CHAPTER XXIX
HOW THE VIRGINIA FLEET WAS STOPPED BY THE QUEEN'S COMMAND
"The daughter of debate, That discord still doth sow, Shall reap no gain where former rule Hath taught still peace to grow. No foreign banish'd wight Shall anker in this port Our realm it brooks no stranger's force; Let them elsewhere resort."
QU. ELIZABETH. 1569.
And now Amyas is settled quietly at home again; and for the next twelvemonths little passes worthy of record in these pages. Yeo has installedhimself as major domo, with no very definite functions, save those ofwalking about everywhere at Amyas's heels like a lank gray wolf-hound,and spending his evenings at the fireside, as a true old sailordoes, with his Bible on his knee, and his hands busy in manufacturingnumberless nicknacks, useful and useless, for every member of thefamily, and above all for Ayacanora, whom he insults every week byhumbly offering some toy only fit for a child; at which she pouts, andis reproved by Mrs. Leigh, and then takes the gift, and puts it awaynever to look at it again. For her whole soul is set upon beingan English maid; and she runs about all day long after Mrs. Leigh,insisting upon learning the mysteries of the kitchen and the still-room,and, above all, the art of making clothes for herself, and at last foreverybody in Northam. For first, she will be a good housewife, like Mrs.Leigh; and next a new idea has dawned on her: that of helping others.To the boundless hospitality of the savage she has been of courseaccustomed: but to give to those who can give nothing in return, is anew thought. She sees Mrs. Leigh spending every spare hour in workingfor the poor, and visiting them in their cottages. She sees Amyas, afterpublic thanks in church for his safe return, giving away money, food,what not, in Northam, Appledore, and Bideford; buying cottages andmaking them almshouses for worn-out mariners; and she is told thatthis is his thank-offering to God. She is puzzled; her notion ofa thank-offering was rather that of the Indians, and indeed of theSpaniards,--sacrifices of human victims, and the bedizenment of theGreat Spirit's sanctuary with their skulls and bones. Not that Amyas,as a plain old-fashioned churchman, was unmindful of the good oldinstinctive rule, that something should be given to the Church itself;for the vicar of Northam was soon resplendent with a new surplice, andwhat was more, the altar with a splendid flagon and salver of plate(lost, I suppose, in the civil wars) which had been taken in the greatgalleon. Ayacanora could understand that: but the almsgiving she couldnot, till Mrs. Leigh told her, in her simple way, that whosoever gaveto the poor, gave to the Great Spirit; for the Great Spirit was in them,and in Ayacanora too, if she would be quiet and listen to him, insteadof pouting, and stamping, and doing nothing but what she liked. And thepoor child took in that new thought like a child, and worked her fingersto the bone for all the old dames in Northam, and went about with Mrs.Leigh, lovely and beloved, and looked now and then out from under herlong black eyelashes to see if she was winning a smile from Amyas. Andon the day on which she won one, she was good all day; and on the day onwhich she did not, she was thoroughly naughty, and would have worn outthe patience of any soul less chastened than Mrs. Leigh's. But as forthe pomp and glory of her dress, there was no keeping it within bounds;and she swept into church each Sunday bedizened in Spanish finery, withsuch a blaze and rustle, that the good vicar had to remonstrate humblywith Mrs. Leigh on the disturbance which she caused to the eyes andthoughts of all his congregation. To which Ayacanora answered, that shewas not thinking about them, and they need not think about her; and thatif the Piache (in plain English, the conjuror), as she supposed, wanteda present, he might have all her Mexican feather-dresses; she wouldnot wear them--they were wild Indian things, and she was an Englishmaid--but they would just do for a Piache; and so darted upstairs,brought them down, and insisted so stoutly on arraying the vicartherein, that the good man beat a swift retreat. But he carried offwith him, nevertheless, one of the handsomest mantles, which, insteadof selling it, he converted cleverly enough into an altar-cloth; and forseveral years afterwards, the communion at Northam was celebrated upon ablaze of emerald, azure, and crimson, which had once adorned the sinfulbody of some Aztec prince.
So Ayacanora flaunted on; while Amyas watched her, half amused, half insimple pride of her beauty; and looked around at all gazers, as much asto say, "See what a fine bird I have brought home!"
Another great trouble which she gave Mrs. Leigh was her conduct to theladies of the neighborhood. They came, of course, one and all, not onlyto congratulate Mrs. Leigh, but to get a peep at the fair savage; butthe fair savage snubbed them all round, from the vicar's wife to LadyGrenville herself, so effectually, that few attempted a second visit.
Mrs. Leigh remonstrated, and was answered by floods of tears. "They onlycome to stare at a poor wild Indian girl, and she would not be made ashow of. She was like a queen once, and every one obeyed her; but hereevery one looked down upon her." But when Mrs. Leigh asked her, whethershe would sooner go back to the forests, the poor girl clung to her likea baby, and entreated not to be sent away, "She would sooner be a slavein the kitchen here, than go back to the bad people."
And so on, month after month of foolish storm and foolish sunshine; butshe was under the shadow of one in whom was neither storm nor sunshine,but a perpetual genial calm of soft gray weather, which tempered downto its own peacefulness all who entered its charmed influence; and theoutbursts grew more and more rare, and Ayacanora more and more rational,though no more happy, day by day.
And one by one small hints came out which made her identity certain, atleast in the eyes of Mrs. Leigh and Yeo. After she had become familiarwith the sight of houses, she gave them to understand that she had seensuch things before. The red cattle, too, seemed not unknown to her;the sheep puzzled her for some time, and at last she gave Mrs. Leigh tounderstand that they were too small.
"Ah, madam," quoth Yeo, who caught at every straw, "it is because shehas been accustomed to those great camel sheep (llamas they call them)in Peru."
But Ayacanora's delight was a horse. The use of tame animals at all wasa daily wonder to her; but that a horse could be ridden was the crowningmiracle of all; and a horse she would ride, and after plaguing Amyas forone in vain (for he did not want to break her pretty neck), she proposedconfidentially to Yeo to steal one, and foiled in that, went to thevicar and offered to barter all her finery for his broken-kneed pony.But the vicar was too honest to drive so good a bargain, and the matterended, in Amyas buying her a jennet, which she learned in a fortnight toride like a very Gaucho.
And now awoke another curious slumbering reminiscence. For one day, atLady Grenville's invitation, the whole family went over to Stow; Mrs.Leigh soberly on a pillion behind the groom, Ayacanora cantering roundand round upon the moors like a hound let loose, and trying to makeAmyas ride races with her. But that night, sleeping in the same roomwith Mrs. Leigh, she awoke shrieking, and sobbed out a long story howthe "Old ape of Panama," her especial abomination, had come to herbedside and dragged her forth into the courtyard, and how she hadmounted a horse and ridden with an Indian over great moors and highmountains down into a dark wood, and there the Indian and the horsesvanished, and she found herself suddenly changed once more into alittle savage child. So strong was the impression, that she could not bepersuaded that the thing had not happened, if not that night, at leastsome night or other. So Mrs. Leigh at last believed the same, and toldthe company next morning in her pious way how the Lord had revealed ina vision to the poor child who she was, and how she had been exposed inthe forests by her jealous step-father, and neither Sir Richard nor hiswife could doubt but that hers was the true solution. It was probablethat Don Xararte, though his home was Panama, had been often at Quito,for Yeo had seen him come on board the Lima ship at Guayaquil, oneof the nearest ports. This would explain her having been found by theIndians beyond Cotopaxi, the nearest peak of the Eastern Andes, if, aswas but too likely, the old man, believing her to be Oxenham's child,had conceived the fearful vengeance of exposing her in the forests.
Other little facts came to light one by one. They were all connected(as was natural in a savage) with some animal or other natural object.Whatever impressions her morals or affections had received, had beenerased by the long spiritual death of that forest sojourn; and Mrs.Leigh could not elicit from her a trace of feeling about her mother, orrecollection of any early religious teaching. This link, however, wassupplied at last, and in this way.
Sir Richard had brought home an Indian with him from Virginia. Of hisoriginal name I am not sure, but he was probably the "Wanchese" whosename occurs with that of "Manteo."
This man was to be baptized in the church at Bideford by the name ofRaleigh, his sponsors being most probably Raleigh himself, who may havebeen there on Virginian business, and Sir Richard Grenville. All thenotabilities of Bideford came, of course, to see the baptism of thefirst "Red man" whose foot had ever trodden British soil, and the mayorand corporation-men appeared in full robes, with maces and tipstaffs, todo honor to that first-fruits of the Gospel in the West.
Mrs. Leigh went, as a matter of course, and Ayacanora would needs gotoo. She was very anxious to know what they were going to do with the"Carib."
"To make him a Christian."
"Why did they not make her one?"
Because she was one already. They were sure that she had been christenedas soon as she was born. But she was not sure, and pouted a good dealat the chance of an "ugly red Carib" being better off than she was.However, all assembled duly; the stately son of the forest, nowtransformed into a footman of Sir Richard's, was standing at the font;the service was half performed when a heavy sigh, or rather groan, madeall eyes turn, and Ayacanora sank fainting upon Mrs. Leigh's bosom.
She was carried out, and to a neighboring house; and when she came toherself, told a strange story. How, as she was standing there trying torecollect whether she too had ever been baptized, the church seemedto grow larger, the priest's dress richer; the walls were covered withpictures, and above the altar, in jewelled robes, stood a lady, and inher arms a babe. Soft music sounded in her ears; the air was full (onthat she insisted much) of fragrant odor which filled the church likemist; and through it she saw not one, but many Indians, standing by thefont; and a lady held her by the hand, and she was a little girl again.
And after, many questionings, so accurate was her recollection, not onlyof the scene, but of the building, that Yeo pronounced:
"A christened woman she is, madam, if Popish christening is worthcalling such, and has seen Indians christened too in the CathedralChurch at Quito, the inside whereof I know well enough, and too well,for I sat there three mortal hours in a San Benito, to hear a friarpreach his false doctrines, not knowing whether I was to be burnt or notnext day."
So Ayacanora went home to Burrough, and Raleigh the Indian toSir Richard's house. The entry of his baptism still stands,crooked-lettered, in the old parchment register of the Bideford baptismsfor 1587-3:
"Raleigh, a Winganditoian: March 26."
His name occurs once more, a year and a month after:
"Rawly, a Winganditoian, April 1589."
But it is not this time among the baptisms. The free forest wanderer haspined in vain for his old deer-hunts amid the fragrant cedar woods,and lazy paddlings through the still lagoons, where water-lilies sleepbeneath the shade of great magnolias, wreathed with clustered vines; andnow he is away to "happier hunting-grounds," and all that is left ofhim below sleeps in the narrow town churchyard, blocked in with dingyhouses, whose tenants will never waste a sigh upon the Indian's grave.There the two entries stand, unto this day; and most pathetic they haveseemed to me; a sort of emblem and first-fruits of the sad fate of thatworn-out Red race, to whom civilization came too late to save, but nottoo late to hasten their decay.
But though Amyas lay idle, England did not. That spring saw another anda larger colony sent out by Raleigh to Virginia, under the charge of oneJohn White. Raleigh had written more than once, entreating Amyas to takethe command, which if he had done, perhaps the United States had begunto exist twenty years sooner than they actually did. But his mother hadbound him by a solemn promise (and who can wonder at her for asking, orat him for giving it?) to wait at home with her twelve months at least.So, instead of himself, he sent five hundred pounds, which I supposeare in Virginia (virtually at least) until this day; for they never cameback again to him.
But soon came a sharper trial of Amyas's promise to his mother; andone which made him, for the first time in his life, moody, peevish, andrestless, at the thought that others were fighting Spaniards, whilehe was sitting idle at home. For his whole soul was filling fast withsullen malice against Don Guzman. He was losing the "single eye," andhis whole body was no longer full of light. He had entered into thedarkness in which every man walks who hates his brother; and it lay uponhim like a black shadow day and night. No company, too, could be morefit to darken that shadow than Salvation Yeo's. The old man grew morestern in his fanaticism day by day, and found a too willing listener inhis master; and Mrs. Leigh was (perhaps for the first and last timein her life) seriously angry, when she heard the two coolly debatingwhether they had not committed a grievous sin in not killing the Spanishprisoners on board the galleon.
It must be said, however (as the plain facts set down in this booktestify), that if such was the temper of Englishmen at that day,the Spaniards had done a good deal to provoke it; and were just thenattempting to do still more.
For now we are approaching the year 1588, "which an astronomer ofKonigsberg, above a hundred years before, foretold would be an admirableyear, and the German chronologers presaged would be the climactericalyear of the world."
The prophecies may stand for what they are worth; but they were at leastfulfilled. That year was, indeed, the climacterical year of the world;and decided once and for all the fortunes of the European nations, andof the whole continent of America.
No wonder, then, if (as has happened in each great crisis of the humanrace) some awful instinct that The Day of the Lord was at hand, some dimfeeling that there was war in heaven, and that the fiends of darknessand the angels of light were arrayed against each other in some mightystruggle for the possession of the souls of men, should have triedto express itself in astrologic dreams, and, as was the fashion then,attributed to the "rulers of the planetary houses" some sympathy withthe coming world-tragedy.
But, for the wise, there needed no conjunction of planets to tell themthat the day was near at hand, when the long desultory duel betweenSpain and England would end, once and for all, in some greatdeath-grapple. The war, as yet, had been confined to the Netherlands, tothe West Indies, and the coasts and isles of Africa; to the quarters,in fact, where Spain was held either to have no rights, or to haveforfeited them by tyranny. But Spain itself had been respected byEngland, as England had by Spain; and trade to Spanish ports went on asusual, till, in the year 1585, the Spaniard, without warning, laid anembargo on all English ships coming to his European shores. They were tobe seized, it seemed, to form part of an enormous armament, which was toattack and crush, once and for all--whom? The rebellious Netherlanders,said the Spaniards: but the queen, the ministry, and, when it was justnot too late, the people of England, thought otherwise. England was thedestined victim; so, instead of negotiating, in order to avoid fighting,they fought in order to produce negotiation. Drake, Frobisher, andCarlisle, as we have seen, swept the Spanish Main with fire and sword,stopping the Indian supplies; while Walsingham (craftiest, and yet mosthonest of mortals) prevented, by some mysterious financial operation,the Venetian merchants from repairing the Spaniards' loss by a loan; andno Armada came that year.
In the meanwhile, the Jesuits, here and abroad, made no secret, amongtheir own dupes, of the real objects of the Spanish armament. Theimpious heretics,--the Drakes and Raleighs, Grenvilles and Cavendishes,Hawkinses and Frobishers, who had dared to violate that hidden sanctuaryof just half the globe, which the pope had bestowed on the defender ofthe true faith,--a shameful ruin, a terrible death
awaited them, whentheir sacrilegious barks should sink beneath the thunder of Spanishcannon, blessed by the pope, and sanctified with holy water and prayerto the service of "God and his Mother." Yes, they would fall, andEngland with them. The proud islanders, who had dared to rebel againstSt. Peter, and to cast off the worship of "Mary," should bow theirnecks once more under the yoke of the Gospel. Their so-called queen,illegitimate, excommunicate, contumacious, the abettor of free-trade,the defender of the Netherlands, the pillar of false doctrine throughoutEurope, should be sent in chains across the Alps, to sue for her life atthe feet of the injured and long-suffering father of mankind, whilehis nominee took her place upon the throne which she had long sinceforfeited by her heresy.
"What nobler work? How could the Church of God be more gloriouslypropagated? How could higher merit be obtained by faithful Catholics?It must succeed. Spain was invincible in valor, inexhaustible in wealth.Heaven itself offered them an opportunity. They had nothing now to fearfrom the Turk, for they had concluded a truce with him; nothing from theFrench, for they were embroiled in civil war. The heavens themselveshad called upon Spain to fulfil her heavenly mission, and restore tothe Church's crown this brightest and richest of her lost jewels. Theheavens themselves called to a new crusade. The saints, whose altarsthe English had rifled and profaned, called them to a new crusade. TheVirgin Queen of Heaven, whose boundless stores of grace the Englishspurned, called them to a new crusade. Justly incensed at her own wrongsand indignities, that 'ever-gracious Virgin, refuge of sinners, andmother of fair love, and holy hope,' adjured by their knightly honor allvaliant cavaliers to do battle in her cause against the impious harlotwho assumed her titles, received from her idolatrous flatterers thehomage due to Mary alone, and even (for Father Parsons had asserted it,therefore it must be true) had caused her name to be substituted forthat of Mary in the Litanies of the Church. Let all who wore within amanly heart, without a manly sword, look on the woes of 'Mary,'--hershame, her tears, her blushes, her heart pierced through with dailywounds, from heretic tongues, and choose between her and Elizabeth!"
So said Parsons, Allen, and dozens more; and said more than this, too,and much which one had rather not repeat; and were somewhat surprisedand mortified to find that their hearers, though they granted thepremises, were too dull or carnal to arrive at the same conclusion. TheEnglish lay Romanists, almost to a man, had hearts sounder than theirheads, and, howsoever illogically, could not help holding to the strangesuperstition that, being Englishmen, they were bound to fight forEngland. So the hapless Jesuits, who had been boasting for years pastthat the persecuted faithful throughout the island would rise as one manto fight under the blessed banner of the pope and Spain, found that thefaithful, like Demas of old, forsook them and "went after this presentworld;" having no objection, of course, to the restoration of Popery:but preferring some more comfortable method than an invasion which wouldinevitably rob them of their ancestral lands and would seat needy andgreedy Castilians in their old country houses, to treat their tenants asthey had treated the Indians of Hispaniola, and them as they had treatedthe caciques.
But though the hearts of men in that ungodly age were too hard to meltat the supposed woes of the Mary who reigned above, and too dull to turnrebels and traitors for the sake of those thrones and principalities insupra-lunar spheres which might be in her gift: yet there was a Marywho reigned (or ought to reign) below, whose woes (like her gifts) weresomewhat more palpable to the carnal sense. A Mary who, having everycomfort and luxury (including hounds and horses) found for her by theEnglish Government, at an expense which would be now equal to sometwenty thousand a year, could afford to employ the whole of her jointureas Queen Dowager of France (probably equal to fifty thousand a yearmore), in plotting the destruction of the said government, and themurder of its queen; a Mary who, if she prospered as she ought, mighthave dukedoms, and earldoms, fair lands and castles to bestow on herfaithful servants; a Mary, finally, who contrived by means of an angelface, a serpent tongue, and a heart (as she said herself) as hard asa diamond, to make every weak man fall in love with her, and, what wasworse, fancy more or less that she was in love with him.
Of her the Jesuits were not unmindful; and found it convenient, indeed,to forget awhile the sorrows of the Queen of Heaven in those of theQueen of Scots. Not that they cared much for those sorrows; but theywere an excellent stock-in-trade. She was a Romanist; she was "beautifuland unfortunate," a virtue which, like charity, hides the multitude ofsins; and therefore she was a convenient card to play in the great gameof Rome against the Queen and people of England; and played the poorcard was, till it got torn up by over-using. Into her merits or demeritsI do not enter deeply here. Let her rest in peace.
To all which the people of England made a most practical and terribleanswer. From the highest noble to the lowest peasant, arose onesimultaneous plebiscitum: "We are tired of these seventeen years ofchicanery and terror. This woman must die: or the commonweal of Englandperish!" We all know which of the two alternatives was chosen.
All Europe stood aghast: but rather with astonishment at Englishaudacity, than with horror at English wickedness. Mary's own Frenchkinsfolk had openly given her up as too bad to be excused, much lessassisted. Her own son blustered a little to the English ambassador;for the majesty of kings was invaded: whereon Walsingham said in opencouncil, that "the queen should send him a couple of hounds, and thatwould set all right." Which sage advice (being acted on, and some deersent over and above) was so successful that the pious mourner, havingrun off (Randolph says, like a baby to see the deer in their cart),returned for answer that he would "thereafter depend wholly upon hermajesty, and serve her fortune against all the world; and that he onlywanted now two of her majesty's yeoman prickers, and a couple of hergrooms of the deer." The Spaniard was not sorry on the whole for thecatastrophe; for all that had kept him from conquering England long agowas the fear lest, after it was done, he might have had to put the crownthereof on Mary's head, instead of his own. But Mary's death was asconvenient a stalking-horse to him as to the pope; and now the Armadawas coming in earnest.
Elizabeth began negotiating; but fancy not that she does nothing more,as the following letter testifies, written about midsummer, 1587.
"F. Drake to Captain Amyas Leigh. This with haste.
"DEAR LAD,
"As I said to her most glorious majesty, I say to you now. There are twoways of facing an enemy. The one to stand off, and cry, 'Try that again,and I'll strike thee'; the other to strike him first, and then, 'Trythat at all, and I'll strike thee again.' Of which latter counsel hermajesty so far approves, that I go forthwith (tell it not in Gath) downthe coast, to singe the king of Spain's beard (so I termed it to hermajesty, she laughing), in which if I leave so much as a fishing-boatafloat from the Groyne unto Cadiz, it will not be with my good will, whointend that if he come this year, he shall come by swimming and not bysailing. So if you are still the man I have known you, bring a good shipround to Plymouth within the month, and away with me for hard blows andhard money, the feel of both of which you know pretty well by now.
"Thine lovingly,
"F. Drake."
Amyas clutched his locks over this letter, and smoked more tobacco theday he got it than had ever before been consumed at once in England. Buthe kept true to his promise; and this was his reply:--