But then I did hear oars lashing the water, and a commotion on deck, with Captain van Warwyck loudly shouting in Dutch, and Portugals shouting back at him just as loudly, and no one understanding the other, but I understanding all: which was that they knew I had stowed away, and they had come here to look for me.
How was it that I had been betrayed?
I did not know. I made myself small and did crawl into the least visible place that I could see, while the dispute raged above me. And then were thumping footsteps, and torches, and the sounds of men prowling and poking nearby, and Warwyck still grumbling and protesting, and at last the lights were bright in my face and I saw six Portugals, all armed, staring down at me.
“Here he is,” they cried. “The traitor, the renegado!”
They dragged me to my feet. The torches gave such a raging light as to blind me, but when I shielded mine eyes a little from the hot glare I saw that Captain Fernão da Souza himself had led the arresting party, and he was dressed now in no fancy breeches, but with armor and helmet, and his face was steely set and harsh with rage. And beside him was none other than Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues, who had given me no trouble worse than sour glares at a distance for a long time, but who now was puffed up with triumph and vindictive joy. For it was he—so I did learn afterward—that had discovered the secret of my escaping, by talking with some Portugals in the crew of Captain van Warwyck—those rogues, those poxy bastards!—who had overheard the preparations being made to stow me on board the vessel. And it was he who had denounced me to Captain da Souza. So it was that the hornet had had his sting into me at last, and revenge was his, for I was undone.
Souza, maddened with fury, struck me across the face with such force it nearly twisted my neck apart, and struck me again that split my lip and cost me a tooth, and he called me dog and traitor and more, and said, “Is this how you repay our kindness, with this treachery? Oh, you will be repaid yourself, for this!” And when he had done with me it was the turn of Caldeira de Rodrigues, who did punish me most severely for the death of his brother, striking me in the ribs and the gut while others held me, and in other shameful craven ways tormenting me, so that I became a mess of blood and puke everywhere on me.
Then was I taken and bound both hand and foot and pulled to the deck, and most ungently cast into the Portuguese longboat. When we reached the shore there was waiting, instead of native bearers with hammocks, a party of horses, and I was flung across the back of one as if I were nothing more than a sack of beans. They trussed me down, and into the city we rode, giving me such a jouncing and jostling as was like to break every rib. Up to the presidio we went, and into the dungeon was I conveyed, with many a kick and a slap.
It was the same filthy beshitten loathsome hole of a place where I had been when first I came to São Paulo de Loanda—I the brave pilot, I the useful interpreter, I the heroic survivor of the Kafuche Kambara massacre, I the this and I the that, now all of it wiped out, and back to the miserable starting-point for me. I lay sleepless all night, astounded by this reversal of my fortunes. And when morning came, the time of the departure of the Dutch ship, I knew it was gone although I could not see the harbor, and I felt such pain in all my vitals as could scarce have been caused my beating, or even by the thrust of a spear. For Warwyck and his Dutchmen now were standing out to sea, and I was still here, and all my hope of England was torn from my grasp just as I had been within a few hours of setting forth. That was the greatest agony, to have been so close, and to have failed.
What would become of me now?
From the severe anger of the mild and courteous Fernão da Souza I knew I was in high trouble. I wondered if my friendship with Don João, such as it was, could aid me now. For I had betrayed his trust by fleeing. I had promised to serve, and he had had need of me, and then I had slipped on board the Dutch ship after all, and that must have wounded him. And yet, and yet, he could surely understand my longing for England. He was kind of heart; he liked me; he did not need to have it explained that a homesick man would take any opportunity to depart, no matter what pledges he had given. During that long bleak night I told myself this again and again, that Don João would have me freed in the morning with no more than a reprimand, and return me to my former pleasant life among the Portugals.
But then I thought it might not be so easy. For I did remember Don João hurling the sauce into the eyes of that slave, and I remembered Don João casually deceiving Dona Teresa in the matter of their marriage contract, and I knew that I did give the man credit for being more generous of soul than he really was. So I began to fear once again. I had betrayed my trust, who had seemed trustworthy to them; why then should they be soft with me?
In the morning I was brought a bowl of water and a plate of cold porridge, and nothing else, and no one came to speak with me. And so it was the next day, and the next. It was worse than my first captivity in this dungeon, for then I had the company of my shipmate Thomas Torner, and sometimes Barbosa also to visit and encourage me, and later Dona Teresa; but Torner was long since fled and Barbosa had perished and Dona Teresa had become my enemy, and who now would stand advocate for me?
I grew weak and suffered much from hunger. On the fourth day there was a clanking of gates and there came to me a priest, Father Gonçalves, one of the Jesuits. I trembled with terror when I saw him, for I knew they had years ago given up hope of converting me to their Romish way, so if they sent a priest now it must mean I was in some grave peril, perhaps even of execution. And indeed he set up his candles and began his Latin mutterings and invited me to join with him in prayer.
“How now,” I said, “am I to be put to death?”
“I do not know, my son,” said the priest in most gloomy tones, that brought the dark shadow of the gallows into the room.
“It cannot be, to slay a man for no more than trying to return to his homeland!”
“Your soul is endangered. Add no more sins to your score by uttering lies.”
“Lies?”
“You are guilty of grave crimes,” he said.
At which I cried out, “A grave crime? What? To cherish my native soil, to yearn to see my family again?”
“To force your lusts upon a married woman is no trifling offense.”
“What, did I hear you aright?”
“You stand guilty of rape, or will you deny it?”
I began then to shout forth my protests, all outraged by this scurvy and unwarranted attack on my innocence. And then my head did begin to swim with dismay, for in an instant I understood which woman it was that I was accused of ravishing, and what kind of trap had been woven about me. And I feared that I was lost.
I said, when the pounding of my heart had quieted some, “Speak the truth, priest. Am I to be hanged?”
“You are a runaway and a Lutheran and a forcer of women. What hope can there be for you?”
“That I am a Protestant has been known from the beginning, and no one has greatly chided me for it in this land. That I am a runaway I do not contest, but it was a natural deed that anyone would have done, and no sin. And that I am a forcer of women is an abominable falsehood. I would wish to see my accuser take an oath before God that I have done any such crime.”
“These words will not save you.”
“Then the governor will! Does Don João know that I am imprisoned here?”
“It is by his express command,” said the priest.
“It is a lie!”
Dourly he did hold high his crucifix and say, “Do you demand an oath from me on it?”
Then I knew all was lost. I fell to my knees, and in my own way did implore God to spare me. At this the priest brightened greatly, and dropped down beside me and offered to place the crucifix in my hands as I prayed, the which I did not accept, and he said, “If you will but embrace the true faith, I will crave pardon of the governor for you, and perhaps he shall yield.”
I closed my eyes. “My life then depends upon my turning Papist?”
“You
r soul, rather.”
“Yea. You will fill me with Latin and then hang me anyway, and think yourselves well accomplished, for having sent another good Catholic soul to Heaven. I do see the size of it. But I will not have it. If I am to hang, I would rather hang as a Protestant, I think. For whether I go to Heaven or Hell makes little difference to me, but to die as an honest man is very much my intent.”
“You speak on honesty, with such crimes on your conscience?”
Turning on him angrily I did cry, “By the God we both claim to love, I have done no crimes!”
“Peace. Peace.”
And he muttered some more in Latin, with many signings of the cross over me. I think he was as sincere in his hunger for my soul as I was in my denial of guilt. So I allowed him to pray for me.
And then I said, “I will not turn Papist, for it is a matter of scruple with me. But if you are as godly as your robes proclaim you, then I beseech you do me one service: go to Don João and tell him I maintain myself to be unjustly prisoned, and ask him to grant me an audience that I may defend myself against these charges.”
Father Gonçalves looked at me long and steady. At length he said, “Yes, I will speak with Don João.”
He departed then. His final words did give me hope, and for a day and a half I listened intently for the sounds of my jailers coming to fetch me and take me to the governor. But when next anyone came to me, it was not the jailers, but rather a certain venerable member of the governing council, one Duarte de Vasconcellos. This stooped and parch-cheeked old lawyer, with the dust of ancient lawbooks all over him, told me that Don João had sent him to explain to me the nature of my iniquities.
Which were vast, for I was accused of plotting with the Dutchman Cornelis van Warwyck to overthrow the royal government of Angola by force and seize the city of São Paulo de Loanda for Holland, and also was I charged with going to the chamber of the lady Dona Teresa da Souza in the dark hours before my boarding of the Dutch ship, and attempting a carnal entry upon her chaste body.
“And who are my accusers?” I asked.
Dona Teresa herself was the accuser in the second offense, he told me. As for the first, it was Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues who cried treason against me, and swore upon his royal forebears that I had gone about town boasting that I would convey the city to the possession of the Dutch, who meant to sell it to England. Thus did he avenge his brother.
“Well,” I said, “and let me be confronted with these accusers! For the deceitful Rodrigues knows that there was no plan of hostility against this city in me, but only that I sought to return to mine own homeland. And Dona Teresa, God wot, will not be capable to stand up before my eyes and swear that I had her by force, when it is well known in São Paulo de Loanda that she has many times given herself freely to—”
“Nay, say no slanders, Englishman.”
“Slander? Slander? Come, old man, you know yourself that she—”
“I will not hear it.” He looked at me sternly and said, “The Portugals who denounced you cannot testify, for that their ship has sailed, and they are gone with it out to sea. And I do tell you it is beyond all imagining that Dona Teresa can be put to the torment and ordeal of an appearance in court, so shaken and disrupted is she by your attack on her. But her husband Don Fernão has seen the bruises and other damage on her body, and he has entered the plea against you, by which you are found guilty and sentenced—”
“God’s death, am I guilty already, and no trial?”
“—to die by hanging in the public square, at the pleasure of the Governor Don João de Mendoça.”
“Those bruises on Dona Teresa’s body were made by my slave-girl Matamba, when they two did fight, after Dona Teresa in jealous rage attacked the girl: she being angered that Matamba and not she herself was now my bedpartner. Examine the slave! Take her testimony, and see the wounds Dona Teresa inflicted upon her!”
“A slave’s testimony is without value. And in any event the verdict has already been rendered.”
“Ah,” I said. “The famed Portuguese justice!”
“I am here to make formal notice to you, and to ask if you have requests we may fulfill.”
“I do appeal my sentence to Don João, and demand an audience with him, to make show to him of my innocence.”
“That will avail you nothing,” said Vasconcellos. “But I will do as you say.”
That afternoon four Portuguese warders came for me, and without one word took me from my cell. I thought joyously that I was indeed now to be brought to Don João, and it gave me heart, since that I had spent some hours resigning myself to death for these phantasmical crimes of mine. But it was a cruel disappointment, for the Portugals conveyed me only as far as the courtyard of the presidio, where they fastened me to their whipping-stake and did beat me with knotted cords, so that by the time they were done there was not a spot on all my body that was not swollen and aching, and in some places bleeding. After this punishment they did return me to my cell, and a keeper entered, and, saying he was doing this at the governor’s command, did clinch to my legs great bolts of iron of thirty pounds’ weight, that dragged upon me like the Devil’s own grip. “This is done because that you are a known escaper,” he said, and left me.
Enfeebled, shackled, sore with my whipping, I lay like one benumbed and bereft of all will. Each morning when I arose I expected to be taken out and put to death; and each night when I lay me down to sleep I tallied one more day of life, with gratitude and despair all at the same time, for what was the use of living if my remaining few days were to be so empty? I thought of Warwyck’s ship, that must be halfway to Holland by now, and I wept from rage. I thought of Matamba, and wondered sorrowfully what had become of her, now that I was condemned. I thought of Dona Teresa, by whose jealousy and treachery this had befallen me, and I meditated much and deep on how love could turn to bitter enmity. And I gave my thoughts greatly to England, to my friends there and such family as I might still have, to the Queen Her Majesty, to the soft mists and gentle rains and green fields full of sheep and all that I would never see again. In this way I passed through despair to resignation, and grew calm, telling myself that I had lived some thirty-five years, which was more than is granted to most, and had known much delight in that time along with a proper measure of grief. If I had to die now, why, I would accept that judgment, for it is true beyond quarrel that we each owe God a death, He who gave us life, and I was merely paying the debt a little earlier than was my preferred time. Furthermore there are many ways to die that are more hideous than hanging, and now I would suffer none of them.
But as it happened I was spared the gallows as well. For two months I did languish in that foul stinking prison awaiting my doom and thinking, whenever a warder approached my cell, that it was to take me to the gibbet. But then came the one that had fastened the iron hoops to my legs, and he did cut them from me; and then the lawyer Vasconcellos entered my cell and said, “I bring you happy tidings, Englishman.”
“Aye, that I am to be drowned slowly in good wine of the Canary Islands, instead of being hanged, is that it?”
He looked displeased at my levity and said most soberly, “His Excellency Don João has taken mercy upon you despite your great crimes. Your sentence of death is raised.”
“God be thanked!” I cried.
But my jubilation was misplaced. For Vasconcellos went on to tell me that I was not pardoned, but merely given a new sentence: which was to be banished for ever to the fort of Masanganu, and to serve for the rest of my days in that place of fevers and monstrous heat, to defend the frontiers of the colony. My first impulse upon hearing that was to call out for hanging instead, as being greatly more preferable. Which I did not say; but I did tell myself inwardly that Don João had earned little thanks from me for this show of kindness. For he had sent me into a suffering beyond all measure, to a Hell upon earth, from which death was likely to be the only release.
As I went on board the pinnace that was to take me up the
river into imprisonment, I drew from my pouch the small woman-idol that Dona Teresa had given me long before, and I looked at it most long and hard. Still did it seem to embody the sinister irresistible beauty of that woman, and still did it cling to my hand as though by some secret force in the wood. I drew my breath in deep, and clamped my jaws tight closed, and with all my strength did I hurl that idol into the dark waters, and stood staring as it dropped from sight.
The which deed gave me some measure of comfort and release from constraint. I braced myself against the rail, and stood sweating and gasping in the aftermath of it, until they hurried me onward with a rude jostle onto the ship. But the discarding of that idol was the only action I was able to take against those who had brought me to this pass, and precious little good did it in truth do me. For even if I had broken free of Dona Teresa’s witch-spell at last, yet still was I condemned inexorably to torment most extreme, at Masanganu the torrid, Masanganu the terrible.
BOOK
THREE:
Warrior
ONE
AT MASANGANU I lived a most miserable life for the space of six years without any hope to see the sea again.
How swiftly I am able to say that! It takes me not even two dozen words to encompass that statement of simple fact. And in so saying, so quickly and easily, I reduce to a seeming trifle what was indeed a most doleful burden. Not even two dozen words to tell of it! But the actual living of six years cannot be done in one hour less than those six years, as even a fool will attest; and I do swear to you by the Savior’s own beard that to dwell at Masanganu for six years is much like living anywhere else for sixty, or perhaps six hundred.
Yet did I endure it, day by day, minute by minute, which is the only way such a thing can be done. When I think back to the years of my servitude there, the time does indeed fold and compress in upon itself, so that I can speak of six years and make it seem to have gone by as rapidly as it takes me to tell of it; and yet also I can still feel the weight of those years within me, hanging on my soul as iron gyves did once hang on my legs. A prisoner can put down his chains, when his pardon comes, but I can never put down my years at Masanganu until that last day when I do lay down all the freight that my soul does carry.
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