For the first time in all these years of painstaking labour, Raimundo Silva will not give the book one final reading from beginning to end. There are, as we explained, four hundred and thirty-seven heavily annotated pages, to read all of them would mean staying up all night or at least most of it, a torment he does not relish for he has positively come to dislike the book and its author, tomorrow the ingenuous readers will say and schoolchildren repeat that the fly has four legs, as affirmed by Aristotle, and on the next centenary of the conquest of Lisbon from the Moors, in the year two thousand and forty-seven, if Lisbon still exists and continues to be inhabited by the Portuguese, some president or other will evoke that sublime moment when the insignia of the proud victors triumphantly replaced the unholy crescent of the moon in the blue skies of our lovely city.
Nevertheless, his professional scruples demand that he should, at least, slowly go over the pages, his expert eyes scanning the words, in the hope that by thus varying the degree of concentration, he might discover some minor error of his own, like that shadow suddenly displaced by strong light, or that familiar sideways glance which at the last minute captures an image in flight. We do not need to know whether Raimundo Silva managed to tidy up those tiresome proofs, but what is interesting is to observe him as he re-reads the speech Dom Afonso Henriques made to the crusaders, according to the version attributed to Osbern, here translated from the Latin by the author of the History himself, who does not trust the lessons of others, especially when dealing with such an important subject, no less than the first speech of our founding king to be recorded, for there is no reliable evidence of any other. Raimundo Silva finds the entire speech absurd from start to finish, not because he is competent to question the accuracy of the translation, a command of Latin not being amongst the talents of this average proof-reader, but because no one in their right mind could possibly believe that this King Afonso, who had no gift for rhetoric, made such a convoluted speech, more like one of those pretentious sermons the friars would be giving six or seven centuries later than the limited phrases of a language which at that time was little more than childish prattle. There was the proof-reader smiling scornfully, when suddenly he felt his heart leap, if Egas Moniz really had been the excellent tutor described in the annals, if he was born not simply to accompany the little cripple to Carquere or subsequently to go to Toledo with a noose round his neck, then surely he would have instilled a fair number of Christian precepts and political maxims into his pupil, and Latin being the perfect language in which to impart this knowledge, one might assume that the royal prince, in addition to a natural command of Galician, would have known quantum satis Latin in order to be able to make the aforementioned harangue at the right moment, to all those foreign and highly civilised crusaders, since at that time the only language they understood was the one they had learned in the cradle and a few words of the foreign language with the help of the friars who acted as interpreters. Dom Afonso Henriques, therefore, would have known Latin and not needed to send an emissary in his place to that famous assembly, perhaps he himself might even have been the author of those celebrated words, a wholly plausible hypothesis in the case of someone who in his own hand, and in Latin no less, had written The History of the Conquest of Santarém, as we are solemnly informed by Barbosa Machado in his Biblioteca Lusitana and who also states that the manuscript was preserved at the time in the Royal Convent of Alcobaça at the end of a book of about St Fulgentius. It has to be said that the proof-reader does not believe a single word of what he is reading, he is more than sceptical, he himself has already said so, but in order to be fair-minded, as well as to break the monotony of this obligatory reading, he consulted the primary source on which the modern histories are based, he searched and found, just as I suspected, the credulous Machado copied, without checking, what Fray Bernardo de Brito and Fray Antonio Brandão had written, this is how historical misconceptions come about, So-and-So says that Beltrano said that Cicrano heard, and three such statements are enough to make a story, but what is beyond question is that The Conquest of Santarém was written by a member of the community of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, whose very name has not survived to take its rightful place in the library and remove that of the usurping king.
Raimundo Silva is on his feet, he has the shawl drawn over his shoulders but one corner trails on the ground whenever he moves, and he is reading aloud like a herald making a proclamation, that is to say, the speech our noble king made to the crusaders in the following words, We know, and can witness with our own eyes, that you are men of valour, fearless and well prepared, and, truly, your presence has not diminished in our eyes what we already knew of your prowess. We are not gathered here in order to know how much, men of such wealth, we need promise you, so that enriched with our gifts, you might join us in besieging this city. From the Moors, ever restless, we were never able to accumulate treasures, with which as sometimes happens one cannot live in safety. But since we want you to know what resources we have and what our intentions towards you are, we feel that this should not lead you to despise our promise, for we consider at your disposal everything that our land possesses. Of one thing, however, we are certain, and that is that your piety will incline you more to this enterprise and the desire to carry out such a mighty deed, than any promise of financial rewards. Now then, so that the clamour of your men does not disturb what I have to say to you, choose whomsoever you wish, so that once both sides have withdrawn, we may sit down quietly and discuss the reasons for this assurance and reach some mutual understanding about our proposals before making any statement in public, and so, with both sides in agreement and with the appropriate oaths and guarantees, may this be ratified for the greater glory of God.
No, this speech is not the work of some fledgling monarch without much experience in matters of diplomacy, here one detects the finger, hand and head of some senior ecclesiastic, perhaps the Bishop of Oporto himself, Dom Pedro Pitões, and almost certainly the Archbishop of Braga, Dom João Peculiar, who jointly and in connivance had managed to persuade the crusaders who were passing along the Douro to come to the Tagus and help with the conquest, saying to them amongst other things, At least, listen to the reasons why we think you should come to our assistance and see the evidence for yourselves. And the journey from Oporto to Lisbon having lasted three days, one does not need much imagination to assume that the two prelates, on the way, drew up their plans with the aim of advancing the enterprise, pondering the arguments, giving much advice, cautioning each other about possible dangers, with the most liberal assurances entangled in prudent mental reservations, not forgetting a little flattery, a beguiling strategy which rarely fails to bear fruit even if the ground is sterile and the sower somewhat inexperienced. Blushing, Raimundo Silva drops his shawl with a theatrical gesture, he smiles without happiness, This is not a speech one could ever believe in, more like some Shakespearian climax than the speech of provincial bishops, and he returns to his desk, sits down, shakes his head despondently, We're convinced we shall never know what Dom Afonso Henriques actually said to the crusaders, at least, good-day, and what else, what else, and the blinding clarity of this evidence, not to be able to know, suddenly strikes him as being most unfortunate, he would be capable of renouncing something, he does not ask himself what or how much, his soul, if he has one, his possessions, if he had any, in order to discover, preferably in this part of Lisbon where he lives and where the entire city was once located, some parchment, papyrus, sheet of paper, newspaper cutting, some entry, if possible, or stone engraving, as a record of what was really said, the original, as it were, perhaps less subtle in the art of discourse than this mannered version, which has none of the vigorous language worthy of such an occasion.