A swaying barrel cabin ship wandered out of the river berth covered by trees on both sides of the Dudeiro River. A sailor standing at the bow leaned lazily against the bulkhead with a high raised hull behind him. Not far behind him, several other sailors were paddling forward with their oars.

Due to the terrain, the water flow of the Dudeiro River is very gentle in this section. Moreover, because the surrounding terrain is relatively high, it is much more difficult to drive on the river surface, so whenever you arrive in this area of ​​water, sailors have to pass through this section of the river by paddling. Fortunately, the water will gradually become turbulent with the terrain, and then these large ships can float all the way to the estuary.

The heavy barrel cabin ship slowly moved forward on the river surface, and waves of vague aroma of wine also floated around the river surface.

This kind of barrel cabin is a unique local ship used to transport wine. The entire ship is mainly composed of a closed cabin like a huge wine barrel. The hull is directly built on this "big wine barrel". After the wine filled with the whole ship of wine will be sealed with wax paint, and the ship will flow downstream. After reaching the destination downstream, the door will be smashed open and the wine will pass through the long wooden trough built on the river bank and fill the barrels waiting on the other side of the carriage.

Although many people here make a living by making wine, everyone is very popular despite this business. Almost every vineyard has endless business, so the local church simply uses wine as a substitute for tithes tax. Because local wine is so famous, the church often only needs to make a little profit than the tithe tax.

This is Porto, the most important city in northern Portugal and an important northern port second only to the capital Lisbon.

Centuries ago, when the Moors came, the Goth rulers at that time were unable to withstand the invasion of the pagans. Most of them were slaughtered and a few survivors fled to the north. At that time, Porto became an important stronghold in confrontation with the Moorish invaders in the south. Even after the long victory of the regaining lost grounds, Porto still enjoyed the glory and privileges that were not allowed elsewhere by the King of Portugal.

One of these privileges is that Porto has completely independent wine sale rights.

This right made Porto rise rapidly in its already prominent position with the booming development of the local wine industry, and at one point the nobles in the Lisbon court tried to regain this power because of coveting Porto's wine business.

This was strongly opposed by the Porto people. After the strong struggle between the whole country, the Porto people retained the right to sell wine, which was extremely important to them.

The barrel cabin ship floats forward slowly on the river surface. It is a very troublesome job to transport wine in such weather. In addition to being closed and tight, you must also be careful not to let the wine ship be exposed to the sun for a long time, otherwise the wine may ferment, which is bad.

So the barrel cabin always tries to avoid the hottest days of the day, but will only depart in the morning and afternoon.

This is when the weather is still cool in the morning, and there are not many boats on the river, which is just right for these bulky and slow barrel cabins to pass by.

A horizontal shadow appeared on the river in front of him. It was a stone bridge across the Dudiluo River. The figures of people coming and going on the bridge separated the sunlight from time to time, which flashed light that alternated between light and dark.

A man wearing a somewhat exotic semi-short coat stood behind the boat and leaned out on a high wooden board hanging outside. The view here was very wide, and not only could he see the scene on the entire boat, but he could also observe the situation on the river.

This wooden board as a watchtower is usually the owner or the boss. Now the one standing on this watchtower is the owner of this barrel cabin and is also a local grape plantation owner. From the fact that he has his own barrel cabin specially used to deliver wine, it can be seen that this person is considered rich and generous in the local area.

The ship owner was looking at the bridge deck with his toes at this time. He noticed that there seemed to be a few people standing on the bridge looking down at his boat, which made him a little proud. After all, the wine from this ship was enough for him to make a fortune, especially after hearing that some overseas businesses seemed to be particularly easy to do recently, the vineyard owners were even more happy to prepare for a fortune.

The barrel cabin slid into the bridge hole, and the person standing on it could not see it at all. Moreover, the owner of the ship did not intend to turn his head to see what those people who had nothing to do with him looked like. He only vaguely remembered that one of them seemed to be a young man.

"That's those barrel cabins containing wine?" Alexander stood on the bridge and looked down at the strange-looking riverboats passing by. He asked a middle-aged man next to him wearing a local cylinder hat and a short top with a typical Moorish style.

"Yes, why are you planning to do this business? But it's not easy for locals to accept it."

The man said with a smile, while curiously looking at the aristocrat who was said to be from mainland Europe.

He had never heard of this Roman named Joel Modillo, but according to the instructions of his boss Diego, he not only had to do his best to meet all the requests made by the Roman, but also had to obey his orders completely without reservation. This made the local man named Cateresa very curious about what the young man was from, and could make Diego, a great merchant who was very generous even in Lisbon, so cautious.

Alexander arrived in Porto the day before. After following the Clark ship called the former, he walked through the Strait of Gibraltar, which is now the most important Strait of Gibraltar in the world, and entered the Atlantic Ocean.

At the moment he entered the Atlantic Ocean, Alexander looked at the vast sea in the distance, and looked at the busy strait behind him. At this moment, he suddenly felt that the Strait of Gibraltar seemed to have become a gate that entered the new world from the old world. At this moment, countless people still tried to squeeze into this gate in order to gain the wealth pursued in their dreams. However, Alexander knew that the real hope of the future has quietly changed, which means that the Mediterranean in the old world will gradually lose its glory that has lasted for thousands of years. The dawn of the future belongs to the new world far away on the other side of the ocean, an unknown field where its status and value have not yet been truly discovered.

However, Alexander did not rashly go to Castilla, nor did he land in Aragon. The place he had agreed to meet with Tiego was in Portugal, and he deliberately avoided Lisbon and chose Porto as the place where the two met.

In addition to being cautious, Alexander chose Porto, another reason was that it was related to Porto's wine.

According to the news that Tyergo sent someone to send him back, Alexander discovered something quite interesting. It seemed that many British people in Porto were doing business with locals. Their main business was to buy a large amount of Porto wine and transport it back to their country. The Porto people made a lot of money by exporting local wine to the British.

This did not attract much attention from Tyergo until he accidentally discovered that some of these businesses were related to some of the dignitaries in Lisbon.

Tiego immediately paid attention to the grape plantation in Porto, and then he was surprised to find that some of the Lisbon nobles seemed to have a close relationship with Porto. Many of these nobles had made money from Porto's wine industry, but this was not the most important thing. The key point was that he noticed that these people seemed to have a common characteristic, that is, they were all enemies of the queen and Mary of Aragon.

Maria of Aragon was the place of her dead sister. Queen Isabella and Isabella of Aragon became the queen of Portugal with Ferdinand II's eldest daughter. The young queen who married her brother-in-law inherited her mother's piety and her father's ambition. The queen can be said to have spared no effort in making Portugal the future Spanish brother.

This caused dissatisfaction among many Portuguese nobles. They were already wary of the two kingdoms of Aragon Castilla, which seemed extremely powerful after the merger. What's more, there were more and more signs that the two kingdoms were developing towards a trend of complete unity, which made many Portuguese worried that once a powerful and fully agreed power of the Trastamala dynasty appeared on the Iberian Peninsula, then Portugal's life would probably be difficult.

Perhaps it was because of this that when King Enrique's daughter Juana competed with Queen Isabella for the throne of Castile, the then Portuguese King John II completely ignored the relationship between Queen Isabella's mother being a Portuguese princess, but firmly supported Juana.

But they were unable to defeat Castilla and Aragon's reinforcements. Juana had to enter the monastery after her defeat, and John II had to accept the couple's proposal to let the next Portuguese king marry their daughter as queen.

If Isabella of Aragon, as the eldest daughter, is still a qualified queen, then the sister who took over her position after her death, Mary of Aragon is not so easy to talk to. The queen began to interfere in her husband's affairs shortly after she got married. From the beginning, she just built a church to the frequent intervention in the government affairs, many Portuguese have begun to secretly discuss that the queen wanted to turn Portugal into a vassal of her own hometown.

However, as the king, Manuel I was quite unsatisfactory. He seemed extremely weak in front of his wife. He followed the queen's advice in many things, which made many people worry that one day Portugal might really become a vassal, or even annexed by powerful neighbors.

It was at this time that Tyergo discovered the actions of the nobles. He found that the nobles frequently interacted with the British through the Porto wine business, and some of them bought from the British or exchanged wine directly for a large number of weapons and artillery.

These transactions should have been very secretive, but most people in this era obviously did not have the habit of keeping them secret. Although the queen's subordinates were so slow that they didn't even notice such important things, Diego still took a lot of trouble before gradually inquiring about the various relationships.

Tiego was not sure what the Portuguese wanted to do, maybe they didn't even know what they had plans, but he immediately reported this important intelligence to Alexander, but that was almost half a year ago, and then he went to Castilla.

Until he received an order from Alexander two months ago to prepare for his arrival, and to pay close attention to the movements of the Portuguese.

When choosing Porto to meet, it was obvious that Alexander was influenced by the news sent by Diego. The day after he got ashore, he saw the scene of the wine transporting to the harbor from local barrel cabins.

"How much can the wine from these ships cost?" Alexander asked the man named Cateresa, who hoped to guess how large aid the Portuguese nobles could get by understanding these wine deals.

"Do they make a lot of money? A ship of wine is worth 30 silver gusts," Cateresa looked at the ships passing by the bridge with some envy. "Many people have made a fortune. Speaking of which, I once suggested that my boss sell wine, but he seems to have other businesses, and he is always running around and not so concerned about these things."

"Maybe you can do this business, and I can suggest to Diego that you are responsible for selling wine."

Alexander smiled at Cateresa. He could see that this man was very clever, which made him think that perhaps he could learn more about the relationship between the Portuguese aristocrats and the British through this man. Is it purely that they wanted to accumulate strength and prepare to do something, or the British also got involved.

It would be fine if it was the former, but if it was the latter, it would be interesting.

Alexander always felt that the British were aliens on the European continent. Just like Russia later, these two strange countries were always strange countries outside Europe. Their personality that wanted to integrate into Europe, but always caused trouble at any time and anywhere, although they were so inexplicably in harmony at both ends of Europe, which was a rare miracle.

"Let our people be patient, we will wait for Diego to come and meet us."

When Alexander walked back to his residence, he told Schell to be by his side that he always brought the Balkans with him, not Uriu or others when he went out, not because he felt that Schell was more convenient than they did, but because he was worried that putting the Balkans with any woman might become a tool of unlucky in the future.

"Master, where are we going next?" Sher looked at the street curiously. Everything here was different from what he had seen before. Except for the obvious marks left by the Gothic era, the Moorish-style architecture, clothing, and even the locals with typical mixed race characteristics that could be seen everywhere due to centuries of occupation.
Chapter completed!