by Robert Nye
To be blunt, I cannot bring myself to re-read such rot. Yet it works, and I know it works, and I shall use it. Here I am, a modern man, playing a rôle again. Who wrote that book-within-the-book? I did, my son. Sir Walter Ralegh. Mr Worldly Wise. A relic of Gloriana’s glory. A ghost from the Golden Age. I wrote those ten chapters as much for myself as for you. To see if I could do it. To test out a style I might need.
It’s a good style, a bad style, second nature to me. I shall use it to die in, that style. A good voice, a bad voice, second nature to me. The voice of the last Elizabethan.
*
Seven Heads. Robin just shouted it. I went out on deck. Filthy dawn. I could not see seven. I counted them. Tall black headlands of rock in sea-mist. Bad light and worse seas made it difficult. But there were not seven. I’d have staked my life on that. Not seven heads.
Mr Burwick guessed the source of my confusion.
‘Seven castles,’ he said.
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘On the cliffs there.’
I thought I’d gone mad. I saw no castles. Only rock. Only spindrift. Desolation.
Mr Burwick explained then, tired, unsmiling. ‘They say the Irish once had castles there. Seven of them. Hence the name: Seven Heads.’
I looked again. My head spun. I saw castles.
Incredible castles.
Castles of pure gold.
I shook my head. There was nothing. Then it rained like fury.
I let the rain soak my cloak. It was good on my face.
‘Master,’ a voice said. It was Robin. He tugged at my sleeve. ‘Master, your ague! Come back to your cabin. You’ll catch your death of this!’
The feather in his cap was half-snapped by that downpour.
I nodded. Robin offered his arm. I declined such assistance.
‘How long, Mr Burwick?’
‘With this head wind? Impossible to say!’
I struck at the main shrouds with my cane. ‘How long, Mr Burwick?’ I repeated.
He shrugged. His eyes had no spirit.
‘Seven hours, sir.’
Seven Heads. Seven castles. Seven hours.
The ship was spinning round me. I stood upright.
‘Master, the rain!’
I had more than the rain to master. I did it. I mastered more than the rain.
I bowed to Mr Burwick. He saluted.
I waved Robin aside. I walked back to my cabin.
I’m sure they didn’t know, they couldn’t tell.…
*
I am drunk, Wat. Drunk on my Lord Boyle’s brandy. Impeccably drunk, Wat. The first time for 26 years.
Sotebam, inquit, quod domum tandem evomeret.
Diogenes knew what he was talking about. Did he not sit blind drunk in his tub?
And Augustine, at Carthage. He knew too. Knew drunkenness. That devil. This sweet poison. Which whosoever has, has not himself.
We drink in order to not have ourselves.
As a young man, when I drank, I drank to excess. My nature is always to do nothing save to excess. Including restraint. Hence those bitter, those exacting Instructions, that book-within-my-book, my Last Will and Testament.
I wrote finis.
Then I started on the brandy.
And for two days I’ve been drunk. Cold drunk. Dead drunk. Your cold dead drunken father. Drunk as Diogenes. Drunk as St Augustine.
O, I have a good head, a strong brain, inextinguished, inextinguishable. I used to dance drunk with Elizabeth, and she never knew. I came drunk to my wedding with your mother. She never guessed it. I stand straight. I don’t babble. I carry my liquor well.
(To take pride in this! Twice-unforgiveable! But I must go on —)
Carew, your father is no cynic. I mean those Instructions. Every word. That’s the hell of it. The way of saying may be false - but not what I say, what I said. You must read between the lines of what I wrote for you. Your poor father lies revealed there. His least mistake. I turned my misdirections to direct you. I damned no sin which I have not committed. I spoke of nothing that I do not know. Learn, by a father’s ruin, a son’s structure. By my rise and my downfall, save your life.
Drunk, boys, your father is damnation drunk. He is sailing in to Ireland in a freezing blaze of drunkenness, his mind benumbed with brandy, his heart made blunt.
O but it hurts, it hurts. My unfinishable heart.
The first time I’ve touched drink in 26 years—
Damerai— The first time I’ve been drunk since the day you died— The first time and the last, my long-lost son—
The cask is almost empty. I shall finish it.
31
23 May
We dropped anchor at noon in the harbour of Kinsale, entering between Strookaun Point on the west side and Hangman Point on the east, keeping a midchannel course to avoid rocks and shoals, coming to rest in four fathoms a cable off the quay. It is necessary to lay out a kedge owing to the swirling of the tide here. That done, I took the longboat ashore, Sam King and the Indian attending me.
While they busied themselves fetching meat, oat-cakes, and beer to provide for the men, I limped off on my own to find solitude. I climbed up a hill called Rincurran that overlooks the bay. I drank from a spring of pure water. Then I slept, safe-cradled in the roots of an ancient oak.
When I woke it was evening and I was sober. I washed my face in the spring, combed my beard, and hobbled back down to the town.
Kinsale has one church, called St Muköse. It stands right beside the quay. Its bell was tolling. I went in. I was in time for Evensong.
Almighty and most merciful Father: We have erred and strayedfrom thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us. But thou, 0 Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou them, 0 God, which confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord, And grant, 0 most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life. To the glory of thy holy name. Amen.
Evensong was always my favourite service.
Some few of the crew had come ashore for it. Not many, and by no means the best. I was glad to be there in their company.
Mr Jones offered prayers of thanksgiving for our deliverance. I couldn’t say Amen with such a will. The word stuck in my throat. Sam King shouted it. So did most of the others. May their enthusiasm atone for my reserve.
The last collect of Evensong remains with me:
Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, 0 Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night
When I came out of the church I found the Indian lying on a tombstone.
‘Guattaral thanked his god?’
I said I had.
32
25May
They’re leaving now. One by one, the exodus. They leave me. The quitters, the deserters, the wanted men.
Wanted? By whom? Not by me! By the common hangman.
I am better off without them.
I have kept my word.
I promised that once we made Ireland they were free to depart. No soldier or sailor of my company to be compelled into England. No man to be forced to face justice, whatever his crime.
For a moment, there, at Evensong, the day before yesterday, it did cross my mind that there might be a change of heart. Not a bit of it. The kneelers, the hymn-singers - they’re the first to go! Should I be surprised by this? I suppose not. The worst sinners creep the fastest into churches. What else, after all, was I doing in there myself?
But how many. And how soon. That does surprise me.
I calculated there might be a score.
Already, twice that number have taken advantage of my promise. Drawn their wages from the purser, and departed. Mostl
y without a word, or a backward glance.
Not all of these fellows are criminals, I am sure. Some leave because they fear what will happen to me when I reach England. They presume my arrest and destruction. They have no wish to share in my fate.
Well, hard to blame them for that.
But just two days’ rest here, safe in Kinsale’s landlocked harbour, out of the muck and the waste of the sea, and I begin to find some small particle of hope still alive in me. Perhaps it is a hope against hope, a desperate and ill-founded fancy, a self-teasing delusion—
All the same, and with less than half my crew remaining, I remind myself that. I have one friend left who could save me yet.
Ralph Winwood.
His Majesty’s Secretary of State.
If anyone can save me, Winwood can.
A true friend, and a powerful one, and honest.
A hope with a very English sort of face.
*
The Indian just gave me a strange gift. It is a tiny idol, no more than an inch tall, a grinning devil made of solid gold. ‘Where did you get this?’ I demanded.
‘I found it.’
‘At San Thomé?’
‘No. In the lake. Guatavita.’
‘When?’
‘Long ago. I was a boy. I went swimming.’ ‘So the tale is true!’ I cried.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Does it matter? I only found one:
‘The Golden Man!’
‘A golden man,’ he said.
I questioned him further. Yes, he had gone back often to the lake, diving in search of other trinkets. He had found nothing else. In the end, he abandoned the search. No, he attached no particular significance to the idol. He thought it must be the image of a devil, not a god. Or if not a devil, then a man. ‘Gods don’t grin,’ he explained.
I asked him why he had waited until now to show me this evidence that there was at least something behind his tale of El Dorado. He went over the old ground: it was not his tale, the legend had been imposed on his people, the Chibcha had perhaps been mere traders, they most certainly had no gold of their own. As to the delay, he claimed that he had not wanted to raise my hopes again at any point on the voyage. He was sure that my quest for gold was mistaken. Besides, he insisted, he had given me the khoka leaves. The leaf was worth more than any gold. And so on, and so on.
I grew tired. His conversation irked me. It was witless. It insulted my intelligence. Every word he said made it plain that to his eyes this idol was a toy, something childish, a half-forgotten relic of his boyhood.
He must have seen the impatience on my face. Abruptly, he broke off, reaching out to close my hand around the statue. ‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘For you, it might be an antidote.’
‘To what poison?’ I demanded.
‘Elizadeath,’ he said.
*
The sea makes many false harmonies. The land allows for none. How could I ever have imagined that my destiny was linked with this Indian’s? We have nothing in common but our failure to understand each other.
*
There is usquebaugh aboard. Most of the remaining men are drinking it. They have three barrels in the forecastle, Robin tells me.
The Reverend Mr Samuel Jones wants this forbidden. He approached me, quoting the 17th article of my own Orders to be observed by the Commanders of the Fleet: ‘No man shall keep any feasting or drinking between meals, nor drink any healths on the ship’s provision.’
I cannot summon up sufficient hypocrisy to act.
I know about usquebaugh. It is an Irish spirit, foul and fierce, raw alcohol with fennel-seed and raisins to disguise its fire. I drank it after that day in Smerwick Fort. Its name, in the Irish tongue, means the water of life.
33
1 June
Winwood is dead.
Winwood was dead when I wrote that letter to him from St Kitts.
Winwood died more than seven months ago, suddenly, in London, on the 27th of October last year. (On which day I was still at sea, myself fevered, the ship horribly becalmed, with a fortnight left to go of that nightmare voyage out to America.)
I have pinned my last hopes on a corpse. I have counted for protection on a dead man.
O poisonous irony. Gods don’t grin.
Don’t they?
*
I learned this news tonight from the Earl of Cork. He was startled by my ignorance of Ralph’s death. I had gone to dine at his castle on the Blackwater. Over a capon, well-larded, he urged me to stay here in Ireland. The new Secretary of State is Robert Naunton. Naunton. No friend of mine, ever. The toad who once called me the Queen’s oracle.
Ireland is the answer,’ Boyle said. ‘You could stay here. Or go into France. King James will not welcome you. You embarrass him. The Spanish Ambassador wants your head.’
Then he told me the latest tales from London. (He keeps well-informed, my Lord of Cork. He’s like an owl, and he feathers his nest with gossip.)
I shall cut this information to the bone. I have no more stomach for it than for that capon.
My letter to Ralph Winwood was intercepted. Naunton demanded it of my nephew, and George gave in. Next thing, of course, the King was reading it. Then Parker and North came back -I thought they would. Having no guts to turn privateer, they turned private informers instead. They went straight to his Majesty, who was no doubt delighted to see them and even better pleased with what he heard. They went on oath to declare that the whole story of the Guiana mines was my invention. That there was no gold to be found, and I’d always known it. I’d pretended to be angry with Keymis, by their account. (And did Keymis pretend suicide? Damn both those fine liars to hell!) I’d cheated the King, they said. I’d tricked him to get out of the Tower. They’d heard me boast that I’d never return home to England, that it had always been my secret intent to seek sanctuary elsewhere. I was a traitor, they said. That’s why they’d deserted me.
Simultaneously - evil strikes like lightning, all this happened in a space of about 24 hours, just at about the time the Lucifer of the piece was struggling towards Ireland in a blaze of my Lord Boyle’s brandy (I didn’t confess that; I didn’t say very much at all) - simultaneously, Gondomar arrives white-faced and sweating at Whitehall. The Spanish Ambassador has his own gorgeous network of spies. He’s already got a fistful of papers with ‘details’ of what they’re calling’the massacre at San Thomé.’ Count Gondomar requests - no, demands-mi immediate audience of his Majesty the King. James, guessing what this means, prevaricates. Gondomar sends in a message. He appreciates his Majesty’s busyness. All the same, the matter is most urgent. Yet it need occupy less than a minute of his Majesty’s precious time. He promises, in fact, that if admitted he will say just a single word to his Majesty.
James never could resist a ploy like that, and Gondomar knew it. Once into the King’s company, the Spaniard shouted his single word:
‘Pirates?
He shouted it three times, with pauses for emphasis in between, and with each shout he shouted it louder. Then he bowed, turned, and raged out of the room.
*
Boyle says that I should stay in Ireland. Boyle says King James would be best pleased by that. Boyle says—
Damn Boyle and what he says!
*
Winwood is dead. Good Ralph, my friend. He died on my voyage out, and I never knew it. It’s midnight. It’s raining. I have lost my only advocate. He knelt with me at her tomb and promised money. He stood with me on London Bridge and spoke of empire. That barrel-like body. That face as honest as the skin between its brows. Dead. Gone. Deserted. I have no ally in high places any more. They’re singing in the forecastle.
I can hear them. I sit here staring at a golden grinning idol one inch high. I can hear every word of their song:
I went to the tavern, and then,
I went to the tavern, and then,
I had good store of wine,
And my cap full of coin
And the world went well with
me then, then,
And the world went well with me then.
Idiot music! Deluded wretches! I sit here searching the pages of my own History of the World for some passage that will serve to give me comfort, blot out their song, make sense of my predicament, deny their mindless ditty. There is none.
But when I was married, 0 then,
But when I was married, 0 then,
My horse and my saddle
Were turned to a cradle,
And the world went ill with me then, then,
And the world went ill with me then.
The words of my own wisdom rise from the History to mock me, to pour scorn on my pursuit of gold and honour. I have made a fool of myself in that pursuit. And there’s no fool like an old fool. Especially an old fool whose writings once declared that he knew better: ‘When is it that we examine this great account? Never while we have one vanity left us to spend; we plead for titles till our breath fail us, dig for riches whiles our strength enableth us, exercise malice while we can revenge, and then, when Time hath beaten from us both youth, pleasure and health, and that nature itself hateth the house of old age, we remember with Job that we must go the way from whence we shall not return, and that our bed is made ready for us in the dark ‘
I took my wife home again,
I took my wife home again,
But I changed her note
For I cut her throat,
And the world went well with me then, then,
And the world went well with me then.
Sam King is with them. Sam, my companion. A man to whom it has probably never occurred with any force: to be absent from himself, from what he is. An honest man, a loyal man, my friend. But a friend without power, with no influence. His voice is strong, but he’ll never sing to the King. And here, in my History, my own voice raised in judgement of my follies: ‘But what examples have ever moved us? What persuasions reformed us? Or what threatenings made us afraid? We behold other men’s tragedies played before us; we hear what is promised and threatened; but the world’s bright glory hath put out the eyes of our minds—’
But when it was known, O then,