So September came in with blazing skies and unrelenting heat. I wrote again to Manuel Buarcos, asking for the favour of an interview. After a week’s wait he granted it.
We were taken across, Major George and I, the following evening to the officers’ quarters at the other side of the square. It was the same room upstairs where we had been first interviewed; but this time except for our escort Buarcos saw us alone.
As the only one with Spanish I had to be spokesman. George spoke a halting word or two, but by now I was fluent.
This was the moment when I needed all my fluency. Buarcos sprawled behind the table sweating and picking his nose. Tonight the scar looked like a shoe-lace drawn taut across the wet brown surface of his skin.
I told him the conditions under which we were living, and said that if nothing were done to ease them the rest of us would soon die. We had all, I said, been put aside for ransom; even the poorest had been adjudged of some value. But one of the first to die now would be Victor Hardwicke who was a close kinsman of the great Sir Walter Ralegh. His would be a big ransom and it would all be lost. The Spanish Government and the Court would not look approvingly on his treatment of us if by it they became the losers.
Buarcos waited until I had finished. Then absentmindedly, one eye staring more than the other, he said that in his view war was not waged thus. In his view war was a matter of blood, not of gold. If he had had his way when we first came here he would have impaled us all together on one long pike and left us for the crows to pick. Portocarrero and his like were weaklings and were now paying the penalty. Had he made his feelings clear?
Perhaps then I should have gone, but I was fighting for Victor’s life as well as my own. So I swallowed and began again. I said it was accepted and praised in Spain even we in prison had heard the praise how the English in Cadiz had been considerate to the sick and the wounded. If war were a matter of blood it could yet be conducted with dignity. Could we not as prisoners ask for fair treatment? If a doctor were unavailable, could I not be given permission to beg herbs in the town? And perhaps one or two of our most serious sick might be granted some milk and eggs, which might just make the difference between life and death to them.
Buarcos yawned. “Killigrew, you affect my appetite. The mere stink of you is an insult. Do you know that in the fight to capture your miserable ship over forty of my countrymen died? Near on thirty of those were killed by an explosion set off treacherously at the moment of surrender. Another twenty are maimed or grievously injured. Why should I care what happens to you? I am in the confident hope that very soon Madrid will forget. Then such of you as are left can be put to death for sport. It is a dull place, Lagos, and there is too little sport.”
Horses stirred in the stables underneath. Tonight the table was set for supper; silver on good white linen; one brown manicured hand toyed with the salt-cellar.
I said: “There speaks a Spanish gentleman. After this a return to the cell will be sweet.”
I turned to go, but Captain Buarcos shouted a word to the guards and they seized me. They thrust me round to face him, and he stared at me while thoughtfully picking his nose.
“Killigrew, Madrid knows there are captives here, but one more or less will not concern them. It is St Matthew’s day next week, and we will have you out of your cell then and will grill you over a slow fire. It will give you something to think of until then besides the tribulations of a poor diet. Remember, in eight days you will be free! You may rely on that on the word of a Spanish gentleman!“
Now I was thrust out, along with George, but as we left Buarcos bawled after us: “And until then you will all be on a half supply of food and water. You’ve been living too well in captivity!“
On the way back we tramped in silence. George said at last: “I think we should kill that man.”
“I cannot keep my tongue quiet! God, I should not imagine he could deprive us of such water as we’ve had! It’s little enough for bare existence in this weather! … So we are back where we were but worse off! ” I was so angry I could scarcely swallow. There was no room yet to consider his threat against me. The anger drummed in my ears like lust.
Major George said again: “I think we should kill that man.”
It was a hot night, as hot as any I remember, and the smell in the cell was sickening. The narrow windows should have allowed in some air, but the air was too still to circulate. All that entered were the mosquitoes which swarmed everywhere. We had no light, so I could not see Victor’s face while I told him. Perhaps he had expected nothing, for he took the disappointment very calmly. All he said was: “I wish Crocker would learn to play in tune.”
Cracker was trying to play:
“If love were mine, who pray would seek for valor? For love is warm, and courage listeth cold …”
In a corner Mabe, my pupil, was near his end. Unlike Victor, he did not bear his pains quietly. I sat up all that night with Victor, wafting a cloth before his face to give him the air he so much needed and trying to keep away the mosquitoes which were constantly settling on his face. My own fever had returned, and I shivered and fretted in company with him. In the morning he looked very grey and drawn, much as he had on the first day after his wounds at Cadiz.
“Maugan, if you see Sherborne again, go, please, to the house of Mistress Katherine Churcher, and tell her that in my last hours I thought only of her. Will you do that?”
“NOW, now, I don’t like this way of saucing. May I ask you, if you reach England first “
“NO, Maugan, let us be practical. For eight weeks I’ve walked on a thread, and the thread is wearing thin. If the worst befalls I ask you to go to Mistress Katherine Churcher of Cerne Abbas, some ten miles south of the castle. You’ll find her married to a man for whom she has neither love nor respect take her aside and in private tell her that I have always loved her, and, if at death there be any flame in me that does not puff out, that I shall do so for all eternity …”
“Quiet, now, drink this. It will ease the pain …”
On the Sunday Mabe died. That left six of us. On the same night Major George dislodged the stone which had been holding up his efforts to move the bar. NOW he could make progress again. But I was too sick and sad to aid him. I sat with Victor an day, he now being barely conscious. His face was changing under the strain; the daylight seemed to make his lank fair hair gray and he might have been sixty. Once I got blood on my hand, and it was in just the place Katherine Footmarker had traced it with a long finger that day in the clearing by the mill above Penryn. I thought, if it had not been for me none of this need have happened. Victor would not have gone into the church and we should not have been wounded; so we should not have been sent home thus and captured. Already, I had killed a half-score men in my life, but it was not the blood of my enemies Katherine Footmarker had seen, it was the blood of my friends …
On the Monday and Tuesday, with that tenacity which marked his seemingly frail constitution, Victor rallied and was able to take a little of the precious mink I had bought from Cabecas with another jewel. The coming Friday was St Matthew’s day, but so far I had not believed in it: anger and remorse were so great that it cut my mind away from the future. I tended Victor constantly, and visions of the auto de fe seen in Madrid only crept in each day with the brazen light of dawn.
On the Wednesday there was a big change in Victor. He seemed no longer to be in pain, and only his breathing was difficult, as if there were phlegm at the back of his throat. His face lost its tensions and the aged look disappeared as if a sponge more cooling than mine had wiped it away. Even his hair and month-old beard became smooth and silky instead of bedraggled and unkempt.