The Voyage of the Destiny

by Robert Nye

  The morning sun was soon so hot that it dried the water on my skin with a sort of hiss, even before I could feel the cold of the water doing me good.

  The Indian and Sam King watched my ablutions without comment. The Indian squatted, chewing at a leaf. It is a habit of his which I have noted before, though not in these pages. He carries the leaves about with him in a pouch. They appear to be dried, uncurled, and are deep bright green on their flat upper surface and a softer grey-green underneath. He picks off the stalk quite fastidiously, then chews a whole leaf into a ball in his mouth. His cheek bulges with it. I notice he never spits when chewing these leaves. No doubt he swallows them eventually. That’s what he seemed to do today at the mineral spring.

  It was on the way back to the ship that the Indian started to shout. Some dark miscHicf, some nonsense possessed him. He cupped his hands to his mouth and made his voice echo and re-echo among the rocks. At first it was just sounds that he emitted, weird hoots, long trilling calls, some of them hunting cries perhaps in the dialect of his tribe. Then, quite clearly and suddenly emerging from this unintelligible hulla-balloo:

  ‘Elizadeath,’ he cried. ‘Elizadeath.’

  Sam King, in a startled fury, would have struck him a blow with his fist, by the look of it. I stopped that. I sought to teach the man better:

  ‘Elizabeth,’ I said. ‘The great Queen of the North was named Elizabeth.’

  He tried hard. But the more muted consonant proved beyond his reach.

  ‘Elizadeath! Elizadeath!’

  The white rocks of the island rang with the word. Elizadeath

  Perhaps, after all, this Indian has it right. He says by accident what I am still learning. He tells the truth of my life without knowing me.

  *

  I came, as I said, to London in ‘75, lodging first at Lyons Inn, then at the Middle Temple. I did not study law. I studied the hive. I determined how to make my own name buzz in it. I was a young male bee. I would court the Queen.

  Understand, Carew, what I mean by this. Elizabeth was 42 years old when I first saw her. That is, she was exactly twice my age.

  What did I see?

  A woman of middle height, whose upright bearing made her appear tall. A woman with thin reddish hair and short-sighted eyes the colour of gold, her eyelids heavy and hooded like a bird’s. A woman with a high thin arched nose, prominent cheek bones, a small unsmiling mouth, and a sallow complexion made artificially vivacious by rouge. A woman compact in body, strident in voice. A woman with lovely hands - Queen Elizabeth’s long slender fingers were by far her most beautiful feature, and she made sure that men noticed them.

  Yes, I saw that.

  And I saw at the same time and in the same place a woman who wore a ring on one of those fingers, which ring - she had publicly declared it - was a token of her marriage to her kingdom. A woman who had said that to her it would be a full satisfaction, both for the memorial of her name, and for her glory also, if, when she had breathed her last breath, it was engraven upon her marble tomb: Here lies Elizabeth, which reigned a Virgin, and died a Virgin. Yet a woman who kicked her legs high in the dance, and whose supposed love affairs were the scandal of Europe. Yes, I saw that.

  And I saw also something else. Something brighter and darker than the mortal habit. Something which made sense of every contradiction. Something beyond personality. Some- thing beyond woman even. For I saw something that went riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing the fair hair about her pure cheeks, like a nymph, by her gait, by her grace. Something sometimes sitting in the shade like a goddess. Something sometimes singing like an angel. All suddenly I saw the Faerie Queen

  And she swore. As vividly and vehemently as her father in his prime. King Henry the 8th. That minotaur. That magnifico. Defender of the Faith and murderer of his wives.

  And in her everything there was a something more. A something witch-like. A something like that dancing slant-eyed never-to-be-mentioned Anne Boleyn, who had had one finger too many on her pinched left hand and who had had her lovely head cut off for going to bed with her own brother.

  So. Quite so. And absurdly. But I feasted on that singular sexual honey even as I starved in my bare lodgings and borrowed maps from Richard Hakluyt, uncle of one of my friends at Oxford, himself a lawyer of the Middle Temple. I pored over the maps, dreaming of navigations, discoveries, battles and conquests, a life as a gentleman and a soldier. But I would also be a courtier. I would court the Queen. I would make myself her favourite.

  How? You may well ask! I was unknown. I was alone. I was 21 years old, and heir to no fortune, a penniless nobody from the West Country.

  Did I imagine myself as some heroic figure in a folk story? The youngest son of a poor but honest man who would pass through trials and adventures and initiation tests before eventually marrying a princess and living happily ever after?

  No. I was neither so ambitious nor so stupid.

  I ask you merely to note that I saw Queen Elizabeth from a distance long before she ever noticed me. And that I saw that the Queen, the Virgin Queen, played a long-drawn-out and inconclusive game with princely suitors from foreign lands, while surrounding herself privately with a Court which was mostly male and wholly English. A Court of handsome young men and shrewd older ones. A Court which adored her, and which she adored to scorn. A Court which needed her, and which she needed to spurn.

  It would take time. It would take pain. Being young, I was not altogether displeased by the thought that it might even cost me my life. But something in me made the Queen my destiny from that first time I saw her. I was standing on the riverside at Charing Cross. She passed in a gilded barge, Elizabeth, proceeding in state to visit her Archbishop at Lambeth. The Thames ran silver that day and the Queen rode like gold on it. As for me, I was no more than any other fame-hungry young man in a borrowed gown. I cried out: ‘God save the Queen!’ Her head did not turn.

  *

  Midnight. My nephew George has just come to me with a most extraordinary report about the Indian.

  It seems that the morning after the taking of San Thome, when Keymis started questioning him about the exact location of existing Spanish gold mines, this Christoval Guayacunda tried to get himself killed not just by refusing to co-operate but by deliberate and apparently pointless lying. He invited death by saying that he was a half-caste. The soldiers believed him, and were all for putting him to the sword, but a couple of black slaves who had served the Spaniards and now come over to our side declared that the man certainly was not a half-caste, that he was a pure-bred Indian, that he had been Palomeque the Governor’s personal servant, and so forth. Keymis still threatened him with death by hanging if he would not reveal what he knew about the mines. He had the Indian mounted on a horse, with a rope about his neck, under a tree in the town square. When it at last became evident that nothing was going to make the man talk, Keymis gave the order (in English) to let him go. At this point the Indian appears to have made a definite attempt at suicide. He kicked his horse forward and was left hanging for a moment from the tree before Keymis cut him down. They thought his neck had been broken but it had not. He laughed at them when he opened his eyes and saw their astonishment that he was still alive.

  My nephew had this tale tonight from one of the soldiers who was present.

  After that, George says, the Indian kept himself very much to himself. He made no attempt to run away, but neither did he volunteer any information which might have helped Keymis. It came as a complete surprise when they were about to leave San Thome and he appeared on the riverbank and asked to be taken with them. George says he was (and is) suspicious of the man’s motives, and advised against his adoption, but Keymis just nodded nervelessly and the Indian leaped into the boat before another word could be said.

  I asked my nephew what he made of all this.

  I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I don’t like it. Why should a man try and get himself killed and then join the enemy w
ho has failed to kill him?’

  ‘Perhaps he is mad,’ I suggested.

  ‘And perhaps we are madder,’ George said, ‘to keep such a creature on board.’

  9

  18 March

  Dawn. Dawn swift and tropical after a night without sleep. This is what happened—

  When George had gone I sat brooding upon what he had told me. I smoked several pipes of tobacco. I wrote the account of it here to clarify my thoughts.

  But that writing did nothing to cleanse my mind’s eye of one bloody and terrible image. It was a mental picture drawn from my nephew’s previous report on the events upriver, now curiously linked to what he had told me about the Indian. I kept coming back to it: The thought of the Spanish Governor’s great fat body lying naked in the sand of the square at San Thome, his skull smashed in, and a hatchet in his back.

  At last I could stand it no longer. I abandoned any hope of a night’s rest. I left this cabin and took a turn around the deck. I was looking for the Indian.

  I found him where they say he usually is at night - stretched out flat on his back on the bowsprit, quite safe, between the fore-topmast stays. He appeared to be sleeping. He looked like some weird figurehead in the moonlight, his pointed grey cap pulled down over his ears, his copper skin shining, his feet tucked into the shrouds.

  I stood a long while watching him. I had made my approach without noise, and I said nothing now. I did not care to shake him from his slumbers.

  Then, just as I turned aside, just as I determined to come back to the safety of my cabin with no word spoken, the Indian laughed. It was a long low laugh - mocking, sardonic, harsh. I realised that I had never heard him laugh before, and that the sound was carking and unwelcome: it thicked my blood with cold. I realised also that his laughter meant that he had not been asleep at all. His eyes had been shut, but he had been fully aware of my presence.

  The Indian pulled himself up by the bowlines and nodded at me.

  ‘Guattaral.’

  He made the word a question. He wanted to know what I wanted. Well, I was willing enough to confront him.

  I said: ‘You told me once that Don Palomeque had many enemies in his own fort.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘You told me also that he was not killed by my men,’ I went on. ‘You claimed that he was killed by one of his own.’ ‘That’s right,’ he said. I looked him straight in the eyes. ‘How can you be so sure?’ I demanded. He shrugged. He said nothing.

  ‘Palomeque was killed by a hatchet thrown between his shoulderblades,’ I said. ‘Whoever threw the hatchet presumably smashed in his skull as well. The same person took all his clothes off - the corpse was found naked.’

  The Indian took a leaf from his pouch. He drew it gently through his fingers, as if savouring the texture. Then he picked off the stalk with an abrupt flick of forefinger and thumb.

  ‘Who killed Don Palomeque?’I demanded. The Indian was moistening the leaf with his lips. ‘You know who,’ he said. I said: ‘You killed him!’ ‘You say so,’ he said.

  ‘You killed him,’ I said. ‘That’s why you wanted to die, isn’t it? That’s why you lied and said you were a half-caste. You wanted Keymis to execute you for your master’s murder!’

  The Indian started chewing at his leaf. It went into his mouth like the tail of a mouse going into the gnawing jaws of a cat. He stared at me with jet-black cat’s eyes in the moonlight.

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why did you kill him? And why strip him naked?’ The Indian said nothing.

  ‘Honour,’ I said. ‘Was it to do with honour? But how can it be honourable to stab a man in the back, however much you hated him, however bad he was as a master?’

  The Indian chewed in silence.

  ‘Where are you really from?’ I said angrily. ‘Who are you? What are you? Why did you come back downriver with Keymis? Why are you here with me now? What do you want? Where do you think you are going?’

  The Indian smiled without amusement.

  ‘Guattaral asks many questions,’ he observed.

  ‘Damn you! Then give me a straight answer to just one of them!’

  The Indian nodded, chewing.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Where do I think I am going? I think I am going where Guattaral is going.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ I cried. ‘I’ll have no murdering coward on my ship!’

  The Indian rose from the bowsprit. He walked down it with great agility, placing one bare foot half-sideways behind another, his long toes gripping the round spar like an ape’s, then came to a stand on the beakhead before me, taking a deep breath and drawing himself up to his full height. As I have remarked before, this is not tall Yet the man gives an incontestable impression of power and authority.

  ‘Christoval Guayacunda is not a coward,’ he said in a soft voice.

  I said: ‘To stab a man in the back is cowardice.’

  ‘What if the man is already running away?’ he said.

  ‘Was Palomeque running away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I turned to face him,’ the Indian said. ‘Listen well. Palomeque liked to inflict pain. That was his pleasure. Naked, he liked to flog me with the bull-whip. That night I turned to face him. I thought Guattaral was at the gates. I was wrong. It was only Guattaral’s son and the man who looked sideways. But I thought if Guattaral came then Guattaral would surely set me free. So that night I had the hatchet. Palomeque was the coward. He ran.’

  ‘From you?’ I said.

  The Indian shrugged. ‘From me,’ he said, Or from those he saw over my shoulder.’

  ‘You mean you had accomplices? Who?’ ‘My golden fathers.’

  I must have frowned. Then I saw that the Indian spoke figuratively. He meant that the ghosts of his ancestors had risen up with him against the oppressor.

  He went on quietly: ‘I did not throw the hatchet. I went after him. I jumped on his back in the dark. I killed him with one blow on the side of the skull. He fell in the dust. It was then that I put the hatchet in his back.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘To make sure he was dead. And to show contempt. I put the hatchet in his head for myself. I put the hatchet in his back for my golden fathers. My people are a proud and ancient people. We had our lands before the Incas came.’

  ‘So you told me already,’ I reminded him. ‘Your Chibchas may indeed be the oldest tribe in the New World. And the Spaniards came here after the Incas, of course. And Don Palomeque could well have been a perfect monster of cruelty, for all I know. But can any of this justify the murder of a man who was when all is said and done your master?’

  The Indian chewed in silence a long while.

  Then he said, his voice a whisper: It is true that Palomeque was my master. He took me prisoner from the mountains with an iron collar round my neck. Three days and nights I had to run behind his horse on the way to San Thome. If I had stumbled once, or fallen from weariness, I would have been dashed to death. I felt -I feel - no guilt in having killed him. If I did wrong it was in not having killed him sooner.’

  I said: In God’s name, man, then why did you wish to die?’ The Indian did not answer me directly. He looked at the moon where it was broken into silver on the sea. His jaws worked all the time, chewing at the leaf in a frenzy of what I took to be anguish.

  Then, after much deliberation, he said: ‘When I killed Don Palomeque I cried out. I stood over him and I shouted. I shouted the great shout which is the shout of the Golden Man. That shout is always answered. It makes whoever hears it run for blood.’

  ‘I cannot understand you,’ I said. ‘You talk in riddles.’ ‘I will be plain,’ the Indian said. ‘I will be plain and you will understand. I stood over Palomeque’s dead body and I shouted. The shout was answered. The shout made one come running in the night. It was my shout that killed Guattaral’s son.’

  *

  I must be mad. My nephew George is right: I must be mad. To sit h
ere writing this account of a meaningless conversation To have spent half the night talking nonsense in Spanish with a crazy savage But:

  Who else do I have to talk with? George himself? - Quite inane.

  Sam King? - Sam is my friend, and a good patient listener, but our acquaintance is of such long-standing that it is no longer much use for discourse. Besides, it was always a friendship based upon silence, upon a few important things mutually understood and held in trust, and Sam was hardly ever the world’s greatest conversationalist.

  The Reverend Mr Samuel Jones, our ship’s chaplain? - Enough said!

  The truth I admit is that I have no one else.

  No one but ghosts from the past and you, Carew.

  And sometimes that is too much like talking to myself.

  *

  I just passed a few hours in dreamless but unrefreshing sleep. The heat of noon woke me. This cabin is like an oven.

  Summary of the remaining madness of last night:

  The Indian fancies some kind of seemingly mystical connection between his killing of Palomeque and Wat’s death. I cannot persuade him otherwise. He will have it so, and there is no arguing with the man. It was for this reason, apparently, that he more or less tried to commit suicide upriver, and then - when that failed - decided to come back with Keymis to Punto Gallo and put himself into my service. At the same time, he repeats his assertions that he voyages with me ‘to see Guattaral die’. Not that he takes any manifest pleasure in the prospect. He seems to be convinced that there is some destiny which has linked his life to mine. Or, rather, which has linked his life to my death. It is all quite ridiculous.

  Or is it?

  I don’t know.