Martim Afonso remained in the king's household for a good while. When Gonçalo Eanes learned that he was in Évora, he left Seville and went to see him, always travelling off the road where he knew he would not be recognised. He deliberately arrived at night, and spoke to him, with no one present apart from Rodrigo Afonso de Brito, his uncle. When Martim Afonso saw him, he embraced him, saying,

‘Gonçalo Eanes, you can't go through with this now, for they’ve thrown you out of the town!’

‘Don't despair’, said Gonçalo Eanes, ‘but tell me if you bring a message from the king for you to go ahead.’ He replied that he did.

‘Well’, said Gonçalo Eanes, ‘despite their forbidding me to go there, or else they would hang me from the battlements or send me as a prisoner to the King of Castile, it is my wish to go there at all costs.’

‘Do not go’, said Martim Afonso, ‘for they may seize you, or inflict on you some other harm so that under torture you confess. That is of little help either to you or the interest of my liege lord the king.’

‘I guarantee you’, said Gonçalo Eanes, ‘that I will not confess; even though I die under torture, I will not reveal anything to them.’

‘Let him go’, said Rodrigo Afonso. ‘Since he wants to die such a terrible death, then let it come upon him!’

‘Do not concern yourself with my death’, he said, ‘for I intend to take this thing forward. Make yourselves ready. Since you want to go to Campo Maior to fetch your wife, simply go with no other company than your own men, and even then with as few as possible, and I shall go immediately to Badajoz. If they allow me to stay there a couple of days, I shall come to an agreement with the gatekeeper. When you know that I am there, go immediately to Campo Maior, as you say.’

Then Gonçalo Eanes went to Badajoz, without telling anybody anything, apart from talking and conversing with everyone, as had been his custom from the very outset.