Nathaniel's nutmeg (5 page)

In Chaucer's day such spices had been a rare luxury. In
the
Canterbury Tales
the doughty Sir Topaz speaks longingly
of gingerbread, licorice and 'notemuge'-flavoured ale. By
the time Shakespeare was writing, less than twenty years
before Nathaniel Courthope arrived at Run, such luxuries
were fast becoming commonplace. In
The Winter's Tale,
the
clown has a lengthy list of ingredients needed for his dish
of spiced pears, all of which were readily available in
London: 'I must have saffron to colour the warden pies
[pears]. Mace, dates, none; that's out of my note; nutmegs,
seven, a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four
pound of prunes, and as many raisins o' the sun.'

Throughout the Middle Ages, Venice had controlled the
spice trade with an iron fist. Nutmeg, cloves, pepper and
cinnamon all travelled across Asia to the great trading
emporium of Constantinople where they were snapped up
by Venetian merchants and shipped westward across the
Mediterranean. From here they were sold, at vastly inflated
prices, to traders from northern Europe. By the time Marco
Polo made his 1271 voyage to China, Venice's monopoly
on spices was complete, yet no one from the West had ever
visited the countries from which these spices originated.
Polo was the first European to describe the clove tree, 'a
little tree with leaves like laurel', but his claim to have seen
one in mainland China owes more to his imagination than
to reality for, unbeknown to the Venetian, the tree could
only be found on a handful of islands in the Indonesian
archipelago.

In the two centuries that followed Polo's return, spices
had become so popular that demand had long since
outstripped supply. Venice's merchants were sufficiently
adept at the art of money-making to know that a shortage
of supply meant that prices could be kept high. So long as
they controlled the trade routes and kept a monopoly over
the souks of the Middle East they could retain their
stranglehold on trade. But in the closing days of 1511 a
startling and wholly unwelcome piece of news reached the
Venetian merchants. A small flotilla of Portuguese ships,
they learned, had just arrived in the Spice Islands and
acquired a full lading of spices. After more than four
centuries the Venetian monopoly had been broken.

.

The spice race could now begin.

The Portuguese had made spectacular progress in their
quest to find a sea route to the East. Just forty years after
their first tentative crossing of the equator in 1471, they
had successfully sailed to the Spice Islands of the East Indies
and returned with their ships crammed with pepper,
nutmeg and cloves. These islands, known as the 'spiceries'
or Moluccas, were scattered over an area of ocean more
than half the size of Europe. Although these days they form

a single province of Indonesia, called Maluku, the hundred
or so islands in fact fall into three distinct groups. To the
north he the volcanic islands of Tidore and Ternate,
powerful sultanates which spent much of the sixteenth
century fighting a desperate battle to retain their
independence. Some four hundred miles to the south of
here are the islands of Amboyna and Ceram, rugged places
whose sweet-smelling cloves would eventually spark a
terrible and infamous massacre. The southernmost group,
the Banda Islands, were the richest and least accessible of
them all, requiring bravado and a deft hand to steer a vessel
safely through the archipelago's treacherous waters.

The Portuguese touched at all of these islands and,
before long, were consolidating their position by force of
arms. The important spice port of Malacca fell under their
control in 1511 and, just months later, the remote Banda
Islands were first visited by a Portuguese carrack. Next,
they seized the spice ports on India's west coast, wresting
control from the Muslim middlemen, before returning to
the outlying and far-flung 'spiceries'. Here they built a
series of heavily guarded forts and bastions and, within a
few years, the islands of Ternate and Tidore, Amboyna and
Ceram, had all fallen into their grasp.

The other countries of Europe had got off to a faltering
start in the spice race. Columbus had sailed westwards
across the Atlantic in 1492 convinced that he could detect
the whiff of spice in the air. Although he went to great
lengths to persuade the King and Queen of Spain that he
had found the East Indies, he had of course discovered
America. The Venetian explorer John Cabot also believed
that the quickest way to the East Indies was to sail west and
he visited Arabia at a very early age in order to quiz the
local merchants about 'whither spices are brought by
caravans from distant countries'. These merchants were
understandably reticent to part with such priceless
information and spoke vaguely of spices coming from the
easternmost reaches of the world. It was exactly what
Cabot had hoped to hear and he concluded that
'presupposing the rotundity of the earth' — not a foregone
conclusion even in those days — the merchants must have
bought the spices 'at the north towards the west'.

Cabot was unable to interest any Venetian sponsors in a
westerly voyage across the Atlantic so he travelled to
England and persuaded King Henry VII to commission his
search for the 'spiceries'. Setting sail across the Atlantic in
1497 he landed at Cape Breton Island which he
confidently declared to be an uninhabited part of China.
Although spices were distinctly thin on the ground Cabot
returned to an England fascinated by his supposed
discovery. 'Great honour is paid him,' wrote a Venetian
merchant living in London, 'and he dresses in silk; and
these English run after him like mad people.' So, indeed,
did the King who promptly provided the finances for a
second expedition.

On this new voyage Cabot decided to follow the coast
of 'China' until he reached Japan where 'all the spices of the
world originate'. Certain he would return with his ships
filled with nutmeg, his confidence only faltered when the
mercury slumped below zero and the icebergs grew ever
more threatening.

Despite his failure to bring home a single nutmeg,
Cabot's voyages aroused considerable interest in the ports
of Spain and Portugal. One man in particular was keen to
know more about his discoveries: Ferdinand Magellan, a
'gentleman of great spirit', had long believed there was a far
quicker route to the Spice Islands than the lengthy voyage
around the Cape of Good Hope and was sure that Cabot
had been right to sail westwards across the Atlantic.

Magellan had sailed to the East Indies in his youth and
would certainly have returned had circumstances allowed.
But after taking part in a military campaign in Morocco, he
was accused of treachery and informed by the Portuguese
king that his services were no longer required. King
Manuel had made a grave error in dismissing Magellan for
he was an expert navigator who had read widely the
geographical theories of his day. He argued that the only
reason that Columbus and Cabot had failed to find the
Spice Islands was that they had not found a passage through
the American continent.

Magellan travelled to the court of King Charles V of
Spain in 1518 and 'acquainted the Emperour that the
islands of Banda and of the Molucca's [were] the only one
store-house of nature for nutmegs and mace'. The King
immediately realised that Magellan offered him the best
chance of challenging the seemingly indomitable position
of the Portuguese, and placed him in charge of a fleet of
ships which were to sail southwards down the coast of
Brazil, find a passage through to the Pacific Ocean, then
sail west until they reached the 'islands of Banda'. It is
fortunate that Magellan took with him a scholar by the
name of Antonio Pigafetta, for Pigafetta faithfully recorded
everything that happened on that historic first Spanish
voyage to the Spice Islands. His journal, in turn, found its
way into the hands of the learned English vicar Samuel
Purchas whose monumental anthology of exploration,
Purchas His Pilgrimes,
was to inspire London's merchant
adventurers.

Magellan's voyage began well: he revictualled in the
Canary Islands, crossed the equator, and reached the South American coastline three months later. Here, simmering
resentment between the Spanish crew and their Portuguese
captain exploded into mutiny and Magellan was forced to
hang the troublemakers from a hastily constructed gibbet.
At that point the mutiny died down.

The remaining mutineers soon found their attentions
diverted by the extraordinary behaviour of the natives; not
least the giant-like menfolk of Patagonia who, noted
Pigafetta, 'when they are sicke at the stomache they put an
arrow half a yard downe the throat which makes them
vomit greene choler and blood.'Their cure for headaches
was no less dramatic; they gashed their heads open and
purged the blood. And as soon as they detected the first
chill of winter, 'they would truss up themselves so the
genitall member is hidden in the body'.