Lord of Darkness

  So quickly we laded our pinnace and got ourselves back onto the bosom of the great river. Which swept us like a cork out to sea, and I caught hold of the wind and turned us south, and coasted us skillfully back to Angola. And stood like a king in triumph on the deck of the Infanta Beatriz, bare to the waist and sunburned dark, with my hair long behind me in the breeze that came out of the hot lowlands, as we made our way into harbor at São Paulo de Loanda. For it had been a successful voyage and I had done well, and had won my own respect in the business of piloting. And one’s own respect is the hardest of all to win, if one be an honest man.

  Don João de Mendoça clapped me lustily on the back and praised me or my work and fed me on buffalo and other strange meats, and gave me his good wines, and said, “Well accomplished! And next week off you go again, even farther, to the land of Loango for a greater cargo.”

  Indeed I was ready to go. And go and go again, as often as they did care to ship me, for a year or so. I would keep my bargain, and then they would keep me theirs, and send me off to England as a free man.

  Aye! To bargain with a Portugal! Ere I saw England, how many voyages there would be, and what monstrosities of event, and what pains, what deaths, what torments! But I predicted nothing of that to myself then. I supped with Don João, and I spoke a trifle boastfully of my getting into the estuary of the Zaire, and then I went to my new little house in the city to plan for my next voyage. There did Dona Teresa come to me soon after, and there did we have a joyous reunion of our bodies and our spirits, and afterward, when I lay alone and drowsy, an amazing thought did enter my mind. For I realized that even though I had been taken captive and sent into slavery to these Portugals, and had endured much that was not to my liking, I had emerged into a happy life. I was a happy man, by God, and could not deny it! Only one thing was lacking to me, and that was my return to my native land; but even that seemed less urgent, now that I was out of dungeon and had won a place among the Portugals here and had a skill that I practiced well. That amazed me: to find myself happy. Yet it was the truth, at that moment. And in a week, the voyage to Loango; and in a year, perhaps, the voyage home to England. All journeyed well for me.

  Aye! Would that it had been so!

  BOOK

  TWO:

  Pilot

  ONE

  NORTHWARD AYE I went, in quick course, on my second trading voyage in behalf of Don João. Loango was my destination, which is a kingdom that has its beginning fifteen leagues to the north of the River Zaire.

  Do you wonder at the ease with which I became an officer of the Portuguese maritime? That I should have no qualms and pangs of conscience, that I should take so swiftly to piloting of their vessel and earning them their tons of richly valued elephanto teeth? Nay, but I did not see myself as any traitor to Her Majesty by so doing. My choice was to serve, or to lie and rot in dungeon. If I proudly chose the second of those, and if perchance some venomous creature did creep upon me in my cell and bite its poison into me, would I then ever again see England or serve the Queen? But by undertaking these voyages along the coast I could preserve my life, I could increase my health, I would gain in knowledge of piloting that might some day be of use to Her Majesty—and I stood at least a chance of regaining my liberty. Or so I told myself, over and over a great many times, whenever this debate erupted within my soul, until a time came when it erupted no longer and I did my duties without self-inquest.

  This land of Loango was an easy voyage from Angola, with no terrible river-mouths to enter as on the last one. Upon the appointed day I did go down to the port at São Paulo de Loanda and I found the same ship as before ready for me, the Infanta Beatriz, and much the same crew. This was comforting. Already on board were Faleiro the master and other men I had come to know, whose names I remember well after these many years, and they were Andrade and Pires and Cabral and Oliveira, who did clap me on the back and give me good grinning smiles and freely offer me the harsh thin wine that they keep in leather sacks. These men had seen me do brave service piloting them into the maw of the Zaire, and now all prejudices owing to my being English were forgot among them. They called me “Andres” or more often “Piloto,” that is the Portugal way of saying pilot, and I got from them no further stares or hard glowering looks. The only time I held myself apart from them was when they were at their devotions, for I would not take the Mass or sing their Latin songs, or venerate the crucifix and image of the Madonna and other holy idols that they had brought on board. Instead at such times I went off quietly and knelt and talked to God in good plain English words, unburdening my soul and sometimes saying what words I could recall of the offices of matins or evensong. The sailors took no offense at this, for they no more expected me to transform into a Papist than they would expect a blackamoor to begin turning white of skin.

  So we sailed up the coast with good breezes past the awful Zaire and to a point called Cabo do Palmar, where Loango commences. Here there are many palm-trees, giving the place its name. Five leagues beyond it is the port of Kabinda, which many ships use to water and refresh themselves. The terrain is one of woods and thickets. And seven leagues northwards of that place is the River Kakongo, a very pleasant place and fruitful. This is a strong river whose waters discolor the sea for seven miles, though that is nothing to what the Zaire achieves. At its mouth is the town of Chiloango: here is great stock of elephanto teeth, and a boat of ten tons may go up the river.

  I tell you these places because I was the first Englishman to behold them. At four leagues from Kakongo is the river of Luiza Loango. Its depth where it meets the sea is only two feet, owing to a sand-bar, but once your vessel is within, it finds a fair waterway for over an hundred miles. Ten miles upriver is the town of Kaia, one of the four great seats or lordships of the kingdom of Loango. I did not go there on this voyage. And two leagues northward along the coast is a sandy bay, where a ship may ride within a musket-shot of the shore in four or five fathoms. Here is the port of Loango, the capital city of this kingdom.

  “Come, Piloto,” said Pedro Faleiro as we cast down our anchor and made ready to go ashore. “You will accompany us to the city, which I think you will find different from such places as you may already have seen.”

  “Tell him about the king and the bell,” said our boatswain, Manoel de Andrade.

  Faleiro laughed. “Aye! The king and the bell! Listen well, Andres, for it could cost you your life to be careless in this.”

  And he said that it was forbidden in this land to behold the king taking food or drink, on pain of death. When the king drinks, the bearer who carries the royal cup of palm-wine also holds a bell in his hand, and when he gives the cup to the king, he turns his face away and rings the bell. And then all that be there fall down upon their faces, and do not rise until the king has drunk. “Which is very dangerous for any stranger that knows not the fashions,” said Faleiro, “for if anyone sees the king drink he is straightaway killed, whosoever he may be.”

  “Whosoever?” I asked.

  “Aye. There was a boy of twelve years, which was the king’s son. This boy chanced to come into the chamber when his father was in drinking, and beheld him. Presently the king commanded the boy should be dressed in fine apparel, and given food and drink. This was done; and afterward the king commanded that he should be cut in quarters and carried about the city, with proclamation that he saw the king drink.”

  “It is not so!” I cried.

  “You would give me the lie?” said Faleiro, looking angered.

  “Nay, nay, good Pedro,” I said, touching his arm. “I mean only that my mind will not accept such horror.”

  “Accept it, and accept it well. For if we are so lucky as to be granted audience with this king, listen ye sharp for the bell. We are not exempt from the rule.”

  “Would they cut one of us in quarters, then?”

  “We are few and they are many. I know not whether they would attack us, and if they did, we have our muskets and they have none. But we ought not put it
to the test.”

  “And so we must grovel on our faces when the king is in his cups?” I asked.

  “Turning away the face is sufficient, for us,” answered Faleiro.

  Andrade said, “It is the same when the king eats, but there it carries less risk, for the king has an eating-house that he enters alone, and the door is shut behind him, and he knocks before he comes out. Yet even so, sometimes a fool will stumble into this house and spy unwitting on the king, and for this he always perishes.”

  I felt a shivering, despite all the heat of the day. “This sounds devilish to me, or mad.”

  “It is their belief,” said Manoel de Andrade, “that the king will shortly die, if ever he is seen at his food or drink. And so he protects himself. For if he slays the one who sees, then his own life is spared, they do think.”

  “Ah!” I cried. “Now I understand, and in sooth it makes goodly sense!”

  But I was speaking with deep irony—which my Portugal companions did not notice, I suppose, for they gave me odd looks, as though to say the English must be as mad as the Loangans. I did not trouble to explain myself. Indeed it did make a sort of sense, that if one believes a certain thing, then it follows naturally that one must take proper action to ward off its evil. The trick is in believing. To the Papist the actual and real blood of Christ is in the chalice from which they sip, and I think the King of Loango would have difficulties believing the truth of that. By God, I do!

  Hearing such tales as these, I was in a taut and most sensitive mood as we went toward Loango. We entered the city on foot, leaving a small band of men to guard the ship. And entering that place was for me like entering a land of dreams, a place where phantoms did walk abroad in open daylight. The strangeness of those first moments there was something I could taste in my mouth, as if I had taken some piece of metal against my tongue, and I can remember that taste of strangeness to this day.

  Yet the strangest thing about that strangeness is how swift it passes. I have entered many places as alien from my native land as Loango, and each time I have felt as though I am passing into another world, where light and sound and all else have different qualities. But yet I adapt and assimilate most speedily. Is that some special aspect of my own character, I wonder, or is it universal? The former, I think. There are those who never adapt to anything unfamiliar, and go through life speaking only their native tongue and eating only their native foods, and if they are exposed to other foods or climes they sicken quickly and die. Yet I do adapt. I never came to like the heat of these African lands, which is severe: the heavy wet air hangs about you like a woolen cloak that may not be shed. But since there is no escape from the heat, it becomes unremarkable. One lives with the heat the way one lives with the ache of an old wound, and takes no notice of it. And wherever I found myself, I incorporated into myself whatever I could not shrug away. I spoke the language of those about me, be it Portugal or Kongo or Jaqqa. I ate—God save me!—the things they ate. I breathed their air. Thus it was that Loango, which I entered as if I were entering the domain of Belial or Moloch, lost its strangeness early for me, and came before long to seem most comfortable, and pleasing, as though it were some cozy town along the Thames. And in after years, when I needed refuge, I took my refuge there and found it much to my liking. I think this is a curious quality of my soul, but I make no apology for it. For if I had not had it, I trow, I would have gone to feed the worms many years ago.

  The main town of Loango is three miles from the waterside, and stands on a great plain. The streets are wide and long, and always clean swept. The place is thick with people, more than can be numbered, though you might not know it because the plantain-trees and palms and other vegetation are so profuse that they hide the dwellings that are built among them. On the west side of town are ten great houses that belong to the Maloango, as the king is known, and outside the door of his main house is a broad open space where he sits, when he has any feastings or matters of wars to deal with. I found it not easy to imagine Queen Elizabeth squatting outside her front gate to debate with the Privy Council. But, then, I found it equally hard to imagine the Privy Council pressing their faces into the dust whenever the Queen’s cupbearer came to her beck.

  From this open place goes a great wide street that runs the length of several musket-shots, and at the other end of it there is a great market every day, that begins at twelve o’clock. Here they deal in victuals, hens, fish, wine, oil, and grain, and in the excellent cloth they make from palm-leaf threads, fashioning it into velvets, satins, taffetas, damasks, sarsenets, and such like. Here also they deal in copper bracelets and in a wood that makes a very fine scarlet dye. But though Loango has an abundance of elephantos, the teeth of them are never sold in the marketplace, but always by private treaty.

  The people of Loango are pagans. They wear fine garments of palm-cloth or woven grass that drape them from waist to feet, like a sort of kilt, of fine workmanship. They go circumcised after the manner of the Hebrews, as is true of all the peoples hereabout except the Christian folk of the kingdom of Kongo, who keep their members intact as Europeans do. The King of Loango is an ally with the King of Kongo, and in earlier days, when the King of Kongo was very powerful, the King of Loango was his vassal.

  It was the middle part of the afternoon when we came into the city. Few people were about, under the horrid glare of the sun, but as word passed that the Portugals had come, the numbers of those in the streets increased. And once again the presence of a blond Englishman doubled and redoubled their curiousness: they whispered, they pointed, they crept forward almost unto touching range. With my hair and skin gleaming in the brilliance of the sunlight I felt that I was become Apollo of the Greeks, and I did smile and stretch forth my arms to the multitude and pretend to be giving them solemn blessing, until Pedro Faleiro tapped my ribs and said sourly, “Spare us this comedy, Piloto.”

  Through these gathering throngs we made our way to the royal compound so that we might present our compliments and credentials. The Loangans parted before us with that awe and deference that the colored folk of the world show so readily to Europeans, and by which the Spaniards and Portugals have been able to conquer so much territory with such small expenditure of lives. Is it that they take us indeed for gods, I wonder, or do our white skins persuade them that we come from the spirit-world and must be obeyed? Certain it is that if the Mexicans and the Peru folk and all the other conquered nations had risen up, and had been willing to sacrifice fifty of their lives for each of the invaders, they would have hurled King Philip’s troops to perdition and preserved their empires unto their own keeping. But they did not do it.

  As we came upon the royal buildings Faleiro showed me one group to the south side, all encircled with a palisado of poles, and said, “This is the harem.”

  “I know not that word,” I replied.

  “It is Moorish, and means, the place where the king’s wives are kept. No man may enter that zone and live.”

  It was so many buildings that it looked to be a village of itself. I felt amazed. “God’s own passion,” I cried, “how many wives does the man have?”

  “One hundred fifty and more,” said Faleiro.

  “Jesu!”

  “That is a trifle. The old king that was here before him had twice that number. And four hundred children by them. Or was it four thousand, eh, Andrade?”

  “Four hundred, I think,” said the boatswain.

  I shook my head. “Quite enough. One hundred fifty wives! Jesu, if he visit one a night, it would take him half the year to tup them all!”

  Faleiro gave me a leering look. “And would such a regimen be to your liking, Piloto?”

  “Nay,” said I most truthfully. “Better one wife, and clasp her dear body a hundred fifty times a year, than a hundred fifty and embrace them once apiece.”

  And that set me thinking of home, and house, and wife, and awakened the sadness and homesickness that lay always not far beneath the surface of my soul. And also did all this tal
k of women and tupping arouse in me dark hot thoughts of Dona Teresa, that I did miss most intensely from my life. Ah, then, was it the loss of Anne Katherine I mourned, or my absence from the witching Portugal woman? I did not know. I did not know at all, and that threw me into a new despond. For I would not then admit that Anne Katherine and all our plans had entered into the realm of vapors and mist for me, and that it was the silken thighs and hard-tipped breasts of Dona Teresa that I craved. But yet had I brought Dona Teresa’s little witching-statue with me, and kept it close beside me at all the time, and rubbed it now and again, as if I were rubbing her own flesh; and the touch of it made my ballocks heavy with desire and fiery recollections. This much dismayed me, for it was witchery, and witchery I do dread greatly: but though I had thought often of hurling that little idol into the sea for the sake of Jesus, yet had I not done it, and could not, for Dona Teresa’s sake. And all these thoughts did roar through my head just then, that stirred me into confusion.

  The rough Portugals did not have the wit to see that I was brooding, but jostled me and joked with me about what it would be like to be a king, and own such an abundance of wives. But I felt no gaiety and my mind was on other matters that they could not comprehend.

  And then they told me that if any man be seen trespassing in the royal harem, if he be taken in a woman’s arms or merely speaking with her, they both are brought into the marketplace and their heads are cut off, and their bodies quartered, and for all that day they lie thus sundered in the street. Faleiro had seen just such an execution, and Andrade also at another time.

  A man of our company named Mendes Oliveira, that had the best command among us of the language of this realm, spoke with some grandee who came out to meet us, and arranged for us to attend the king at his court-meeting. This happened every day between one in the afternoon and midnight, and was about to occur now; so we were quickly conducted to the main palace. Which was no true palace, but only a large arching-roofed building of wickerwork and straw and mud, hung with carpets and crimson tapestries to make it look more grand. It was full of noblemen, sitting upon white carpets upon the ground. That they were noblemen was clear certain, for they were most nobly dressed, in the garments of palm-cloth most splendidly worked, of the brightest yellow and scarlet and blue, and they also had hanging in front, apron-style, pretty and delicate skins, such as the skins of panthers, civets, sables, martens, and the like, with their heads left intact. For even greater show they had flung about their bare shoulders a kind of round surplice called in their language nkuto, the which fell below the knee and was woven like a fine net, out of palm fibers: the links were bordered with fringed tufts, making a very graceful effect.