Having stayed a few nights beneath the roof of Master Fothergill, I bought a horse – a sorry creature which would have drawn a cart in Spain or the Indies – and rode to London. The day after my arrival I called upon Mr John Hawkins at his residence upon Tower Hill, hard by the Navy Office. I had no sooner sent in my name to him, saying that I was that same Miles Philips who had served in the pantry upon the Jesus of Lubeck, than he came running out, thrusting the porter aside, and embraced me as if I had been his son.
He was that day bound down river to Chatham and took me with him in his barge so that we had many hours together in the little cabin at the stern. I told him of his nephew, Paul Horsewell, and he was more displeased that Paul should be a Catholic than that he should have made his home in New Spain. Also I told him what I knew of the fate of the others who had been set on shore from the Minion and of my meeting with poor Job Hartop, who, as you know, returned to England in the year 1590 and wrote his story for Master Hakluyt as I had done myself.
I found Mr Hawkins greatly changed, splendid as ever in dress and bearing, but gone grey with the cares of the dockyard and the Court. He spoke more godly than he used to, and was now filled with hatred of the Spaniards and their popery, as he called it.
He said to me that I had become a fine gentleman and more of a damned don than an Englishman, to which I answered that time would remedy it and that I desired nevermore to leave my country. Further, I asked him to recommend me to some merchant trading in the cochineal and dyes and spices of the Indies who might take me as a partner for the sake of my knowledge and my little money.
This made him very thoughtful, and I feared that I had been too bold.
‘We will speak of that later, lad,’ he said. ‘You shall stay with me in Chatham and see our new ship Revenge and the old Victory which I have now stripped of all fal-lals as we did the Jesus of Lubeck off the coast of Florida.’
When we returned to London, my nostrils were full of the scent of oak and my ears still rang with the picking of the ship-Wrights’ adzes and the rattle of the capstans as the great cannon were hauled up from dockside to deck. Mr Hawkins engaged a lodging for me and told me to provide myself with clothes at his expense, saying that I might find myself in the company of greater men than he.
‘Then, sir, I will choose the blue which was the colour of your service on the Jesus of Lubeck,’ I replied, wishing him to know that I felt myself his to command.
‘Nay, Miles, you must be more soberly dressed now that you are a man,’ he said. ‘I would have you all in fine black velvet like a don, wearing a gold chain which I will give you, and your sword at your side.’
A week later he summoned me to meet him at eleven of the forenoon in the great court of Whitehall. When he saw me, he laughed and swore that with my bronzed skin and curled beard – which was then as black as night – I looked like the Governor of Cartagena. So he led me up back stairs, telling me that we were going to speak privately with Lord Burghley.
At that I held back, pleading that I would rather enter the den of some monstrous spider in Honduras.
Mr Hawkins owned that indeed no man knew where his web began or ended, but said that I should find the spider himself old and kindly. Moreover, I was to speak out boldly before him, remembering that he was Her Majesty’s chief Secretary of State and that the two held between them the fate of England in those perilous years.
We passed straight into Lord Burghley’s room by an inner door and found him standing by the fire, for it was bitter cold outside. He had a huge beard parted in the middle and such eyes as I never saw in any other man, for they were piercing and jovial, yet revealed nothing of his thought.
‘This is Master Miles Philips, my gracious lord, of whom we spoke at length some days past,’ said Mr Hawkins.
I could not make out why I should have been the subject of their talk and supposed they wished to know more of the defences of Havana or of what value the Indians could be as allies, Mr Hawkins having questioned me closely on both points. But it seemed to be Spain, not New Spain, which was of interest to Lord Burghley for he made me talk of my daily life as weaver and soldier.
Then he spoke to me very eloquently of how King Philip was collecting a fleet in his ports in order to depose Her Majesty and bring the Holy Office into England, and that if ever he could set his army on shore our levies would not stand against soldiers so trained and hardened to battle as the Spaniards.
‘Therefore,’ said he, ‘we may fare very ill unless John Hawkins and Drake and the rest of them can catch the dons at sea. Now, what have you to say to that, Master Philips?’
‘Why, my lord, that one of our ships is worth ten of theirs,’ I answered. ‘But first we must know whether their fleet is bound for Ireland or Plymouth or the Low Countries.’
Mr Hawkins appeared much pleased, and cried out, ‘There, my lord!’
‘That indeed is what I must know, Master Philips,’ Lord Burghley said gravely. ‘But who will tell me?’
‘They say that gold will bring an answer to most questions, my gracious lord.’
‘It will indeed, but love of country will bring a better,’ he said. ‘Now, such a man as you who can pass as friar, weaver, soldier or merchant from the Indies could serve Her Majesty very well in the ports of Lisbon or Corunna.’
I was blunter with him than I intended, being only a simple Devon man in spite of my fine clothes.
‘I have escaped once from the rack, the galleys and the burning, and once is enough,’ I said.
Mr Hawkins pressed me very hard, swearing that they would have all shipshape when they put me on shore so that neither don nor devil nor the cuadrillas could ever suspect me. But I would not. I told them that they must depend for their news upon the English merchants of the northern ports of Seville, who served as agents for both sides.
‘Well, Miles, you may leave us now,’ Mr Hawkins said. ‘But dine with me on Tower Hill next Tuesday noon and we will make merry as two Devon men together and forget all this.’
When we met he was as good as his word, and said nothing of Spanish ports and friars, so I thought it was all done with and that he would leave me in peace to buy and sell my cochineal. But as I left his house with a bellyfull of his best Canary wine, he slapped his thigh and declared that he had failed to give me some good news.
‘Her Majesty, being a woman – as indeed none of her servants may ever forget – is curious, Miles, and would see one who has so strange a story.’
‘She will not speak to me?’ I cried, half dreading it and half dreaming that she might.
‘As to that, I do not know,’ Mr Hawkins answered. ‘But you shall see her, and she you.’
So there came a day when we rode most gallantly to Hampton Court, and I heard the people saying as we passed through the streets of London, ‘There goes John Hawkins! How many ships hast built today, John?’
And some asked who was that riding with him, to which others answered that it must be some Spanish captain whom the old fox was cozening.
We were led to the small state-room, since Her Majesty had no public business that night. My eyes were dazzled by the hundreds of wax candles, the blazing of the fire in the mighty great chimney and the clothes and jewels of the gentlemen who strolled about jesting one with another. I remember Sir Christopher Hatton in crimson and white and Sir Walter Raleigh in plum taffeta and Lord Burghley, who clapped me on the shoulder, in a long, furred gown of sad olive green.
Then a chamberlain entered and knocked with his staff upon the floor, when the gentlemen formed themselves into two lines, and Mr Hawkins and I stood behind the men-at-arms.
Through the door came Her Majesty with her ladies-in-waiting who, I suppose, were fair enough, but I had no eye for them. She was stiff with gold brocade embroidered with pearls and wore on her hair, which was the colour of new-mined copper, a little cap, with diamonds and fine veiling round it. She moved so graciously that she seemed to me like a ship with golden sails and the first breath of wi
nd in them.
She sat down, and her ladies and gentlemen gathered round her easily and lovingly while the music played. Though they might laugh at her in private and curse and swear because she was too careful a housekeeper for England, I could see that they worshipped her. She was all woman from top to toe, but her eyes were frank and merry as those of a gallant captain.
When all were at their ease, she beckoned to Mr Hawkins to bring me to her, and I fell on one knee before her not daring to lift my eyes or open my mouth, more than to whisper to myself ‘Gloriana’ which I think she may have heard.
‘Poor Miles has lost his English,’ she said. ‘But let me hear something in the Indian language!’
Then I took courage, and it came into my mind to greet her as the goddess Xochiquetzal, of whom I had heard much from Xolotl.
‘And what does that mean?’ she asked.
‘Flower Feather, Goddess of Flowers, Guide of the hand of the craftsman,’ I murmured.
‘Flower Feather,’ she repeated, much pleased. ‘A pretty conceit! But my poets and craftsmen must guide themselves, for the most I can do is to keep an England fit for their magnificence, whether they serve Gloriana with sonnets, swords or hands or … their wits, Miles. Is it true what they say: that you wore King Philip’s crown on your doublet?’
‘Yes, Madam.’ I answered. ‘God forgive me!’
‘Then wear mine in your heart, my Spanish soldier, my Indian,’ she said, gently pulling my ear as I knelt before her, ‘and let no one ever know that it is there!’
Nor did I, my beloved sons, until after the Armada was scattered and John Hawkins knighted on the deck of the Lord Admiral’s flagship. Then I came home a second time from Spain in the year 1592, bringing with me Paquita, your dear mother, whom you must ever honour because for love of me she took to herself my country and my faith.
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Miles Philips was a real person. His story is in Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation published in 1589 by Richard Hakluyt. Hakluyt has been called the most influential writer of the Age of Shakespeare, since it was he who opened the eyes of the Elizabethans to the romance of the whole world, tropical or arctic, beyond their island, as well as the boundless opportunities for profit.
For us it is as if a first-class newspaperman had been alive at the time. He was on the spot to ask questions of the merchants, shipmasters and seamen, to prod them into putting something on paper and to edit the result. Without Hakluyt few of them would ever have described their trading voyages and adventures, and we should be left to extract mere tantalising bits of information from archives, log books and customs records.
Usually he preserved their own words. The great captains like Hawkins, Drake, Raleigh and Frobisher write in their individual styles. Smaller fry with a good story to tell, like Miles Philips, Job Hartop and the many merchants who were English by birth and Spanish by residence, are edited with extraordinary skill – for they cannot all have been such born writers as they seem – so that their characters, sympathies and personal interests are clear and sharp.
I have naturally given Miles Philips a style simpler than his own, rather as if he had lived a hundred years later than he did. I have followed his movements exactly, merely filling in the details. His narrative covers fifteen years of boyhood and youth very quickly and somewhere he has missed a year in his dates; so he must have had many adventures which he never mentions. I have felt free to invent them as well as some additional characters.
But I have invented nothing else, and tried to give a true picture of Spanish–American society in the second half of the sixteenth century.
The Empire of the Aztecs had been conquered by Hernando Cortés in 1521 at the head of his Indian allies and his heroic band of 928 Spaniards – the figure given by Bernal Diaz who fought throughout the terrible campaign and wrote the story of it when he was in his eighties. Explorers then discovered Florida, the Mississippi and the southern seaboard of the United States. Cortés himself and his captains opened up the whole of Central America.
The immense kingdom which this handful of incredible men added to the Spanish Crown was ruled by a Viceroy under the Council of the Indies and known as New Spain. The name of Mexico was then only applied to the capital and its valley. The country was sparsely settled: a few adventurous spirits in the vast spaces of the north, plenty of great estancias and small, fairly primitive towns in the rich tropical lands between Mexico and Costa Rica. Miles Philips says that when Drake was on the coast the Viceroy reckoned the population of whites and mestizos as 30,000. He was probably not far out. The Indian population of at least four million far outnumbered them, yet New Spain was a paradise of plenty and utter peace.
Both Miles Philips and his contemporaries – some of them also in Hakluyt – acclaim the wonders of the valley and city of Mexico. Little remained of the Aztec capital. Tlatelolco, the northern half was destroyed in the last, desperate assault. The long battle through the streets reduced Tenochtitlan, the southern half, to ashes and rubble.
But the imagination of the Spaniards had been caught by this shining city on the lake, its perfect climate and the splendour of its avenues, canals, bridges and palaces. Four years after the conquest rebuilding was well under way. Christian churches took the place of the stepped pyramids on which had stood the Indian temples, black with the blood of human sacrifices. The main avenues were lined by monasteries, public buildings and the private houses of the rich.
It was so noble a city that travellers compared it to Venice. After a month or two to get over the strangeness, any of us today could have lived there in comfort, attended its theatre, been educated at its university, sailed on its lake and eaten the superb Aztec cooking which aroused the enthusiasm of every European, whereas in the London and Paris of the time we should have been sickened by the stenches and the squalor.
In Philips’ day the whole continent was Spanish from Texas to Patagonia, with the exception of the Portuguese settlements on the coast of Brazil. Foreigners, if not heretics, were allowed to immigrate, and foreign goods might be imported. But no foreign ships were allowed to trade.
Hawkins’ voyages were therefore illegal under Spanish law, though permitted by international law to which the statesmen of the day gave surprising respect. But inevitably the old alliance between England and Spain faded away as privateering in the Channel and the Caribbean became more persistent. The position during the twenty years before the Armada is familiar to us. It was cold war. When it flared up into a shooting war, as at San Juan de Ulua, both sides did their best to ignore incidents and confine themselves to diplomatic protests.
Yet the difficulties of trade were not alone enough to account for the blazing hatred of Spain which began to grow among Elizabeth’s captains and seamen. They feared and resented the Holy Inquisition as we today detest any form of secret police.
It was not because of the cruelty of the punishments. Sentences of horrible savagery upon traitors and criminals were then accepted as a matter of course. What appalled Miles Philips and his fellows was that these punishments were inflicted in the name of religion and upon captured seamen, for the early years of Elizabeth were a time of religious tolerance in England.
Miles himself was undoubtedly a Protestant but far from a Puritan. His admiration of the friars in New Spain stands out clearly from his story. In fact he dearly loved everything Spanish except the Inquisition, and, though he never lost his determination to escape, he was more at home in New Spain than any of his companions. Because he had completely acquired the Spanish culture and language, he was able to risk his secret, reckless journey across the Atlantic to Spain and home.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters
, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1967 by Geoffrey Household
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
978-1-4804-1108-1
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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Prisoner of the Indies Page 13