Then there did come to us a pair of Jesuits, that had traveled up the Kwanza to bring certain news to the governor, and not finding him at Masanganu had continued on to this place. These two were closeted with Cerveira Pereira a long while, and two days afterward messengers came to me, saying, Cerveira Pereira did wish to speak with me.
I went to him and he declared, without any pleasantries of conversation, “Your Queen Elizabeth is dead.”
“Nay, it is not so!” I cried, taking the news like a hard blow upon the back of my neck.
“It is brought me by the Jesuit fathers, who say she is long dead, of the April of 1603.”
“Then who is King in my land?”
“James of Scotland, that was the Scottish Queen’s son.”
“Aye, I suppose it would have been he,” said I. “For she died a maid, did Elizabeth, and the Scottish King is of the royal blood.” And I did fall to thinking inwardly, King James, King James, trying to get the sound of it to ring honestly in my head, for at the moment it was entirely false. King James. Never had there been a James King of England before, but only Henry, William, Edward, Richard, in the main, and your stray lone John and Stephen, so James was a strange noise upon the throne. And furthermore there had been no King of England at all in my lifetime, but only the Queen, that was Elizabeth, and before her Queen Mary Tudor, the bloody one, so that the rule of women had been customary to my mind. King James? Aye, then, King James, King James, King James: I would try to learn the music of it by heart, discordant though it now might seem. King James. Of that man I knew little or none, save that he was a Scot, and said to be not fair to look upon, and a Protestant, though his mother had not been one. A Protestant for good and aye, surely, else Elizabeth would not have bestowed upon him the crown.
“There is more news, Don Andres,” Cerveira Pereira said. “The war is ended between Spain and England, by command of King James and King Philip, and so there is peace between Portugal and England as well, this having been proclaimed in August last.”
“God be praised, then, I am no man’s enemy in this land!”
“That is the case,” said he.
“I do make petition to you, Don Manoel, to grant me license to go into mine own country, since that I am no longer a prisoner of the realm, but only a sojourner here.”
He studied me a long while out of those harsh and beady dark eyes of his, and I felt me to be a fish upon a hook, dangling in air while the angler decides if he is to be thrown back into the freedom of the water.
I said, into his silence, “You could consult the archives in São Paulo de Loanda of Governor Serrão’s time, that would record how I was brought here out of Brazil, upon my capture from a freebooter’s expedition, and—”
“This I know,” he replied. “And most bravely have you served us, Don Andres.”
“Surely that service is at its end now.”
“I think so,” said he.
“Then may I go?”
“Aye,” he said. “Make to me a petition by writing, and I will grant you license, and you may go home.”
Such simple and easy words! Such a trifle, falling from his lips! England to be mine again! I for King James’ land, by Governor Cerveira Pereira’s freely given license!
Aye, but not so lightly, for nothing is light or swift when one is dealing with Portugals. I did make my application that afternoon by writ to Don Manoel Cerveira Pereira, and then I went off apart to give thanks unto God for my deliverance, and to pray for the repose of Her Protestant Majesty Elizabeth of beloved memory, and to offer also the hope of God’s benevolence upon my new King and master James I, who unknown to me had been my monarch some two years already. But still was I in Kambambe, many leagues from the coast. Nor did Cerveira Pereira favor me with a written reply to my petition, though I had the promise in words from him.
Shortly it was time for the governor to return himself to his capital; and I departed with him and his train to São Paulo de Loanda. Scarce was I able to recognize that city, so great had it grown, with majestic new buildings now rising on the hill and in the flat places, and the old palaces and cathedral dwarfed in their midst. Slavery had become the main sustenance of the city, and it looked not much unlike the depot of São Tomé, with great pens everywhere in which the sad human merchandise of this commerce was penned.
Strange was it to be back in civilization, to sleep in a true bed, to eat Portuguese food and drink claret and wear fresh clothes. I still felt the Jaqqa pull, the lodestone force of the jungle. I was in part yet one of that nation, even after some years away from them; I think I will always be, for Jaqqa blood does throb ineradicably in my veins. And also was there in me a void and chilly place where Dona Teresa had occupied mine affections, that left me hollow and bereft.
In merely the few years that I had been gone from São Paulo de Loanda I had become a total stranger, without links to this place. I looked about most diligently, and all was unfamiliar. Those men known to me of old had died or gone elsewhere, even the streets I had known being engulfed into the new ones. I could not find Matamba, nor any who knew of her. The very names of Don João de Mendoça and Fernão da Souza and his wife Dona Teresa seemed lost to oblivion in this greater and noisier place. And as for Andrew Battell, why, he was forgotten also. I had no attention of any special kind, not even on account of my coloring, since my hair was no longer golden, nor was golden hair a scarcity here, the city being full of Dutchmen partaking in the slave trade, and some Frenchmen also.
Aye, and did I board the first ship bound for Europe, now that I had license to go? Surely that is what I did, you say. But I did not do that. For they would not ship me home by courtesy of the crown: I had to buy my passage, and at most dear a price. And among those who had forgotten me were those bankers to whom I had entrusted my store of wealth. I had placed at deposit in the counting-house in São Paulo de Loanda all the proceeds of my trading voyages to Benguela, before my abandonment into the hands of Mofarigosat, and a heavy sum it was, too. But when I came calling for it, thinking it had compounded into a pretty pile, they left me standing in their velveted outer chamber a long span, and when they returned to me they feigned not knowing why I had come, and left me standing there another long while, and so on, before coming at last to deny any knowledge of my credit with them. Had I any certificate of that funding? What could I say, that I had been roaming naked in the wilderness, wearing beads and paint, and had had no purse to keep my documents in? “You will see,” I said, “I am Andrew Battell, or it may be that you have me down as Andres, who served as pilot under Don João de Mendoça—”
But they knew not Don João, and they knew not me, and they had not my money, nor any record thereof.
I went to the governor to make complaint, but he would not admit me, and his secretary told me bluntly that the counting-house was known to be honorable. I had no further recourse. These Spaniards who kept the bank were sly dogs, and I was English, having no rights in this land. And they had cozened me of all my wealth and that was the end upon it. When I returned to England, so one official opined, I might bring an action in court against the counting-house. But without that money I was unable to return to England!
So, then, how to pay for my passage? Pawn my scars? I had no friends in this place, and of moneylenders there were none who would deal with me, and in fine I was as helpless a beggar here as I had been on the day Thomas Torner and I were led in chains into our prison.