“Nay,” said the men of Cashil, “we saw no such,” while all the while I did remain out of sight.
“We know he is here, and we want him, for he has given offense to our master.”
“He is not here,” said the men of Cashil. But there was less firmness in their voices, and in my place of hiding I felt the sweat rolling down my skin.
The men of Mofarigosat did say, “He has slain a prince of our city, and he has broken his pledge to our master. We have put to death a false ndundu who lied so that the white man’s life would be spared. And now we must slay the white man also, so that the zumbi of our ndundu does not come to us and harm us.”
At this talk of zumbis and ndundus the men of Cashil showed great fear, and conferred among themselves, and I think were making themselves ready to sell me to Mofarigosat. But the Jaqqas of the town, hearing what was taking place, did go to the emissaries and say loudly, “Begone, fools, or we will slit off your skins and tie them around pigs, and send you back to your master in the guise of the beasts that you are.”
“We demand—” said one of the men of Mofarigosat, and then he said no more, for the Jaqqas slew him that instant, and the others turned and fled. I was summoned from my hiding place so that the Jaqqas might tell me all that had befallen. Very cool and easy did they seem about the murder they had done.
“And will not Mofarigosat make war upon us now?” I asked.
“Nay,” replied the Jaqqas, “for he fears the Imbe-Jaqqa, and does not want you that much. But we will leave this place tomorrow, and take you to the Imbe-Jaqqa.”
That night the Jaqqas boiled the man of Mofarigosat in a great metal tub that they had with them, and threw in spices and savories of many kinds, to make a soup in which morsels of flesh did float. The people of Cashil watched this festival from afar, looking most gloomy over it, for man-eating was not to their liking, and this was going on in the center of their own town. When the meat was ready the Jaqqas did carouse with great gulpings of the palm-wine, and called to me, saying, “Ho, white one, dine with us, it is tender flesh!”
I said a nay to that, claiming an illness of the stomach that would not let me eat meat just then. The which gave them no offense, and they took their bellies’ fill of their awful delicacy without me. And afterward they lay about the plaza very satisfied, sleeping that light Jaqqa sleep which is almost no sleep at all.
In the morning they brought me onward to the camp of Imbe Calandola at the town of Calicansamba.
This way passed through a grove of giant ollicondi trees, the biggest I had yet seen, that darkened the air with the spread of their leaves. This tree is one of the marvels of Angola, very tall and exceeding great, some of them as big around as twelve men can fathom, all bloated and distended of trunk, and of limb. Some of them are hollow, and from the liberal skies receive such plenty of water at the time of the rainy season, that they are hospitable entertainers of thousands in the hard thirsty months that follow. I have seen whole villages of three or four thousand souls remain at one of these trees for four and twenty hours, receiving watery provision from it, and yet not empty it. I think some one tree can hold forty tuns of water. Also do they have in them great store of honey, for this is the favored tree of the bees here, and as I have said the blacks do drive the bees off by smoke, rewarding the laborious creatures with robbery, exile, death, and stealing their produce. To get the honey the Negroes climb up with pegs of hardwood, which the softer wood of the ollicondi easily receives.
When we passed through this forest of mysterious tree-monsters, which are like unto whales that have taken root in the ground—albeit whales with gnarled arms and myriad little leaves—we entered into the town of Calicansamba.
The great Jaqqa had made his camp here for some months, and all the place was greatly despoiled by his triumphing, drinking, dancing, and banqueting. The native folk of Calicansamba did stand about like sad ghosts, helpless to resist the Jaqqas and forced to give them all that they desired: the Jaqqas being like a plague of locusts that had come this way to help themselves to cattle, corn, wine, and oil, not to mention the flesh of human beings. The town was full of them. I think there were more Jaqqas here than villagers, the difference between them being readily apparent, for the Jaqqas had their skins ornamented differently, and did practice the knocking out of front teeth, and wore scarce any clothing, but mainly just beads and shells. And also the Jaqqas did comport themselves with terrible pride, like grand swaggering masters, even the humblest of them who still wore the slave-collar of boyhood about his neck. Whereas the Calicansamba people had been utterly defeated without striking a blow, and their manhood was altogether humbled, and they went with drooping shoulders and dim eyes, the look of conquered folk.
The town of Calicansamba was very like the one of Cashil, except that nearly all its palm-wine trees were cut down, save only one grove at the eastern end of the place. It too had a great idol in the center of the town and many elephanto tusks thrust into the earth in front of it. And here also was an altar of human skulls, very grisly indeed, and making me think how close I had come to leaving my own skull for Mofarigosat’s pleasure.
But also in the great square of Calicansamba were certain things that I had not seen in Cashil, for they were things of the Jaqqas. Lined up all in a row were three gigantic metal tubs, which I knew to be their cooking-pots. To one side of these was a great vat made of woven fiber very tightly drawn, and smeared on the inner side with a sort of dark wax. It contained some several hogsheads’ full of a thick purple fluid, and when I asked what that was, the Jaqqas who were my guides did dip their hands merrily in it and anoint themselves with streaming runlets of it, and laugh, and say, “It is blood, that we save for our feasts.”
I did not ask, nor did I need to be told, what sort of blood that blood might be.
And on the other side of the three tubs was another such wickerwork basket, the contents of which were even more repelling, for it was a kind of soft pale blubbery stuff that did make my stomach heave and churn to behold it, a great store of fat that had been carved from thighs and breasts and bellies and buttocks, and I turned away, gagging, holding my gut in distress.
“It is the Imbe-Jaqqa’s own supply,” they told me, “but we have so much in this town that he shares it freely.”
Aye! Such was his generosity, this grand Calandola, that he did let others of his nation besmear himself with the fat of fallen foes that made his own skin so glossy, and they deemed it a rare privilege.
And these were my hosts. And these were the beings to whom I had fled for safety, because I had found my own Christian kind to be too traitorous toward me. Aye, in such a way do we choose our friends and allies, in this bleak and sorrowful world, as we make our path through the pitfalls and turmoil of life toward the joyous reward that lieth at the end.
TEN
NEVER HAD most of these Jaqqas seen a white man before, and the amazement that I caused among them was tenfold greater than I had ever previously created. They circled round and round me with their eyes wide and their mouths agape, and they pointed, and muttered, and jostled each other and said things, and came close, and rubbed my skin and my hair, and made strange soft cries deep in their throats, like the sound of no other man nor beast on this earth. So many of them came to view me upon my arrival in Calicansamba, that I thought I might be crushed in the frenzy. They snuffled and snorted and pressed in, murmuring, “Skin is white, hair is gold…Skin is white, hair is gold…Skin is WHITE, hair is GOLD…O Calandola! O Sumba-Jaqqa! O Kalunga! Skin is white! Hair is gold!” And many more such outcries, and a howling like that of tormented spirits, and a dancing on the round part of their heels, with their arms thrust upward stiffly as though they were joined on wires to the sky.
This frightened me greatly. But I stood my ground, smiling at them and nodding and bowing slightly, and accepting their curiosity for all the world like the Pope of Rome accepting the homage of a tremendous multitude of Papists, or like a king greeting subject
s crazed with awe. But my hand was close upon my musket, and I resolved to fire off some loud shots into the air if the crowding of them seemed to grow more perilous to me.
They were all of them oiled with loathsome greases, whether the fat of animals or of men I could not tell, and they were painted and bejeweled, and their mouths, that did gape so wide at me, were missing all of them two top teeth and the two bottom, that is such a mark of beauty among them. I felt myself at the center of a great whirlpool of strangeness, that might be sweeping me downward and downward to the far circles of Hell. It was as if in all my time in Africa I had been pulled through jungles and deserts and swamps and rivers toward this place and this time and these people, the wild man-eaters whose prince the Imbe-Jaqqa was surely of the substance and being of the Lord of Darkness. And now here I was, my weird destiny fulfilled.
As this dance proceeded there came a sudden sharp outcry from the rim of the circle, and it widened and fell apart entirely, admitting a Jaqqa of great height and poise. I recognized him after a moment to be Kinguri, the brother to Calandola. He embraced me as though I had been his brother also, and bade me be welcome at their camp. When he spoke everyone else fell silent, so that there was a great hush, against which we could make out every sound of the forest that lay close beside the town.
Kinguri said, “What is your purpose, white one?”
“To live among you.”
“Ah, and will you be a Jaqqa?”
“I will no longer be a Portugal,” said I. “For they have given me only pain, and loaded many treasons upon me, and now I make them my enemy.”
“Then our enemy is your enemy also, which makes us kin,” Kinguri said. “For we do purpose to bring deep grief upon the Portugals your enemy, and we will place you beside ourselves when we undertake that thing. How are you called?”
“Andrew Battell is my name.”
“Andubatil,” said Kinguri.
I thought to correct him. But then I smiled, and told myself nay, for that I was beginning a new chapter of my life in this sultry forest, or indeed a new life altogether, and I could readily take on a new name here in the same bargain.
“Aye,” I did answer most ringingly. “Andubatil am I!”
“Come to the Imbe-Jaqqa,” he said.
Thereupon was I conveyed to the dwelling-place of the Jaqqas in a far part of the town. For they had built a habitation of their own alongside the settled place of Calicansamba, opening into it, so that they could go freely from the Jaqqa town to the village-folks’ town. It is the custom of the Jaqqas, wheresoever they pitch their camp, although they stay but one night in a place, to build a strong fort around their resting-place, with such wood or trees as the place yieldeth. So when they arrive at a place, the one part of them cuts down trees and boughs, and the other part carries them, and builds a round circle with twelve gates. Each of these gates is in the charge of one of the captains of the Jaqqas, being twelve in number, and all of them pledged forever to loyalty to their prince and general Imbe Calandola. In the middle of the fort they place Calandola’s house, which is severely entrenched about, and fortified by a triple hedge of thorns.
So was it done here. I think it would have been a valiant army indeed that could have thrust itself to the inner sanctuary of the Imbe-Jaqqa.
At the lone entrance to Calandola’s place there were warriors in double rows, well armed and very frightful of size and strength. Though these were eager to look upon me and touch me, they held their positions as I went past them. To the innermost place I came, where great sharpened stakes were thrust into the ground, that had points at both ends, and embedded in the tops of each stake were lopped-off arms and legs, withering and shriveling and parching in the heat, with whitened bones showing upon their nether sides. And each of these was of an enemy, and displayed here like a banner of triumph. And beyond this stark palisado was Imbe Calandola, in the midst of all his household people, his lieutenants and his man-witches and his wives, to the number of twenty or thirty, for I do think all those women were his wives.
Even though this was the second time I had laid eyes on him, I felt the same shivering surprise and astound that I had felt the first, so overwhelming was his presence.
He was dressed as before, in a strip of palm-cloth about the middle, though this was bright yellow now, and not scarlet; and he had the shells knotted in his hair and the copper pieces thrust through his ears and nose and the beads about his waist, and the painted ornaments on his shining skin. He sat in a kind of saddle half as high as a man, that rose on three legs of some very fine jet-black wood that looked almost like stone. In his hand he held a cup brimming with palm-wine, the which cup had been fashioned most artfully from the top part of a human skull.
When I entered, the Imbe-Jaqqa nodded very calmly to me and plunged his face into the bowl, taking so deep a draught of the wine that I thought he would drain it all at a gulp. When he lifted his head he was dripping with it, and it ran down his cheeks and jowls, like the slaver that runneth down the face of a wolf when it has bitten deep.
Kinguri said, “This is Andubatil.”
“Andubatil, welcome.” The voice of Calandola was like the growling of a bear. “Drink, Andubatil!”
To me he handed the cup, which still held some half its wine. I took it as he had, with the weight of it against both my hands and the smoothness of bone to feel, and I put my lips to it. The beverage was even more sweet than other palm-wine I had tasted, as if honey had been put into it. But it was not honey, as I understood after a moment. For the wine had a red tinge of hue, and I realized what substance it was that had been mixed in it to give that color. And I did shiver, though I strived hard to hide it. Aye! The muzzle of a wolf, lifted bloodied to bay the moon!
Kinguri said, “Does the wine please you?”
“That it does.”
“It is the royal wine, that only the Imbe-Jaqqa may drink. You have a great honor upon you.”
“I am grateful,” said I to Kinguri, who repeated my words to Calandola. At that time I knew just a scattering of Jaqqa words and Calandola did not deign to speak Kikongo, nor did he comprehend Portuguese.
Calandola smiled his frightful smile, all coccodrillo-teeth of a great sharpness and evil length, except where the four were missing and made holes black as jet. He stared me as he had stared me before, deep as a blade into my soul.
“Drink, Andubatil,” said he again.
I did not hesitate.
Let them mix blood with my wine, I would drink all the same, and drink me deep, and feel flattered by the great honor. Ah, I thought, I have done the Papists one better! For they drink wine and pretend it is blood, while I drink blood encumbered in my wine and pretend it is mere wine! Yet something in my gut did recoil at it, or perhaps it was in my mind and not my gut, and on the second draught I felt myself on the verge of retching, which would have been a deadly insult. God be thanked, I did find means to control that movement, and put the nausea wholly away from me, and smiled, and drank again, lightly but with great show of willingness and pleasure, and handed the wine-skull back to Calandola.
He clapped one great hand against the heavy muscle of his arm, which was his way of showing approval.
Then he said, “What is your nation, Andubatil?”
“English, O Lord Imbe-Jaqqa.”
“Angleez?”
“Aye, Imbe-Jaqqa.”
Kinguri said, “What nation is that?”
“Of an island,” I replied, “far away in the western sea.” I waited to see if the Imbe-Jaqqa’s brother had understood that, which seemed to be the case, and I went on, “Where the people are as fair-haired as I am, and do stand tall and square, and go to sea and travel far, with the finest of courage. And where our ruler is a great prince who is also a woman, and a virgin, and the finest master that Heaven ever did send our people.”
It was a long speech and in my joy at talking of England I let it all come rolling out at once, and I thought for sure Kinguri had become lost in
it. But he had not, Kinguri being a man of extraordinary sharpness of sense. He repeated all that I had said to Imbe Calandola, who leaned forward, listening with great intentness, and twice taking great noisy draughts of his wine. I could follow most of Kinguri’s words, and I saw that when he arrived at the part about our prince being a woman, the Imbe-Jaqqa did sit up straight with his eyes bright and wide, and when Kinguri said that she was a virgin, Calandola did slap his leg with amaze, and made a loud snorting sound like that of a river-hippopotamus.
There followed a lengthy colloquy between Calandola and his brother, scarce a word of which I could comprehend, so fast did the Imbe-Jaqqa tumble forth his words. But he did also a pantomiming with his hands, thrusting one finger back and forth between two of the other hand in the unmistakable manner of a male member being thrust into a woman’s hole, and I knew they must be discussing the virginity of Her Majesty.
Then Kinguri turned to me and said, “My brother asks, is this Queen of yours a woman?”
“Aye, that is what all queens are.”
“And she rules by proper right in your land?”
“That she does, for her father was Great Harry our king, the eighth of that name. And she is Queen and her sister was Queen before her, and also her brother, who did die a young man.”
“And your Queen-woman, she has never known what it is to lie with a man?”
I smiled. “That is the report that is widely given out, and we call her the Virgin Queen, and it would be a blasphemy to argue against its truth. Besides, I think it is so.”
Kinguri, shaking his head, did say, “And the people of your land easily accept her, and she has always reigned in peace with her subjects?”
“Aye.”
“And if a man came to her, and said, Queen, I would fain lie with you, open yourself to me, what then?”
“Why, she would strike his insolent head from him, if he spoke with her like that!” I then added, “There are those who assert that in her youth the Lord High Admiral Seymour did trifle lewdly with her, and that later she was had by the Earl of Leicester, and still later by Sir Walter Ralegh also. But I do believe these are but scandals and slanders, and that she is a true maiden to this day, and I would wager my head on it.”