“Can he do such a thing?”
“He can do as he pleases. Now that Governor d’Almeida is here, and stands revealed as a fool, it is Don João’s time to make his reach for power. Be of cheer.”
“So shall I be.”
She caught my wrist by her hand and drew me close, ear to her mouth. In a low voice she said, “One thing, only. Give no clue to him that anything has passed between you and me save geographical instruction, or it may go hard for both of us.”
“Geographical instruction?”
“Aye. I have come to you all these months to be taught the globe, and the oceans, and the countries of Europe. Nothing more. Nothing more.”
“Don João de Mendoça is a jealous man?”
“He is a man of pride.”
Which confirmed what I had already guessed, that she was this Mendoça’s mistress, that she was using with him that which lay between her thighs as one of the instruments of her ascent. Well, and well, I had not thought her to be a virgin, nor to lie alone on those many nights that she was not with me.
It did not matter. I was of cheer. With her hand on Mendoça’s privates she might yet be able to squeeze me out my freedom.
9
In the morning there came to me that fancy-breeched captain of the guards, Fernão da Souza, another whom I suspected that Teresa had conquered. As was his custom he was most nobly dressed, all lace and spotless gloves and scented boots, and satin sleeves and pearl-trimmed cuffs of great flare and breadth: a young man, tall for a Portugal, fair-complected, with just enough of a look of shrewdness and ambition in his eyes to take the curse off his foppishness. “You are summoned,” he told me, “to come before Don João de Mendoça, who out of the greatness of his heart has granted you the opportunity to make yourself of use. Clean yourself and put on these garments.”
No foul-smelling ragabones for Don João! I sponged myself and clad myself in decent simple clothes, and went forth from my cell and out, blinking and astonished, into the huge blaze of daylight. And into the plaza of the town, and beyond the church to one of a small group of houses done in the Portuguese style—that is, fashioned out of boards, and with a second story, instead of being a thing of light framework and mud and thatch. This was the palace of Don João de Mendoça, whom I found already at his midday meal when I was brought in.
Mendoça was a man of much presence and authority, who in any sort of society would rise to a position of distinction. What he was doing in this remote colony, instead of dwelling at Lisbon and dealing in high affairs of state, I surely could not imagine, though later I found out what should have been evident enough to me: with a Spaniard on the throne of Portugal, Don João saw little hope of advancement in his homeland, nor, as a younger son, had he inherited great lands and wealth. So like so many other men of spirit he had gone to the tropic lands of empire, where all things begin anew for those with zeal and ability.
He was a man past middle years, forty or somewhat beyond that, which left me wondering how he could cope with the demanding passions of his paramour Dona Teresa. In stature Mendoça was low, but yet his shoulders were of great breadth and his chest was deep, so that when sitting he seemed a person of power and majesty. It was the same with Sir Francis Drake, who was not tall, but dominated by easy force at a counciltable. Don João’s flesh was full but firm, his skin was swarthy in the Portuguese way, his eyes were large and very glistening. He was dressed finely, yet not in the overdone dandified way of Captain da Souza: his was more restrained a costume, in tones of black and gray, with black velvet slippers. The feast that was spread before him was a royal one, I thought, although served on simple pewter dishes rather than fine plate. In many bowls and tankards and platters were the foods of the country, fruits and vegetables that I did not recognize, and meats of several kinds, all in deep and thick sauces, and reeking of the spices that the Portugals so love, their garlics and saffrons and capsicums and the like. Two kinds of wine were on the table, and beakers of beer or ale also. Don João had a platter to his mouth and was sipping of a heavy golden sauce, and with great deliberation he finished his sip, and hacked him a piece of what I took to be mutton or veal, and speared it prettily with his knife and chewed at it most delicately. Then he took a vast deep draught of his pale wine, and wiped his lips, and looked up toward me, and I saw in him a man well satisfied with his meal.
“Dona Teresa tells me you speak passable Portuguese,” he said without other word of greeting.
“Aye, that I do.”
“Where did you come by that skill?”
“By stages, sir, since I was a boy in England and my brother taught me some.”
“Your accent is too broad, though you have the words and the sense quite aptly. You speak our words in the flat English way, without music. Speak you more in the throat and in the nose, do you take my meaning? Put some thunder in your vowels. Put some savory spice in them. I think it is your English food, that is so empty of taste, that causes you English to speak your words in such a flavorless way. How do you say your name?”
“Andrew Battell, sir.”
“Sit you down, Andrew Battell. Will you eat?”
“If it please you.”
“Eat. There’s enough here for a regiment.” He pushed vessels of meat and gruel toward me, and a goblet and some wine, and other things. I was perplexed by such plenty, having lived so long on foul prison fare leavened only by those tasties that Dona Teresa had smuggled to me. As I hesitated he stabbed a slab of meat and put it before me, and I took of it, for fear of offending against his hospitality. It was meat that looked to be mutton, at a glance of it, but to my tongue it was not in the least muttonous, more in the direction of veal, though not far in that direction, and it was covered with a sauce of hot pepper and onions that was like live coals in my mouth upon first touch, though I quickly grew familiar with it. Don João watched me with curiosity as I ate the strange meat and then a second piece.
“You like it, then.”
“Indeed I do. What sort of meat is this, sir?”
“A vast delicacy. You know not how fortunate you are.”
“And its name?”
“It is called in these lands ambize angulo, that is to say, a hog-fish, because it is as fat as a pork.”
“It has neither the savor nor taste of a fish.”
“Nay,” said Don João, “for it is no more a fish than you or I, though it lives in he rivers. It is the animal that in the New World the Indians call the manatee, that has two hands, and a tail like a shield. It never goes out from the fresh water, but feeds on the grass that grows on the banks, and has a mouth like the muzzle of an ox.”
“A creature passing strange.”
“Indeed. There are of these fishes some that weigh five hundred pounds apiece. The fishermen take them in their little boats, by marking the places where they feed, and then with their hooks and forks striking and wounding them. They draw them forth dead of the water, and in the kingdom of the Kongo all such creatures that are caught must be taken straightaway to the black king, for whosoever does not incurs the penalty of death. Here we suffer under no such restriction, and we eat it often. Will you have more?”
“In some while, perhaps. This richness of food surfeits me, after so lengthy a captivity.”
“I see. But it improves your Portuguese. Do you comprehend that this sauce has sharpened your inflection, and made you eloquent?”
“Not the sauce, I think, but only listening to your words,” I said.