Lord of Darkness

by Robert Silverberg

  But it was surprising to see Dutch traders come to Angola. The Dutch they are a maritime people, and do voyage hither and yon with great success, but also are they Protestants, and enemies of King Philip of Spain, that very King Philip who also had become ruler of Portugal and thus had sway over Angola, too. Philip once had been sovereign over the Low Countries, by some trick of inheritance from his father the Emperor Charles, but the Protestant folk of Holland, so I recall, had rebelled and set up their own republic, an endeavor into which we English had given great aid. Had that republic fallen, I wondered, so that Holland was again Philip’s fief? If not, what were Protestant Dutch merchants doing on a venture into Papist Africa? Had they no fear of being seized and imprisoned, as I had been seized and imprisoned by the Portugals of Brazil?

  Some talk with the Dutch merchant captain, one Cornelis van Warwyck, and I had a better understanding of the complexities of the situation. The Dutch republic had not fallen; indeed in these past few years of my absence the Hollanders had expelled Spain from all their seven United Provinces. So they were as much King Philip’s enemies as ever. But I had been merely privateering, going into the Brazils hoping to steal Philip’s gold, the which made me forfeit to him if caught. These Dutch had come to trade, though, a thing which brings prosperity to both sides if the trading be done with skill. And so although there might be a state of war between Spain and Portugal on the one hand and the United Provinces on the other, it was a purely European war, and took second place to the necessities of profit-making out here in these distant colonies. The Portugals, moreover, had not been enemies to the Dutch before Anno 1580, when Philip came to take the Portuguese crown, and had not learned the hatred for them that the Spaniards had. Then, too, the Hollanders did bring good guilders and ducats to pay for the spices and silks and ivories and other such exotic merchandises they desired; guilders and ducats are neither Protestant nor Papist; and so these bold merchants and Don João both chose to ignore, for the sake of everyone’s merry enrichment, the quarrels that divided their nations at home. Such things, I understand, were common in Africa and the Indies. Why, there were even a few Portugals who sailed in Captain van Warwyck’s crew—shabby scoundrel rogues with flittering shifty eyes, that I would not have had in any crew of mine, though Warwyck did maintain that they were hard workers.

  I busied myself deeply in this commerce, which involved much meeting with the Dutch skipper and with Don João, and speaking both English and Portuguese with some of my little bastard Dutch mixed in. That was hard work, but what a joy to frame good English phrases again! To hear from my own lips such words as “invoice” and “quantity” and “rate of exchange,” and even such humble things as “but” and “and” and “thereunto”—what delight! Why, it was like downing a flagon of good cool brown ale, to speak forth such words!

  This Warwyck was a tall round-faced man with reddened cheeks and blue eyes and white hair, who dressed in dark sober Dutch clothes, all rough and woollen in our tropic heat, and puffed away on a long clay pipe as the Dutch are so fond of doing, making heavy use of that foul weed tobacco that is the mania in his country and mine these days. He had an odd sweetness to his English, as though he did put honey on his sounds before they left his tongue, which is the Dutch accent. I liked it greatly, and, strange to tell, the more I talked with him the more the same tones did creep into my own speech. I think this was because I had scarce uttered any English aloud since Thomas Torner’s disappearance years before, and I was readily swayed by his manner of speaking, English now having become almost an unfamiliar language to me.

  I demanded of him news of England, he having been in London as recent as the spring of ’94. For England was by this time only a sort of vague dream to me, and I needed reassurance that it yet existed.

  “The Queen,” I said, “how fares it with her?”

  “They say that she is strong and healthy, and that her beauty it is undimmed.”

  “And my country, does it prosper?”

  Warwyck did puff deeply on his pipe and surround himself in a great swirl of white smoke, and at length he said, “The harvests have been poor these few years past. Her Majesty has spent much on the wars in France, and in my own land. I think some Spanish treasure-carracks have been seized in the Azores, which much aided the royal funds—”

  “Ah,” I said, “does the Queen now take a share in such adventures?”

  “Indeed. They all go partners, the Queen and her brave captains, and divide the plunder. Which she would deny if asked, but we know it to be true. Yet I think England grows poorer, despite such raids. You cannot live by piracy, my friend. Trade, yes, colonies, yes—the Engenders should settle foreign lands, and build themselves into them, as these Portugals do, and the Spaniards, and as we intend to do.”

  “The Dutch will colonize also? Where, I pray you?”

  “In places where there are no Portugals: in the Indies, the Spice Islands, and such places. We are sailing; we are learning; we will do well, I think. Better than the Spaniards and Portugals, for they are but shallow settlers, and we will sink ourselves deeply into those lands, and export from them cloves and pepper and nutmeg and other useful things, instead of merely filching gold from the natives and giving them diseases. And we will do better than you English, too, for you seem interested only in piracy, and there is no profit in that over the long term, however glittering the rewards of snatching this ship and that one may be. Eh, friend? Do you see?”

  Indeed I did see; for I had had a close view of what the Portugals did, which was more slaving than merchandising, and I knew our own maritime enterprise from within, and I was aware also of the shortsighted cruelties of the black-hearted Spaniards. And I knew that these Hollanders, if they did keep faithfully to their task, would build for themselves a great machine of perpetual money-spinning, for they are diligent people that do understand where the truest pot of gold doth lie. And I swore to myself that if ever I returned to England I would preach the gospel of colonizing and commerce, and urge my countrymen to give over piracy and slaving, as being not the best ways toward national wealth.

  Warwyck and his gossiping did much enhance my longing for my own cool green country. He talked on and on! Ralegh had fallen, he said, for having got with child one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, and secretly marrying her, which displeased Her Majesty highly. The great man at court now was the Earl of Essex, son-in-law to old Leicester. Lord Burghley still was the Queen’s most trusted adviser, but his crook-backed son Robert was rising now in esteem. There were plots on the Queen’s life, which was nothing new, some Portugal living in London accused of conspiring to poison her at the behest of King Philip. And so on and so on. Food was dear, rain fell constantly, hunger was general. People died in the streets from want, but the Queen ordered grain given out to the populace from her private stores, and was widely loved for it. And so on; and so on. He told me endless things of England, that kindled in me a keen biting desire to behold thatched cottages and winding country lanes and the white line of surf licking at the fog that lies upon the coast. Only in one area did he fail me, this Dutchman Warwyck, when I did ask him of the world of plays and poetry, what new and wonderful things had been put on the stage. For the world of words has always been hot in my mind, and I had read much, as sailors go, and it seemed to me that there were in England in my time a great host of new men who would write miracles. But of all that the Dutchman knew nothing and told me nothing. So I was left all unknowing of the high deeds of our poets, though he could tell me the price of a peck of corn on the London docks. Well, and well, I could not expect everything from the man, and he had told me much. Aye, so much that it left me churning with a powerful bitter yearning to quit this torrid Angola and get myself back to the pleasant island of my birth before old age did wither me altogether to a husk. God’s blood, but I had had my fill of Africa, and then some!

  For day after day I did my interpreting while the Portugals and Dutch haggled over the prices of their commodities.
Warwyck was not interested in slaves, but the sumptuous fabrics of Angola seemed to attract him, and he bought also goodly measure of ivory, and bales of certain medicinal herbs most sharp against the nostrils. When not occupied in these transactions I whiled away my hours happily with Matamba, or went off quietly angling, or simply strolled alone and reflective through the city. I was not living badly, that is clear; but it was not the life I wanted for myself. From time to time I did see Dona Teresa off at a distance, but there were no encounters between us. Yet I sensed there would be trouble from that quarter ere very much longer.

  And so there was. I returned to my cottage one afternoon from my negotiations with the Dutch, and as I entered it I had a premonition of ill fortune, a tingling of the ballocks and a cold knot in my stomach’s pit. When I looked within I saw Dona Teresa in my chamber. She had laid aside most of her garments and wore only a thin cascade of the native weaving, brightly dyed in yellow and green, a kind of damask that they do make here from the fibers of the palm. That one garment was draped so that it did reveal the supple curves of her body, with a hint of thigh and a hint of breast artfully disposed for my endazzlement.

  None of my slaves were about. The house was silent; the air was stifling hot. Teresa seemed posed, as if she had struck an attitude and waited a long time so that I would find her precisely thus. Her eyes had their keenest gleam and there was an odor in the room, that musky cat-odor of her body that I knew to be the surest token of her lusts.

  She said, “Since you will not come to me, Andres, I have come to you.”

  “Ah, you should not have done this!”

  “No one has seen me. Give me an hour, and then I will slip away, and who will be the wiser?”

  “For the love of God, Teresa—”

  “Have I grown ugly?”

  “You are more beautiful than ever. But the case is altered with us, Teresa, the case is altered! You are a wife!”

  “I told you that that means nothing.”

  “Well, and let Don Fernão tell me that himself, and then I might feel safer,” I said.

  “Are you such a coward, then?”

  “I will fight Jaqqas if I must,” said I, “or stick lances in the bellies of Kafuche Kambara’s warriors. But I have no wish to do combat with a rightfully angered husband.”

  “Andres—Andres—”

  She gave me a look both of desire and of fury, that made me fear her very much.

  Slowly she arose, and came flowingly toward me, and I did see the unconfined globes of her breasts swaying beneath her thin draping, and the darkness at her loins was apparent, too, and I felt myself losing all resolve.

  “Andres,” she said, “give me no more talk of angered husbands. You and I are lovers, and nothing else is significant. Come: you want me as much as I do you.”

  “I will not deny that.”

  “Then come.”

  I shook my head. “It is too dangerous. I tell you, we must make an end of this union.”

  “Nay,” she said. She drew nearer, and rubbed herself against me most unsubtly amorous, with a pressing and a thrusting of her loins on me that made my yard stand out fair to split my breeches. “Do not compel me to beg you, Andres,” said she.

  “I beg you, Teresa—”

  She backed off and there was rage now smouldering in her eyes.

  “I cannot believe this! I crawl to you, and you refuse me? What have you done? Have you renewed your vow to that English wench of yours, and returned to your chastity?”

  “She has not entered my mind often in recent times,” I did declare, to my shame, for it was the truth.

  “Then why do you shun me? I cannot believe this fear you claim to have of Fernão. He will not know. And if he did, he would look the other way, I swear it! Nay, it must be something else that keeps you from me.” She stepped back one pace more, and the look upon her face changed, growing harder, growing colder. “They tell me that in Loango you did buy a slave-girl, a young one, and that she is your bed-toy. When I heard it I laughed at it, for I know the African women are not what you desire. You want no flat noses, you want no thick lips and heavy rumps. Or so I did think. But is it true, Andres? Do you use your little black slut, and care no more for me? Do you? Do you?”

  Her words came at me like daggers. I could say nothing.

  Yes, yes, I did sleep with Matamba, and yes, I took great pleasure of her, and yes, all that Dona Teresa had heard was true; but that was not the whole story of my refusal of her. It was not Matamba that had come between us, but rather the conjoining of lust with politics in this city, and my fear of letting a new embroilment with Teresa’s body embroil me also in some fatal tangle of ambitions. But I had told her all that already, and she had brushed it aside, seeking a more elemental motive. I searched my brain for some new argument that might sink to the core of the matter, and prevent it from seeming a mere jealous squabble between women, but I found no reasoning worth offering her. And so I stood, silent, gaping, while within me came the insinuating devilish temptation to put all this word-spinning behind me and throw myself atop Teresa’s body instantly in a willing embrace, that any other man in half his right mind would give a year of his life to enjoy.

  Yet did I not do that, nor anything else, but remained as it were paralyzed. And then the worst of all possible things befell, for in that moment did Matamba enter the cottage, all unaware, and come lightly onward into my inner chamber, calling out my name in a cheery voice like a familiar lover, “Andres! Andres!”

  Oh, God’s bones and shoulders, what I would have given to have her choose any some other different time to appear!

  In the year when I lived with my wife Rose Ullward so long ago, we did keep two cats as pets, a grizzled tabby tom and a sleek old black-and-orange female, both of them amiable and easy-tempered animals, that stood and made a purr most vociferous when I rubbed them behind the ears. They were Rose’s cats, but they liked me well enough, and I them. One ghastly windy rainy winter day, when I was within the house with them and they were squatting together in the window-ledge, asleep in the warmth, some stray cat did come by outside, and perched on the sill, and peered in at them, as though yearning to join them out of the rain. I know not why, but the coming of that stray did set my two cats’ fur on edge, and they rose like beasts that had seen an evil spirit, and began upon the moment to fight with one another, squealing terribly and leaping about and sending clouds of their fur flying into the air. I would not have these animals, both so dear to me, injuring each other, and so, without giving the matter any thought, I went to them and seized them to hold them apart. Which was a most grievous mistake, for with a single accord they turned on me as their enemy, and so clawed and bit and furrowed me that within moments was I bleeding amazingly along my arms and both my ankles, and stood in sore pain. This taught me two things: one being that the cat of your hearth, though he be old and tame and sleepy, is nevertheless a hunting animal with ferocious fangs and claws and sturdy sinews; and the other being, never set yourself as umpire between two cats in combat, for you will be the chief sufferer in that. Yet I did not learn those lessons sufficiently well, I do believe, since something of the same story now replayed itself in my cottage, and with something of the same result.

  By which I mean that the moment Matamba did enter my chamber, Teresa pulled back, crouching, drawing her lips away from her teeth, shaping her hands into fearsome claws as though she meant to destroy her rival straightaway. Matamba, though wondrously startled at finding Dona Teresa here and she near naked at that, needed no time to comprehend that she was in menace.

  “Ah, you are the witch-woman,” said she. “You are the sorceress! I know you, idol-maker!”

  “Slave! Trash!”

  “Ah,” said Matamba, hunching forward, extending her arms with her hands held in the same claw-fashion. “Ah, Jesu Maria, God is with me!”

  And from Teresa came words in the Bakongo tongue that I had never heard her speak before, black mingo-jango words out of the souls o
f her grandmothers, a hard gibbering magical stuff that amazed me to hear it out of her beautiful lips. And for each word she spoke in that dark incantation, Matamba did call forth the name of a saint, though I did see the terror in her eyes, and I felt no little fright myself at this witchery magicking that poured from Dona Teresa.

  For a half minute, perhaps, they circled one another, poised, taut, the one woman crying curses and sorcery, the other answering with her holy names, and I looked on stupefied, thinking I must hold them apart from one another.

  But I waited an instant too long. For Dona Teresa, with a hellish shriek, suddenly leaped upon the waiting Matamba.

  “Nay!” I cried. But it was like shouting commands to the wild hurricane.

  They rushed together with a loud clashing of flesh and grappled one another and entered into the most unloving of hugs, tugging and pulling each to knock the other to the ground, and all the while snarling like enraged beasts. They were of about one size, Matamba being a few years younger and somewhat more sturdy of build, but Dona Teresa having a lithe leopard-like strength to her. They grasped and struck at each other while I stood by for the moment all frozen, never having seen women fighting before.

  Dona Teresa’s flimsy garment soon was a shred, and a reddened row of scratchings ran across her front from one shoulder over the breast to a side of her rib-cage. While at the same time she grasped Matamba’s thick woolly hair and did tug at it to rip it from her head, and brought her knee up to the black girl’s crotch, whereupon Matamba clawed her again, and this time flung her down, Matamba’s own garment coming undone at that. Teresa rose and launched a new assault, the air being all full of shrieks and sweat.

  And I, forgetting the lesson of the two quarrelsome cats, could stand no more to see these two women, near naked and so vulnerable, harming their beauty in this way. So before the gougings of eyes commenced, and the breaking of noses, and such like mutilations, I flung myself against their slippery bodies and did strive to separate them.