Everyone will know the history of this negotiation, so the reason for their voyage will be well publicized. The Queen, of course, will turn down their proposals. But that doesn’t matter—the point is that the galleys will have occasion to pass Ceuta, both coming and going. The ambassadors will land there, and we shall be able to find out all we want to know about the city, its defenses, and its anchorages.”

The two ships left Lisbon and turned east out of the surge of the Atlantic into the tideless Mediterranean. On a fine summer day they dropped anchor beneath the walls of Ceuta and announced to the authorities that they wished to rest and provision before continuing their embassy to Sicily. They were given permission.

While the Prior concentrated on the defenses and dispositions of the city, Captain Furtado and his sailors surveyed the bay, noting where the rocks were fewest, and where soldiers might most easily be landed. When night fell, they hoisted out a boat and made a survey of the area: from Ceuta Bay on the west, round Almina Point, and so to the other bay on the east. The men rowed silently, the leadsman in the bows, Captain Furtado taking note of shoals and off-lying rocks.

The whole operation went off without a hitch. It was a masterpiece of co-ordination, and when the Captain and the Prior compared and cross-checked their notes, they found that they had between them all the information necessary for a seaborne attack on the great Moorish citadel. The galleys weighed anchor and turned east.

Under oar and sail, they made their way across the summer sea to Palermo and the waiting Queen. Their embassy was as fruitless as King John had known it would be. The Queen had no intention of marrying any of his sons except the heir to the throne.

On their return to Lisbon the ambassadors were received in open court and the King and his councilors heard the Queen’s rejection of Prince Peter. That news, he was well aware, would quickly find its way out into the streets of Lisbon, and so to the waterfront, and so via traders and merchants back to Granada, Castile, and Ceuta itself. Any doubts as to the authenticity of the King of Portugal’s recent embassy would soon be set at rest.

Afterward, the King sent privately for Captain Furtado and the Prior of St. John. So confident were they of the accuracy of their findings, and so certain that the city could be taken from the sea, that they had arranged to play a joke on the King. When he eagerly asked the Captain for his views, the latter embarked on a rambling tale of how, as a youth, he had been told by an old Arab that the city of Ceuta would one day fall to a king of Portugal, and that this would be the beginning of the end of the Moorish power in Africa. (Curiously enough, the Mallorcan mystic Ramon Lull in the thirteenth century had indeed prophesied that the Portuguese would one day capture Ceuta and circumnavigate Africa. It may be that Captain Furtado was retelling some version of this story current at the time.) In any case, the King was in no mood for old wives’ tales. He had evolved a brilliant stratagem for spying out Ceuta, and here was Captain Furtado rambling on like an old woman by the fireside. He shrugged his shoulders and turned impatiently to the Prior.

“What news have you, my Lord Prior? Something a little more definite, I hope?”

“Sire, I have seen much. But I can tell you nothing until you have had brought to me four things: two sacks of sand, a roll of ribbon, a half-bushel of beans, and a basin.”

King John scowled. “Don’t you think we have had enough stupidity with the Captain here and his prophecies? If this is a jest, then the time for it is over. Tell me what you have seen.”

“It is not my habit to jest with your Lordship. I only repeat that I can say nothing until I have the things I have asked for.”

The King turned angrily to his sons. “Look at the answers I get from men whom I thought reliable! I ask them about their mission, and one babbles about astrology, and the other talks as if he were a magician demanding the tools of his trade!”

But there was something in the Prior’s manner that convinced the princes that the old man was not merely joking. The sand, the beans, and the ribbon were sent for, and the Prior went away with them into another room. Still mystified, the King waited impatiently. After a long time the door was opened.

“Now, my Lord, you may see the result of our observations.”

With the simple materials at his disposal the Prior had constructed a relief map of the Strait of Gibraltar, showing the anchorages of Ceuta, and its fortifications and defenses. There across the strait they could see where Algeciras lay, its bright bay, the Rock of Gibraltar, and the foothills of southern Spain.