A swaying barrel boat swam out of the wood-covered bay of the Dudiero River, and a sailor standing in the bow leaned lazily on the high bulkhead behind him, and a few other sailors rowed forward with their oars brazenly behind him.

Because of the topography, the flow of the Dudiero River is very gentle in this section, and because of the high terrain around it, it is much more difficult to travel on the river surface where it is difficult for the wind to blow, so when they reach this water, the sailors have to paddle through this section of the river, but the water will gradually become turbulent with the terrain not far ahead, and then these big boats can drift all the way to the mouth of the sea.

The heavy barrel boat slowly moved along the river, and the smell of wine wafted everywhere on the river.

This barrel boat is a unique local vessel used to transport wine, the whole middle of the ship is dominated by a closed cabin like a huge barrel, the hull is built directly on this 'big barrel', after the whole ship is filled with wine, the barrel is sealed with wax paint, and then the boat will go down the river, and when it reaches the destination downstream, the seal will be smashed, and the wine will pass through the long wooden trough built on the bank of the river, until it is filled with barrels waiting on the other side of the wagon.

Although many people here make wine for a living, despite this business, everyone is very prosperous, and almost every vineyard has an endless business, so much so that the local church simply uses wine as a material tax in lieu of tithes, because the local wine is so famous, so the church often only needs to change hands slightly to make much more profit than the tithe.

This is Porto, the most important city in the north of Portugal and an important port in the north after the capital Lisbon.

Centuries ago, when the Moors came, the Gothic rulers were unable to resist the pagan invasion, most of them were slaughtered, and a few survivors fled to the north, and Porto became an important stronghold against the Moorish invaders in the south, so that after a long reconquista victory, Porto still enjoyed the glory and privileges not found elsewhere allowed by the King of Portugal.

One of the privileges of this is that Porto has complete autonomy in the sale of wine.

This power allowed Porto to rise to prominence on the back of a thriving wine industry, so much so that at one point the nobles of the Lisbon court tried to take it back because they coveted Porto's wine business.

This was met with strong opposition from the people of Porto, who, after a concerted struggle, retained the right to sell wine, which was extremely important to them.

The barrel boat floats slowly forward on the river, and it is a very troublesome task to transport wine in such weather, in addition to having to be very tightly sealed, and it is necessary to be careful not to expose the boat to the sun for a long time, otherwise the wine may ferment, which is terrible.

That's why barrel boats always try to avoid the hottest days of the day, leaving only in the morning and afternoon.

It was a cool morning and there weren't many boats on the river, just in time for these bulky and slow barrel boats.

A shadow appeared on the river ahead, a stone bridge across the Dudiero River, and the figures of the people on the bridge separated the sunlight from time to time, alternating light and dark rays.

A man in an exotic semi-short coat stood at the back of the boat and leaned out of the hull of the boat on a raised plank that hung outside, giving him a wide view of not only the whole boat, but also the river.

This plank used as a lookout is usually the position of the owner or the boss, and now the owner of the barrel boat is the owner of the barrel boat, and the owner of the local vineyard, which shows that he has his own barrel boat specially used to deliver wine, which shows that this man is considered rich in the local area.

The owner of the boat was now looking on the bridge on tiptoe, and he noticed that there seemed to be several people standing on the bridge looking down at his boat, which made him a little proud, after all, the wine of this boat was enough for him to make a fortune, especially after hearing that some business from overseas seemed to be doing particularly well lately, and the vineyard owners were ready to make a windfall with joy.

The barrel boat slid through the hole in the bridge, and the man standing on it was suddenly out of sight, and the owner of the boat did not intend to turn his head to see what the men 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 the barrel ships that hold wine?" Standing on the bridge and watching down the odd-looking riverboats pass by, Alexander asked a middle-aged man with a local cylinder hat and a crop jacket in the same typical Moorish style.

"Yes, why are you going to do this business, but it's not so easy for the locals to be accepted by them."

The man said with a smile as he quietly looked at this nobleman, who was said to be from the interior of Europe.

Speaking of which, he had never heard of this Roman named Giorre Mordillo, but according to the orders of his boss Tiego, he must not only do his best to meet all the demands of this Roman, but also obey his orders completely and unreservedly, which made the local man named Cateresa wonder what the origin of this young man could make even the big businessman Thiego who was very popular in Lisbon so careful.

Alexander arrived in Porto the day before, and after a long circle around the Mediterranean with the Clark ship called the Former Shore, the former passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, which is arguably the most important in the world of our time, and entered the Atlantic.

At the moment of entering the Atlantic Ocean, Alexander looked at the endless sea in the distance, and then looked at the busy strait behind him, at this moment he suddenly felt that the Strait of Gibraltar seemed to have become a gate from the old world to the new world, and there are still countless people trying to squeeze into this gate in order to obtain the wealth they dreamed of, but Alexander knew that the real hope for the future had quietly changed, representing that the Mediterranean Sea of the old world would gradually lose its luster that had lasted for thousands of years, The dawn of the future belongs to the new world on the other side of the ocean, an unknown territory that has not yet been truly discovered.

However, Alexander did not rush to land in Castile, let alone Aragon, and the meeting place he agreed with Tiego was in Portugal, and he deliberately avoided Lisbon and chose Porto as the meeting point for the two men.

Alexandre chose Porto, not only because of prudence, but also because of Porto's wines.

According to the news sent back by the Tiego faction, Alexander noticed that it seemed that there were many British people in Porto who were doing business with the locals, and their main livelihood was to buy a large amount of Porto wine and ship it back to their home countries, and the Porto people made a lot of money by exporting local wine to the British.

This didn't attract much attention to Tiego until he stumbled upon the fact that some of these businesses were related to some of Lisbon's dignitaries.

Tiego immediately paid attention to Porto's vineyards, and then he was somewhat surprised to find that some of the Lisbon nobles seemed to be closely related to Porto, and many of these nobles had made their fortunes 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 queens, enemies of Maria of Aragon.

Maria of Aragon became Queen of Portugal in place of her dead sister, Queen Isabella of Aragon and Ferdinand II's eldest daughter, a young queen who married her brother-in-law who inherited her mother's piety and her father's ambitions, and who was bent on making Portugal the future Spanish brother.

This caused the dissatisfaction of many Portuguese nobles, who were already wary of the unusually powerful Aragone-Castilian kingdom after the merger, not to mention the increasing signs that the two kingdoms were moving towards full unification, which made many Portuguese people worry that once a strong and fully agreed Trastamara power appeared in the Iberian Peninsula, then Portugal was likely to have a hard time.

Perhaps it was because of this that when King Enrique's daughter Juana competed with Queen Isabella for the throne of Castile, King John II of Portugal at that time completely ignored Queen Isabella's mother as a Portuguese princess, and firmly supported Juana.

However, they were unable to defeat the reinforcements of Castile and Aragon, Juana was defeated and had to enter the convent, and John II had to accept the couple's offer that the next King of Portugal marry their daughter as queen.

If Isabella of Aragon as the eldest daughter was still a qualified queen, then her sister who succeeded her after her death, Mary of Aragon was not so easy to talk to, and the queen began to intervene in her husband's affairs soon after she got married.

However, Manuel I, as king, behaved quite unsatisfactorily, he looked extremely weak in front of his wife, and he followed the queen's advice in many things, which made many people worry that one day Portugal might really become a vassal, and maybe even be annexed by powerful neighbors.

It was at this time that Thiego discovered the actions of the nobles, who had frequent contacts with the British through the wine business in Porto, and that some of them had bought wine from the British or exchanged wine for large quantities of weapons and artillery.

These transactions were supposed to be very secretive, but most people in this era obviously did not have the habit of secrecy, although the queen's subordinates were so slow that they did not even notice such an important matter, but it took a lot of trouble for Tiego to gradually inquire about the various relationships.

Tiego wasn't sure what the Portuguese were trying to do, and perhaps even they didn't know what they were going to do, but he immediately reported this important information to Alexander, but that was almost half a year ago, and then he went to Castile.

It wasn't until 2 months ago that he had received an order from Alexander to prepare for his arrival and to keep a close eye on the movements of the Portuguese.

The choice of Porto for his meeting was evident that Alexandre was influenced by the news from Tiego, and the day after he disembarked, he saw the boatloads of wine being transported to the harbor in the local barrel boats.

"How much can these ships sell for wine?" Alexander asked the man named Catresa, hoping to guess how much help the Portuguese nobles could get by learning about the wine trade.

"Well, they make a lot of money, and a boatload of wine is worth 30 silver ecuums," Catalesa looked at the boats that passed under the bridge with some envy, "A lot of people have made a fortune, and I used to suggest that my boss also sell wine, but he seems to have other businesses, and he always runs around and doesn't care so much about them." ”

"Maybe you can do this, and I can suggest to Thiegor that you be in charge of selling the wine."

Alexander smiled at Catresa, he could see that the man was very clever, which made him wonder if perhaps this man could learn more about the relationship between the Portuguese nobles and the British, whether it was purely their own desire to accumulate strength and prepare for something, or whether the English had also joined in.

If it's the former, that's fine, if it's the latter, then it's a little interesting.

Alexander always felt that the British were outliers on the European continent, just like Russia later, this two strange countries that had always been outside of Europe, and their character of wanting to integrate into Europe, but always causing trouble anytime and anywhere, although they were so inexplicably compatible at the two ends of Europe, was a rare miracle.

"Let our men be patient, we'll wait for Tiego to meet us."

As Alexander walked back to his quarters, he commanded Scheer, who was with him, that he always went out with him now, not with Uliu, or anyone else, not because he felt that Sher was more comfortable than they were, but because he feared that putting the Balkans around any woman might not be long before he became a tool of bad luck.

"Sir, where are we going next?" Schell looked curiously at the street, everything here was different from what he had seen before, except for the obvious marks of the Gothic era, the Moorish architecture that could be seen everywhere because of the centuries-long occupation, the clothing, and even the typical mestizo locals, all of which surprised Schell curiously.

"Tiego will arrange it, I think soon we will be able to meet a lot of people."

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