Lord of Darkness Read online

  The burning is the joy

  The torment is the pleasure

  The killing is the fine delight

  The eating is the crown of all

  And so forth, long skeins of doggerel imbued with a hellish vigor and enthusiasm.

  Before my dreaming eyes these black fiends fell upon the village, and I knew it to be the village of Muchima, where I saw them arrange in a secret circle and burst inwardly on the hapless fisher-folk, and strike them with their spears, and slit their gullets with knives of bone or polished wood, until the dead lay in heaps. Whether I closed my eyes or kept them open I saw the same sight, a slaughter most dread, followed by a feast much like the one I had viewed in Brazil, of human meat. There was one difference, that instead of devouring their victims one by one, these Jaqqas took an immense cauldron the size of a barque or caravel, and filled it with water that at once bubbled and sparkled, and thrust the villagers into it by the dozen, so that they floated and drifted while they boiled, and the meat came loose from the bones. And when it was cooked the greatest of the Jaqqas, the giant one with a body like a god’s and a dangling long member like a black serpent, took to me a thigh and an arm and said, “Here, English. Take and eat! Take and eat! In this flesh will you be healed!” And I had no choice but to eat, but lo! the meat was tender and graceful, and power poured into my ailing body, until I rose from my bed and danced among the Jaqqas through the smoking ruins of the harmless village.

  Such was my phantasm. There was no truth in it but only that of a disordered mind. But there was prophecy in it, I would discover. There was vision and oracle. A day would come when I would witness at close range the Jaqqas at their play, and though what took place was very little like that of my fever-dream, yet there were certain monstrous similarities indeed.

  The Jaqqas sang and danced and feasted and were gone. And I lay sweating and vomiting, thinking, I must not yet be dead, because I feel pain in every joint, and death is said to bring relief from such dismay.

  After the Jaqqas, there came into my room Her Protestant Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

  She was garbed all in resplendent white, with sparkling gems set into her robe, and a trim of white ermine that had been brought her from the dukedoms of Muscovy. The crown was on her head, with spikes of gold that rose as high as long fingers, and atop each spike was a little ruby or emerald carved most cunningly in the shape of a man’s head, just like the pickled heads of the traitors that stand on pikes along London Bridge. She carried the scepter and the orb as well, but these she put down, and she leaned over my bed so that her lustrous red hair dangled in my face and I felt her cool sweet breath and saw the luminous wonder of her smile.

  “Poor Andy,” she murmured. “How you suffer for me!”

  And took my hand in hers, and stroked it to draw the heat from my flesh, and said softly, “I remember how it was, when I had the pox and was like to die of it, and everything was alpha and omega for me all at once. It’s like that for you, is it not? But I recovered and you will recover of it, too, and grow strong, and when you return to me I will name you Duke, eh, Andy? The Duke of Angola. The Earl of Masanganu. And give you land and castles and ten thousand pound a year, for you are my only son, in whom I am well pleased.”

  And much more drivel of the same sort, telling me tales of the court, the doings of the Earl of Leicester and Lord Burghley and Sir Walter Ralegh and all that crew, and then she spoke of her dread sister Spanish Mary, Mary Tudor, who died in the year of my birth, and who would have had us all Papists if she had lived. The Queen whispered to me of Bloody Mary’s chilly couplings with her husband, the very same Philip who has become King of Spain and Portugal, and told me such mocking gross things as I blush to reveal in this telling, for that they came not out of any true gossip but only out of the stews of my own mind, however fevered. She told me also similar tales of the Pope and his catamites, and then she said, “And if you die on this bed, Andy, take not the unction from the Portugal priest, but go with my own dispensation, that frees you of all blame, for I am God’s vicar in England,” and such stuff. And wiped my forehead with a damp cloth, and gave me sweet thick syrup to drink, and rested my head against her breasts, which were wondrous soft, contrary to the vile stories that are told of her. But I was fevered. For as the Queen cradled and caressed me she was transformed in my melting brain to my sweet Anne Katherine, whose breasts I knew well, and soft indeed they were. In the deep valley between them I had my repose, and she ran her fingers over my matted and tangled hair and sang of love and peace.

  “Good Anne Katherine,” I said. “Take me to you!”

  Her body was bare, all pink and gold, and from it came the fragrance of grass in springtime and violets in bloom, or lilacs, and she opened her arms to me and gathered me to her. And my body rose to her, my manhood stiffened and I felt the warm wet place between her thighs where I was to go, and as I entered her something happened that was passing strange, for she darkened and grew smaller and became my other wife Rose Ullward, that had died of the pox. The change took only a moment from the fair woman to the dark, the tall to the small, and I cupped her breasts, which were wondrous round and full for so tiny a woman, and put my face into the hollow beside her cheek along her shoulder, and ran my lips along her skin, but the skin seemed cold to me. And well it might be, for the Rose I embraced was the Rose who lies to this day in the churchyard at Plymouth, all bone and staring eyeless sockets, which gave me great horror.

  I screamed long and severely from that vision. And there came someone to comfort me, who patted my brow and spooned a medicine between my lips. I dared not open my eyes, fearing another skeleton, but a familiar voice said, “Have no dread, Andy, you are mending well.” It was my father. I looked to him and there he was as in life, dressed finely with tight dark hose and fine velvet breeches and a brown leather jerkin, and a doublet all chased with patterns of gold, and the cloak of a great gentleman, and leather purse at his waist, saying, “You were ever my pet, my favorite, the child of my late years, and I will guard you now, I will defend you against all harm, for I am your father and your mother both, and your pilot as well in this sea of storms.” I clasped his hand and he turned to smoke and was gone, which seemed to me to say, There is no true pilot except for yourself, and you must sail your own course in this world, where no other soul can truly aid you. But perhaps I am wrong to take such phantasms so earnestly.

  I know not how long I tossed in these dreams. It may have been days or weeks or months.

  There were many more. My mind was wholly cut loose from its moorings and I could not distinguish between dream and wake, day and night. Sir Francis Drake came to me and vowed to teach me all his craft of the sea, I know, and then there was a priest who offered me Romish comfort, with wafers and wine, which I think I may have accepted, and I do recall Thomas Torner’s young Muchima bedmate, with her firm breasts, jutting in that manner of newly sprouted ones, and her little teeth filed to sharp wedges. She ran her mouth over me, kissing me and nibbling me, the way a barber might cup for the ague, raising little welts here and there, which I did not find objectionable. I found nothing at all objectionable, after a time, in anything. Let the Jaqqas dance in the room, let my Anne Katherine become my Rose become a skeleton, let Papist incense burn, it was all the same to me, for I was dying and the things of this world were all one, they had no heavy significance: baubles of air. I had sup with Bloody Queen Mary one hour and her father Great Henry the next. I had good Jesus and all His disciples, and Peter and James and Thomas did a juggling-show for me that made me laugh and clap. I danced with coccodrillos in a fine galliard. I dined at the court of the High Khan of Cathay and with the Grand Duke of Muscovy, and I walked down the long marble gallery of the lords of Byzantium, and I drank the golden wine of Prester John. I coupled with dolphins and serpents and the daughter of Pharaoh. I wandered into ages yet to come and into time gone by. I floated from one miracle to another, in a daze, in a rapture, and I had no wish for it ever to end.
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br />   But end it did. The world became more real about me day by day, until I emerged into the true truth of my surroundings. And then I would rather have returned to my dreams and my fevers.

  I saw myself in a room with earthen floor and an earthen roof, an underground chamber, pierced at top by a circular skyhole that admitted a wan beam of light. My furniture was only a miserable pile of straw and a bucket of slops beside it, and there was a palisade of stout poles barring my door, with a chain across it, so that I was not sure whether I was in a hospital or a dungeon, or some of both. Which latter I soon discovered to be the case.

  I was weak as a puppy. I could not rise. I touched my face with a quivering hand and felt my cheek all stony and hollow, like a skull’s, and rough uncouth beard sprouting everywhere. My eyes were blear, but I could see well enough my naked body before me, fleshless, the hip-bones rising to view like scimitars, my skin loose and slack and yellowish, my manhood shriveled and shrunken like that of a man of ninety years, limp and sad against my thigh. So I was not dead, but I was far from being alive.

  The gate was let back and a woman entered my cell. I could see her but dimly, but she was slender and seemingly young, with a bodice and robe of some dark velvety stuff, and a kind of surplice over her shoulders woven like a net out of fine fibers, and a veil on her face. I took her to be a nun, though I was puzzled to see gold chains around her neck, and that she had a cap of black velvet trimmed with jewels. This did not seem nun’s garb to me.

  “Are you awake, then?” she asked in Portuguese.

  “Aye.”

  “And in your right mind?”

  “I cannot be so sure of that. What place is this?”

  “The hospice of Santa Maria Madalena, in São Paulo de Loanda, where you have lain ill these months past.”

  “Months? What month is this?”

  “It is the month of the Feast of São Antonio.”

  “By God, I know not your saints! What month of the calendar?”

  “June.”

  That smote me hard. First, that I had dozed away half a year here, out of my mind; and second, that now two years had slipped by since my leaving England. My life was fleeing and I was becalmed, helpless, lost.

  The woman had brought me food. It was a bowl of some mashed stuff, floating in a light sauce. She crouched beside me and offered me some with a wooden spoon, saying, “You must regain your flesh. You have eaten very little. Will you try it?”

  “What is it?”

  “It is a thing called manioc, that we take from the ground and roast, a whole root, and grind into flour. It will make you strong again.”

  I remembered this manioc from Brazil: a plant of the Indians, that I suppose the Portugals had brought with them to Angola. I had eaten it often, with no great fondness, but now I took it, and the broth in which it lay. The first spoonful filled me with such appetite that I signalled at once for another, but that was rashness: by the time the second one hit bottom, my stomach was sorely griped from the first. I waved the bowl away. She waited patiently. The spasm passed and I was hungry again, and took more, less greedily, a kitten-sip of the stuff. Then a little more. Then a pause, and then yet more. And I felt the griping begin again, and smiled my thanks, and said politely, “Obrigado, sister,” which to the Portugals is thanks.

  “I am Dona Teresa da Costa.”

  “Is it you that has cared for me all these months?”

  “I and some others. They would have let you die, at first, but that seemed too harsh, and we came to give you medicines, and a little soup when you would take it.”

  “I am most grateful,” I told her again. “What is your order, sister?”

  She laughed a little tinkling laugh. “Ah, nay, I am no nun! No nun at all!”

  “And yet you serve in the hospice?”

  “It was for my pleasure,” she said. “You looked right splendid when they took you from the pinnace all unconscious, with your golden hair adangle, and your fair English skin, and all. I had never seen such hair and such skin, and I would not have had you die. Can you eat more?”

  “I think not.”

  “Something to drink?”

  “Some water, only.”

  “I will fetch it.”

  She was gone a long time. Before she returned I felt the fever climbing in me again, and knew that I was far from healed, perhaps still in risk of my life. I began to shake, and as she came to me I turned on my side and delivered myself of all that she had fed me, in such racking pukes that I thought my guts would spew out my mouth and snarl by my side. Then, as quickly as that had happened, I was calm again, sweaty, trembling, but the heat was gone from my forehead. I begged her mercy for having inflicted such foulness on her, but she only laughed, and said, “There has been worse, much worse, in your illness.”

  As she wiped the spew from my face I looked closely at her. She was no more than eighteen, I saw, and of surpassing beauty. Her eyes were set far apart and narrow in that wondrous Portugal way the women sometimes have, and her skin was deep-hued, an olive tone, and her hair, jet black, was thick and lustrous, tumbling in heavy loops and coils. Her lips were full, her cheeks were high and sharp, her carriage was regal.

  “I will try more manioc,” I said, and this time I kept it down.

  She bade me sleep, but I told her I had slept for months, and wished now to learn something of what had gone on in the world outside my cell. There was another Englishman in São Paulo de Loanda, I said: where was he, could he not be sent to visit me, or was he under imprisonment?

  “I know not,” she said.

  “His name is Thomas Torner, and he was with me on the pinnace when we came from Masanganu.”

  “Yes, that I know. It was he who carried you on shore when you fell ill. But he is not in São Paulo de Loanda now.”

  “Gone back to Masanganu?”

  “I think he is fled,” she said. “Or perhaps perished. I know nothing of this Englishman.”

  Which saddened me and sorrowed me greatly. What escape could he possibly have managed? I asked her to make inquiries, and she did, to no effect. Later I learned that Torner had disappeared not long after our return from Masanganu, slipping away in a manner most mysterious. But a party of Arab slave-traders had been along the coast just then, selling captive Moors from the desert lands to the far north, and it was suspected by the Portugals that Torner had somehow insinuated himself among them, bribing them or begging such mercy as the sons of the Prophet are willing to offer. What became of him beyond that I know not, whether he was sold in slavery himself, or made his way through the kindness of the Arabs to some civilized land, but I have had assurance that he did in time reach England safely.

  With Torner gone I felt monstrously alone in this strange dark land. He had been a boon companion, a man of my own kind with whom I felt comfortable, and a wise head against which to toss ideas; and now I was by myself among a wild stew of Portugals and Jaqqas and Kongos and all the dozen other kind of blackamoors, with no one to guide me but my own wit. That was a heavy burden, though I think I bore it well enough as things befell.

  My talking with Dona Teresa left me weary and she went from me, which was to my regret, because her presence gave me vigor. She seemed then to me a saint of charity and kindness. I slept and woke and slept and woke, and others brought me food, and then on the third day she returned. I was stronger, strong enough to reach a hand toward her as she entered, and to try to sit up a bit.

  When I had eaten I said, “I think I will soon be able to leave this bed, and walk a little. And then I want to go out into the sunlight and quit this hole.”

  “Ah, you may not.”

  “In truth? Why not?”

  “Because you are imprisoned.”

  “Nay,” I said. “I dealt on that matter with Governor Serrão. He invited me into Portuguese service, and I agreed, and I served as pilot on the governor’s pinnace when I brought it down from Masanganu. Why imprison me now?”

  “No one knows. The decree w
as set down, and you are not to be freed. Outside this room a guard stands at all time, to restrain you from leaving.”

  I had to laugh at that, me too weak to put my legs to the floor.

  Then I leaned toward her and said, “Dona Teresa, are you my friend?”

  “That I am,” she said. And in that moment I for the first time doubted her, because I saw a glint in her eye, a strangeness, a kind of Satanic mischief, even, and I wondered how much a saint she might truly be. Where came those thoughts I hardly know: I think it was her great beauty that frightened me, and a certain foreignness, the full extent of which I did not then understand, that made me wary of trusting a Portugal no matter how kindly. But even as I was having these misgivings of her she said warmly enough, “What service can I do?”

  “Go to Governor Serrão,” I urged, “and remind him that he and I came to a treaty, and that I said I would serve faithfully and—”

  “Governor Serrão is dead.”

  “Ah, then! When?”

  “Many months past. There was a war against King Ngola and his allies, which went badly for us, and soon afterward Serrão fell ill and died. The troops elected the captain-major once more, Luiz Ferreira Pereira, to take his place. It is Governor Pereira who ordered you imprisoned.”

  “Why?”

  She shook her head. “That is not known. Perhaps he simply did not want to think about you, since he had so much else on his mind. There was an order posted, that the Englishman is to be kept apart, as prisoner. Which made no difference to you, since you raved and dreamed, and everyone thought you would die anyway, though you did not. When you have your strength again you will be transferred to the prison at the presidio.”

  “Nay, nay, nay! Will you go to this Governor Pereira for me, and tell him how Serrão dealt with me, and that I am more useful to him in his service than in his jail?”

  “But Pereira is gone to São Salvador.”

  I was blank at that name. “Where?”