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In the building yards of Port Santa Maria the keels of three caravels were laid down to be built under Colon’s superintendence. They were to cost three or four thousand ducats, and be fitted, provisioned and manned, for a year at the Duke’s expense; and Colon must have thought that now his dream was soon to come true, and that his doubt and toil would end. But for the inner purpose he had in view beyond the discovery of the easy way to Asia, he needed a patron even more powerful than Medina Celi; and it may have been the discoverer who took means to let the Queen of Castile know the preparations that were being made, or, as Medina Celi himself wrote afterwards, the information may have been sent to Court by the Duke, fearing to undertake so great an expedition without his sovereign’s licence.^[54] In either case, when Isabel was informed of it in the winter of 1485, she and her husband were in the north of Spain, and instructed the Duke to send Colon to court, that they might hear from his own mouth what his plans were.