Lord of Darkness

  “I am uneasy, brother,” muttered Kinguri.

  Stretching my hand to that devilish shrewd Jaqqa I did say, “I pledge myself as surety, brother. She will do no harm to our nation. I would have my wife restored to me, and I ask you withdraw your opposing it.”

  “So be it,” said Calandola, with an imperious wave. “Take her, then.”

  “A thousand thanks, mighty Imbe-Jaqqa,” I said, making a low bow. When I looked up I saw the cold enmity on Kinguri’s face, for plainly he did not want me to have her, and even more did not want my pleading to triumph over his words to the Imbe-Jaqqa.

  Calandola said, “As for the other two Portugals, they will be tomorrow’s feast. Mark that you speak with them before then, and learn what you may from them.”

  “That I will do,” said I.

  I went then to Dona Teresa and ordered the Jaqqa who guarded her to strike her fetters from her. He made a move to do it, out of respect for me, but then a doubt did smite him, and he glanced across toward the Imbe-Jaqqa. Calandola nodded, and the guard set her free.

  Dona Teresa, gathering her rags about her to hide her breasts, gave me thanks with a squeeze of the hand, and said, “How was this thing accomplished?”

  “I swore to them you were my wife, and they have given you back to me.”

  “Ah. There is no penalty for perjuring here, then?”

  I leaned close to her and said, “Your case was desperate. Shall I cling to niceties of truth, and let you be stewed?”

  “So I am to be your wife in this place?”

  “Either that, or offer yourself to the fetters again,” said I.

  “Ah. Ah, I see.” There was mischief in her eyes, and a little anger, and also much amusement, I think. “Well, and I suppose I can play at being your wife, then, Andres.”

  “You will do more than play,” said I.

  “You are very blunt, now that you are a man-eater.”

  “Lady, I have won you your life back. But I have pledged mine own as security, that you will work no trouble in this camp. So therefore you will bear yourself less imperiously, and carry me along in this pretense of our marriage, or I will in this instant revoke what I have done. Is that understood?”

  “Ah, Andres, Andres, I mean no difficulties! I but jest a little.”

  “Jest at another time,” said I. For I was much angered, and newly cold toward her, for this pride of hers. It had cost me something with Kinguri to have saved her: but I need not explain that to her, only be assured of her consenting in the falsehood that had saved her life.

  After a moment she said, “And these two?”

  “I have no grasp on their lives. They will be slain.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Well, and then I suppose we must pray for their souls.” She did not look deeply grieved. “You are kin to these man-eaters, you say, Andres?”

  At this I hesitated some. “They have taken me as close companion,” said I finally. “It is for my hair and skin, that I think they revere for its color. And my musket, which I have put to strong use in their service.”

  “You do battles on their behalf?”

  “Aye,” I answered. “I am one of their great warriors.”

  She stepped back a bit, and stared at me as though I had sprouted a Satan-tail, and breathed fire. Behind us, the sound of the drums and other musics grew more fierce. It was altogether night now, and a heavy heat was descending, with droplets of moistness hanging in it, and creatures cried most raucously beyond the zone of our fires.

  She said, hushed and strange-voiced, “You speak to me in good Portuguese words, and I think you are the man I knew in São Paulo de Loanda, that was so straightforward and upright. And then I look at you, and see these marks of paganism on your body, and I hear you say you fight in Jaqqa wars and do them great service, and I know you to be a changeling, Andres.”

  “A changeling. Aye,” said I. “I think that is what I am, that has had some other soul slipped in behind my face. And the face is much altered, too, is it not?”

  “I barely knew you when you first came close,” she said. There was a trembling in her arms now, and perhaps elsewhere, and her eyes were fixed and harsh with fright. “I said, What is this creature, that has the skin of a white man, but the bearing of a Jaqqa? And I was sore affrighted. And I am sore affrighted now.”

  “Are you, then?”

  “Listen. Listen! The fifes, the drums, the singing. They are devils, Andres, all about us!”

  “Aye.”

  “And you: you are half devil now.”

  “More than half, perhaps. But why would that trouble you? You are of that kind yourself.”

  “Nay,” she said, making the sign of the cross. “Nay, you do not understand me.”

  “You, with your idols, and your witchy incantations?”

  “I am a Christian, Andres. I but use the other older things, when I feel the need. But I am no witch!”

  “Ah,” I said. “It must be so, if you do say it.”

  “Mock me not. I am not the witch you think me, and I am sore affrighted. I think this is Hell we are in. But where are the fires? Where are the imps?”

  “See the fires, there?”

  “Those?” she said, shivering. “Will they leap higher, as the night goes on? Are they true Hell-fires, Andres? And are these demons about me, or only men and savages? O Andres, how have they conjured you so?”

  I thought she would weep again, from her quivering and pallor, but she did not. But she plainly was smitten to the core of her soul by all she beheld about her, and even by what she could read in my face.

  “Come,” I said, “let me take you to the Jaqqa lords.”

  “What, and shall we dine grandly with them, as though we are all lords and ladies here?”

  “We dine with them,” I said, “or they dine upon you. Which is your preference?”

  “And we will eat the flesh of—”

  She could not say it. She was yellow-faced with loathing.

  “You are not compelled to do it. But they are the masters of this place. We must make a show of friendship.”

  “Yes. Yes. I understand. It is for the sake of staying alive.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And for the sake of staying alive, have you on such occasions also eaten—”

  “Come,” said I. “Ask fewer questions, and take my arm, and be you my true wife, if you would save yourself from the pot.”

  Yet did she shrink back from me. I offered arm to her anew, and she shook a little, but then recovered herself once more, standing tall, making her shoulders squared. Averting her eyes from the kettle and its bubbling contents, those floating disjointed limbs that surged now and again to the surface, she walked with me like a veritable consort to the other side of the fire. All about us were hordes of frenzied Jaqqas, flinging their knees high in the capers of their dance, who paused in their wild leaping to salute me, which did not fail to have its measure upon her.

  We went up to the banqueting-place of the high ones. Quite as if I were presenting her at the court of Her Majesty, I did show Dona Teresa to Calandola, and felt the taut grip of her hand on my arm as he turned his blazing and chillsome eyes upon her, penetrating her to the veriest mysteries of her soul: she breathed in bursts, her breasts rose and fell most vehemently, so keen was her terror. And yet I think if I had put my hand to her loins, in the moment of her meeting Calandola’s diabolic gaze, I would have found her hot and wet, in the lustful way of one who finds the monstrous most arousing.

  I offered her next toward Kinguri, who smiled most frigidly upon me and scarce more warmly to her, and then to the other lords; and we were seated, and given wine; and they placed before us vegetables and porridges, which we both did toy at much uninterestedly, neither of us having great appetite under these pressures; and the witches did their dance, and lit fires of strange colors, and sang their screaming hymns in praise of the Imbe-Jaqqa.

  And Dona Teresa looked out upon all this quite as if she had been transpo
rted to the nether Pit, and was witness to the terrible celebrations and rites of Belial and Beelzebub and Moloch and Lucifer. Yet did she remain outwardly calm, though tautly held and trembling like the tuned string of a harp.

  She said at length, “How many months have you dwelled among these creatures?”

  “I think close upon two years. It is not easy to retain account of the passing of the time.”

  She held her wine-bowl, and looked into it as though into a wizard’s sphere, and swirled it about.

  “Why have they not slain you, Andres? They do slay everything in their path.”

  “It is not so,” said I. “They are philosophers—”

  “Ha! Are you drunken, or only mad?”

  “Philosophers,” I said again, “and follow a great mission, to bend the world to their way.”

  “That much I know, but it is not philosophy.”

  “I tell you it is!” I cried.

  “You are mad, then.”

  “Listen to me: they mean to reshape the world into something that is holy by their way of seeing. They slay as need and appetite demand; but they do not slay indiscriminately. They serve a higher cause than mere destruction.”

  She looked about her, at the riotous roaring Calandola, at cool scheming Kinguri, at the dancers, at the witches.

  “Then they are greater devils,” she said, “than even I had thought.”

  “I think you are right in that, Teresa.”

  “And yet you serve them.”

  “I serve them, yes.”

  “What use have they for you? Strong though you are, you are nothing next to a demon Jaqqa.”

  “Ah, I have a musket,” I said.

  “That is it. I had overlooked it. They desire you for your musket, Andres.”

  “Aye, my musket, and me for myself, also. I am the white mokisso with golden hair, and they think I have divine force within me.”

  She looked me inward long and steady. A server came by with wine, and offered us; and she took, making him fill her bowl to the brim, and drank of it deep, and asked for more. It was not the blooded wine. I think I would not have told her, had it been that stuff. But here only Calandola was drinking it.

  After a time she said, “I am much astounded by all this, Andres.”

  “For a time, so was I. But I am alive: that is the justification for everything.”

  “Sometimes it may be preferable to accept death.”

  “Sometimes,” said I. “But I have not met that sometimes yet.”

  “How came you to them?” she asked.

  I laughed a sour laugh, and replied, “By the usual treacheries of your brothers the Portugals, who left me as pawn to a blackamoor king, and did not redeem me. Then the blackamoors would have slain me, and I slipped away, and gave myself up to the man-eaters, who seem the most honest of the peoples of this land, since they alone pretend to no virtue they do not possess.”

  “Ah. And so you enrolled in their number.”

  “I was welcomed gladly there. They gave me a place, and a rank, and one of the king’s own wives for my own—”

  “A wife?” cried she in amaze. “But now I am your wife!”

  “Then I have two.”

  “Ah,” she said. “I understand. You are heathen through and through, deeper ever all the time.”

  “I could have had more wives. I took only one. I would still have only one, Teresa, but that I saw a way to save your life. If you prefer, you need not be wife to me. As you said only a moment before, sometimes it can be preferable to accept death. And death is waiting for you in those kettles. Eh?”

  “I am your wife,” said she sullenly.

  “Then cry me no shame, for having two of them here.”

  “Where is this first wife of yours? Why is she not at your side, then?”

  “She is dancing, there, with the other women. See, the young one, with the reddened hair?”

  Dona Teresa followed my pointing finger, and squinted some in the smoky dark, until she spied Kulachinga, who did prance and leap most grandly, her breasts swaying, her body shining with sweat and oils. To me did Kulachinga seem quite fine; but an instant later I saw her through Dona Teresa’s eyes, with her cicatrice-scars, her thick lips, her heavy rump all crying forth her jungle birth.

  “That one is your wife?” said Dona Teresa. “You lie with her, Andres?”

  “Aye, that I do.”

  “When first you came to this African land, you held yourself proudly apart, and thought even me to be too foreign for you. Yea, and now you couple joyously with greasy cannibal wenches that put red clay in their hair.”

  “I came to this land many years ago, Teresa.”

  “How you are transformed!” And in a lower voice, husky, quavering, she said, “I cannot put aside my fright of you. And I cannot abide feeling fear of you.”

  “Am I so frightening still, then?”

  She turned to me, and her nostrils were aflare, and her eyes hard and bright, and I knew that she feared me, and that she hated herself for fearing her old dear Andres that could be so easily led about once by the nose. “I am part African, you know,” she said after a moment, “although I pretend that I am not, and hide that side of my blood even from myself, and put on the airs of a Portugal lady. But you! You, who are pure fair-skinned English: you have become three-quarters savage, and most devilish savage at that. I knew you when you had a boy’s way about you, a kind of schoolboy honor that was most charming in you, if a bit foolish. It is a metamorphosis most terrifying.”

  “Is it? I did not ask it. I could have been living quietly in England years ago, and doing none of this.”

  “Is there anything left of England in you now, Andres?”

  “It is deep below.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “It is my hope,” said I, not sure at all. To her most intently I said, “I adapt to my surroundings, Teresa. It is my way of surviving, and surviving is a high goal for me, as I think it is for you. We are more alike than different, I think, and that is why we were drawn once so close, and that is why you struck at me that time, when you thought you had lost me.”

  “Speak not of that time, Andres. You said we would not be enemies over that.”

  “Ah. So I did. And we are not enemies, eh? Are we? Now you are my wife, are you not?”

  “Truly?”

  “Truly,” said I.

  “I and also the cannibal woman, your wives.”

  “Two wives, aye. The king has some forty. I can have two.”

  “In England, do they take their wives two at once?”

  “This is not England.”

  “I think you speak sooth,” said she. And she smiled, and seemed to ease a little, withal. “You are so strange, Andres, as you are now. But I think I grow used to it. I will be your wife here, though you frighten me some. I will lie on the one side of you, and the man-eater woman—what is her name?”

  “Kulachinga.”

  “Kitchlooka. She will lie on the other. And we will press you close between us, and smother you amongst our flesh. Is there any better way to perish?”

  “I think your spirits are returning, Teresa.”

  “It is this wine,” she said. And smiled again, but it was a dark and sharp-angled smile, for dead Portugals did boil in the kettle, and live ones were chained to the far tree, and man-eaters roared and pranced all about us. And those were realities that could not lightly be thrust aside by jest.

  The meat now was served, to the Imbe-Jaqqa first, and then to Kinguri, and then to me. Teresa hissed a little when the platter was brought to us, and looked away, and much of her fragile newly-won ease went from her.

  “I will have none,” said I to the servitor. For I would not let Teresa see me partaking of such stuff; and in truth, though I had grown casual to Jaqqa fare in my long time among them, I could no more have made a meal of the flesh of Don Fernão da Souza, which is what most likely was being served us, than could I have taken my own right arm to my mouth, and b
ite off a gobbet of myself to gnaw. So the joint was passed, and we drank our wine and ate our porridge. It was an ordinary evening’s amusement among the Jaqqas, that I had known many times before, but tonight I saw it as Dona Teresa did see it, and I think it brought me to my senses somewhat to perceive these festivities with her eyes.

  She stayed contained, and held back her tears and her fright. The feast became too mad and noisy for the exchanging of words, and we sat side by side saying little. At our high table there was much pounding and laughing, and great abundance of wine being consumed.

  Yet also were there some frictions apparent between the Imbe-Jaqqa and his brother: I saw them whispering, and glaring hotly, and once the witch Kakula-banga came to them, and seemed to play the role of a mediator in a hard dispute. I think, from the words I could catch, that they quarreled over the sparing of Dona Teresa, which Kinguri still thought to be an error. Cunning Kinguri, to see in her the force that lay coiled there! To know, almost by second sight, that she was a woman of power and purpose, which it was wisest to slay out of hand while yet she was fettered! I admired the keenness of him, and I feared the consequences of having thwarted him; and in a way I knew that by wheedling the life of Dona Teresa from Imbe Calandola against the strong counsel of Kinguri, I had widened the wedge that was opening between the two brothers, and had increased the difficulties of my own position in the Jaqqa camp.

  At length the brothers put the matter aside, and Calandola diverted himself by commanding a wrestling match. My man Golambolo came forth in the first, and one named Tikonje-nzinga, and they faced one another and reached forth their long arms and began the slow and stately dance that was the praeludium and introduction to their combat.

  Such wrestling had I seen many times at these man-eating feasts, and always was there a fierce beauty to it. The essence of the sport was in the display of agility and suppleness it afforded, not in the winning or losing: little heed seemed to be paid to victory, but only to excellence of performance, and one who displayed grace in the manner of his defeat often was hailed as warmly as his conqueror. So now did Golambolo and Tikonje-nzinga go artfully through their pavanes and allemandes of combat, until in the press of the struggle Tikonje-nzinga was thrown, and fell most serenely, which won him acclaim.