Lord of Darkness

  How could I have broken away from her to go on deck, at such a time? Master of the ship I might be, but in good sooth I am a mortal man and no angel, and a male of hearty lust, and I could no more have flung Matamba from me and gone about my duties than I could have stepped outside of mine own skin. So we did the little love-wrestling on that cramped couch, lying on our sides, she half atop me, my hands clutching her buttocks and my fingers digging deep, she moving with the strange fury of one in whom terror has been transformed into desire with scarce a perceptible boundary twixt one and the other. And then from her did come a high-pitched wailing sound like the lament of some spirit of the dark misty fens, so piercing that it must have carried from one end of the ship to the other, and which affrighted me at first until I comprehended that it was only the outcry of her ecstasy, and into it I spent myself with hard hammering strokes that left me weak and whimpering. Thus drained we clung to one another in the dark, and gradually I perceived that the storm had abated, the sea had grown quiet.

  She was sobbing softly.

  God’s bones! What does one say, when a woman sobs at you after the act of coupling? Does she weep from joy or shame or fear, or what? How can one know these things, and how can one speak without being clumsy?

  Well, and sometimes it is best not to speak. I merely held her, as I had before, and she grew calm. My body slipped out of hers and she drew back a bit, but not far. I took her hand between mine to give her reassurance.

  “Please,” she said. “Forgive—”

  “Forgive? And forgive what? There’s naught to forgive.”

  Tears still did gleam by her cheeks. “D’ye understand my words?”

  “Frightened—”

  “Yea, the storm was a scary thing. It’s over now.”

  “Frightened—now. Not storm.”

  “Frightened of what we did? Nay, girl! It is the kindest thing a man and a woman can do for one another! D’ye understand my words? Do you?” She made no reply, and I had no way of knowing how much she followed my speech. But then I said, “I must go on deck, and see if there is damage,” and she understood that well enough, for she asked me in a whisper not to leave her. I told her it was my duty; and the leaving of her was ever so much easier now, with the magnetical pull of fleshly desire no longer holding me in its unshakeable grip. I drew on my cloak and patted her to show I meant no coldness by this withdrawal, and went without.

  The sea was still high and water was sluicing over the deck, and the men were busy under Oliveira’s command doing their tasks of battening and belaying. But all was well enough, the rain nothing more than a fine warm spray, the lightning having moved off to the east where we could see it marching through the dark humps of the coastal hills, and the thunder a mere distant reverberance. To me Oliveira said, “I’ve an hour more of my watch, Piloto! No need of you on deck now!” And he grinned his toothy grin, as if to say, Go back to thy doxy, lad, have yourself another merry roll with her. I did think of him most kindly for that carnal but well-meant grin.

  Yet did I make my rounds all the same, and only when I was certain that everything was secure did I return to my cabin. Matamba had not left my bed, but now she was tranquil. I lay down beside her and would have kissed her, which I had not done in that sudden and wild conjoining of ours; but she turned her head away, saying, “Nay, the mouth is for eating.”

  At that I laughed. For who would find aught to object to in a sweet kiss? But I saw the great gulf that lay between us, that were two people out of different worlds.

  We came close together and soon we were coupling again. And this time we did enact the rites of love no longer merely because we had been flung close together by the suddenness and violence of the storm—which I think was only the pretense we both had used, anyway—but now for sheer desirousness of it. And afterward of nights in my cabin on the homeward voyage we were unhesitating in our joinings, and did send the high wail of her pleasure and the answering rumble of my own through the ship again and yet again.

  Though Matamba was scarce more than a girl she clearly had had much experience of these sexual matters. Her skills were considerable, yet in her way of going about the act she was wholly African, with practices most unfamiliar to me. I have already told you that she would not kiss, the meeting of mouths being deemed unclean in her tribe, lest there be an exchange of spittle from tongue to tongue. Nor did she care to have her private parts much caressed by my hand, nor to touch my own, except when as a particular favor to me she would rest her fingers lightly upon my member. And by no means would she countenance the putting of my mouth to her female zone, and I think she would sooner have died than do the like to me. In these things she did follow the customs of all her sort, rather than any private finicking fastidiousness, for never in African lands did I find a woman who was much fond of kissing or the other kind of mouthing: it is not their way, and they look with distaste upon Europeans who do such things.

  On the other hand she was much given to tickling me, notably beneath the arms and along the thighs. The which startled and displeased me, both that it seemed frivolous in the making of love and that it was in itself not a likeable sensation to me; but when I asked her to desist, she burst into tears, thinking herself found unworthy. I learned afterward that such is the practice of her tribe, to tickle, that is as solemn to them as kissing can be among us, and is core and essence of their loveplay. Since she knew that I disliked it she attempted not to do it, but it was too deeply ingrained in her, and when the full heat of the game did come upon her she could not refrain from working her fingertips slyly into my sensitive places, the which I learned to accept from her.

  So far as the manner in which coupling was achieved, there, too, she had her own strong preferences. Her favored way was to crouch above me, like one who squats by a riverside washing garments in the stream, and to lower herself until her loins were positioned above mine, and thus to impale herself. Then, too, she liked to lie alongside me and slide herself over me until I was imprisoned by her legs, as she had done that first time when the storm drove her into my bed. And often she turned and knelt with her back to me, so that I had her in the dog-fashion. What she did not care for at all was our familiar English way, the woman on her back with her legs drawn up and the man between them; this she found smothering and perilous, and somehow awkward. It was not the usage of her tribe, in fact, but I think the prime reason for her not wanting it that way was a deeper one. For during her time in slavery she was forcibly had by Portugals any number of times—they violating any handsome slave-wench without shame, whenever the fancy took them—and in such rapes they customarily flung themselves atop her, through which she came to loathe that manner of union. I may add that she loathed Portugals as well, despising everything about them, their faces and their smell and their filthiness of body. When she cried out to me from the corral that I should save her from the slave-masters, it was on account of my yellow hair and English face, for although she had no idea what an Englishman might be, she knew at first sight that I must be something quite different from a Portugal, and chose therefore to cast her lot with me. And when she discovered that I was indeed different, that my skin was not rancid with old stinks and grimes and that I would not shove my yard into her unheated slit at the first chance I got, her devotion to me manifested itself most touchingly. She followed me about the ship, as loving and tender as a puppy; and though she was courteous enough to the Portugal men, they being my comrades, she kept a cool distance between them and herself as far as such was possible in close quarters.

  Thus it fell out that I did go to São Tomé a solitary man, and returned as a man of property, with my own private slave that was also the companion of my bed, and, in the best of ways between men and women, my friend.

  For we were both lost souls set adrift from our native soil, two wanderers, two victims of seizure and imprisonment, and we clove to one another. It had been my first plan to set her free in Angola and allow her to return to her own land; but swiftly
did it become evident to me, as I guided the pinnace down the coast from port to port, that I had no wish to dismiss her. Nor was she eager to leave me again, since in the journey back to her native province she would surely be taken in slavery again, if she were not devoured by Jaqqas or torn asunder by lions or gulped by coccodrillos. As we came to these conclusions we found ourselves rapidly drawing nigh in spirit, which charmed me greatly. I began to instruct her more fully in Portuguese, and she to teach me some African words, so that we needed no longer to be limited to the cumbersome business of miming that was the chief means of communication between us. She was a quick learner. I even taught her a few words of English, telling her that this was my private language, the language of my true nation, that was enemy to these Portugals among whom I did find myself. It was a joy, God wot, to feel good English syllables on my tongue again! Once in jest I had pretended with Dona Teresa a game of talking English to stir the fires of lust; but now with Matamba I did the like in earnest, for the hearing of mine own language in her mouth aroused me greatly.

  So we lay together and she said, “God bless Her Protestant Majesty Queen Elizabeth,” and I laughed and caressed her and would have kissed her, if she had let me.

  And she said, “Essex, Sussex, Somerset, York.”

  “Northumberland, Suffolk, Gloucester, Kent,” said I.

  And she said after me in her way, “Northumberland, Suffolk, Gloucester, Kent.”

  It was a joyous time. Let the Portugals strive among themselves like serpents and basilisks for power, I told myself: let them lie and cheat and betray, and excommunicate each other with bell and book and candle, and scheme feveredly for advantage. It was not my way. I had carved out a small isle of solace for myself within their dark and tempestuous Africa. I had an occupation; I had my good health; now I had this Matamba of mine, too. It was my purpose henceforth to continue to live carefully and quietly until I could contrive somehow to effect my escape and my return to England, which was the one great canker in the sweetness of my life, that I was so far from home.

  There was still the matter of the debt I had incurred in the buying of Matamba out of slavery. But that was easily enough dealt with, in the trading we carried out at the coastal depots. For by order of Don João de Mendoça—an order sustained and confirmed by Don Jeronymo—I stood a full partner with the Portugals of my crew in any enterprises we might conduct by way of commerce. And when we stopped once more in Loango on our southward way, those people did greet us cordially and relate that there had lately been a great hunting and slaughter of elephantos there, so that they had much merchandise to offer us, the which we were able mightily to profit upon.

  The elephanto, I should say, is the most awesome of all the African beasts, the same colossus that accompanied the armies of great Hannibal that time he came to conquer Rome. It is found wandering free all over the Kongo land and Loango, and to a lesser extent in Angola, where also the dwellers are not so assiduous in the hunting of him. They are immense beasts, like unto houses that move. I have seen the imprint of their feet in the dust, in plain diameter four spans broad, and their ears are like great gray wrinkled cloaks, in which a man could hide himself. I was told in Loango that the elephantos do live one hundred and fifty years, and until the middle of their age they continue still in growing. Certainly have I seen and weighed divers of their tusks, and their weight amounted to two hundred pounds apiece, and more. These vast teeth are of course prized in civilized lands for the ivory that is cut and polished out of them.

  But in Africa it is their tails that are richest valued, and from which much later I did create the fortune that for a time I assembled. They use these tails to beat away the flies that trouble them, and on their tails they have certain hairs or bristles as big as rushes or broom-sprigs, of a shining black color. The older they be, the fairer and stronger be the hairs, and they fetch a fine price, as I say, fifty hairs getting a thousand reis, that is, six of our shillings. The blacks of all these kingdoms braid the tail-hairs very finely, and wear them about their necks, and also the blackest and most glossy ones about their waists, displayed most proudly.

  In the hunting of the elephantos there are several methods. They trap them by digging deep trenches in the places where they accustom to graze, which trenches are very narrow at the bottom, and broad above, so that the beast may not help himself and leap out when he is fallen into them. These trenches they cover with sods of earth, and grass, and leaves, and when the animal walks over them he falls into the hole. But another way is for light and courageous persons, that trust much to their swiftness in running, to lie in wait all smeared with elephanto dung and urine, so that the elephanto will not smell the human smell of them. Then when the beast ascends some steep and narrow place, they do come up behind them, and with a very sharp knife cut off their tails, the poor beast not being able in those straits easily to turn back to revenge himself, nor with his trunk to reach his enemy; and the hunter flees. It is a swift animal, because it makes very large strides, but in turning round it loses much time, and so the huntsman escapes in safety with his prize. And we in the marketplace of Loango did buy these things for our paltry beads and other gibcrack gewgaws that we had acquired in São Tomé, which we knew we would sell in São Paulo de Loanda far more valuably. If the Africans of this coast were seafaring folk, or had some skill at the merchant trade, it would not be so simple for the Portugals to turn such easy profits from them. But as things be, the wealth is open for the plucking, since that the native folk do not trade much with one another beyond their own borders, and leave a vacancy for enterprising Europeans to exploit them of their treasure. Well, and the race was ever to the swift; and so be it. So be it!

  TEN

  WHEN WE had returned to São Paulo de Loanda we did indeed hawk our cargo most beneficially, and I was able to put aside enough out of my share to repay the ten thousand reis I had borrowed of my shipmates, with some left over, the first money of my own I had possessed since leaving England. I installed Matamba at my cottage and showed her to my other slaves, who I think did resent her coming, inasmuch as she shared my bed and held other such privileges with me. They gave her evil looks and often played cruel tricks on her. But I dismissed one of them from my service, a Bakongo woman who had contempt for the tribe from which Matamba sprang; and the other two, a boy and an old woman, gave no more trouble.

  The city was quiet. If there were any adherents to the former faction of Don João yet remaining, they were all now loyal to Don Jeronymo, and indeed I never heard Don João’s name mentioned. Whenever I passed the palace that had been his—which still was guarded and maintained, there being an official pretense that Don João would soon be returning from Portugal—I felt the sharp pricking of sorrow over the cruel murder of that man, who had been so generous with me. And of course I lamented also and always the slaying of Dona Teresa, and prayed that the assassins, at the last, might have spared her for beauty’s sake, though I did not think it very likely.

  I comforted myself with Matamba, a simpler and warmer person than Dona Teresa, and good to be with, who was Teresa’s equal in matters of the flesh, I think, and whose sweet and eager nature had a charm not to be found in the other woman. Yet I do confess that I preferred Dona Teresa’s beauty. Though Matamba was ripe and supple of body, she was nevertheless a pure blackamoor, and I was not then so much of an African myself that I was able to find the highest joy in her flattened nose and her full lips. And when my caressing hands passed over the rough coarse slave-brand on the softest part of her thigh, or when I stroked her face and encountered the double row of tribal markings incised as cicatrices into her skin by way of ornament, I found myself against my will yearning for the satin perfection of that woman who was lost to me.

  I had yet by me the tiny wooden idol that Dona Teresa had given me long ago, the which had survived all the hardships I had undergone. This thing I regarded as most private, and displayed it not, but kept it about me in my clothes, or beneath my pillow. But with
Matamba dwelling at my side, it was certain she would discover it, and one day she did. She laid back my pillow and stared at it in solemn silence, so that I heard her hard breathing. Then she crossed herself five times running and whispered, “Mokisso! Mokisso!”

  “It is nothing, Matamba.”

  “Why do you have this?” she demanded.

  I might have lied, and said I had found it in my wanderings, and was keeping it only as a curiosity-piece. But I saw no need to lie to a slave, and I cared not to lie to Matamba. So said I then, “It was given me by—a friend.”

  “Throw it away! It is witchery!”

  And she trembled, as though she had found the Devil’s hoofprint in the earth outside our door.

  “Well, and if it is?” I said. “It has no power over me.”

  “Do you know that?”

  “I am my own man, and suffer no witching force.”

  “Then throw it away,” she said again.

  “But I find it pleasing. It is smooth to the touch, and well carved. And the friend who gave it to me is one that is dead, or so I think, and this is all that is left to me of her.”

  “Of her?” said Matamba, and there was a very wifely something in her tone, that amused and angered me both.

  “Dona Teresa da Costa was her name,” said I. “A very fine and noble Christian woman of high bearing, who—”

  “She is no Christian, if she gives you this. She is a witch!”

  “Come, Matamba, you are too harsh!”

  “I know witching. I know mokisso-things. This is peril!”

  “A harmless little carving.”

  “An idol,” said she.

  And now my wrath did rise, for I knew that she was right and I was wrong, which always angers one when one is determined not to give way; and I would not, by my faith, part with this gift of Teresa’s, if six Archbishops were to insist upon it. She tried to take it from me, I holding it in my hand, and I pushed at her and thrust her back, not gently, so that she fell to the edge of the bed. And when she looked up at me, her breasts rising and falling hard in her upset, there was a new look to her eyes, that said she was reminded I was still her master, and a man, for all that I seemed gentler than the other men she had known.