I busied myself deeply in this commerce, which involved much meeting with the Dutch skipper and with Don João, and speaking both English and Portuguese with some of my little bastard Dutch mixed in. That was hard work, but what a joy to frame good English phrases again! To hear from my own lips such words as “invoice” and “quantity” and “rate of exchange,” and even such humble things as “but” and “and” and “thereunto”—what delight! Why, it was like downing a flagon of good cool brown ale, to speak forth such words!
This Warwyck was a tall round-faced man with reddened cheeks and blue eyes and white hair, who dressed in dark sober Dutch clothes, all rough and woollen in our tropic heat, and puffed away on a long clay pipe as the Dutch are so fond of doing, making heavy use of that foul weed tobacco that is the mania in his country and mine these days. He had an odd sweetness to his English, as though he did put honey on his sounds before they left his tongue, which is the Dutch accent. I liked it greatly, and, strange to tell, the more I talked with him the more the same tones did creep into my own speech. I think this was because I had scarce uttered any English aloud since Thomas Torner’s disappearance years before, and I was readily swayed by his manner of speaking, English now having become almost an unfamiliar language to me.
I demanded of him news of England, he having been in London as recent as the spring of ‘94. For England was by this time only a sort of vague dream to me, and I needed reassurance that it yet existed.
“The Queen,” I said, “how fares it with her?”
“They say that she is strong and healthy, and that her beauty it is undimmed.”
“And my country, does it prosper?”
Warwyck did puff deeply on his pipe and surround himself in a great swirl of white smoke, and at length he said, “The harvests have been poor these few years past. Her Majesty has spent much on the wars in France, and in my own land. I think some Spanish treasure-carracks have been seized in the Azores, which much aided the royal funds—”
“Ah,” I said, “does the Queen now take a share in such adventures?”
“Indeed. They all go partners, the Queen and her brave captains, and divide the plunder. Which she would deny if asked, but we know it to be true. Yet I think England grows poorer, despite such raids. You cannot live by piracy, my friend. Trade, yes, colonies, yes—the Engenders should settle foreign lands, and build themselves into them, as these Portugals do, and the Spaniards, and as we intend to do.”
“The Dutch will colonize also? Where, I pray you?”
“In places where there are no Portugals: in the Indies, the Spice Islands, and such places. We are sailing; we are learning; we will do well, I think. Better than the Spaniards and Portugals, for they are but shallow settlers, and we will sink ourselves deeply into those lands, and export from them cloves and pepper and nutmeg and other useful things, instead of merely filching gold from the natives and giving them diseases. And we will do better than you English, too, for you seem interested only in piracy, and there is no profit in that over the long term, however glittering the rewards of snatching this ship and that one may be. Eh, friend? Do you see?”
Indeed I did see; for I had had a close view of what the Portugals did, which was more slaving than merchandising, and I knew our own maritime enterprise from within, and I was aware also of the shortsighted cruelties of the black-hearted Spaniards. And I knew that these Hollanders, if they did keep faithfully to their task, would build for themselves a great machine of perpetual money-spinning, for they are diligent people that do understand where the truest pot of gold doth lie. And I swore to myself that if ever I returned to England I would preach the gospel of colonizing and commerce, and urge my countrymen to give over piracy and slaving, as being not the best ways toward national wealth.
Warwyck and his gossiping did much enhance my longing for my own cool green country. He talked on and on! Ralegh had fallen, he said, for having got with child one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, and secretly marrying her, which displeased Her Majesty highly. The great man at court now was the Earl of Essex, son-in-law to old Leicester. Lord Burghley still was the Queen’s most trusted adviser, but his crook-backed son Robert was rising now in esteem. There were plots on the Queen’s life, which was nothing new, some Portugal living in London accused of conspiring to poison her at the behest of King Philip. And so on and so on. Food was dear, rain fell constantly, hunger was general. People died in the streets from want, but the Queen ordered grain given out to the populace from her private stores, and was widely loved for it. And so on; and so on. He told me endless things of England, that kindled in me a keen biting desire to behold thatched cottages and winding country lanes and the white line of surf licking at the fog that lies upon the coast. Only in one area did he fail me, this Dutchman Warwyck, when I did ask him of the world of plays and poetry, what new and wonderful things had been put on the stage. For the world of words has always been hot in my mind, and I had read much, as sailors go, and it seemed to me that there were in England in my time a great host of new men who would write miracles. But of all that the Dutchman knew nothing and told me nothing. So I was left all unknowing of the high deeds of our poets, though he could tell me the price of a peck of corn on the London docks. Well, and well, I could not expect everything from the man, and he had told me much. Aye, so much that it left me churning with a powerful bitter yearning to quit this torrid Angola and get myself back to the pleasant island of my birth before old age did wither me altogether to a husk. God’s blood, but I had had my fill of Africa, and then some!
For day after day I did my interpreting while the Portugals and Dutch haggled over the prices of their commodities. Warwyck was not interested in slaves, but the sumptuous fabrics of Angola seemed to attract him, and he bought also goodly measure of ivory, and bales of certain medicinal herbs most sharp against the nostrils. When not occupied in these transactions I whiled away my hours happily with Matamba, or went off quietly angling, or simply strolled alone and reflective through the city. I was not living badly, that is clear; but it was not the life I wanted for myself. From time to time I did see Dona Teresa off at a distance, but there were no encounters between us. Yet I sensed there would be trouble from that quarter ere very much longer.
And so there was. I returned to my cottage one afternoon from my negotiations with the Dutch, and as I entered it I had a premonition of ill fortune, a tingling of the ballocks and a cold knot in my stomach’s pit. When I looked within I saw Dona Teresa in my chamber. She had laid aside most of her garments and wore only a thin cascade of the native weaving, brightly dyed in yellow and green, a kind of damask that they do make here from the fibers of the palm. That one garment was draped so that it did reveal the supple curves of her body, with a hint of thigh and a hint of breast artfully disposed for my endazzlement.
None of my slaves were about. The house was silent; the air was stifling hot. Teresa seemed posed, as if she had struck an attitude and waited a long time so that I would find her precisely thus. Her eyes had their keenest gleam and there was an odor in the room, that musky cat-odor of her body that I knew to be the surest token of her lusts.
She said, “Since you will not come to me, Andres, I have come to you.”
“Ah, you should not have done this!”
“No one has seen me. Give me an hour, and then I will slip away, and who will be the wiser?”