidore, the Moluccas
On 8 November 1521 the Trinidad and the Victoria enter the harbour of Tidore, in the Moluccas. Sultan al-Mansur tells them he had dreamed of their coming, and consulted the moon to be sure.
Friday, 8 November 1521
Three hours before sunset on Friday, the 8th of November 1521, the Trinidad and the Victoria enter the harbour of an island called Tadore, which we call Tidore. They anchor close to shore in twenty fathoms of water and fire all their guns.
Tidore is a cone of a volcano rising straight out of the sea, green to the summit, with a town on the shore. Beside it, across a narrow strait, rises a twin, the island of Ternate. These two little islands and three others nearby, Moti, Makian and Bacan, are the only places in the world where the clove tree grows.
For these islands, cloves have travelled for centuries by junk and dhow, caravan and galley, from hand to hand across half the world, getting more precious with every step, until they reached the tables of Europe. In Venice or Lisbon a single shipload could make a merchant’s fortune.
Now the Europeans have come for them directly, and they have come the long way round.
9 November 1521
The next day the king comes out to the ships in his boat and circles them once. He sits under a silk awning. In front of him sits one of his sons holding the royal sceptre, with two men holding gold jars of water for washing his hands, and two with gilded caskets of betel.
He tells them they are welcome. Some time ago, he says, he dreamed that ships were coming to Maluco from far away. To be certain, he consulted the moon, and he saw that the ships were coming, and that they were these.
He comes aboard, and everyone kisses his hand. Entering the cabin at the stern, he refuses to bow his head, so the men have to let him in from above. They seat him in a red velvet chair and dress him in a yellow velvet robe. To honour him, they sit on the floor around him.
The king says that he and all his people want to be the most loyal friends and subjects of the king of Spain. The Europeans may go ashore as if they were in their own houses, and from now on his island will be called not Tadore but Castile, for the great love he bears their king. They load him with presents until he asks them to stop. Then he says he has nothing left to send the king of Spain but his own life.
His name is Sultan al-Mansur. Pigafetta calls him Raia Sultan Manzor: a Muslim of about forty-five, well built, with a royal presence, and “an excellent astrologer.”
Sunday, 10 November 1521
On Sunday the king asks how long they have been away from Spain, and what pay the king gives each of them. He asks for a signature of the king of Spain and a royal banner. With those, he says, he will bring both his own island and neighbouring Ternate under Spain, if he can put one of his grandsons on Ternate’s throne. If he is ever overwhelmed, he will sail to Spain with his whole family in a new junk he is having built, carrying the royal signature and banner.
He asks them to leave some men behind, so that he will always be reminded of the king of Spain. He does not ask for merchandise, he says, because merchandise would not last.
There are not enough dry cloves on Tidore to fill two ships, he tells them, so he will go to the island of Bacan to fetch more. Because it is Sunday, they agree not to trade. His people’s holy day, Pigafetta notes, is Friday.
The Europeans have been welcomed as saviours before, in Cebu. Some of them must wonder how long this welcome will last.
November 1521
Now they hear news that would have broken Magellan’s heart.
Less than eight months earlier, a Portuguese named Francisco Serrão had died on Ternate, across the strait. He had been captain-general of the king of Ternate, and had fought for him against Tidore. He was Magellan’s close friend and relative. Years before, when Magellan was in Malacca, Serrão had written to him several times from Ternate, describing the Spice Islands. It was those letters, Pigafetta says, that made Magellan decide on this whole enterprise.
Serrão came to Tidore one day to trade for cloves. The king of Tidore, the same king who has just welcomed them so warmly, had him poisoned with betel leaves. He lived four days.
So Magellan and Serrão, the two friends who had hoped to meet at the Spice Islands, one sailing west to find the other waiting in the east, both died that same spring, a few hundred miles apart, without ever seeing each other again.
Pigafetta adds that Portugal’s King Manuel had refused to raise Magellan’s pension by a single coin a month, so Magellan went to Spain. It is as close as he comes to an explanation of the whole voyage.
11–12 November 1521
The next day a son of the late king of Ternate comes out to the ships, dressed in red velvet, in two boats with gongs playing. He will not come aboard. He is looking after Francisco Serrão’s widow and children. The Europeans, unsure of their host’s feelings, ask the king of Tidore whether they may receive him. The king says they may do as they please. By then the prince has moved off. They row out to him with presents, which he accepts somewhat haughtily.
With him is a Christian servant named Manuel, who speaks Portuguese. Manuel belongs to a Portuguese trader, Pedro Afonso de Lorosa, who lives on Ternate. They send Lorosa a letter inviting him to visit.
On Tuesday, the king has a house built for them in the town in a single day. They move almost all their trade goods into it, and the trading begins. Ten fathoms of good red cloth buy one bahar of cloves, which is more than four hundredweight. So do fifteen hatchets, or thirty-five glass cups, or a hundred and fifty knives, or fifty pairs of scissors, or forty caps. Almost all the mirrors have broken on the voyage.
“Our haste to return to Spagnia,” Pigafetta admits, “made us dispose of our merchandise at better bargains than we should have done.”
November 1521
Every day so many boatloads of goats, chickens, bananas, coconuts and other food come out to the ships that the men are amazed. There is good water too, which comes out of the ground hot, but after an hour turns very cold. That, Pigafetta is told, is because it comes from the mountain of cloves.
He learns about the king’s household. The king keeps two hundred chief wives in a large house outside the town, with as many women to serve them. When he eats, he sits in a high gallery from which he can see them all, and chooses the one who pleases him best for the night. He has twenty-six children. On the great island of Gilolo nearby, he is told, one king has six hundred children and another five hundred and twenty-five. There, reeds as thick as a leg grow on bare rock, filled with good drinking water.
When the king learns they have prisoners from the captured junks, he thanks God and asks for them, so that he can send them home. They give him everyone except the men from Burne.
Then he asks a strange favour. He wants them to kill every pig they have on board, and he will give them the same number of goats and chickens in return. They kill the pigs and hang them below deck. The people of Tidore are Muslims. When they happen to see a pig, Pigafetta notes, they cover their faces, so as not to look at it or catch its smell.