“And what would you do with the emperor at last?” asked Amyas when the Don had been scrubbed somewhat clean with a bunch of rushes. “Kill him, as your grandfather did Atahuallpa?”
“My grandfather,” answered the Spaniard, indignantly, “was one of those who, to their eternal honor, protested to the last against that most cruel and unknightly massacre. He could be terrible to the heathen; but he kept his plighted word, sir, and taught me to keep mine, as you have seen to-day.”
“I have, senor,” said Amyas. “You might have given us the slip easily enough just now, and did not. Pardon me, if I have offended you.”
The Spaniard (who, after all, was cross principally with himself and the “unlucky mare's son,” as the old romances have it, which had played him so scurvy a trick) was all smiles again forthwith; and Amyas, as they chatted on, could not help asking him next—
“I wonder why you are so frank about your own intentions to an enemy like me, who will surely forestall you if he can.”
“Sir, a Spaniard needs no concealment, and fears no rivalry. He is the soldier of the Cross, and in it he conquers, like Constantine of old. Not that you English are not very heroes; but you have not, sir, and you cannot have, who have forsworn our Lady and the choir of saints, the same divine protection, the same celestial mission, which enables the Catholic cavalier single-handed to chase a thousand Paynims.”
And Don Guzman crossed himself devoutly, and muttered half-a-dozen Ave Marias in succession, while Amyas rode silently by his side, utterly puzzled at this strange compound of shrewdness with fanaticism, of perfect high-breeding with a boastfulness which in an Englishman would have been the sure mark of vulgarity.
At last came a letter from Sir Richard Grenville, complimenting Amyas on his success and promotion, bearing a long and courtly message to Don Guzman (whom Grenville had known when he was in the Mediterranean, at the battle of Lepanto), and offering to receive him as his own guest at Bideford, till his ransom should arrive; a proposition which the Spaniard (who of course was getting sufficiently tired of the Irish bogs) could not but gladly accept; and one of Winter's ships, returning to England in the spring of 1581, delivered duly at the quay of Bideford the body of Don Guzman Maria Magdalena. Raleigh, after forming for that summer one of the triumvirate by which Munster was governed after Ormond's departure, at last got his wish and departed for England and the Court; and Amyas was left alone with the snipes and yellow mantles for two more weary years.
“And therewith he blent, and cried ha!As though he had been stricken to the harte.”Palamon and Arcite.
So it befell to Chaucer's knight in prison; and so it befell also to Don Guzman; and it befell on this wise.
He settled down quietly enough at Bideford on his parole, in better quarters than he had occupied for many a day, and took things as they came, like a true soldier of fortune; till, after he had been with Grenville hardly a month, old Salterne the Mayor came to supper.
Now Don Guzman, however much he might be puzzled at first at our strange English ways of asking burghers and such low-bred folk to eat and drink above the salt, in the company of noble persons, was quite gentleman enough to know that Richard Grenville was gentleman enough to do only what was correct, and according to the customs and proprieties. So after shrugging the shoulders of his spirit, he submitted to eat and drink at the same board with a tradesman who sat at a desk, and made up ledgers, and took apprentices; and hearing him talk with Grenville neither unwisely nor in a vulgar fashion, actually before the evening was out condescended to exchange words with him himself. Whereon he found him a very prudent and courteous person, quite aware of the Spaniard's superior rank, and making him feel in every sentence that he was aware thereof; and yet holding his own opinion, and asserting his own rights as a wise elder in a fashion which the Spaniard had only seen before among the merchant princes of Genoa and Venice.
At the end of supper, Salterne asked Grenville to do his humble roof the honor, etc. etc., of supping with him the next evening, and then turning to the Don, said quite frankly, that he knew how great a condescension it would be on the part of a nobleman of Spain to sit at the board of a simple merchant: but that if the Spaniard deigned to do him such a favor, he would find that the cheer was fit enough for any rank, whatsoever the company might be; which invitation Don Guzman, being on the whole glad enough of anything to amuse him, graciously condescended to accept, and gained thereby an excellent supper, and, if he had chosen to drink it, much good wine.
Now Mr. Salterne was, of course, as a wise merchant, as ready as any man for an adventure to foreign parts, as was afterwards proved by his great exertions in the settlement of Virginia; and he was, therefore, equally ready to rack the brains of any guest whom he suspected of knowing anything concerning strange lands; and so he thought no shame, first to try to loose his guest's tongue by much good sack, and next, to ask him prudent and well-concocted questions concerning the Spanish Main, Peru, the Moluccas, China, the Indies, and all parts.
The first of which schemes failed; for the Spaniard was as abstemious as any monk, and drank little but water; the second succeeded not over well, for the Spaniard was as cunning as any fox, and answered little but wind.
In the midst of which tongue-fence in came the Rose of Torridge, looking as beautiful as usual; and hearing what they were upon, added, artlessly enough, her questions to her father's: to her Don Guzman could not but answer; and without revealing any very important commercial secrets, gave his host and his host's daughter a very amusing evening.
Now little Eros, though spirits like Frank Leigh's may choose to call him (as, perhaps, he really is to them) the eldest of the gods, and the son of Jove and Venus, yet is reported by other equally good authorities, as Burton has set forth in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” to be after all only the child of idleness and fulness of bread. To which scandalous calumny the thoughts of Don Guzman's heart gave at least a certain color; for he being idle (as captives needs must be), and also full of bread (for Sir Richard kept a very good table), had already looked round for mere amusement's sake after some one with whom to fall in love. Lady Grenville, as nearest, was, I blush to say, thought of first; but the Spaniard was a man of honor, and Sir Richard his host; so he put away from his mind (with a self-denial on which he plumed himself much) the pleasure of a chase equally exciting to his pride and his love of danger. As for the sinfulness of the said chase, he of course thought no more of that than other Southern Europeans did then, or than (I blush again to have to say it) the English did afterwards in the days of the Stuarts. Nevertheless, he had put Lady Grenville out of his mind; and so left room to take Rose Salterne into it, not with any distinct purpose of wronging her: but, as I said before, half to amuse himself, and half, too, because he could not help it. For there was an innocent freshness about the Rose of Torridge, fond as she was of being admired, which was new to him and most attractive. “The train of the peacock,” as he said to himself, “and yet the heart of the dove,” made so charming a combination, that if he could have persuaded her to love no one but him, perhaps he might become fool enough to love no one but her. And at that thought he was seized with a very panic of prudence, and resolved to keep out of her way; and yet the days ran slowly, and Lady Grenville when at home was stupid enough to talk and think about nothing but her husband; and when she went to Stow, and left the Don alone in one corner of the great house at Bideford, what could he do but lounge down to the butt-gardens to show off his fine black cloak and fine black feather, see the shooting, have a game or two of rackets with the youngsters, a game or two of bowls with the elders, and get himself invited home to supper by Mr. Salterne?
And there, of course, he had it all his own way, and ruled the roast (which he was fond enough of doing) right royally, not only on account of his rank, but because he had something to say worth hearing, as a travelled man. For those times were the day-dawn of English commerce; and not a merchant in Bideford, or in all England, but had his imagination all on fire with projects of discoveries, companies, privileges, patents, and settlements; with gallant rivalry of the brave adventures of Sir Edward Osborne and his new London Company of Turkey Merchants; with the privileges just granted by the Sultan Murad Khan to the English; with the worthy Levant voyages of Roger Bodenham in the great bark Aucher, and of John Fox, and Lawrence Aldersey, and John Rule; and with hopes from the vast door for Mediterranean trade, which the crushing of the Venetian power at Famagusta in Cyprus, and the alliance made between Elizabeth and the Grand Turk, had just thrown open. So not a word could fall from the Spaniard about the Mediterranean but took root at once in right fertile soil. Besides, Master Edmund Hogan had been on a successful embassy to the Emperor of Morocco; John Hawkins and George Fenner had been to Guinea (and with the latter Mr. Walter Wren, a Bideford man), and had traded there for musk and civet, gold and grain; and African news was becoming almost as valuable as West Indian. Moreover, but two months before had gone from London Captain Hare in the bark Minion, for Brazil, and a company of adventurers with him, with Sheffield hardware, and “Devonshire and Northern kersies,” hollands and “Manchester cottons,” for there was a great opening for English goods by the help of one John Whithall, who had married a Spanish heiress, and had an ingenio and slaves in Santos. (Don't smile, reader, or despise the day of small things, and those who sowed the seed whereof you reap the mighty harvest.) In the meanwhile, Drake had proved not merely the possibility of plundering the American coasts, but of establishing an East Indian trade; Frobisher and Davis, worthy forefathers of our Parrys and Franklins, had begun to bore their way upward through the Northern ice, in search of a passage to China which should avoid the dangers of the Spanish seas; and Anthony Jenkinson, not the least of English travellers, had, in six-and-twenty years of travel in behalf of the Muscovite Company, penetrated into not merely Russia and the Levant, but Persia and Armenia, Bokhara, Tartary, Siberia, and those waste Arctic shores where, thirty years before, the brave Sir Hugh Willoughby,
“In Arzina caught,Perished with all his crew.”
Everywhere English commerce, under the genial sunshine of Elizabeth's wise rule, was spreading and taking root; and as Don Guzman talked with his new friends, he soon saw (for he was shrewd enough) that they belonged to a race which must be exterminated if Spain intended to become (as she did intend) the mistress of the world; and that it was not enough for Spain to have seized in the Pope's name the whole new world, and claimed the exclusive right to sail the seas of America; not enough to have crushed the Hollanders; not enough to have degraded the Venetians into her bankers, and the Genoese into her mercenaries; not enough to have incorporated into herself, with the kingdom of Portugal, the whole East Indian trade of Portugal, while these fierce islanders remained to assert, with cunning policy and texts of Scripture, and, if they failed, with sharp shot and cold steel, free seas and free trade for all the nations upon earth. He saw it, and his countrymen saw it too: and therefore the Spanish Armada came: but of that hereafter. And Don Guzman knew also, by hard experience, that these same islanders, who sat in Salterne's parlor, talking broad Devon through their noses, were no mere counters of money and hucksters of goods: but men who, though they thoroughly hated fighting, and loved making money instead, could fight, upon occasion, after a very dogged and terrible fashion, as well as the bluest blood in Spain; and who sent out their merchant ships armed up to the teeth, and filled with men who had been trained from childhood to use those arms, and had orders to use them without mercy if either Spaniard, Portugal, or other created being dared to stop their money-making. And one evening he waxed quite mad, when, after having civilly enough hinted that if Englishmen came where they had no right to come, they might find themselves sent back again, he was answered by a volley of—
“We'll see that, sir.”
“Depends on who says 'No right.'”
“You found might right,” said another, “when you claimed the Indian seas; we may find right might when we try them.”
“Try them, then, gentlemen, by all means, if it shall so please your worships; and find the sacred flag of Spain as invincible as ever was the Roman eagle.”
“We have, sir. Did you ever hear of Francis Drake?”
“Or of George Fenner and the Portugals at the Azores, one against seven?”
“Or of John Hawkins, at St. Juan d'Ulloa?”
“You are insolent burghers,” said Don Guzman, and rose to go.
“Sir,” said old Salterne, “as you say, we are burghers and plain men, and some of us have forgotten ourselves a little, perhaps; we must beg you to forgive our want of manners, and to put it down to the strength of my wine; for insolent we never meant to be, especially to a noble gentleman and a foreigner.”
But the Don would not be pacified; and walked out, calling himself an ass and a blinkard for having demeaned himself to such a company, forgetting that he had brought it on himself.
Salterne (prompted by the great devil Mammon) came up to him next day, and begged pardon again; promising, moreover, that none of those who had been so rude should be henceforth asked to meet him, if he would deign to honor his house once more. And the Don actually was appeased, and went there the very next evening, sneering at himself the whole time for going.
“Fool that I am! that girl has bewitched me, I believe. Go I must, and eat my share of dirt, for her sake.”
So he went; and, cunningly enough, hinted to old Salterne that he had taken such a fancy to him, and felt so bound by his courtesy and hospitality, that he might not object to tell him things which he would not mention to every one; for that the Spaniards were not jealous of single traders, but of any general attempt to deprive them of their hard-earned wealth: that, however, in the meanwhile, there were plenty of opportunities for one man here and there to enrich himself, etc.
Old Salterne, shrewd as he was, had his weak point, and the Spaniard had touched it; and delighted at this opportunity of learning the mysteries of the Spanish monopoly, he often actually set Rose on to draw out the Don, without a fear (so blind does money make men) lest she might be herself drawn in. For, first, he held it as impossible that she would think of marrying a Popish Spaniard as of marrying the man in the moon; and, next, as impossible that he would think of marrying a burgher's daughter as of marrying a negress; and trusted that the religion of the one, and the family pride of the other, would keep them as separate as beings of two different species. And as for love without marriage, if such a possibility ever crossed him, the thought was rendered absurd; on Rose's part by her virtue, on which the old roan (and rightly) would have staked every farthing he had on earth; and on the Don's part, by a certain human fondness for the continuity of the carotid artery and the parts adjoining, for which (and that not altogether justly, seeing that Don Guzman cared as little for his own life as he did for his neighbor's) Mr. Salterne gave him credit. And so it came to pass, that for weeks and months the merchant's house was the Don's favorite haunt, and he saw the Rose of Torridge daily, and the Rose of Torridge heard him.
And as for her, poor child, she had never seen such a man. He had, or seemed to have, all the high-bred grace of Frank, and yet he was cast in a manlier mould; he had just enough of his nation's proud self-assertion to make a woman bow before him as before a superior, and yet tact enough to let it very seldom degenerate into that boastfulness of which the Spaniards were then so often and so justly accused. He had marvels to tell by flood and field as many and more than Amyas; and he told them with a grace and an eloquence of which modest, simple, old Amyas possessed nothing. Besides, he was on the spot, and the Leighs were not, nor indeed were any of her old lovers; and what could she do but amuse herself with the only person who came to hand?
So thought, in time, more ladies than she; for the country, the north of it at least, was all but bare just then of young gallants, what with the Netherland wars and the Irish wars; and the Spaniard became soon welcome at every house for many a mile round, and made use of his welcome so freely, and received so much unwonted attention from fair young dames, that his head might have been a little turned, and Rose Salterne have thereby escaped, had not Sir Richard delicately given him to understand that in spite of the free and easy manners of English ladies, brothers were just as jealous, and ladies' honors at least as inexpugnable, as in the land of demureness and duennas. Don Guzman took the hint well enough, and kept on good terms with the country gentlemen as with their daughters; and to tell the truth, the cunning soldier of fortune found his account in being intimate with all the ladies he could, in order to prevent old Salterne from fancying that he had any peculiar predilection for Mistress Rose.
Nevertheless, Mr. Salterne's parlor being nearest to him, still remained his most common haunt; where, while he discoursed for hours about
“Antres vast and deserts idle,And of the cannibals that each other eat,Of Anthropophagi, and men whose headsDo grow beneath their shoulders,”
to the boundless satisfaction of poor Rose's fancy, he took care to season his discourse with scraps of mercantile information, which kept the old merchant always expectant and hankering for more, and made it worth his while to ask the Spaniard in again and again.
And his stories, certainly, were worth hearing. He seemed to have been everywhere, and to have seen everything: born in Peru, and sent home to Spain at ten years old; brought up in Italy; a soldier in the Levant; an adventurer to the East Indies; again in America, first in the islands, and then in Mexico. Then back again to Spain, and thence to Rome, and thence to Ireland. Shipwrecked; captive among savages; looking down the craters of volcanoes; hanging about all the courts of Europe; fighting Turks, Indians, lions, elephants, alligators, and what not? At five-and-thirty he had seen enough for three lives, and knew how to make the best of what he had seen.
He had shared, as a lad, in the horrors of the memorable siege of Famagusta, and had escaped, he hardly knew himself how, from the hands of the victorious Turks, and from the certainty (if he escaped being flayed alive or impaled, as most of the captive officers were) of ending his life as a Janissary at the Sultan's court. He had been at the Battle of the Three Kings; had seen Stukely borne down by a hundred lances, unconquered even in death; and had held upon his knee the head of the dying King of Portugal.
And now, as he said to Rose one evening, what had he left on earth, but a heart trampled as hard as the pavement? Whom had he to love? Who loved him? He had nothing for which to live but fame: and even that was denied to him, a prisoner in a foreign land.
Had he no kindred, then? asked pitying Rose.
“My two sisters are in a convent;—they had neither money nor beauty; so they are dead to me. My brother is a Jesuit, so he is dead to me. My father fell by the hands of Indians in Mexico; my mother, a penniless widow, is companion, duenna—whatsoever they may choose to call it—carrying fans and lapdogs for some princess or other there in Seville, of no better blood than herself; and I—devil! I have lost even my sword—and so fares the house of De Soto.”
Don Guzman, of course, intended to be pitied, and pitied he was accordingly. And then he would turn the conversation, and begin telling Italian stories, after the Italian fashion, according to his auditory: the pathetic ones when Rose was present, the racy ones when she was absent; so that Rose had wept over the sorrows of Juliet and Desdemona, and over many another moving tale, long before they were ever enacted on an English stage, and the ribs of the Bideford worthies had shaken to many a jest which Cinthio and Bandello's ghosts must come and make for themselves over again if they wish them to be remembered, for I shall lend them no shove toward immortality.
And so on, and so on. What need of more words? Before a year was out, Rose Salterne was far more in love with Don Guzman than he with her; and both suspected each other's mind, though neither hinted at the truth; she from fear, and he, to tell the truth, from sheer Spanish pride of blood. For he soon began to find out that he must compromise that blood by marrying the heretic burgher's daughter, or all his labor would be thrown away.
He had seen with much astonishment, and then practised with much pleasure, that graceful old English fashion of saluting every lady on the cheek at meeting, which (like the old Dutch fashion of asking young ladies out to feasts without their mothers) used to give such cause of brutal calumny and scandal to the coarse minds of Romish visitors from the Continent; and he had seen, too, fuming with jealous rage, more than one Bideford burgher, redolent of onions, profane in that way the velvet cheek of Rose Salterne.
So, one day, he offered his salute in like wise; but he did it when she was alone; for something within (perhaps a guilty conscience) whispered that it might be hardly politic to make the proffer in her father's presence: however, to his astonishment, he received a prompt though quiet rebuff.
“No, sir; you should know that my cheek is not for you.”
“Why,” said he, stifling his anger, “it seems free enough to every counter-jumper in the town!”
Was it love, or simple innocence, which made her answer apologetically?
“True, Don Guzman; but they are my equals.”
“And I?”
“You are a nobleman, sir; and should recollect that you are one.”
“Well,” said he, forcing a sneer, “it is a strange taste to prefer the shopkeeper!”
“Prefer?” said she, forcing a laugh in her turn; “it is a mere form among us. They are nothing to me, I can tell you.”
“And I, then, less than nothing?”
Rose turned very red; but she had nerve to answer—
“And why should you be anything to me? You have condescended too much, sir, already to us, in giving us many a—many a pleasant evening. You must condescend no further. You wrong yourself, sir, and me too. No, sir; not a step nearer!—I will not! A salute between equals means nothing: but between you and me—I vow, sir, if you do not leave me this moment, I will complain to my father.”
“Do so, madam! I care as little for your father's anger, as you for my misery.”
“Cruel!” cried Rose, trembling from head to foot.
“I love you, madam!” cried he, throwing himself at her feet. “I adore you! Never mention differences of rank to me more; for I have forgotten them; forgotten all but love, all but you, madam! My light, my lodestar, my princess, my goddess! You see where my pride is gone; remember I plead as a suppliant, a beggar—though one who may be one day a prince, a king! ay, and a prince now, a very Lucifer of pride to all except to you; to you a wretch who grovels at your feet, and cries, 'Have mercy on me, on my loneliness, my homelessness, my friendlessness.' Ah, Rose (madam I should have said, forgive the madness of my passion), you know not the heart which you break. Cold Northerns, you little dream how a Spaniard can love. Love? Worship, rather; as I worship you, madam; as I bless the captivity which brought me the sight of you, and the ruin which first made me rich. Is it possible, saints and Virgin! do my own tears deceive my eyes, or are there tears, too, in those radiant orbs?”
“Go, sir!” cried poor Rose, recovering herself suddenly; “and let me never see you more.” And, as a last chance for life, she darted out of the room.
“Your slave obeys you, madam, and kisses your hands and feet forever and a day,” said the cunning Spaniard, and drawing himself up, walked serenely out of the house; while she, poor fool, peeped after him out of her window upstairs, and her heart sank within her as she watched his jaunty and careless air.
How much of that rhapsody of his was honest, how much premeditated, I cannot tell: though she, poor child, began to fancy that it was all a set speech, when she found that he had really taken her at her word, and set foot no more within her father's house. So she reproached herself for the cruelest of women; settled, that if he died, she should be his murderess; watched for him to pass at the window, in hopes that he might look up, and then hid herself in terror the moment he appeared round the corner; and so forth, and so forth:—one love-making is very like another, and has been so, I suppose, since that first blessed marriage in Paradise, when Adam and Eve made no love at all, but found it ready-made for them from heaven; and really it is fiddling while Rome is burning, to spend more pages over the sorrows of poor little Rose Salterne, while the destinies of Europe are hanging on the marriage between Elizabeth and Anjou: and Sir Humphrey Gilbert is stirring heaven and earth, and Devonshire, of course, as the most important portion of the said earth, to carry out his dormant patent, which will give to England in due time (we are not jesting now) Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Canada, and the Northern States; and to Humphrey Gilbert himself something better than a new world, namely another world, and a crown of glory therein which never fades away.
“Misguided, rash, intruding fool, farewell!Thou see'st to be too busy is some danger.”Hamlet.
It is the spring of 1582-3. The gray March skies are curdling hard and high above black mountain peaks. The keen March wind is sweeping harsh and dry across a dreary sheet of bog, still red and yellow with the stains of winter frost. One brown knoll alone breaks the waste, and on it a few leafless wind-clipt oaks stretch their moss-grown arms, like giant hairy spiders, above a desolate pool which crisps and shivers in the biting breeze, while from beside its brink rises a mournful cry, and sweeps down, faint and fitful, amid the howling of the wind.
Along the brink of the bog, picking their road among crumbling rocks and green spongy springs, a company of English soldiers are pushing fast, clad cap-a-pie in helmet and quilted jerkin, with arquebus on shoulder, and pikes trailing behind them; stern steadfast men, who, two years since, were working the guns at Smerwick fort, and have since then seen many a bloody fray, and shall see more before they die. Two captains ride before them on shaggy ponies, the taller in armor, stained and rusted with many a storm and fray, the other in brilliant inlaid cuirass and helmet, gaudy sash and plume, and sword hilt glittering with gold, a quaint contrast enough to the meager garron which carries him and his finery. Beside them, secured by a cord which a pikeman has fastened to his own wrist, trots a bare-legged Irish kerne, whose only clothing is his ragged yellow mantle, and the unkempt “glib” of hair, through which his eyes peer out, right and left, in mingled fear and sullenness. He is the guide of the company, in their hunt after the rebel Baltinglas; and woe to him if he play them false.
“A pleasant country, truly, Captain Raleigh,” says the dingy officer to the gay one. “I wonder how, having once escaped from it to Whitehall, you have the courage to come back and spoil that gay suit with bog-water and mud.”
“A very pleasant country, my friend Amyas; what you say in jest, I say in earnest.”
“Hillo! Our tastes have changed places. I am sick of it already, as you foretold. Would Heaven that I could hear of some adventure Westward-ho! and find these big bones swinging in a hammock once more. Pray what has made you so suddenly in love with bog and rock, that you come back to tramp them with us? I thought you had spied out the nakedness of the land long ago.”
“Bog and rock? Nakedness of the land? What is needed here but prudence and skill, justice and law? This soil, see, is fat enough, if men were here to till it. These rocks—who knows what minerals they may hold? I hear of gold and jewels found already in divers parts; and Daniel, my brother Humphrey's German assayer, assures me that these rocks are of the very same kind as those which yield the silver in Peru. Tut, man! if her gracious majesty would but bestow on me some few square miles of this same wilderness, in seven years' time I would make it blossom like the rose, by God's good help.”
“Humph! I should be more inclined to stay here, then.”
“So you shall, and be my agent, if you will, to get in my mine-rents and my corn-rents, and my fishery-rents, eh? Could you keep accounts, old knight of the bear's-paw?”
“Well enough for such short reckonings as yours would be, on the profit side at least. No, no—I'd sooner carry lime all my days from Cauldy to Bideford, than pass another twelve-month in the land of Ire, among the children of wrath. There is a curse upon the face of the earth, I believe.”
“There is no curse upon it, save the old one of man's sin—'Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to thee.' But if you root up the thorns and thistles, Amyas, I know no fiend who can prevent your growing wheat instead; and if you till the ground like a man, you plough and barrow away nature's curse, and other fables of the schoolmen beside,” added he, in that daring fashion which afterwards obtained for him (and never did good Christian less deserve it) the imputation of atheism.
“It is sword and bullet, I think, that are needed here, before plough and harrow, to clear away some of the curse. Until a few more of these Irish lords are gone where the Desmonds are, there is no peace for Ireland.”
“Humph! not so far wrong, I fear. And yet—Irish lords? These very traitors are better English blood than we who hunt them down. When Yeo here slew the Desmond the other day, he no more let out a drop of Irish blood, than if he had slain the lord deputy himself.”
“His blood be on his own head,” said Yeo, “He looked as wild a savage as the worst of them, more shame to him; and the ancient here had nigh cut off his arm before he told us who he was: and then, your worship, having a price upon his head, and like to bleed to death too—”
“Enough, enough, good fellow,” said Raleigh. “Thou hast done what was given thee to do. Strange, Amyas, is it not? Noble Normans sunk into savages—Hibernis ipsis hiberniores! Is there some uncivilizing venom in the air?”
“Some venom, at least, which makes English men traitors. But the Irish themselves are well enough, if their tyrants would let them be. See now, what more faithful liegeman has her majesty than the Inchiquin, who, they say, is Prince of Themond, and should be king of all Ireland, if every man had his right?”
“Don't talk of rights in the land of wrongs, man. But the Inchiquin knows well that the true Irish Esau has no worse enemy than his supplanter, the Norman Jacob. And yet, Amyas are even these men worse than we might be, if we had been bred up masters over the bodies and souls of men, in some remote land where law and order had never come? Look at this Desmond, brought up a savage among savages, a Papist among Papists, a despot among slaves; a thousand easy maidens deeming it honor to serve his pleasure, a thousand wild ruffians deeming it piety to fulfil his revenge: and let him that is without sin among us cast the first stone.”
“Ay,” went on Raleigh to himself, as the conversation dropped. “What hadst thou been, Raleigh, hadst thou been that Desmond whose lands thou now desirest? What wilt thou be when thou hast them? Will thy children sink downwards, as these noble barons sank? Will the genius of tyranny and falsehood find soil within thy heart to grow and ripen fruit? What guarantee hast thou for doing better here than those who went before thee? And yet, cannot I do justice and love mercy? Can I not establish plantations, build and sow, and make the desert valleys laugh with corn? Shall I not have my Spenser with me, to fill me with all noble thoughts, and raise my soul to his heroic pitch? Is not this true knight-errantry, to redeem to peace and use, and to the glory of that glorious queen whom God has given to me, a generous soil and a more generous race? Trustful and tenderhearted they are—none more; and if they be fickle and passionate, will not that very softness of temper, which makes them so easily led to evil, make them as easy to be led towards good? Yes—here, away from courts, among a people who should bless me as their benefactor and deliverer—what golden days might be mine! And yet—is this but another angel's mask from that same cunning fiend ambition's stage? And will my house be indeed the house of God, the foundations of which are loyalty, and its bulwarks righteousness, and not the house of fame, whose walls are of the soap-bubble, and its floor a sea of glass mingled with fire? I would be good and great—When will the day come when I shall be content to be good, and yet not great, like this same simple Leigh, toiling on by my side to do his duty, with no more thought for the morrow than the birds of God? Greatness? I have tasted that cup within the last twelve months; do I not know that it is sweet in the mouth, but bitter in the belly? Greatness? And was not Essex great, and John of Austria great, and Desmond great, whose race, but three short years ago, had stood for ages higher than I shall ever hope to climb—castles, and lands, and slaves by thousands, and five hundred gentlemen of his name, who had vowed to forswear God before they forswore him and well have they kept their vow! And now, dead in a turf-hovel, like a coney in a burrow! Leigh, what noise was that?”
“An Irish howl, I fancied: but it came from off the bog; it may be only a plover's cry.”
“Something not quite right, sir captain, to my mind,” said the ancient. “They have ugly stories here of pucks and banshees, and what not of ghosts. There it was again, wailing just like a woman. They say the banshee cried all night before Desmond was slain.”
“Perhaps, then, this one may be crying for Baltinglas; for his turn is likely to come next—not that I believe in such old wives' tales.”
“Shamus, my man,” said Amyas to the guide, “do you hear that cry in the bog?”
The guide put on the most stolid of faces, and answered in broken English—
“Shamus hear naught. Perhaps—what you call him?—fishing in ta pool.”
“An otter, he means, and I believe he is right. Stay, no! Did you not hear it then, Shamus? It was a woman's voice.”
“Shamus is shick in his ears ever since Christmas.”
“Shamus will go after Desmond if he lies,” said Amyas. “Ancient, we had better send a few men to see what it is; there may be a poor soul taken by robbers, or perhaps starving to death, as I have seen many a one.”
“And I too, poor wretches; and by no fault of their own or ours either: but if their lords will fall to quarrelling, and then drive each other's cattle, and waste each other's lands, sir, you know—”
“I know,” said Amyas, impatiently; “why dost not take the men, and go?”
“Cry you mercy, noble captain, but—I fear nothing born of woman.”
“Well, what of that?” said Amyas, with a smile.
“But these pucks, sir. The wild Irish do say that they haunt the pools; and they do no manner of harm, sir, when you are coming up to them; but when you are past, sir, they jump on your back like to apes, sir,—and who can tackle that manner of fiend?”
“Why, then, by thine own showing, ancient,” said Raleigh, “thou may'st go and see all safely enough, and then if the puck jumps on thee as thou comest back, just run in with him here, and I'll buy him of thee for a noble; or thou may'st keep him in a cage, and make money in London by showing him for a monster.”
“Good heavens forefend, Captain Raleigh! but you talk rashly! But if I must, Captain Leigh—
'Where duty callsTo brazen walls,How base the slave who flinches'
Lads, who'll follow me?”
“Thou askest for volunteers, as if thou wert to lead a forlorn hope. Pull away at the usquebaugh, man, and swallow Dutch courage, since thine English is oozed away. Stay, I'll go myself.”
“And I with you,” said Raleigh. “As the queen's true knight-errant, I am bound to be behindhand in no adventure. Who knows but we may find a wicked magician, just going to cut off the head of some saffron-mantled princess?” and he dismounted.
“Oh, sirs, sirs, to endanger your precious—”
“Pooh,” said Raleigh. “I wear an amulet, and have a spell of art-magic at my tongue's end, whereby, sir ancient, neither can a ghost see me, nor I see them. Come with us, Yeo, the Desmond-slayer, and we will shame the devil, or be shamed by him.”
“He may shame me, sir, but he will never frighten me,” quoth Yeo; “but the bog, captains?”
“Tut! Devonshire men, and heath-trotters born, and not know our way over a peat moor!”
And the three strode away.
They splashed and scrambled for some quarter of a mile to the knoll, while the cry became louder and louder as they neared.
“That's neither ghost nor otter, sirs, but a true Irish howl, as Captain Leigh said; and I'll warrant Master Shamus knew as much long ago,” said Yeo.
And in fact, they could now hear plainly the “Ochone, Ochonorie,” of some wild woman; and scrambling over the boulders of the knoll, in another minute came full upon her.
She was a young girl, sluttish and unkempt, of course, but fair enough: her only covering, as usual, was the ample yellow mantle. There she sat upon a stone, tearing her black dishevelled hair, and every now and then throwing up her head, and bursting into a long mournful cry, “for all the world,” as Yeo said, “like a dumb four-footed hound, and not a Christian soul.”
On her knees lay the head of a man of middle age, in the long soutane of a Romish priest. One look at the attitude of his limbs told them that he was dead.
The two paused in awe; and Raleigh's spirit, susceptible of all poetical images, felt keenly that strange scene,—the bleak and bitter sky, the shapeless bog, the stunted trees, the savage girl alone with the corpse in that utter desolation. And as she bent her head over the still face, and called wildly to him who heard her not, and then, utterly unmindful of the intruders, sent up again that dreary wail into the dreary air, they felt a sacred horror, which almost made them turn away, and leave her unquestioned: but Yeo, whose nerves were of tougher fibre, asked quietly—
“Shall I go and search the fellow, captain?”
“Better, I think,” said Amyas.
Raleigh went gently to the girl, and spoke to her in English. She looked up at him, his armor and his plume, with wide and wondering eyes, and then shook her head, and returned to her lamentation.
Raleigh gently laid his hand on her arm, and lifted her up, while Yeo and Amyas bent over the corpse.
It was the body of a large and coarse-featured man, but wasted and shrunk as if by famine to a very skeleton. The hands and legs were cramped up, and the trunk bowed together, as if the man had died of cold or famine. Yeo drew back the clothes from the thin bosom, while the girl screamed and wept, but made no effort to stop him.
“Ask her who it is? Yeo, you know a little Irish,” said Amyas.
He asked, but the girl made no answer. “The stubborn jade won't tell, of course, sir. If she were but a man, I'd make her soon enough.”
“Ask her who killed him?”
“No one, she says; and I believe she says true, for I can find no wound. The man has been starved, sirs, as I am a sinful man. God help him, though he is a priest; and yet he seems full enough down below. What's here? A big pouch, sirs, stuffed full of somewhat.”
“Hand it hither.”
The two opened the pouch; papers, papers, but no scrap of food. Then a parchment. They unrolled it.
“Latin,” said Amyas; “you must construe, Don Scholar.”
“Is it possible?” said Raleigh, after reading a moment. “This is indeed a prize! This is Saunders himself!”
Yeo sprang up from the body as if he had touched an adder. “Nick Saunders, the Legacy, sir?”
“Nicholas Saunders, the legate.”
“The villain! why did not he wait for me to have the comfort of killing him? Dog!” and he kicked the corpse with his foot.
“Quiet! quiet! Remember the poor girl,” said Amyas, as she shrieked at the profanation, while Raleigh went on, half to himself:
“Yes, this is Saunders. Misguided fool, and this is the end! To this thou hast come with thy plotting and thy conspiring, thy lying and thy boasting, consecrated banners and Pope's bulls, Agnus Deis and holy waters, the blessing of all saints and angels, and thy Lady of the Immaculate Conception! Thou hast called on the heavens to judge between thee and us, and here is their answer! What is that in his hand, Amyas? Give it me. A pastoral epistle to the Earl of Ormond, and all nobles of the realm of Ireland; 'To all who groan beneath the loathsome tyranny of an illegitimate adulteress, etc., Nicholas Saunders, by the grace of God, Legate, etc.' Bah! and this forsooth was thy last meditation! Incorrigible pedant! Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni!”
He ran his eye through various other documents, written in the usual strain: full of huge promises from the Pope and the king of Spain; frantic and filthy slanders against Elizabeth, Burghley, Leicester, Essex (the elder), Sidney, and every great and good man (never mind of which party) who then upheld the commonweal; bombastic attempts to terrify weak consciences, by denouncing endless fire against those who opposed the true faith; fulsome ascriptions of martyrdom and sanctity to every rebel and traitor who had been hanged for the last twenty years; wearisome arguments about the bull In Caena Domini, Elizabeth's excommunication, the nullity of English law, the sacred duty of rebellion, the right to kill a prince impenitently heretical, and the like insanities and villainies, which may be read at large in Camden, the Phoenix Britannicus, Fox's Martyrs, or, surest of all, in the writings of the worthies themselves.
With a gesture of disgust, Raleigh crammed the foul stuff back again into the pouch. Taking it with them, they walked back to the company, and then remounting, marched away once more towards the lands of the Desmonds; and the girl was left alone with the dead.
An hour had passed, when another Englishman was standing by the wailing girl, and round him a dozen shockheaded kernes, skene on thigh and javelin in hand, were tossing about their tawny rags, and adding their lamentations to those of the lonely watcher.
The Englishman was Eustace Leigh; a layman still, but still at his old work. By two years of intrigue and labor from one end of Ireland to the other, he had been trying to satisfy his conscience for rejecting “the higher calling” of the celibate; for mad hopes still lurked within that fiery heart. His brow was wrinkled now; his features harshened; the scar upon his face, and the slight distortion which accompanied it, was hidden by a bushy beard from all but himself; and he never forgot it for a day, nor forgot who had given it to him.
He had been with Desmond, wandering in moor and moss for many a month in danger of his life; and now he was on his way to James Fitz-Eustace, Lord Baltinglas, to bring him the news of Desmond's death; and with him a remnant of the clan, who were either too stout-hearted, or too desperately stained with crime, to seek peace from the English, and, as their fellows did, find it at once and freely.
There Eustace stood, looking down on all that was left of the most sacred personage of Ireland; the man who, as he once had hoped, was to regenerate his native land, and bring the proud island of the West once more beneath that gentle yoke, in which united Christendom labored for the commonweal of the universal Church. There he was, and with him all Eustace's dreams, in the very heart of that country which he had vowed, and believed as he vowed, was ready to rise in arms as one man, even to the baby at the breast (so he had said), in vengeance against the Saxon heretic, and sweep the hated name of Englishman into the deepest abysses of the surge which walled her coasts; with Spain and the Pope to back him, and the wealth of the Jesuits at his command; in the midst of faithful Catholics, valiant soldiers, noblemen who had pledged themselves to die for the cause, serfs who worshipped him as a demigod—starved to death in a bog! It was a pretty plain verdict on the reasonableness of his expectations; but not to Eustace Leigh.
It was a failure, of course; but it was an accident; indeed, to have been expected, in a wicked world whose prince and master, as all knew, was the devil himself; indeed, proof of the righteousness of the cause—for when had the true faith been other than persecuted and trampled under foot? If one came to think of it with eyes purified from the tears of carnal impatience, what was it but a glorious martyrdom?
“Blest Saunders!” murmured Eustace Leigh; “let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end he like this! Ora pro me, most excellent martyr, while I dig thy grave upon this lonely moor, to wait there for thy translation to one of those stately shrines, which, cemented by the blood of such as thee, shall hereafter rise restored toward heaven, to make this land once more 'The Isle of Saints.'”
The corpse was buried; a few prayers said hastily; and Eustace Leigh was away again, not now to find Baltinglas; for it was more than his life was worth. The girl had told him of the English soldiers who had passed, and he knew that they would reach the earl probably before he did. The game was up; all was lost. So he retraced his steps, as a desperate resource, to the last place where he would be looked for, and after a month of disguising, hiding, and other expedients, found himself again in his native county of Devon, while Fitz-Eustace Viscount Baltinglas had taken ship for Spain, having got little by his famous argument to Ormond in behalf of his joining the Church of Rome, “Had not thine ancestor, blessed Thomas of Canterbury, died for the Church of Rome, thou hadst never been Earl of Ormond.” The premises were certainly sounder than those of his party were wont to be; for it was to expiate the murder of that turbulent hero that the Ormond lands had been granted by Henry II.: but as for the conclusion therefrom, it was much on a par with the rest.
And now let us return to Raleigh and Amyas, as they jog along their weary road. They have many things to talk of; for it is but three days since they met.
Amyas, as you see, is coming fast into Raleigh's old opinion of Ireland. Raleigh, under the inspiration of a possible grant of Desmond's lands, looks on bogs and rocks transfigured by his own hopes and fancy, as if by the glory of a rainbow. He looked at all things so, noble fellow, even thirty years after, when old, worn out, and ruined; well for him had it been otherwise, and his heart had grown old with his head! Amyas, who knows nothing about Desmond's lands, is puzzled at the change.
“Why, what is this, Raleigh? You are like children sitting in the market-place, and nothing pleases you. You wanted to get to Court, and you have got there; and are lord and master, I hear, or something very like it, already—and as soon as fortune stuffs your mouth full of sweet-meats, do you turn informer on her?”
Raleigh laughed insignificantly, but was silent.
“And how is your friend Mr. Secretary Spenser, who was with us at Smerwick?”
“Spenser? He has thriven even as I have; and he has found, as I have, that in making one friend at Court you make ten foes; but 'Oderint dum metuant' is no more my motto than his, Leigh. I want to be great—great I am already, they say, if princes' favor can swell the frog into an ox; but I want to be liked, loved—I want to see people smile when I enter.”
“So they do, I'll warrant,” said Amyas.
“So do hyenas,” said Raleigh; “grin because they are hungry, and I may throw them a bone; I'll throw you one now, old lad, or rather a good sirloin of beef, for the sake of your smile. That's honest, at least, I'll warrant, whosoever's else is not. Have you heard of my brother Humphrey's new project?”
“How should I hear anything in this waste howling wilderness?”
“Kiss hands to the wilderness, then, and come with me to Newfoundland!”
“You to Newfoundland?”
“Yes. I to Newfoundland, unless my little matter here is settled at once. Gloriana don't know it, and sha'n't till I'm off. She'd send me to the Tower, I think, if she caught me playing truant. I could hardly get leave to come hither; but I must out, and try my fortune. I am over ears in debt already, and sick of courts and courtiers. Humphrey must go next spring and take possession of his kingdom beyond seas, or his patent expires; and with him I go, and you too, my circumnavigating giant.”
And then Raleigh expounded to Amyas the details of the great Newfoundland scheme, which whoso will may read in the pages of Hakluyt.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh's half-brother, held a patent for “planting” the lands of Newfoundland and “Meta Incognita” (Labrador). He had attempted a voyage thither with Raleigh in 1578, whereof I never could find any news, save that he came back again, after a heavy brush with some Spanish ships (in which his best captain, Mr. Morgan, was killed), having done nothing, and much impaired his own estate: but now he had collected a large sum; Sir Gilbert Peckham of London, Mr. Hayes of South Devon, and various other gentlemen, of whom more hereafter, had adventured their money; and a considerable colony was to be sent out the next year, with miners, assayers, and, what was more, Parmenius Budaeus, Frank's old friend, who had come to England full of thirst to see the wonders of the New World; and over and above this, as Raleigh told Amyas in strictest secrecy, Adrian Gilbert, Humphrey's brother, was turning every stone at Court for a patent of discovery in the North-West; and this Newfoundland colony, though it was to produce gold, silver, merchandise, and what not, was but a basis of operations, a halfway house from whence to work out the North-West passage to the Indies—that golden dream, as fatal to English valor as the Guiana one to Spanish—and yet hardly, hardly to be regretted, when we remember the seamanship, the science, the chivalry, the heroism, unequalled in the history of the English nation, which it has called forth among those our later Arctic voyagers, who have combined the knight-errantry of the middle age with the practical prudence of the modern, and dared for duty more than Cortez or Pizarro dared for gold.
Amyas, simple fellow, took all in greedily; he knew enough of the dangers of the Magellan passage to appreciate the boundless value of a road to the East Indies which would (as all supposed then) save half the distance, and be as it were a private possession of the English, safe from Spanish interference; and he listened reverently to Sir Humphrey's quaint proofs, half true, half fantastic, of such a passage, which Raleigh detailed to him—of the Primum Mobile, and its diurnal motion from east to west, in obedience to which the sea-current flowed westward ever round the Cape of Good Hope, and being unable to pass through the narrow strait between South America and the Antarctic Continent, rushed up the American shore, as the Gulf Stream, and poured northwestward between Greenland and Labrador towards Cathay and India; of that most crafty argument of Sir Humphrey's—how Aristotle in his book “De Mundo,” and Simon Gryneus in his annotations thereon, declare that the world (the Old World) is an island, compassed by that which Homer calls the river Oceanus; ergo, the New World is an island also, and there is a North-West passage; of the three brothers (names unknown) who had actually made the voyage, and named what was afterwards called Davis's Strait after themselves; of the Indians who were cast ashore in Germany in the reign of Frederic Barbarossa who, as Sir Humphrey had learnedly proved per modum tollendi, could have come only by the North-West; and above all, of Salvaterra, the Spaniard, who in 1568 had told Sir Henry Sidney (Philip's father), there in Ireland, how he had spoken with a Mexican friar named Urdaneta, who had himself come from Mar del Zur (the Pacific) into Germany by that very North-West passage; at which last Amyas shook his head, and said that friars were liars, and seeing believing; “but if you must needs have an adventure, you insatiable soul you, why not try for the golden city of Manoa?”
“Manoa?” asked Raleigh, who had heard, as most had, dim rumors of the place. “What do you know of it?”
Whereon Amyas told him all that he had gathered from the Spaniard; and Raleigh, in his turn, believed every word.
“Humph!” said he after a long silence. “To find that golden emperor; offer him help and friendship from the queen of England; defend him against the Spaniards; if we became strong enough, conquer back all Peru from the Popish tyrants, and reinstate him on the throne of the Incas, with ourselves for his body-guard, as the Norman Varangians were to the effeminate emperors of Byzant—Hey, Amyas? You would make a gallant chieftain of Varangs. We'll do it, lad!”
“We'll try,” said Amyas; “but we must be quick, for there's one Berreo sworn to carry out the quest to the death; and if the Spaniards once get thither, their plan of works will be much more like Pizarro's than like yours; and by the time we come, there will be neither gold nor city left.”
“Nor Indians either, I'll warrant the butchers; but, lad, I am promised to Humphrey; I have a bark fitting out already, and all I have, and more, adventured in her; so Manoa must wait.”
“It will wait well enough, if the Spaniards prosper no better on the Amazon than they have done; but must I come with you? To tell the truth, I am quite shore-sick, and to sea I must go. What will my mother say?”
“I'll manage thy mother,” said Raleigh; and so he did; for, to cut a long story short, he went back the month after, and he not only took home letters from Amyas to his mother, but so impressed on that good lady the enormous profits and honors to be derived from Meta Incognita, and (which was most true) the advantage to any young man of sailing with such a general as Humphrey Gilbert, most pious and most learned of seamen and of cavaliers, beloved and honored above all his compeers by Queen Elizabeth, that she consented to Amyas's adventuring in the voyage some two hundred pounds which had come to him as his share of prize-money, after the ever memorable circumnavigation. For Mrs. Leigh, be it understood, was no longer at Burrough Court. By Frank's persuasion, she had let the old place, moved up to London with her eldest son, and taken for herself a lodging somewhere by Palace Stairs, which looked out upon the silver Thames (for Thames was silver then), with its busy ferries and gliding boats, across to the pleasant fields of Lambeth, and the Archbishop's palace, and the wooded Surrey hills; and there she spent her peaceful days, close to her Frank and to the Court. Elizabeth would have had her re-enter it, offering her a small place in the household: but she declined, saying that she was too old and heart-weary for aught but prayer. So by prayer she lived, under the sheltering shadow of the tall minster where she went morn and even to worship, and to entreat for the two in whom her heart was bound up; and Frank slipped in every day if but for five minutes, and brought with him Spenser, or Raleigh, or Dyer, or Budaeus or sometimes Sidney's self: and there was talk of high and holy things, of which none could speak better than could she; and each guest went from that hallowed room a humbler and yet a loftier man. So slipped on the peaceful months, and few and far between came Irish letters, for Ireland was then farther from Westminster than is the Black Sea now; but those were days in which wives and mothers had learned (as they have learned once more, sweet souls!) to walk by faith and not by sight for those they love: and Mrs. Leigh was content (though when was she not content?) to hear that Amyas was winning a good report as a brave and prudent officer, sober, just, and faithful, beloved and obeyed alike by English soldiers and Irish kernes.
Those two years, and the one which followed, were the happiest which she had known since her husband's death. But the cloud was fast coming up the horizon, though she saw it not. A little longer, and the sun would be hid for many a wintry day.
Amyas went to Plymouth (with Yeo, of course, at his heels), and there beheld, for the first time, the majestic countenance of the philosopher of Compton castle. He lodged with Drake, and found him not over-sanguine as to the success of the voyage.
“For learning and manners, Amyas, there's not his equal; and the queen may well love him, and Devon be proud of him: but book-learning is not business: book-learning didn't get me round the world; book-learning didn't make Captain Hawkins, nor his father neither, the best ship-builders from Hull to Cadiz; and book-learning, I very much fear, won't plant Newfoundland.”
However, the die was cast, and the little fleet of five sail assembled in Cawsand Bay. Amyas was to go as a gentleman adventurer on board of Raleigh's bark; Raleigh himself, however, at the eleventh hour, had been forbidden by the queen to leave England. Ere they left, Sir Humphrey Gilbert's picture was painted by some Plymouth artist, to be sent up to Elizabeth in answer to a letter and a gift sent by Raleigh, which, as a specimen of the men and of the time, I here transcribe*—
“BROTHER—I have sent you a token from her Majesty, an anchor guided by a lady, as you see. And further, her Highness willed me to send you word, that she wisheth you as great good hap and safety to your ship as if she were there in person, desiring you to have care of yourself as of that which she tendereth and, therefore, for her sake, you must provide for it accordingly. Furthermore, she commandeth that you leave your picture with her. For the rest I leave till our meeting, or to the report of the bearer, who would needs be the messenger of this good news. So I commit you to the will and protection of God, who send us such life and death as he shall please, or hath appointed.
“Richmond, this Friday morning,
“Your true Brother,
“W. RALEIGH.”