Prisoner of the Indies by Geoffrey Household

Author:Geoffrey Household [HOUSEHOLD, GEOFFREY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-1108-1
Publisher: Open Road Media Teen & Tween
Published: 2013-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

We were now free to do as we liked and to earn a living as best we could. I myself would have gone back to work in the mines and make my fortune if I had not distrusted the Holy Office. I had been warned that their spies would keep a watch on us for years to come and on me more than the others, since I was reputed to be a bold spirit. It was little use to make money if I were in continual danger of being imprisoned and losing the lot.

So I decided to show myself a settled, common man and to learn a trade which would get me employment wherever I found myself. I took the name of Miguel Perez and bound myself to a mestizo silk weaver for three years paying him one hundred and fifty pesos to teach me his craft. It was a good business, for in the City of Mexico are woven taffetas, satins and velvets as fine as those of Spain, which are readily sold to the many rich and shipped to the Main and to Peru as well. Our blacks were better than the Spanish, though the other colours were not so bright.

But still the Inquisitors could not forget me, and several times their Familiars accused me of planning to return to England and to become a heretic again. To that I would answer that I could not understand why they should suspect me, since escape was impossible even if I wished it, which I did not. The truth was that they feared this Miguel Perez who could speak Spanish well enough to pass as a Spaniard, and Nahuatl so easily that the Indians would help him to travel among forests and volcanoes wherever he pleased.

One day I was much disquieted to be called before Doctor Bonilla. He asked me severely why I did not marry, to which I replied that I was learning a trade and could not afford wife and house until I had set myself up in business. But this did not content him. He forbade me to leave the City of Mexico, threatening to have me burned if I went near San Juan de Ulua or any other port.

With the other English he was not so hard, for most of them had taken wives, showing that they meant to remain good Catholics and settle in New Spain. Paul Horsewell married a rich mestiza, a daughter of one of the Conquerors, and got with her a fine house. Richard Williams married a Basque widow, who, I doubt not, took the place of the mother upon whom he used to call, and had a fortune of four thousand pesos as well. William Lowe obtained permission to sail for Spain, where, it is said, he also married. And several of the others were given Negroes or mestizas for wives.

So I who remained a bachelor was out of favour. Whatever excuses I offered, the Holy Office suspected that I had not yet lost hope of a wife and children in my own country.

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