Lord of Darkness

by Robert Silverberg

  “What, hang a priest?” I exclaimed.

  “It will not come to that. The priests are too strong for him. They will break him, Andres. Which would not be so bad except that we are surrounded by enemies in this land, and we have wasted years since the death of Dias, gaining no advantage for ourselves. Leadership is what we need here, not poltroonish squabblings of this kind.”

  “Aye,” I said, knowing what leader he did have in mind.

  “But if d’Almeida falls, there will be months or even years of fresh turmoil before order is restored. We can ill afford that. Let me explain to you, Andres, how I do believe we must conduct ourselves, if we are to achieve our purposes here.”

  And so he expounded, at some great length. But I had lost interest in the details of all these intrigues. The moment he had spoken of the wasting of years, I was most forcibly and poignantly brought to reflect upon my own waste of years as a captive here, and I fell to brooding, paying him no heed. He did drone on and on about the iniquities of Don Francisco, and the remedies he proposed for them, and I listened little, so that he took me by surprise when suddenly he said, “And what is this, Andres, have you committed murder?”

  “Sir?” said I, startled.

  “There is to be an inquest upon you, I am told. You are charged with the wanton slaying of Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues, that was a man of high birth.”

  “He was a scoundrel, and a thief!”

  “Well, and if he was? His blood was royal, or close to it. Come, Andres, what is this crime? You may be open with me. I knew the man a little: there was no merit to him. Yet if you have indeed slain him—”

  “I took his life,” said I wearily, “but it was to save the lives of many other men. It was not murder. When that we were wrecked, he essayed to force his way into a longboat that was already too crowded, and I drove him back, and he fell to the water and drowned.”

  “Ah,” said Don João, pouring more wine.

  “Drowned, furthermore, because he would not let go his hold of the treasure-sack he clutched in his hand, that was full with the precious goods he had stolen from the grave-site of the kings of Loango, and weighed him down, so that he went under. It was the stealing of these things, moreover, that I think did lead to the downfall of us all: for angry demon-gods did send hot dry winds upon us, and rip away our sails and drive us onto a secret shoal, all in the midst of a fair and pleasant day.”

  “Ah. Ah,” said he. “Ahah.”

  And for a long while he sat with his eyes closed, and held his wine-cup close against his chest, and I thought he had fallen to sleep, so sluggish and slow was he from all his drinking. But then he looked about at me and said, “Was it truly as you say?”

  “Upon mine honor.”

  “Then it is true,” he said. “Be there witnesses?”

  “Ample, unless their fear of the dead man’s brother brings them to lie against me.”

  Don João nodded. “The brother. Aye. It is the brother who brings this charge: Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues. Another worthless man, a pestilent rogue. He will cause you much difficulty, for he is bent on vengeance.”

  “And will I be prisoned again for this? I tell you, sir, if I am, I would rather die first: and take this Gaspar with me, when I do go.”

  “Prison? It could be, if the inquest finds against you.”

  “Then I will slay him!”

  “Soft, soft, Andres. There is the inquest, first. Over which I think I shall preside.” He stretched out his hand toward me and smiled and said, “We must arrive at the truth. But I think I know it already: for I do know you, and I somewhat know Gaspar. And I would not readily part with my Piloto.” He yawned most broad, and belched, and rubbed his swelling belly. “Go, now, Andres. I grow torpid now, and would rest. We will talk on these matters another time. Go: and beware. This Gaspar makes an evil enemy, and he may not wait for the inquest to have his vengeance.”

  I left him and returned to the small house that they had given me, a pleasant one on the seaward side of town, where good winds often blew. Mine eyes I did keep sharp, lest Brother Gaspar and his comrades spring out at me with drawn swords, but it did not happen. I was in a troubled mood, over this inquest, yet I was not greatly surprised, knowing the influence Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues wielded here. Yet the truth would be my defense, and I had the support, so I fervently hoped, of Don João de Mendoça, and though truth alone might not be sufficient, the strength of that most powerful fidalgo might perhaps see me through.

  As I made my way to my dwelling I saw some proclamation being read in the great square, with soldiers standing to attention, and much ceremony. I neared it and discovered that it pertained to intercourse between the Jesuits and the native chiefs. But I was tired, and did not care to hear more just then on that subject. Turning homeward, I lay down and slept a time, and then came a soft rapping at my door, in the night.

  I parted the curtain and saw Dona Teresa in the darkness.

  “You come so late?” I asked, for it was not like her.

  “Don João is elsewhere.”

  “Nay, I saw him only at midday.”

  “That was at midday. Tonight he is in conference with the governor and the council, and it will last for hours. Oh, Andres, Andres, will you not ask me in? I feared so much for you! When they said your ship was lost, how I grieved, how I mourned! And how I prayed!”

  “To Jesus and Mary, or to your mokisso?”

  “Mock me not,” she said sharply, half wounded, and half angered. “Let me in!” And she thrust herself through the door and into my arms.

  In the short while since my return we had not been alone together even once, though I had passed her one time on the plaza, and at a distance we had exchanged a cautious glance and a secret smile. Now she slid against me and greeted me with a tigerish hungry kiss. She wore only the lightest of wraps, moist from a gentle rain that was falling. She raked her fingers fiercely down my bare skin, and drew her breasts across my chest. There was heat coming from her. I cupped her round teats and found her nipples swollen and firm, and she made a little hissing noise as I did tenderly squeeze them.

  “Andres!” she cried. “Oh, I prayed! I longed for you so!”

  “As did I for you.”

  “Truly?” said she, and her eyes held an inquest most severe. “Did you think on me at all?”

  “Constantly.” I brought forth her little statue, that I had stroked so often, and held it high. “A thousand times did I touch this witchy thing, and tell myself it was your breasts I touched, and not a piece of wood!”

  “Ah. I feared for you, all the time you were in Loango. It is a dangerous place.”

  “It seemed not like that to me.”

  “They are not Christians there. They hold to strange ways.”

  “And you, the maker of idols, you are Christian?”

  “Yes!” she cried, in deep wrath. “Never say I am other!”

  “But the idol—”

  “A precaution,” she said. “I am Christian, but I discard nothing valuable.”

  We stood only inches apart, both so crazed with desire that we could not move, but went on chattering. She told me fifty times how she had died deaths for me, and prayed to every god of Africa as well as all the saints and the Madonna that I would not be harmed in Loango or perish on the sea, and I told her how I had tossed and twisted in desire for her. And yet we did not move. Until at last she let her light wrap fall to the ground, and she urged me impatiently toward my rumpled bed, and I followed in haste.

  The rain became less gentle, and drummed the thatch of my dwelling with much vigor. In my nostrils was the scent of Dona Teresa’s body, harsh, acrid, the lust-scent that all animals do have, and at that moment she seemed no more than an animal, sleek, quick, a thing of the jungle. She lay down and planted the soles of her feet upon the bed, and flexed her back so that her buttocks were in the air and her body arched. By the dim light of my single candle I saw her taut and spread for me, a dark foreign creature with ev
ery muscle quivering, the strength of her thighs showing in the contours of them, and the jet-black hairy diadem between them pulling me like a lodestone. I went to her and fell on her and into her in almost a single motion, and she relaxed the torsion of her frame and eased us both down to the surface of the bed, and there we lay motionless a moment, content merely to have our bodies joined again after so long a sundering. Her eyes gleamed with a wantoning.

  Now that we were united some urgency went from her, and slyly she said, holding her hands to my hips to keep me from movement, “Had you many black maidens whilst you were north?”

  “Nay, not a one.”

  “Ah, perfectly chaste, Andres!”

  “I was not allured by what I did see.”

  “Swear it by God’s Mother!”

  “I will swear by God Himself, I entered no woman’s body.”

  “You lie,” said she coolly and pleasantly, beginning now to pump her hips in a slow, steady, maddening way. “You had a dozen of them, little ebony wenches with sweet hard breasts, and you never thought once of me. I can still smell the smell of them upon you. I can see the marks of their little bites on your shoulders.”

  “Then you see with witch-eyes, for there are no marks.”

  “What are these?” she asked, and touched me in a place where I had scraped my arm on barnacles when scrambling upon the rocks of the shoal that had wrecked us.

  “I fought with a coccodrillo last week,” I told her, “and it nipped me once or twice before I split his jaws in twain.”

  “Ah,” she said. “I am relieved of all my fears. Better you hug a coccodrillo than a wench of Loango, eh?” And she laughed, and I laughed with her, though this pretended jealousy of hers seemed something more than mere pretense to me, beneath its outward playfulness, and that was discomfortable to me. But she moved her body in a changing rhythm now, ever swifter, and I ceased thinking of anything at all save the conjunction of our flesh. I drove deep to the center of her and the little quivering motions of her ecstasy did begin within her and a new scent arose from her, a sea-scent, musky and tangy, as the discharge of her pleasure commenced. Though it had been many weeks since I had known such discharge myself, I held myself in check, waiting her out until the highest moment of her ascent, and then, releasing all control, shouting out into the low strange bestial growl of her delight, I did give myself up to the completion of our loving, which went through me like the force of a hammer’s blows. And I fell athwart her, panting, sweaty, laughing giddily, and we held one another, and rolled from side to side, and lightly slapped each other and kissed and pinched. The world seemed calm and full on her course now. For when man and woman love, and pass together through the fulfillment of that loving by the flesh, they enter out of the world of turbulence into a new and silent realm of tranquility that might almost be of a higher sphere of existence, so I do think. Would that we could remain there forever, as the angels do in their crystalline abode! But then, I suppose, we would never know the joy of the ascent, if we dwelled always above the clouds.

  After a time we slipped our bodies apart and Teresa, rising from the bed, stepped naked outside the house to douse herself in the rain. She returned clean and glistening and said, “I must leave now. When Don João sends for me tonight, I must be in my own bed as his messenger comes.”

  “This conference you spoke of—”

  “It is about the Jesuits,” she said. “You heard this afternoon’s proclamation?”

  “Very little of it. Don João told me there is strife between the governor and the Jesuits.”

  “Indeed. D’Almeida has decreed that any Jesuit who meets with a soba must die.”

  “So was I told.”

  “There is more. When the decree was read, and nailed to the door of the priests’ residence, the Jesuit Prefect Affonso Gomes did tear it off, and burn it. And sent word that he would excommunicate the governor, if he persevered at this.” She frowned and said, “Is that painful, to be excommunicated?”

  “It means only to be cut off from the sacraments of the Church,” I said.

  “Yes, that I do know. Forbidden to take the Mass, and no confession, no absolution, none of the rites of birth or marriage or death. But is that all? I have heard of this excommunication, but I have never seen the thing done. Is it done with whips?”

  “It is done with words alone,” I said.

  “Ah,” said she, and peradventure she was a trifle disappointed. “Then there is no peril in it?”

  “But there is,” said I. “It is not only that one is deprived of the whole rigmarole of piety that the Catholic faith does adhere to. But all Christians must scorn the excommunicated one, and turn away, and give him no aid, even if he lie bleeding and broken in a ditch. Did you not know that?”

  “I have been taught these things, but when I was a girl. We have had no excommunication here, Andres. Why, even if there be no whips, still it sounds like a very grave thing!”

  “So I do suppose. But much depends on the effectuality of the powers of the excommunicator. When our King Henry denied the authority of the Pope, in the matter of putting aside his first wife Catherine, the King was indeed excommunicated, but we in England paid no heed to that. And again another Pope did excommunicate our good Elizabeth, when I was a boy, for issuing us a prayer-book and giving us Protestant bishops. But once more it was like the mere blowing of the wind to us, and had neither meaning nor substance.”

  This bewildered Dona Teresa, who after all was a Catholic if she was any sort of Christian, and knew nothing of our heretical ways, excepting that we had contempt for the Pope. I suppose she could not rightly be called a pagan, for she had been reared truly in her Church and had received its sacraments and all of that, but yet I knew, from her faith in idols and witchcraft, that it was only skin-deep to her, as it is to all these converted folk of tropic lands. She knew which was the Virgin Mary and which the Savior, and other grand things of the creed, but I suspect that the nice points of doctrine were cloudy and murky to her, and had no real essence, other than that her mother and father had told her to hold God in awe. Perhaps I do her an injustice: perhaps the priests of the Kongo had made a true and deep Catholic of her. I know not. Could she hold that faith and the pagan one of her black grandmothers with equal force? I think she was capable of that: nay, I do know it! I think she had as much doubt of my faith as I did have of hers, and admitted me to be a Christian only because she did not know what else I might be deemed. For I appeared to believe in God and His Son in a right Christian manner, yet the Pope, that was her grand mokisso, was only the blowing of the wind to me.

  At my door she said, “They tell me there is a quarrel between you and Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues.”

  “So it appears.”

  “And is it true, that you slew his younger brother?”

  “I caused his death, that I admit.” And I told her how it had befallen. “But I accept no blame for it. Do you know this Gaspar?”

  “A little,” said she.

  “Is he as cowardly as his dead brother?”

  “Of that I know nothing. He is a clever man, and ambitious. Walk carefully until this matter is resolved, for I think he would harm you.”

  “Then pray for my welfare, as though I were in peril on the sea.”

  Her eyes glistened. “I will do more than pray. I will use all the unseen forces at my command, against his malevolence.”

  “Ah, then you admit to witching!”

  She put her finger to my lips. “Not a word of that! But I will guard you.” Then most shamelessly did she caress my manhood with her wanton hand, so that I would have drawn her back to the bed, but she would not let it. “Until next time, my love!” And she was gone.

  I thought for some while of all these troubled matters, the inquest, and Don João’s struggle with the new governor, and the doings of the Jesuits. But then it all fell from my mind, this squabbling among tricksome and quarrelsome Portugals, this Papist tug-of-war for power over the pitiful blacks whom
they had so cozened and gulled and enslaved and exploited. I dropped into a sound sleep, and was gone from the world well into the morning. And when I awoke I did know at once, from the uncommon silence of the city, that something notable had occurred.

  I dressed and took my breakfast, which was brought me by one of the slaves assigned me by Don João—I, a miserable prisoner, did have three slaves as servants!—and went forth into the center of things and looked about. The grand plaza was all but empty. A platoon of soldiers marched back and forth before the compound of the Jesuits, on which some new proclamation had been nailed. High above, at the presidio, other soldiers drilled. All work had ceased on the new constructions along the slopes, and very few natives could be seen anywhere. I thought to go to Don João’s palace to discover the turn of events, but I was halted by the captain of the guards, Fernão da Souza, who emerged suddenly from the commissary and said, “You would do well to stay to your house today, Englishman.”

  “What has happened?”

  “The governor has confined the Jesuits to their quarters, and says he will put to death any of the priests that comes into view. Father Affonso is said to be preparing a writ of excommunication against the governor, and shortly may appear to proclaim it in the plaza.”

  “Madness!” said I.

  “Which, the governor’s decree, or the prefect’s?”

  “Both. What will be done when the priest steps forth. Is he to be shot down on his own doorstep?”

  Captain da Souza—credit him with that much—did look dismayed greatly. “No one knows, my friend. We do not shoot priests. We do not disobey our governor. But we cannot hold faith with both factions at once.”

  “If you were a common soldier,” I said, “and you were told to shoot down a priest, would you obey?”