Lord of Darkness

  Here at least we had some repose, and took some fish and birds for the benefit of our bellies. And at dusk the next day we proceeded onward to the north until we arrived at the river. To cross the Mbengu entailed us in great danger, for that the place is a nesting-ground of coccodrillos, in such number that they reminded us of the swarms of ants. I have told you that coccodrillos have a musky scent, but here they were so numerous that the water itself was rank with their flavor, which was distasteful in the extreme. And they are roaring beasts, that in the night do call to one another, especially toward break of day, with a sound much resembling the sound of a deep well, that might be easily heard a league away. But we found a place where we could safely ford the river between two great lairs of these monsters, and we lit torches, which they seemed not to like.

  All the following day we crossed another dry hot terrain and toward night we came to the River Dande, the next one north of the Mbengu. Owing to the bleakness of the land we turned east and traveled so far that we were right against the mountains of Manibangono, which is a lord that warreth against the King of Kongo, whither we intended to go. Ahead of us we saw a village, but we were uncertain of our reception there and so we slipped most secretly into his outskirts, and hid ourselves in a field nearby.

  God’s death, that was folly! For we had planted ourselves right down in the great burial-ground of the village, and hardly were we established there when a procession came wending out of the town to perform some funeral rites. We could not flee, for the lay of the land was such that we would surely be seen; so we had no recourse but to huddle ourselves down behind some of the great heaped-up tumuli of the dead and hope that we went unnoticed.

  So they came forth, and when they reached the edge of the cemetery they all paused while some hens were killed by their painted sorcerers, and the blood liberally scattered around. Cristovão, beside me, whispered, “D’ye know the import of that?”

  “Not at all,” said I.

  “It is to prevent the soul of the dead person from coming to give the zumbi to any of the townsfolk.”

  “I know not this word zumbi.”

  “It means an apparition of the deceased one. They are of the opinion that to whomsoever it shall appear, that person will presently die.”

  “Have we then escaped the ants and coccodrillos only to deliver ourselves up to the zumbi?” I asked.

  To this he laughed quietly, and we fell silent and watched as the ceremony of lamenting proceeded, with much singing and dancing and weeping, and the sound of drums and iron bells and ivory horns. Then the corpse, wrapped in bright clothes and blankets, was taken into its grave. They did cover it with rich goods, blankets and robes and ornaments and the like, and poured an ocean and a half of palm-wine over it, the which I would gladly have had for my own use just then, and covered the top over with straw mats. And then the sorcerers did go back and forth with a thousand superstitious interlacings and interweavings, after which the earth was heaped high. Then to the sound of a beating drum they all withdrew back into their town, and during the night we heard from afar the sounds of merriment, and I know not what idolatrous delights and abominable pleasures.

  There was no sleep for us that night. Who could tell what mourners lurked about, or what sentinels, or what zumbi? With the first pink streaks of dawn in the sky all did seem quiet, and we stole away to the north. And we passed the river, and rested again, and proceeded by the day, crossing, as we hoped, into the kingdom of Kongo, and thinking of ourselves as much like unto the children of Israel, wandering out of the desert toward the promised land.

  THREE

  BEING TWO leagues north of the River Dande, we met with a party of Negroes, a dozen or more young huntsmen or warriors, well armed, but seemingly friendly. They spoke the language of the Angolan blacks and asked us whither we traveled.

  “We go to Kongo,” I said.

  “You go the wrong way, then,” said they, which much surprised me, for that I was sure I had the plan of the territory clear in my mind. But they said they would guide us, for they were Mushikongos, that is, Kongo-men, and would carry us to the land of Mbamba, where the Duke of Mbamba lay, who was one of the chief princes of the kingdom of the Kongo.

  I was ill at ease at all this, and to his credit so was Cristovão and his Gypsies. But the Portugals who were with us had come to mistrust my leadership and were willing to be guided by these blackamoors, and so firmly did they argue that I yielded, thinking I might after all be mistaken about the proper direction of our travel.

  So we went some three miles east, up into the land, till we became certain that we were in the wrong way. For we traveled by the sun and the sun plainly lay behind us in the afternoon as we went up into the hills. So we turned back again to the westward. At this the blacks quick took up a position before us with their bows and arrows and darts, ready to shoot at us.

  I looked toward Cristovão and he to me, and I said, “We must go through them.”

  “Aye,” said he, and we levelled our muskets at them. The blackamoors not showing fear at this, we discharged six muskets together, which killed four of them and greatly amazed the others, who fled into the woods. But they followed us four or five miles, and hurt two of our company with their arrows.

  The next day we came within the borders of Mbamba, that is the south-west province of the kingdom of the Kongo, and traveled all that day. At night we heard the surge of the sea. This gave me great pleasure, I having lived all the happiest days of my life within earshot of the sea, and like any Englishman I begin to feel narrow-souled and strained when I am herded into some great dry flatland far from the surf and the ocean-breezes. But there on my ear was the rise and the fall of the waves, that is the sweetest sound our world can bestow.

  My plan was this, to make my way to some civilized part of the Kongo, for that is a well-ordered land, whose people are far from backward and do obey the behests of Jesus. The Portugals have great influence there, but I did not fear falling into their hands, since they would have no knowledge of my condition in Angola, and perhaps I might pretend to be a Dutchman, shipwrecked somewhere and seeking rescue. Or else the blackamoors themselves might aid me to reach a port, and I might take ship for England. I had some other such schemes, too, in case these did not fare well. But in the final event all my planning was doomed to perish frustrate, because calamity overtook us as we made our wearisome track northward, running a few miles in from the shore of the sea.

  It was in the morning and we were, I think, ten leagues or a little more above São Paulo de Loanda. To our great dismay we saw suddenly coming after us a troop of Portugals on horse, with a great store of Negroes following them. I think we had by grievous error stumbled across some outlying garrison of the army, who did patrol this region against enemies, and peradventure we were mistaken for scouts of an encroaching force.

  Our company was so disheartened by this that our seven faint-hearted Portugals hid themselves in the thickets, crouching down like squirrels in a hole, where they would certainly be captured. I and the four Gypsies thought to have escaped, but the soldiers followed us so fast that we were fain to go into a little wood. As soon as the Portugal captain had overtaken us he discharged a volley of shot into the wood, which made us lose one another, for under that deadly fire we did crawl this way and that, and were separated.

  I lay alone, steeped in my reeking sweat but still unwounded. All about me sounded the cries and alarums of the Negro auxiliaries, who were thrashing foolishly about in the wood, shouting halloo to one another as they sought for us. But there were so many of them that even in their folly they were like to blunder upon me, and I bethought myself that if those Negroes did take me in the wood they would kill me in some barbarous ugly way, and drag my bloodied corpse to the captain of the Portugals to claim a reward. I believed my time was up, but I preferred to die in clean warfare rather than be pounded and mangled by savages in some tangled jungly place of chaos. Therefore, thinking to make a better end for myself among
the Portugals, I came presently out of the wood with my musket ready charged, intending to give a good accounting for my life.

  But the captain, thinking that we had been all twelve together and I was leading my fellows from refuge, called to me and said, “Fellow soldier, I have the governor’s pardon; if you will yield yourselves you shall have no hurt.”

  I, having my musket ready, answered the captain most truthfully that I was an Englishman, and had served six years at Masanganu, in great misery; and came in company with eleven Portugals and Gypsies, and here am left all alone; and rather than I will be hanged, I will die in the defense of my liberty.

  “Nay,” he said, “you will not be hanged. Are you Andres Battell the Piloto?”

  “That I am.”

  “Deliver thy musket to one of the soldiers, Piloto Battell. And I protest, as I am a gentleman and a soldier, to save thy life for thy resolute mind.”

  These were right noble words, even though they came from the mouth of a Portugal. I thought it wiser to accept his pledge, for all my mistrust of such blandishments, than to reject it out of hand and die gloriously; for there is no repair of dying, glorious or otherwise. So did I surrender. And you will not be amazed to learn that I tumbled thereby into fresh misfortune.

  The captain did command all his soldiers and Negroes to search the woods, and to bring us all out alive or dead, which was presently done. Then they carried us to the city of São Paulo de Loanda, which looked much enlarged and greatly more prosperous in the six years since last I had seen it, and thrust me with the three Gypsies into prison. There I lay for months with a collar of iron upon me, and great bolts upon my legs, in the very dungeon I had known before, among the rats and spiders. So I was not hanged, and the captain did keep his promise to me to that degree. But once again I was a captive in chains.

  Everything becomes more skillful done with practice at it, and I had had by now such training at being a dungeon inmate that I was a fair expert at it, and carried off the task with high great virtuosity. No longer did I expend my breath in loud railings at my fate, or denunciation of mine enemies, nor did I brood long and hard upon dire revenge. Instead I quickly let myself slide into an altered condition of awareness, a kind of mystical trance, in which for hours at a time I did lift my soul from out of this dreary place and let it rove the bright realm of fancy. I think I would have gone mad in all my many captivities, had I not had that skill.

  Therefore did I imagine myself in England, walking through the tangled grimy lanes of London and strolling the sweet green fields of Essex. To Plymouth I went, and Dover, that shines so fine in the sunlight, and I knelt in the great Cathedral at Canterbury, and walked on the old walls of Chester, and journeyed by cart to York, and even across into dark stormy Scotland on some errand to those dour turbulent folk. I consorted with great lords of the court and met with learned geographers, to whom I did tell my tales of Africa. I sailed again to France, and to Spain, even which I imagined now was bound by treaty of peace with England. And I pictured myself coming home to a loving wife I called Anne Katherine, though here my fancy failed me, for I could not even summon up a face to give her, nor any character of person. The Anne Katherine I had once known was only a figment, a child long outgrown, and though in pretense I could see myself married with her, she had no substance for me.

  In such playing did I consume the days and the nights. I reflected often upon my own life, also, the strange twistings and turnings of it, that had me in and out of these Portugee dungeons, and back and forth up strange shadowy rivers, and moving like one ensorcelled through a realm of naked savages and man-eaters. It was as though I had fallen asleep on an April day in Anno 1589, and had entered into a long dream from which there was no awaking.

  In dreams anything can happen, and nothing is cause for surprise. So now upon the failure of my bold escape from Masanganu did I resign myself to the dream-like flow of event, and let myself be carried along on its strong tide, without ever once expecting any further relief from prison and punishment, and without showing the slightest amaze when my life did undergo new transformations. By which I mean that I had lulled myself into a great calmness of spirit, from which nothing could rouse my tranquil pulse. Thus when warders came to me and smote the bolts from my legs and the iron collar from my neck, I asked no questions, and it was all the same to me, whether they were taking me next to the place of execution or to put me on board a ship to England. My blood ran quiet. My soul was accepting of anything equally.

  So they took from me my rags and gave me rough but serviceable clothes of the kind a common yeoman might wear, and led me into the presidio courtyard and out into the heart of the city. And under the drumbeat blaze of noon I marched between them, a little weak in the leg from so long being cramped into a cell, but my shoulders straight, and I never asked a word, never demanded of them to know where they went with me or what fate was to be mine.

  They conveyed me to a residence of the most palatial kind, with facings of white stone inset with gleaming tiles of Portuguese manufacture in blue and yellow, and sentinels with muskets patrolling outside. I thought I remembered that place from my former life in São Paulo de Loanda, but I was not sure, and the clouds did not clear from my mind until I was within. Then I realized it was the dwelling place of Fernão da Souza and Dona Teresa, but greatly rebuilt and made more splendid over the years. And setting foot in that place broke me at last from my placid trance, and put a dryness into my throat and squeezed my heart like a secret hand within my breast.

  We went down a lengthy hall hung with heavy tapestries and into a drawing-chamber, where once Dona Teresa had fed me sweetmeats from a little tray. There was a woman standing there, of the greatest majesty and beauty. She wore a long black gown of Venetian silk, and a triple strand of shining pearls, deep blue in color and no two of the same shape, and in her ears were broad hoops of gold from which great emeralds depended. So opulent was her costume that the blaze of it nigh eclipsed her features, and I was slow to recognize her, even though this was, of course, Dona Teresa that I beheld.

  “Leave him with me,” she said.

  Her voice was cool and measured, the voice of one accustomed to command. She held herself like a queen.

  I thought me back six years and more to my last view of her, when she had crouched near naked in my cottage, sweat-shining and as wild as an angry animal, her clothes in tatters and red scratches across her skin, and her bare breasts heaving up and down from frenzy and wrath. And there flashed into my mind also an earlier and happier time, when I was new in Angola and scarce recovered from my Masanganu fever, and in my prison cell she did drop her shift away and show her brown nipples to me, and wrap her thighs about my body. She had been mere eighteen then, mysterious and poised but still showing the soft unformed look of youth about her. But that was ten years past, or a little more, and she had ripened into something regal, and awesome in her strength. And yet was she so beautiful still, more beautiful even than she had been, that I could have wept for anguish at the perfection of her face and form.

  I should have been frighted of her, I suppose. For in our last meeting, those six years back, she had shown herself to be a true witch, a dark sorceress, a woman of the greatest malevolence: qualities which I had seen in her from the beginning, but which had risen to their peak of envenomed power that time she had contended with Matamba. She was a magnificent creature: but yet was she a kind of monster.

  Strange to say, I did not fear her.

  Was it that fear had been burned from my soul, under the hot sun of Masanganu? Or that I had broken her grip on me, when that I had hurled her little idol into the river-waters? Or was it only that I knew she could do me no further harm, since that I had nothing whatever left to lose? Perhaps that last was the essence of it. Whatever, I faced her most coolly, with my heart altogether still. I felt anger toward her—aye, an anger most surpassing!—but not a shred of fear.

  We stood apart, with a massive burnished bronze table between us, a
nd she studied me as though I were some rare curio from the treasure-houses of Byzantium.

  Then she said, “I feared your hair would have turned white. I am much pleased to find it golden still.”

  “I am white-haired within, Dona Teresa.”

  “Indeed? How old are you now, Andres?”

  “I think I will be two-and-forty this year.”

  “Very old, yes. Turn around. Let me see you from all sides.”

  I obeyed, turning as if I were displaying some new mode of cloak for her, or fashionable breeches. For I did not dare let go of my tight rein upon myself, and come into reach of my true feelings, lest I launch myself at her and throttle her to death.

  She said, “You look strong and vigorous, Andres.”

  “Aye. Slavery agrees with me well.”

  “Has it been slavery for you, then?”

  “Six years at Masanganu, Dona Teresa,” said I most quietly. “It is not a pleasure-resort there. And then some days crossing the wilderness on foot, and afterward some months in these dungeons here, where the food is not of the finest.”

  “Oh, Andres, will you forgive me?” she asked, and the steel went from her voice and she seemed almost a girl again.

  “Aye,” said I bitterly, “for it was a light thing you did to me, to betray me on the eve of my escape, and prevent me from regaining my native land. Why should I hold a grudge for that?”

  “Upon the cross, Andres, I had nothing to do with betraying your escape! It was some Portugals in the Dutchman’s crew, that learned of your plan and told Caldeira de Rodrigues.”

  “Ah, so it was. You merely invented the tale of my raping you by force, that was all.”

  She lowered her eyes. “I was greatly angered with you.”

  “For refusing you?”

  “For that, and for taking the slave-girl in my place.”