Lord of Darkness
When the meat was ready came another great strangeness. For one of Calandola’s man-witches brought him a beautifully worked wicker basket of great size, that I remembered we had carried over specially from the Jaqqa camp on the other side. And from it the witch took certain vestments and utensils of an unmistakably Christian kind, and did hand them one by one to Imbe Calandola. There was the black cassock of a priest, and the mantle called a cope, and a richly worked chasuble, which is the thing they wear when they say the Mass. All these several garments had been slitted open and reworked with rope, so that they could fit over Calandola’s giant body; for the Portuguese priest to whom they had once belonged must have been a much smaller man. When Calandola had donned these things he took up a crucifix, which he held by the short end, and in his other hand he raised up a silver chalice, and with a mighty laugh he did clatter the end of the crucifix against the side of the chalice, like the ringing of a bell to summon men to dinner. And at the sound of this ringing, a great shout did go up from all the Jaqqas, and a whoop of joy, for that they knew it must be feeding-time.
It mattered little to me what blasphemy the Imbe-Jaqqa cared to work with all these Popish vestments and utensils. But I thought it would matter a good deal to my Portugal comrades. Indeed they were taken aback, and I saw their lips clamping tight and their nostrils flaring. Yet they cried out nary a word of protest. In this they took their cue from their scoundrel commander, Pinto Dourado, who stood by with his arms folded, smiling as sweetly as though this were some chorus of Christmastide revelers happening here, and not the shouting of sacrilegious cannibals. Did Pinto Dourado not mind the insult to his faith? Or was he shrewdly thinking that a protest might merely add some Portuguese meat to the banquet? Perhaps some of each; but I think also that he was keeping careful watch over his business arrangements with the Jaqqas, and would not venture any disapproval of his host’s ways until the dealings were consummated.
Well, and well, the feast began.
There was Calandola waving his chalice and crucifix about, and straining his mighty shoulders against the constricting garb of some murdered priest, and there were his long-legged naked warriors turning the spits, and there were the kinfolk of the victims standing silent aside, and then the butcher-Jaqqas commenced their carving, and a great juicy haunch was brought to the king, who threw back his head and roared his vast laughter and dug his teeth into the meat.
As he ate, he pointed to his lieutenants and captains, and they one by one came to take their fill, Kinguri Longshanks first, and then each in order of precedence. Nearly all the Jaqqas are tall and straight-limbed, though some few are short, and the short ones are very brawny in the arms and legs. Since they do multiply themselves by adoption, stealing children out of other tribes and raising them as Jaqqas, there is little blood-kinship among these man-eaters; and yet they resemble each other, as if their bloody life does make them grow to look like one another. Or perhaps it is that they choose a certain shape of captive preferably to adopt into their number. But I was greatly struck by the bigness and strength of them, as I had been from the very first, long ago, when I saw a Jaqqa much the size of Kinguri standing alone and mysterious by the side of the River Kwanza.
And again Calandola beckoned us to eat, crying out what must have been the words, “You are our guests! Eat, eat, eat!”
But we did not do that.
From a distance I did watch the feast, though. And a very strange thing happened to me after a time which you may find hard to comprehend, that is, I ceased to be amazed or repelled, and looked upon what was occurring as quite an ordinary event. What, you say? How, was I become a monster like these cannibals? I think not. I think a kind of wisdom was entering me from having witnessed several previous of these cannibal banquets, going back even to my time in Brazil, and those wild Indians the Taymayas.
And what this wisdom said was, We eat cattle and we eat sheep and we eat fowl, and we think nothing amiss of that; and these folk eat man, and they think nothing amiss of that, and we are all God’s creatures, are we not? I mean by that only that in this huge world there are differing customs, and what seems strange or loathsome to one race is quite usual to another. Are we to be angry with a Frenchman because he will speak no English, and we cannot understand his palaver? But he is French: French is his usual speech. And the flesh of humans is the usual diet of Taymayas and Jaqqas and the others of that kind. And I believe it is not fitting to condemn them out of hand for that.
Possibly, you say, I have dwelled too long among cannibals, and my soul has been tainted by their ways. Possibly; but I think otherwise. I think only that I have come to a wide understanding of the world’s variety, from having lived so long on its outer edges. I dare say that somewhere on this globe is a race that not only dotes on human flesh but also would puke at the thought of eating cattle or fowl, claiming that such is unnatural and evil.
And then afterward, when all were sated, we did divide the spoils. From the captives the Jaqqas selected certain boys and girls on whom the first hair had begun to sprout in the loins, and adopted them forthwith into their tribe. These were twelve or fifteen in number, who looked to be dazed, and not knowing what was happening to them. On the boys slave-collars were placed, as is done to all Jaqqa youths until they have slain some foe in battle. The other Benguelas were given to us for slaves, as our fee for taking the Jaqqas across the river. These we loaded on our ship, knowing that we had accomplished the making of our fortune: for we had many strong and healthy souls, that we could sell in São Paulo de Loanda for twelve thousand reis the head, and they had cost us nothing, not even a handful of beads.
Then we made ready to depart. At the last, the high Jaqqas came to us, Calandola and Kinguri and some others, and they walked about on shore looking toward our ship, thinking, I suppose, that it was a miracle. And the Imbe-Jaqqa again touched my hair.
I began to have an idea now of why those Jaqqas who had found us in the desert had spared us that time, and conveyed us toward Masanganu. It was for the sake of my hair; for they had never seen its like, and thought me to be god-like in some way. For Calandola showed such fascination with it as made me feel uneasy, fearing that he would not let me set sail with my fellows, in which Pinto Dourado would most likely gladly acquiesce, or that he would let me go, but ask me to leave my hair behind, or some such thing. But the Imbe-Jaqqa was content only to touch it some few times. And then we went out toward the frigate.
And as we journeyed northward I could not cleanse the Jaqqas from my mind.
I was altogether captivated by them. Certainly they were cannibal monsters, and dreadful; and yet they seemed in a strange way not to be truly evil, any more than a storm that sweeps across the land in a rage of destruction can be said to be evil. For they had no malice in them. They were mere appetites on legs. To slay and eat one’s own kind is, in sooth, a great wrong, as any child might argue. But were the Jaqqas any worse than the swarming slippery Portugals who had taken over the coast, and did press an entire race into slavery, and cheated one another and plotted all sorts of dire treacheries, all the while going piously each day to the Mass? In this land of Africa everyone was a monster of some sort or another, I did decide. And I think I preferred the ferocious Jaqqas, who made no pretense of piety, to the hypocrite folk who claimed to be civilized, but were raw savage just beneath the outer costume.
The Imbe-Jaqqa haunted me in another way. I know that there are upon this globe certain great men: Drake is one, and Ralegh, and Elizabeth must be deemed a great man, too, for a man’s role is what she did adopt, and splendidly. And also Julius Caesar and Alexander and such—leaders, dominators. I have a very small bit of that thing about me myself, that they have had: for I am no king or duke, but I have observed that in any group of men, they do turn to me before long for leadership in a natural way, though I do not seek it. Had I ever sought it, or had I the kind of noble birth that confers those powers without the seeking, I might indeed have been something extraordinary and do
ne high deeds, and I say that in no braggartly way, but in quiet simple assessment. Yet I have only a small bit of that thing. I would not have been an emperor. But this Calandola, I thought at once, had in him the stuff of majesty: like the great Genghis of the Tartars, like the Hunnish chief Attila who despoiled Europe in the long ago, like the Assyrian Sennacherib of dire repute, he could capture the souls of men, and make them follow wherever he willed. In that first encounter he had begun to capture mine, which I barely understood. For there was much that was loathsome and repellent about him, and yet he attracted. Do you comprehend? Can you? It was the pull of the coccodrillo, the pull of darkness, of the hidden chilling Satanic river that flows through the depths of the soul and sweeps all conscience and faith before it. I saw Imbe Calandola in my dreams, like a titan filling half the sky. His touch was upon me. He rang like a great gong in my skull, tolling, tolling, giving me no peace. And I did not understand what power he held over me, nor how I was meant to yield to it. But he filled half the sky; he did ring in my skull like a gong.
SEVEN
THE JAQQAS settled themselves in this country of Benguela and took the spoil of it. And we had great trade with them, five months, and gained greatly by them. First we carried our cargo of slaves to São Paulo de Loanda and sold them, the governor and other officials taking their heavy share, but still leaving profit enough so that we were all rich men. I was showered with milreis, enough money to buy me a grand farm in England, if I were in England. We stayed a little while in the city, and with my new riches I purchased good cloaks for Matamba, and other pretties. I spoke with her of the things that had befallen me, and said that I had seen Imbe Calandola. At the which she moved away from me and began to whimper, as if she feared some contagion of evil might pass from the great Jaqqa to her through me; but I calmed her and she asked me many questions, and told me that the long-legged Kinguri was brother to Calandola, and a famous man in his own right, which I had not known.
We undertook a second voyage to Benguela, bringing certain hatchets and knives and other common things that the Jaqqas needed, and brought away more slaves: for it was easy for the Jaqqas to round up the villagers to give to us at a gentle price. So I grew richer, I that had been a miserable prisoner and a banished man not too long before.
There was a counting-house in São Paulo de Loanda now, operated by a Spaniard with connections in the House of Fugger that is such great bankers across Europe, and I placed my money there, to increase it. This was a noble room of white walls and black wood panels, and a great staircase of some fine black wood rising to the upper room where the secret businesses of banking did proceed. The Spaniard was all courtesy and sleekness, and moved about like a little puppy, fawning on me, with many an eager, “Sí, Señor Battell,” as though I were some oiled and waxed grandee with a long Espaniardo mustachio, and gave me a receipt for my milreis on splendid vellum, inscribed most heroically in curlicues and flourishes, the way one might inscribe a passport into Paradise.
And I knew that I had crossed another unseen line in the progress of my soul into new territory, for now I was a slave-dealer and no hiding the truth of that: and what else does one call a man who buys men and women from cannibals, and sells them among the Portugals? I who rarely had more than a pound or two to my name now did hold great store of milreis at my account with Fugger of Augsburg, that is, I was a man now of substance and wealth, all of it gained by dealing in souls and trafficking with man-eaters. The which was God’s small jest upon me for living an honorable life.
We did a third voyage also in those five months to the Jaqqas in the south and fetched yet more slaves. But coming the fourth time, we found them not. I knew enough of the Jaqqa way by that time to be aware that Imbe Calandola was not content to keep himself in one place for long; and he and his followers had grown weary of the Benguela country, for they had used up all their wine, and in those parts there are no palm-trees for making wine, though other foodstuffs are abundant. So they had marched toward the province of Bambala, to a great lord that is called Calicansamba, whose country is five days up into the land.
Being loath to return without trade, we determined to go up into the land after them. So we went fifty of us on shore, Captain Diogo Pinto Dourado and his boatswain among the party, and left our ship riding in the Bay of Benguela to stay for us. And marching two days up into the country, where all was green and the land was tawny and the air was filled with little glimmering midges with eyes like sapphires and beaks of fire, we entered to the domain of a great lord which is called Mofarigosat. And coming to his first town, we found it all burned to the ground and despoiled, with bloodied mangled bodies strewn here and there in a terrible way that was familiar to me from another sad slaughter long ago.
“The Jaqqas have been here and are gone,” said Pinto Dourado.
He sent for a Negro slave which we had bought of the Jaqqas, and who lived with us, and ordered him to carry a message to the Lord Mofarigosat. This slave did tell Mofarigosat that we were white men allied to the Jaqqas, and seeking to meet with them our friends, and so we desired entry and free passage through his territory.
Two days went past and we thought our envoy might have been slain, which would have been a great insult and required us to make war. But then the slave returned, and with him was a dignitary of the court of Mofarigosat, a broad-bodied black with a great crimson sash of office across his breast, who bowed low before us as though we were demon-princes out of Hell, and said most humbly, “My master bids me tell you that you are welcome here.”
Mofarigosat himself was less humble. This chieftain, who received us a day later in his capital village, did stand tall before us, and his eyes did flash, and there was no smile on his lips, as he bade us make our home with him. “A thousand welcomes,” he said, yet his voice was cold and he did but pretend a welcome to us: I could tell, and it took little shrewdness to see it, that he was merely admitting us for fear of Imbe Calandola, with whom he wanted no disagreement.
Mofarigosat was a man of nearly sixty years, white-haired and white-bearded but with great strength and vigor. His body was lean and strong and warlike, and bore no scrap of fatty surplus upon it. He dressed only in a blue loin-cloth and in a necklace of small golden plates. The gold surprised us, that metal not being an object of much desire among these African folk. Coming before us in his council-chamber, Mofarigosat did walk from one to another of us, inspecting us close, our skins, our guns, our armor, for no white man had ever been in this part before. At last he said, in the Kikongo tongue but with a more fluid accent of the south, “Do you serve the great Imbe-Jaqqa, or is he vassal to you?”
Pinto Dourado looked to me to make reply, and after a moment, hastily constructing an answer, I said, “We are equal allies, that do trade with one another for the universal benefit of both.”
“Ah,” said Mofarigosat. “Equal allies.”
“Go to, you should have told him the Jaqqa is our servant!” Pinto Dourado said sharply to me.
“I think it would have been a hard lie to make,” I said. “They know the Jaqqa too well here.”
Mofarigosat ordered feasting for us, and professed no enmity for Calandola, even that he had burned and spoiled one of his outlying villages. That small event the chieftain appeared to regard merely as the Imbe-Jaqqa’s due. As he passed through this territory, it was only to be expected, a natural thing, that Calandola would pause to make his dinner somewhere, and if he dined on some of the subjects of Mofarigosat, well, then so be it. I understood now how this lord had been able to rule so long here and reach such a great age unmolested: for he, too, knew the art of bending to the breeze, lest he be snapped and swept away in storms.
Yet plainly was he no petty chief, but rather a lord most powerful, and no coward neither, but a shrewd and valiant man. Mofarigosat his town was large and well-appointed, with many dwellings and great wooden palaces covered with deep thatch, and a palisado of sharp-edged stakes set all about it, that would be difficult to breach. H
e had a great many warriors, strong and able, equipped with lances and large bows, that he took care to keep on display for our benefit.
I think that if Imbe Calandola had chosen to attack this lord Mofarigosat, he would have had a heavy task in the defeating of him. In the end the Jaqqa very likely would have triumphed, for I think Calandola did believe so strongly in his own invincibility that he could convince all others of that, even his foes. Yet it would have cost him sorely. So at this time Calandola had chosen not to expend his energies in a hard war with Mofarigosat, but to go on instead in a wide circle around his city and into the deeper forest, which be the true home of Jaqqas.
And seeing the size of Mofarigosat’s army and the tough mettle of Mofarigosat himself, I began to feel some unease about our own safety in this place, we being but fifty men and they being many hundreds. I know that the Spaniards did conquer the entire nations of Mexico and Peru with armies hardly greater than our little band, but those folk were Indians and not Negroes, and perhaps were more readily cowed by muskets and white skins, Indians being a frailer people, and timid. I had not noticed the troops of Kafuche Kambara greatly cowed by those things that time they fell upon the Portugals in the desert. And I did not think those of Mofarigosat would greatly be, neither.
At the first it was all feasting and celebration. The palm-wine flowed like water, and Mofarigosat caused his best cattle to be led forth and butchered for our delight, and we ate and drank until we were stupored by it.