The other man said: “His confinement has been close, captain. After what happened at Lagos I had no choice.” He spoke with the gutteral accent of a southern Spaniard.
De Soto said: “You seem to have stolen his wits. Well, Killigrew, I have little to say to you at this stage. Many decisions as to policy await His Majesty; others await lesser men. Until these are taken you will be preserved. I can offer you two choices a return to the cell where you have spent the winter, or a less rigorous life of house confinement only. The last I can give you only on your oath not to escape. If you wish you may have twenty-four hours to decide.”
Pedro Lopez de Soto, that was it, secretary to-the highest admiral in Spain.
I found myself being led out. I tried to struggle. “No!”
“No what?” asked De Soto.
“I do not need the time. I will take the oath.”
“Very well, you will be put in the house of Captain Caldes here as a garden servant for the time. I can promise nothing more.”
I moistened my lips.
“You appreciate, Killigrew, that your escape from Lagos has still to come for reckoning. But the wicked murderers of Captain Buarcos and Lieutenant Claudia have been brought to justice and no more need be made of that.”
“Brought to … But I it was “
“Say nothing at this stage which win make your case worse. The corpses of the two English soldiers who committed the murder have been found on the Sierra Pelada, north of Huelva. Captain Buarcos’s sword was about the skeleton of one of them. Their guilt is established. There for the moment it should rest.” ~
I stared at him. Three years later T was to come across Major George in London. He and Crocker had changed clothes with two peasants whom they had fought and killed for their mules, and, altering course, they had eventually made the Biscay coast and a fishing vessel home. But now I felt as if I had lost my two last friends.
“There is one word of advice I would give you at this stage. young man that is if you wish to take the best advantage of your time. Are you listening?”
“Yes …”
“Amend your religion,” said Captain de Soto. “Embrace the old religion of Christ. Without that no one may save you.”
The trees were coming out. The long winter was over and with the suddenness of a woman throwing off a cloak, blossom burst in the garden. The cold winds lingered, and there was still snow on the low hills behind the town, but the sun seeped into my bones and warmed them and gave them new life. The dark purple sore in my side began to look less angry and the last stiffness went. I was 19 years old.
I lived the life of a servant, but this was comfortable and mind-restoring after the solitary imprisonment of the winter. I wrote to my father again, and to Mariana to thank her and finally a long letter to Sue.
There were five servants in the house of Captain Caldes, two of them negroes, but they showed no hostility and very little curiosity. Perhaps they had learned better; but for me they were human company, and that was what was needed most. The only member of the household to show resentment and suspicion was Father Lorenzo, who was a Dominican, and he had in some way to be won over. I did not at first seriously think of taking De Soto’s advice, but it was good whatever the motive behind it. If Father Lorenzo were to make one complaint to the Inquisition, no protection from Madrid, however derived, was likely to save me.
Time passed and his hostility did not change. I thought it all over with care. The heroics of openly defying a Roman Catholic monk no longer entered my head; the practical terrors of the dungeons of Seville had cured all that. So one day I decided to play for time.
He was “fudging and did not relax his suspicion, but after some sharp questioning and after hearing there had been some preliminary instruction in Madrid, he agreed to lend me books and to supervise my reading.
This was far from uninteresting, indeed it was a stimulus for an atrophied brain; but I soon saw I walked upon a narrow edge, for the monk was not a man of intellect and he assumed all questions to be heretical unless they could be put down to ignorance. It would have been a much more stimulating discussion with Godfrey Brett.
March and April came, with still no explanation of this treatment. De Soto had seemed to wish to clear me of the killing of Buarcos; this new detention on a favoured basis was nearer in manner to the time in Madrid. They seemed all to be waiting for instructions.
Easter passed with the streets thronged and the bells pealing. The King, they said, had been ill but was recovered; in Spain all things waited on him. For a governor of a prison, Captain Caldes was a humane man, and mostly his visitors and friends were of a like mind. They all went in fear of the church. The activities of the Holy Office were like the visitation of the plague, something not to be spoken of above a whisper and then only to a trusted friend.
I saw nothing of Seville outside the walls of the house, for the house adjoined the prison and was a part of it. Sometimes I would wake in the night with the stifling fear that I was back in that solitary cell. Then the breathing of the negro on the next pallet would be a salvation and a balm.
In late April Father Lorenzo began to grow impatient. I had read the books and had run out of questions or questions
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that could be safely asked. There seemed no way of delaying. One day he asked me when I was prepared to embrace the true church instituted by Christ.
I promised to give him an answer the following week. This had become a cleft stick and one partly of my own making. As a heretic Englishman just released from prison and waiting decisions from Madrid, I might just have been tolerated in the household by being unobtrusive and easily overlooked. Now, however, having received instruction from a priest, I could not be overlooked by him. Either I became a Roman Catholic or I rejected his teaching. In the latter case he would inevitably report to the Inquisition.
Well, was I prepared to die for my faith, as I had been in Madrid two years ago? Much had changed since then. I had heard the emancipating arguments at Sherborne.
But what of those men who had spoken so brilliantly over the dinner table at Sherborne; Harlot, Northumberland and the rest; when it came to an absolute decision such as this, how would they choose? How would Ralegh himself choose, a man who for all his openness of mind was a convinced Protestant? Would he be willing to trim his sails and compromise when his soul was concerned? It did not seem likely. But what was the alternative for me?
One morning I was planting out some clove~gilly-flowers when Captain Caldes came into the garden with a younger cousin of his, Enrico Caldes. They did not see me. Enrico Caldes, a handsome, open-featured man in his late twenties, was protesting vehemently against the Holy Office.
“Let them lay a finger on you, John, let them but lay a finger on you, and all is lost. No one dare ask what has become of you, or write to you, or ask mercy on your behalf. To call and intercede would be to sign one’s own death order. As to the poor wretch “
“I know. I know it all “
“Yes, but you do not know that Felipe has been freed “
“Freed! Well, he is a lucky man l “
“Listen. He was arrested as you know in the dark of the night. He tells me there was no accusation. Someone laid false information about him, he will never know who. So he lies in a loathsome dungeon for six weeks fix weeks protesting his innocence, demanding to know what is his crime, asking for a fair and open hearing of his case while outside all his property is seized and his family pauperised. Then at last when he has asked for the tenth time to be told the cause of his arrest he is taken out of his cell and brought before his judges …