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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2024
After leaving Tuy, in the month of December of the year mentioned [1398], Diogo Nunes de Serpa, Gonçalo Vasques de Melo the Younger, who was the Governor of Serpa, and Álvaro Mendes de Beja were informed of how in Castile, on Mount Robledo near Cortegana, there were a good 5,000 cows roaming about. All three spoke to each other and agreed to go there as covertly as possible in order to bring back those cattle together with anything else they might find to steal. They gathered their men, to wit ninety lances, twenty-two of them wearing bascinets and haubergeons and the others such haubergeons as scouts wear, plus 100 foot soldiers and ten hunter-crossbowmen.
They left the place before dawn on Sunday, 26 December, but this is how they were discovered that same day: while the men were lying in a hidden valley, which people call the Conejera, putting out barley for the animals, ten Castilian horsemen, who were bringing cattle from Portugal, were passing by across the mountain above that valley, and they saw the men lying there. They left the cattle they were bringing and hurried to Aroche to give the news to Diego García de Valdés, the governor of the castle. Likewise, they went to Fregenal, Cortegana, Aracena, Río Frío and Navas de Sevilla, as well as to all the villages in that area, to let it be known how they had seen those men lying there ready to invade Castile.
Unaware of this, the Portuguese left the valley and all went together as far as the other side of Aroche. There they separated into three groups, so that Gonçalo Vasques went to Cortegana, Diogo Nunes to Galaroza and Río Frío, and Álvaro Mendes to Navas de Sevilla. They were all to meet up the next day at a place they had agreed upon among themselves, subject to the fortune that God might wish to grant to each one of them.
Gonçalo Vasques came upon Cortegana quite early before dawn, thinking that he would find the people of the suburb still in bed.
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