“Another night, I beg you, good Andrew,” said Barbosa with great sweetness. “Tonight I must confer again with Don Jeronymo. Am I forgiven this default?”
“Indeed you are,” I replied. “Let us meet another night, when you be less sorely pressed by these urgent matters.”
SIX
WITHIN A few days all was restored to calmness in the city of São Paulo de Loanda. Don Jeronymo did make his peace with the Jesuits; the excommunication of Don Francisco was raised, and that unhappy fidalgo took ship for Brazil, glad, I trow, to see the last of Angola. João de Velloria was released from prison and given again the rank of captain-general, that he had had formerly. Don João de Mendoça also was relieved of all restraints, although he did choose to remain in seclusion. And I, too, was freed from my house arrest. A lieutenant of Don Jeronymo’s bore me a message from the governor, saying that I was to make ready for a voyage to São Tomé, and would receive my more specific instructions from Don Jeronymo in a short while.
The matter of the inquest now demanded a disposal. But this, which I had feared so greatly, proved in the event to be a hollow formality. Such great affairs had taken place in the city that the slaying of an unruly mariner, even if he be a duke’s son, had become a trifle, forgotten by everyone but the aggrieved Don Gaspar. And though I had no longer the hand of Don João raised above me for a shield, yet were my services required by the new governor Don Jeronymo, and so I could not be expended in such vengeful doings.
Thus a court was summoned, before a judicial officer of the faction of Don Jeronymo, Don Pantaleão de Mendes, much wrinkled and glum of face. The thing was done in an hour. Don Gaspar rose and denounced me for slaying his brother, saying I had coveted certain valuable goods of his, and reminding Don Pantaleão of the dead man’s high ancestry. I spoke my piece. Then Pinto Cabral did rise, and Pedro Faleiro, and Mendes Oliveira, all my companions of the voyage, and say how it was that the late Caldeira de Rodrigues had attempted to force his way into the longboat, and had been kept from it by my quickness and valor, to which they all swore by solemn oath. And that was all.
“Death by misadventure,” Don Pantaleão decreed, and assessed the costs of the inquest against the plaintiff, and the case was closed. But as we left the room, Don Gaspar did pluck my sleeve, and hiss and scowl, and vow his vengeance.
“I am not done with you,” said he.
“I beg you,” said I, “fry other fish, and let me be.” And put him from my mind.
The upheaval being ended, I had me my dinner with Senhor Barbosa. There was a fine house at his disposal while he was in São Paulo de Loanda, and we were served by a multitude of slaves, some in good liveries, for Barbosa was ever a man who cherished fine dress. We ate splendidly of many meats, partridge and pheasant both, and the wild boar called here mgalo, and little oysters of a great succulence, and the strange fruits of the land, such as the mandonyns and beynonas and ozeghes. All this was cooked most elegantly in the European style, with fine sauces, and accompanied by a plenitude of excellent wines of Portugal and the Canaries. I did stuff myself shamelessly like one who has been long in desert lands, though Senhor Barbosa was himself content but to taste a trifle here and a trifle there, the merest of morsels.
I heard from him, at this grand feast, of some doings in the world: such that Drake was still harassing the shipping of King Philip. “He has gone into the port of Coruña in Spain, and destroyed a new Armada that was under construction,” said Barbosa. “After which, he took up with Don Antonio, that is the pretender to the throne of Portugal, and landed with him at Lisbon, intending to establish him as king.”
“Brave Sir Francis! But to what result?”
“Ah,” said Barbosa, “very little, for we Portugals seem not eager to die to have back our former dynasty, and the expedition did fail. Now Drake lies under disgrace in England, the Queen being angry at him for having provoked King Philip so, and for not having succeeded at what he began. He is off raiding the Azores and the Spanish coast, and fears to return home.”
“He is much mistreated. And what else is the news?”
There had been, he said, another great voyage by Thomas Candish, who had sailed around the world commencing in Anno 1586. I knew somewhat of this Candish, who was of the Suffolk gentry, and was trustworthily said to be one of the crudest and least loving captains ever to take ship. Barbosa told me that he had sailed from Plymouth with five vessels some two years past, and had raided Brazil, attacking the town of Santos by surprise when its people were at Mass, and taking everyone prisoner within the church. “Yet this invading was a failure,” said Barbosa, “owing to the negligence of Candish’s deputy in charge of the attack, one Captain Cocke—”
“Cocke?” I burst in, feeling an angry hammering of my heart at the hearing of the name. “A small sour-faced man, is he, with one eye askew?”
“That I know not, for I never saw the man. During this time I was at Rio de Janeiro.”
“Tell me what negligences he did work.”
“Whilst he was in possession of Santos,” Barbosa said, “he paid no heed to the Indians of the town, who did carry out from it everything in it, all kinds of necessaries and provisions, leaving the place bare. So that the English found themselves shortly in extreme want of victual, worse furnished than when they had come into the town, and after five weeks were forced to quit the place.”
“It sounds much like the Cocke I knew, that abandoned me on a desert isle four years back, and sundered me thereby from all the life I led.”
“Ah, so that is why the color rises to your face at his name, and anger enters your eye!”
“I wish scarce any man ill, except this one Cocke. Who I see still thrives, and marauds in American waters, and does carry himself as foolish and foul as ever.”
“Perhaps no longer,” replied Barbosa. “For under the command of Candish this entire fleet proceeded south to Magellan’s strait, but it was now past the season for navigating that region, owing to the delay at Santos, and the English ships were scattered by extreme storms. We heard no more of them thereafter. So perhaps your foe Captain Cocke lies at the bottom of the Southern Sea.”
“I would sooner have had God blow him to Africa,” I said, “and waft him into this harbor of Angola, and give him into my hands.” And I curved my fingers most fearsomely, thinking what joy it would be to have them around the throat of Abraham Cocke. Which strong feelings gave me great surprise, for I am not usually of so vengeful a humor: but it must have been Barbosa’s generous pouring of the wines that had set me into such a fever of hatred.
Of worldly events, the making of wars and the changing of princes, Barbosa could impart little that was recent, owing that he had been in remote colonial regions these past two years. But there was some news for telling. He had heard that there had happened a vast coming and going of Popes, no less than four of them in that time, one reigning a mere twelve days. But that mattered little to me.
There was strife, too, in Spain, where the people of Aragon had rebelled against King Philip, but had been put down by Castilian troops. Whatever distressed Spaniards did give me keen pleasure, but I did not say that to Barbosa. In England the Queen still reigned most gloriously, though her treasury was hard pressed for funds, on account of the expenses of maintaining armies in the Netherlands and in Brittany to keep the ambitions of Spain in check. There were, he said, a good many burnings and hangings for reasons of religion in England still, and those who died were not only Catholics who did intrigue against the Queen, but even some Protestants who had gone too far in the Puritan direction, and called for the abolition of the bishops. To speak against the Church of England from either direction now was deemed sedition, if Barbosa told me true; and I think he did, for these holy slaughters were, I believe, as repugnant to him as to me.
At length all the news was told, and I could eat no more and drink no more, and Barbosa summoned slaves to take me in a hammock back to my cottage. As I rose to depart he caught me lightly by the
arm and said, smiling, “It cheers me that you have fared so well in this land. When first I saw you and the other Englishman lying chained on the deck, as we set out from Brazil to this place, I grieved for you, for your lot seemed dark, and I did not think you had the look of a rogue. I hoped you would withstand your pains, and I said a prayer for you; but I did not think you would achieve what you have achieved in your captivity.”
“It has been God’s blessing, and mine own very good fortune.”
“And so may it continue. But beware: there are true villains all about you here.”
“The Jaqqa man-eaters, d’ye mean? Or Don Gaspar?”
He laughed. “The Jaqqas! They are but bad dreams, nightmare-monsters that will do you no harm if only you stay out of their jungles. Nay, I mean closer to hand. I know not how much substance there is to Don Gaspar’s threats. But there are many here who would sell you for their own advantage. This is no city of saintly men, nor saintly women, neither. Watch your steps.” And so saying, he released me and let me be borne away into the night.
His parting words did trouble and alarm me as I crossed the city under a sliver of a moon. A veil of warm air draped me heavily; great green moths and dark hairy bats and the strange birds of the night fluttered close past my head; I heard a distant thick sound that might have been the trumpeting of an elephanto, or the bray of some ugly hyaena, I knew not which. I reached my cottage weary and much jangled, with my mind full of Barbosa’s talk of enemies, and of assassins and lost ships and hangings and the deaths of Popes and kings. What had been a delightful evening had somehow ended in quite another way. But though I lay down troubled, the wine soon mastered me and I fell into a heavy sleep, and when I woke I was cheerful once more, with gratitude toward God for having spared me nigh unto thirty-five years, and humbly did I entreat Him to grant me thirty-five more, and show me all the lands and wonders of His great empire.
It was many days before the new governor summoned me. In that time a ship arrived from Portugal, bearing letters and parcels and casks of wine, and other pleasant things, and also some priests and a few soldiers and a supply of muskets and shot. When its cargo of ivory and hides and copper and such had been put aboard, it would return to Lisbon, and Don João de Mendoça would sail with it.
As well as one other person, whose leaving gave me great grief.
This other voyager was Dona Teresa da Costa. I had not thought that she would accompany Don João, since that it might seem improper for him to appear in Portugal with a woman of mixed blood who was his mistress. But Don João had other thoughts on that.
I learned this from Dona Teresa herself. Her visits to my cottage had been fewer and farther between in these days of uneasy politicking in the city, with spies everywhere on the governor’s behalf. But on the eve of the sailing of the Portugal ship, almost, she came to me at midday, and as we made ready to lie together she said, with a strange and mischievous look to her, “Let us take our pleasure slow and cunningly today, Andres, for I think it will be a long while before we embrace again.”
“And why is that?”
Her lips trembled and her eyes sparkled, and she could barely get her words out, until finally she said in a wild blurting way, “I shall be in Portugal! I travel with Don João!”
That news unmanned me, and I could not conceal my misery. I rolled free of her and gaped at her.
“What, will you leave Angola?”
“It has ever been my dream to see Europe. I begged most piteously, and Don João granted it. I will behold true cities, and great cathedrals, and the high fidalgos of the court in their fine robes.” At these prospects was she all aglow. “Perhaps we will visit Rome, or Paris! Have you been to these places? Are they greatly distant from Portugal? Why, Andres, why do you look so downcast at this my great joy?”
“Because I shall never see you again.”
“Nay, I will be back! Six months, seven—the time will go by like a moment!”
“Not for me,” I said. “I would not gladly spend even six days without you. And I think you will never return.”
“That is untrue.”
I shook my head. “Don João has fallen from power here, but he is so great a man that Don Jeronymo cannot allow him to remain. You do not realize it, but this journey is intended to take Don João forever from Angola. He will be permitted to come back never. And if you go with him, you will be exiled all your life.”
“None of what you say is true,” said Dona Teresa coolly.
“They have kept the truth from you. And what will become of you, in Portugal? You will be a curiosity, a nine-days’ wonder, and then be forgotten. And the first winter will kill you, for even the mild winters of Portugal are like nothing you have ever known. I pray you do not go, Teresa!”
“You are ignorant of our purposes,” said she, all self-possession and confidence.
“Which are?”
“Do you not think we know why Don Jeronymo wishes Don João to make this journey to Portugal? That is, not to obtain reinforcements for the armies here, but only to be rid of him: yea, we understand that. But can you not see what value there is to Don João to be in Portugal, and how he can turn it to his own uses?”
“I see it not,” I said.
“Why, Don Jeronymo has no royal commission to govern, but was merely elected by the council in his brother’s place, after the folly of Don Francisco had put an end to his rule. When we are in Lisbon, Don João will apply to certain powerful allies he has there, and gain for himself the royal warrant to hold authority, so that when we return he will at last be governor. And Don Jeronymo will be the one to fall.”
I had not thought of that.
“It is an excellent plan, Teresa.”
“So we think. He who is closest to the throne is the one who emerges with the highest rank. That was Don João’s mistake, when he did remain here before, after Governor Pereira fled, and let Don Francisco come from Portugal bearing the royal seal. Don João does not make a mistake twice. So we will be back, I assure you, and it will not go well for Don Jeronymo when we are.” Her eyes flashed with the familiar wickedness. “Come, now, take me in your arms, Andres!”
“I cannot,” said I.
“And why is that?”
I indicated my lap, and the limpness of my member.
“All this talk of your going has discouraged him,” I told her.
“Pah! A moment’s work!”
And she bent over me, so that her breasts did hang like heavy moons above my thighs, and drew them swaying from side to side, laughing, and I felt her hot breath on my belly and the tips of her teats on my yard. And it rose at once, as always it did in Dona Teresa’s proximity. And when it did she mounted me, sitting astride, lowering herself to my spear until I was altogether engulfed in her, and crying out jubilantly. I cried out also, and seized her smooth buttocks in both my hands and rode her up and down on my shaft, until the sweat poured in rivers from both of us, and the natural oils of her body did flow and mingle with mine, and the gaspings of pleasure began in her. She was splendid to behold, with her head thrown back, her dark hair streaming long, her back arched, her breasts aimed high. In each our turn we took our pleasure, and rested, and began again, and more slowly brought each other again to ecstasy, lying now on our sides in the close warmth of the day, staring eye to eye. How precious she was to me then, in her alien beauty, her tawny dark-eyed glory! I could not bear the thought of her making so long a voyage away from me. I would burn for her all the while.
I could not tell you how many times we did the act of love that long afternoon, but it was a creditable number, I assure you, and I was not the first to weary, though I was nigh on being twice her age. We lay back at last.
She said, then, “Oh, and one thing more. When we are in Lisbon, Don João and I are to be wed, by a Cardinal of the Roman faith, in full pomp and majesty. But nay, be not so dejected! The governor’s wife will not be too proud, I pledge you, to keep an Englishman as her lover, when she returns to S
ão Paulo de Loanda. Am I not faring finely, Andres? Am I not faring finely?”
SEVEN
HER SHIP embarked for Portugal. Governor d’Almeida made a great public show of going to the harbor and bidding Don João and Dona Teresa farewell, displaying more anguish over Don João’s departure than he had shown when his own brother Don Francisco had crept off into shameful exile. I saw that such mariners of the colony as Pedro Faleiro and Manoel Andrade, that had sailed with me on my two voyages along the coast before, were on board the very same ship, as overseers of cargo. Seeing Faleiro thus depart was a puzzle to me, for if he was not here, who was to be the master of the pinnace that soon would sail for São Tomé?
I had the answer swiftly to that. For soon after the sailing of the Portugal ship I was sent for by Don Jeronymo the governor, to interview with me on the subject of the São Tomé enterprise.
This Don Jeronymo was the younger brother of Don Francisco d’Almeida and could not have been more than five-and-twenty years of age. Nevertheless he appeared a far more consequential person than his brother, being tall and imperious, with a princely bearing about him. It seemed to me that Don João would have a formidable task in displacing this man from the governship, royal commission or no.
He stood throughout our entire meeting, and though I am a man of more than middle height he well overtopped me, so that I felt somewhat ill at ease. Briefly he questioned me on my willingness to serve his government: to which I replied truthfully enough, that my continued welfare depended on my loyalty to my masters here, and therefore I was entirely at his service. He stared at me long and hard, as if trying to read my soul and see if I meant to betray him in some fashion for the advantage of Don João; and his eyes were as fierce and penetrating as those of the Jesuit Father Affonso, who had pronounced the excommunication. But the intent of treachery was not in me, and so how could Don Jeronymo find it there?