“Aye, that we do!” I stared at her. “You know of the Pope? What is the Pope to you?”
“The Pope is the King of Christendom,” said Dona Teresa. “The Pope is the right hand of God, and King Philip and all his subjects are subject to him.”
“You are a Christian, then?”
“My father was Don Rodrigo da Costa, and I am no savage, Andres,” said she with much show of dignity. “Why do the English mock and defy the Pope?”
“Why, because it is madness to be governed by a religious authority that is seated a thousand miles beyond seas and mountains, and that judges questions of English law by the standards of Italy and Spain and sometimes France, but never by those of England. The Pope conspires to dethrone our Queen. The Pope would deliver us into the power of our enemies of Spain. The Pope has strived always to tell us what we might do, and sometimes he has succeeded; but at last Great Harry overthrew him—”
“Great Harry?”
“King Henry that was the eighth of his name, the father of Queen Elizabeth.”
“Overthrew the Pope? Nay, how was that possible? The Pope still reigns in Rome.”
“In Rome, aye. But we have broken free. And spared ourselves from greedy monks who bleed the people of their wealth, and spared ourselves from ignorant mummery and mumpsimus nonsense, that chanted at us in an ancient language and smothered us in the reek of incense and the crying out to idols.”
“Why, then, you are not Christians!”
“Christians we are,” I said, “but we are English, and that makes a difference in all things.”
“Aye,” she said. “English have yellow hair and hate the Pope. Those are the chiefest differences. You must tell me more of England another time. And of yourself: you must tell me of your boyhood, and of your schooling and how you came to go to sea, and if there be anyone you love in England, and how you fell prisoner into the hands of the Portugal, and many other such things. But we will talk of those things later.”
“Later, aye.”
“And now let us talk no more,” she said.
To which I concurred, for she moved against me and drew her satin-smooth skin across my chest, and once more she magicked me in that brazen way of hers, engulfing, devouring, that starfish mouth drawing me in. She had no shame: that was the essence of her. Dona Teresa lay at the center of her world and all other things pivoted about her, and that which she desired was that which she took, be it jewels or fine clothes or the bodies of men. Yet there was an ease and an openness about this which made it not at all unseemly: it was as if she were a man, merely following her star, as we do. Why is it that ambition in a man is a virtue, and in a woman is shrewish discordance? Why is it that lustiness in a man is a mark of strength, and in a woman a stigma of wickedness? Aye, there are fallen women aplenty, but never a fallen man, except only those who have had high positions and let themselves foolishly tumble from it.
I learned much about the world from Dona Teresa da Costa in our feverish couplings on the floor of that murky stinking prison cell. I learned that a woman could be much like a man in certain aspects of character without giving up anything of her womanhood, if she be clever enough. I learned that an entire sex has been left to waste in idleness and chatter, for that we suppress them to our own advantage. I learned that in the darkest heart of Africa could blossom grace and intelligence and vigor that would give honor to any kingdom.
All these things I might have learned, I wager, from close study of my own Queen. For surely Bess is a prince among princes, a woman with all man’s attributes and those of woman, too, and she gives the lie to those who say that the sex is simple and weak. But it has not been my privilege, nor shall it ever be, to strut like a Leicester or Ralegh in the halls of Her Majesty: but Dona Teresa has afforded me close instruction indeed, her eyes glistening near to mine, her tongue-tip tickling the tip of mine, her hardened paps burning like fiery coals against my breast, and, moreover, her dark and mercurial mind open to my inspection, so that I could see her intentions and projects as clearly as, I think, anyone ever did. I would not compare her to my fair pink-and-gold Anne Katherine, for they were as unlike as one planet is to another, as orange Mars to dazzling Venus; but yet I sometimes found myself putting Dona Teresa’s forwardness against Anne Katherine’s timidity and shy uncertain way, and Dona Teresa’s snorting fury of lust against Anne Katherine’s tender and sweet embrace, and in such comparisons I felt ashamed and guilty of making them, for the olive-hued woman of Africa emerged far the more brilliant in the matching. Which is why, I hazard, we should not stray from our own beds to those of strange women, lest we discover things we are better not knowing.
Under Dona Teresa’s ministrations my captivity was not, then, the most painful of captivities to endure. There were bruises and discomforts aplenty, for sometimes the jailers grew angry with me, or I with them, and they beat me for my insubordinations. Thus I came to lose a forward tooth. Dona Teresa observed that, and asked at once for the name of the man who had injured me, so that she could have him punished for it. “Nay,” I said, “I stumbled and struck my face by accident,” I said, for I feared that the guards might take vengeance on me if I informed, and might even slay me. Other than such little things, though, mine was a comfortable life, with a woman of great qualities to be my consort on many a day, and excellent wine sometimes to drink, and little treats from the finest banquets of the city. Yet for all that I was not born to dwell in an earthen cavern, and I yearned for the sunlight and for freedom.
How many months had it been? I had lost all count. A season of rain and a dry season, and rain again and drought—was that not the full cycle of the year twice over? Was there yet an England? Was Elizabeth still its Queen, or had the Spaniards come again with a new and less feckless Armada? Anne Katherine, what of her? How fared my brother Henry, and his patron Ralegh, and the great Sir Francis Drake, and did the Thames still run past London to the sea? Lost, lost, all lost to me. Dona Teresa’s supple thighs and bobbling breasts were comfort but not comfort enough, as I raged and paced and suffered in my dungeon, and counselled myself to a philosophic calm, and raged yet again.
At last she came to me and said, “The new governor is here, Don Francisco d’Almeida. He has come with four hundred and fifty foot-soldiers and fifty African horse, all picked men, and he is full of bold plans. He has a project for an expedition clear across Africa, and a chain of forts to protect the road from here to the sea that lies on the other coast.”
“Very bold indeed,” I said. “And have you spoken with him, and will he let me from this hole?”
“I have spoken somewhat with him.”
“And?”
“He is a vain and idle man.”
My spirit, which had briefly soared, plummeted like Lucifer, who tumbled all the day long from heaven. “That is, he will not set me free?”
“He is occupied with his projects. Chiefly he is in struggle with the Jesuit fathers here. They claim rights in his government, and refuse obedience to the civil powers.”
“It is ever thus with the Pope’s men. And it is ever thus with these dim-souled governors here. Am I to moulder down here forever, Teresa?”
“Peace, peace. Having failed to win the ear of Governor d’Almeida, I have turned to Don João de Mendoça.”
I had long ago lost faith in the powers of this Mendoça. It seemed plain that he himself was unable to gain headway in Angola, in that he had dwelled here at a time of no governor without being able to take command, and had been set aside to some degree by this silly new governor out of Portugal, Don Francisco. But now Dona Teresa had arranged an interview for me with Mendoça, just as I had come to think no action ever would be taken on my behalf. “He will see you tomorrow,” she said, “and he intends to enroll you into his service.”