Lord of Darkness

  “Dona Teresa, yes. The Jaqqas slew her.” And I looked away of a sudden, for that terrible scene awoke in my mind, and I heard sounds and saw sights that I fain would not have had recalled to me.

  In my anguish Sister Isabel did draw close beside me and say, “You loved her greatly, I know.”

  “I will not deny that.”

  “It does not matter. I know that you loved me, and you loved also her, and there was room in your heart for us both.” With a laugh that was almost girlish she said, “Do you remember, when she and I did fight like wild beasts, and claw and scratch each other naked for jealousy?”

  “And how could I forget that?”

  “Nor I. She was like a demon. But I gave her as good as I received. I think that woman was a witch, Andres, and I think she is suffering for that.”

  “She prayed God for forgiveness, at the end, and she prayed sincerely. I was with her.”

  “So long ago, Andres, so very long ago.”

  “There were good times, then, when we were together.”

  “There were. Without shame I tell you, I had great joy of your body.”

  “And I of yours,” I told her. “Dare I say such things, with a holy sister?”

  “In that time, it was rightful that we did what we did, and our joy was the measure of its rightfulness. I am so pleased, at seeing you this last time, and looking back upon all of those things with you.” There was a deep glow in her eyes, of remembrance of things past, that was altogether radiant. Then she stood to her feet. “Come. I have my duties, and I must not shirk them.”

  “But a minute more with you,” said I.

  “Of course.”

  I looked toward her. A fantastic scheme then did blaze into being in my mind, that she should come back to England with me, and we live together—chastely, that is, she and I—in the renewal of the love we bore one another. For we were the only survivors of the past time, and it was pity that we should part, having found one another again at this latter day.

  But that scheme, which for an instant did seem so valuable to me, decayed into absurdity the moment after, as I considered the madness of it, that I should set up housekeeping in England—chastely or no—with a black Catholic nun in that Protestant land. It could not be done. Nor was she likely, even for love of me, to follow me away from her devotions and her native continent. So I did swallow back the words even as they were rising in me, and said nothing, and only pressed my hand to hers in all of love.

  Then said I at last, “Farewell, Matamba Sister Isabel.”

  “Farewell, Andres. God’s love go with you. You know that mine own does.”

  And she made with her lips the little shape of a kiss, that never was part of her lovemaking craft when we were lovers; and then she was gone from me, most serenely gliding toward the door of the church and into the bright blaze of sunlight without.

  FIVE

  SOON AFTER, a messenger from the governor came to me at my lodging, and said that the ship was ready, and that I should prepare myself to go. Which I could scarce believe, after having dreamed of this day so long. For when we dream too long upon a thing, the coming of it becomes indistinguishable from the dream, and loses the power to sustain. I thought I would weep for joy when the day came when they told me I could go; but the day had come, and I did not weep. Joy indeed I felt, but of a subdued sort; one does not weep for joy when one has rehearsed in one’s mind that very weeping. It must take one unawares, I do believe.

  I gathered my few things, and my bit of gold, and walked one last time about the city of São Paulo de Loanda under the hot African sun. That sun was descending, and in the west a stain like blood lay upon the horizon, of terrible fine beauty. I felt a strange sorrow rising in me that I should be leaving this place, that I had so unwillingly entered. It had become my home, in these twenty years.

  But England is ever the greater and truer home, no matter how wide we stray. And the ship was waiting, and I had no farewells to pay, having taken already my leave of Matamba, and Pinto Cabral being abroad on a slaving journey, and most everyone else of my African life being now in the next world: Dona Teresa, Don João, Serrão, Barbosa, Nicolau Cabral, Kinguri, and all those many others, save only, I think, the Imbe-Jaqqa Calandola, who would not die. And of him there was no leavetaking never: he rides forever in my soul, like a black fog that rises unbidden out of the depths by night.

  The ship was a merchant-carrack of six hundred tons, the Santa Catalina, that was richly laden with a cargo of elephanto teeth and other such African treasure, with a mixed crew of Portugals and Spaniards. She was bound for Cadiz and then Lisbon, where I was assured of obtaining a passage to England. Her captain was a Pedro Teixeira, of great courtesy and kindness to me, who offered me a good cabin that gave me comfort. “You are old,” he said, “and they tell me you have given great service to Portugal, and I would have you sleep well of these nights.” Which was a statement that struck me deeply in two ways: for I did not inwardly comprehend that I had become old, nor would I say of myself that I had given great service to Portugal, that was my country’s enemy so long. Yet those two things were altogether true, whether I like it or like it not.

  I took me only one of my blackamoor boys to accompany me, that was twelve years old; for he was greatly desirous of seeing England, but the other would not go at all, and begged to be sold in Angola, which I granted him. This boy that I took with me had no name whatever, he having forgotten it in his captivities, and I now gave him one, which was Francis, in honor of the great Drake.

  On a March day of superb brilliance of the sun in Anno 1610 did we hoist our sails and make our way past the isle of Loanda and into the open sea. And I did turn, and look back at the baked earth and thick trees of Angola, and at the fortress of the city atop its hill, where I had lain prisoner. And it was as though all my life in Africa did pass in review before mine eyes at once, my warfares and my servitudes and my injuries, and my dealings with the Portugals and with the Jaqqas, and my wives and beloved women, and all of that, in one great flash that dizzied me and made me grasp at a spar to hold me upright. And a Spaniard sailor did leap toward me and say, “Lean on me, old man, and I will bear you safe.”

  “I am not so old,” said I, pained to hear that word twice in the same hour, velho from the captain’s lips and viejo from the other, but the meaning being identical, and cutting identically deep. To which the boy smiled, for he was no more than three-and-twenty, and I old enough to be his father with some years to spare. In my own mind I was yet the golden-haired lad that had come out of England, but to his eyes, I fear, I seemed much parched by time, and whitened and shrunken. Well, and he smiled at me, but he did not laugh. And I said, “It was the rush of memory that unsteadied me, for I leave a land that I have dwelled in for a very great long while.”

  “And are you loath to leave, father?”

  “Nay,” said I, “I go home joyously.”

  But yet I knew there was a mixture in my feelings on that score, all the same.

  I stood a time longer, looking backward at the hills. And a cloud came and darkened the land, and I thought I saw the face of Imbe Calandola in the curvings and twistings of the great hill, and that he was calling out to me in his great deep voice, “Andubatil! Andubatil!” So I did turn my back on him, and all of Africa, and looked to the vast sun-sparkled blue-green breast of the ocean sea.

  Our ship was heavy and slow, and the winds were wayward as winds always are; but yet we beat our way up the coast in steady order. I looked landward again, thinking as a pilot does, that this cape I know, and that, and over there must be Zaire mouth, and there Cabo de Palmar in the land of Loango, and there Kabinda, and so on and on. These names I did speak to the sailors, who had done little African service and were unfamiliar with those marks; and they, too, smiled at me, doubtless thinking me a foolish gaffer, but a good-hearted one.

  But some did come to me and ask me my tales of Angola, and I told them a few, and shared with them some of my pilotin
g knowledge that still was sharp in my mind. These were good sailors, men of valor and sufficiency, from youth bred up in business of the sea. I was uneasy at first being among so many Spaniards, they having been the enemies of my nation since I was a boy. But that war was ended, and these bore me no enmity. And why should they? Most had been only babes at the time of the Armada. They said that England and Spain were not only at peace but did do much trade with one another, and there was talk that the King of England’s son Charles might be married to a Spanish princess, which I found most marvelous to consider.

  “What?” I said. “And do Drake and Ralegh swallow all this, and pay civil calls at the court of King Philip?”

  But the names of Drake and Ralegh meant nothing to these lads; and it was from Captain Teixeira that I had the truth, which was that Drake was long dead, having died in ’96 with John Hawkins on the Spanish Main of fevers, in some miscarried voyage; and Ralegh had fared little better, having been clapped into the Tower by this our King James in Anno 1603 on charges of treason, and being still prisoner there these seven years later. So I knew me that I was entering an England greatly altered, where old heroes were branded traitor and the Spanish lingo was heard in the chambers of our King. And that taught me much about the changes carved by the tooth of time.

  We journeyed under a burning swollen sun into the high tropic lands, and to Guinea, and off the headland of Sierra Leona, and into the latitude of Cape Verde; and a few days thereafter we were directly under the Tropic of Cancer. On the next day we had sight of a ship to the windward of us, which proved to be a Frenchman privateer of ninety tons, who came with us as stoutly and as desperately as might be, and coming near us, perceived that we were a merchantship, and judged us to be weak and easily taken. The Frenchman then thought to have laid us aboard, and there stepped up some of his men in armor and commanded us to strike sail; whereupon, we sent them some of our stuff, crossbars and chainshot and arrows, so thick that it made the upper work of their ship fly about their ears, and we spoiled him with all his men, and tore his ship miserably with our great ordnance.

  And then he began to fall astern of us, and to pack on his sails, and get away; and we, seeing that, gave him four or five good pieces more for his farewell; and thus we were rid of this Frenchman. Such are the hazards of the sea. In this hot action I took no part, being a mere passenger, and not needed. But it put me in mind of my young days, this being the most vigorous passage at sea I had witnessed since the Armada. Which I did remark to the sailors, and the young ones looked as empty-eyed at mention of the Armada as though I had been speaking of the Crusades! Well, and they will be fifty years of age one day also, those that are granted such good fortune. For no man be immune and exempt from the passage of time, however much he may think so when he be young.

  Then sped we onward, and in an amazing short time we hove into the road of Cadiz. Here we unladed much of our cargo, and I went ashore, to say I had put foot in Spanish soil. There was some rain then, and the air was cold, and I did huddle close into myself, this temperate air being most intemperate to me, that had become thin-skinned from long African life. And afterward shipped we for Lisbon, where I lay two weeks in kinder weather, until I could board the English vessel Mary Christopher, that took me home.

  This was a journey finally that went by so swiftly it seemed a dream; for one day I entered the ship, and—thus did I fancy it—the next was I in mine own land. But in sooth it did not quite occur that way, except that I took a fever and was raving for some few days; but I was restored fully to health. The captain’s name was Nicholas Kenning, and his pilot John Loxmith, and they looked upon me, as did their men, as though I were something most rare and fragile, for they knew I had long been abroad in African captivity. We took a merry wind for England and by the good blessing and providence of God brought ourselves by the twenty-seventh day of June in Anno 1610 to the sight of the Lizard, where we bore in under heavy wind, and the next day about nine of the clock in the morning we arrived safely in Plymouth, and praised God for our good landfall. Kenning and Loxmith were beside me as I came on deck, and the captain did say, “Well, and you are in England again.”

  “I thought I would weep for joy at this sight, but look! Mine eyes are dry, for I can scarce believe I am here.”

  “Be most assured, this is England.”

  And as so he spoke, the sky that had been gray did release some rain upon us, by way of my welcome; and at that trick of fortune I laughed very heartily, which all of a sudden turned to tears, most copious ones. For indeed this was England and I was in it once again, and as I have said, tears come in unexpected ways: I who had looked dry-eyed into the harbor of Plymouth was surprised by joy in this rainfall.

  I came forth onto the land and would not do anything for show, such as kneel down and kiss the earth, or the like. But I felt a quiet gladness that was deep and pure in every fiber of my being. For I was an Englishman in England again, after ever so trifling a side-journey of only one-and-twenty years.

  Plymouth always is full of sailors fresh in from strange corners of the world, and so no celebrity was made upon me, for the which I was right grateful. I desired only to slip back into this land in quiet, and adapt me to its ways, that had become more strange to me now than those of Calicansamba and Mofarigosat. But it was not so easy. From a moneychanger I got me English money, and found the silver pieces showing King James’ face to be most very curious, though he did look kingly enough, with his sweeping mustachio and beard and heavy brow. I stepped into a tavern, and took a lodging for the night for me and the black boy Francis, that was all eyes, wild agog with wonder at this country. That night I dined on meat pie that to me had no savor at all, and was mere bland stuff without spice after the foods of Africa, and I drank some tankards of foamy beer, but I missed the heavy sweet taste of palm-wine. And in the chill of the night I thought I would perish, though I hid deep below my blankets, on my soft bed that seemed altogether oversoft.

  And so on and so on: it was my first day, and I knew not England any more, but I was as Moses had said of himself, a stranger in a strange land.

  There was another odd thing about my first impression of this new England. It seemed I had entered a smaller and a quieter time than was the one I left. In Elizabeth’s day all was bubbling and excitement, a great upheaving turmoil of life and vigor and earthy outspanning growth: and now, under James, I sensed right at the first that men trod more cautious, and looked often over their shoulders out of timidity, and spoke in less robust voices. Was it an illusion? I think not; for that first impression was confirmed by my succeeding days and weeks. A certain great moment of time has gone by, for England, and is but memory now. It is as though once the world was all fire and crystal, and now it is mere wool and smoke, and dull red sparks in the ashes. And I do regret that I was not here for some of that time of fire and crystal; but, by Jesu, at least I saw its borning and its early ripeness!

  As ever, I swiftly accustomed me to my surroundings; and in a day or two, Plymouth seemed quite ordinary to me again, not much altered from my memories of it, and its houses and lanes and carts and such all having the semblance of a proper town, though not very like the towns in which I had spent the last twenty years. I found me the captain of a fishing-skiff out of Essex who was going homeward, and hired him to take me as far as my village of Leigh, and in that afternoon we put to sea, under a brisk and loving wind. That captain did carry me to my native place without ever once asking me where I had been, nor how long absent: some English lack these curiosities, I suppose.

  At last, then, did I step forward into those familiar streets of Leigh, that I had never abandoned hope of seeing again.

  My wanderings were over. Even as wily Ulysses was I come home again; but there was a difference, for no faithful Penelope waited me here, nor good son Telemachus, nor trusty dog and herdsmen and the rest. In these lanes and byways of Leigh I was as lonesome as if I were trudging the avenues of ruddy Mars: though I knew this house and that one,
and this grassy spot, and that stable, yet was there reflected from those places a sheer chill unknowingness, as if the whole town did say, What man are thou, old stranger, and why have you come upon us?

  Yet were there quick amazements for me. My feet did take me along one lane and another, until, like one who drifts in dream, I found me standing before the house of my father, where I was born. There was an old woman, much bowed and shrunken, sweeping out the steps most vigorously with a broom, and when I paused there she looked up, with beady suspecting eyes, at me with my scarred and sun-blackened face, and at the Negro lad gape-mouthed beside me, as though we were both of us apparitions.

  I said, “Be this the dwelling of Thomas James Battell?”

  “It was, but he is dead these many years, and all his sons as well.”

  “That good Thomas is dead, I know right truly,” said I. “But not all of his sons have perished.”

  “Nay, and is it so?”

  “So it is. For I am Andrew, that went forth from this place in ’89.”

  “Nay! It cannot be!”

  “In good sooth, grandmother, so it is, and I am back from the wars in Africa where the Portugals took me, with this blackamoor child as my companion, and a bit of gold in my purse.”

  She did squint and scry me this way and that, twisting her head and peering at every angle. And with a shake of her head she declared, “But Andrew was a fine strapping great lad, and you are bowed and bent!”

  “Ah,” said I. “He was a man of thirty year when he went from here, which is no lad. And I am one-and-fifty, and time has used me hard. But I am Andrew Battell.”

  “Aye, I think you are,” said she a little grudgingly.

  “I swear it by my father’s beard!”

  “Ah, then, you swear most strongly. Andrew Battell, come home again! So I do perceive, that you be he. But how is it that you are Andrew Battell, as you say, and you know me not?”

  “Good my lady,” said I, thinking her to be some domestic of the house that once had been my father’s, “it has been so many years—”