I have never been able to remember the details of the time at sea. The ship was not Neptune as I had at one time thought but Santa Ana, a Portuguese vessel under the command of Captain Alazar, with Richard Burley acting as navigator. Captain Burley explained to me that Neptune had foundered with her prize at the time when Captain Elliot and his crew had reached Arwenack, and, needs must when the devil drives, Richard Burley had since found employment where it offered. Beggars, he said, could not be choosers. He was as full of saws as an old wife, but empty of explanation as to why they had chosen to seize me.
All the rest was plain Spain would pay well for a first-class navigator who knew the rivers and harbours of England: such were not easy to come by. Captain Alazar, a freebooter of some note and anxious to please his Spanish masters, had asked permission of them that he should be allowed to raid Pendennis. Permission was given and three engineers and twelve barrels of gunpowder were supplied to blow it up.
The attempt had failed. From the look of things on the night of my capture I did not think that the attack had been pressed home with any enthusiasm or vigour. Burley said that as well as damaging the fort they had struck across the peninsular and fired Arwenack, but from the way he told it I knew he was lying. The details were not true: this was sop to please his new masters.
I could not see that taking me back with him to rot in some dungeon or die in the galleys would ingratiate him further. I wondered if he had done it out of spite; he never spoke of my father without a gleam of venom in his eye, but he knew I was not a legitimate child and my death was not likely to bring my father in sorrow to his grave.
I had been two and a half weeks in prison in Lisbon but had been given a cell to myself and supplied with passable food and English books. Captain Alazar had visited me but had refused to comment on what my fate was to be. Then one day I was released to join this cavalcade bound for Madrid, and Burley was of the party.
We had been two weeks on the way, twice snowbound in tiny villages, huddling in a single hut and crouching about a smoky brazier for warmth. Last night we had left Talavera, and tomorrow they said we should be in Madrid.
Presently Bartolomeo called a halt and the half dozen walking peasants and the two tartanas drew in at the side of the truck in the shelter of a great rock where the wind could only stab spitefully in back eddies from the other cliff face. Here we ate a frugal midday meal, though the sun was well on its way down. And here both Burley and Alazar sat beside me eating in silence. When I had finished I took off a shoe to look at the raw blister on my heel.
Alazar said: “In Madrid you will have new boots. Those are of poor leather, they do not wear well.”
It was not his practice to say anything to me at all. I said: “Why are you taking me there?”
I certainly expected nothing in return, for I had asked the question before, but this time Alazar shrugged and glanced at Burley and said: ~
“Because, boy, you happen to be a proof of the success of our raid on Falmouth Haven. You or another would have done. But having got you, we now see you as a piece of merchandise to be disposed of in the most favourable market. See? “
“No. I don’t see …”
“For you for the galleys I could get a few reals, less than a seaman, since you are too thin and too young to last. But it has occurred to us that you may have a small value of another sort. Being who you are. It depends ...”
“On what?”
“A little on yourself. To be of value at all you must help a little. Do you wish to die?”
“Na.”
Captain Alazar took a long drink of red wine. “Well, to stay alive you must help a little.”
“What does that mean?”
He put the goblet down. “Spain and England are at war, yes? As countries, as nations. But every person is not at war with every other person. That is for the person to decide. If you have nothing but enmity in your heart for Spain and show it you will rot in a prison quick enough, and I shall wish I had left you to the overseer’s lash. But if you will take life as it comes if you will see Spain and the people in it as just people like yourself, among whom you must live and work, then it will be of more value to me, and you may not go to prison or the galleys at all. But it is for you to decide.”
I said nothing for a long time. Bartolomeo was already on his feet again, for there were only a few hours of daylight left.
“Well?” said Burley in an aggressive voice.
I said: “I have no wish to die.”
“Good. Good.”
“But I don’t know what you expect. I don’t know what you are suggesting.”
Burley’s narrow savage face quickly clouded, but Captain Alazar got up and patted me on the shoulder. “We have a proverb: ‘If you run too fast you may trip over nothing.’ Be content to greet each day with an open mind judge it as it comes. That way we all make progress.”
We reached Madrid late the next day almost as dusk was fall ing and lodged at a shabby crowded inn in the centre of the city. Five of us, including Bartolomeo, slept in a room under the eaves. Bartolomeo had still to be paid for the hire of his cart, and the next morning there was a violent and ugly argument over payment. Then there was another quarrel with the keeper of the inn. After Bartolomeo and his companions left, still grumbling and unsatisfied, Captain Alazar went out. I kept the attic all day, and Richard Burley was my companion. He seldom spoke but lay all day on one of the pallet beds picking his teeth add taking snuff and dozing. Twice he sent down for food. The first tim,e a black-eyed barefoot girl with silk bows in her hair brought it, but Burley looked at her so lewdly that she put the food down and fled, and the second time it was the innkeeper himself.
I could see very little from the tiny window. A slope of roof hid most of the narrow street, and opposite a taller building was just going up so that it cut off any view there might have been over the city. All day, except in the afternoon, there was the clank and hammer of the workmen, and somewhere below the rumble of carts and the shouts and laughter of people in the inn.
Captain Alazar came back an hour after sundown and the two men went downstairs together. I gathered that he had been trying to gain an audience with somebody and had failed.
He tried the next day and the next, and the third long vigil was lucky, for he came back heartened by his meeting, and the following morning I was taken out into a handsome square near the inn, and cloth was bought to replace my tattered suit. There were churches all round the square, and all the bells were ringing and the open space was thronged with people. Black-clad friars moved among them, and soldiers in full armour and splendid grandees. Beggars crouched at every corner and water carriers rang their own bells as counterpoint to the churches. Bargaining and argument went on over the purchase of the cloth, for Captain Alazar had no money to pay for it but only a promise of money for the morrow. As soon as the measurements were taken I was hustled back to the inn; but by evening the suit, of blue worsted yarn with a thick blue duffel for a cloak, was at the inn and I was being fitted.
The next morning was a Saturday, and the tensions between the two men showed that this was a highly important day for them.
We set off at eight, the three of us only, passed through two smaller squares, in both of which the houses were still being built, reached a third which had at its opposite side a building like a Turkish palace. The great doors were guarded by soldiers in armour, and the flanking sides of the square were given over to armouries and stables. Captain Alazar pushed his way through a crowd of sightseers and suppliants and went up to a man dressed in black velvet, who glanced at the parchment we carried and then passed it over to a guard.