Lord of Darkness

by Robert Silverberg

  Yet was she tall and proud and queenly as she strode, for all her nakedness, this Christian woman whose most secret places were displayed to ten thousand savages. I think I might rather have seen her feeble and frightened; for the sight of her so regal awoke on me sharp memories of the woman of São Paulo de Loanda that I had loved, that soon would be lost to me forever unless some miracle came, and time was growing monstrous late for miracles. And I did feel a powerful sense of onrushing disaster impending over this place, and not for Dona Teresa alone. And I bethought me of those words of Master Marlowe’s play of Faustus, when the clock is striking eleven, and Mephistopheles approaches to claim the soul of the damned man:

  Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

  That time may cease, and midnight never come;

  Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make

  Perpetual day; or let this hour be but

  A year, a month, a week, a natural day…

  Now the musicians did play, now the nganga-men did dance and shout and invoke their mokisso the Devil. And the slaves of the Jaqqas brought forth great leathern sacks of palm-wine, enough of the stuff, God wot, to set afloat the entire Spanish Armada, and they passed among the Jaqqas, filling their cups again and yet again. And all this while did Dona Teresa stand naked in the midst of this barbarous multitude, awaiting her death most calmly with her hands together behind her back.

  Let it be a lengthy ceremony, I prayed. Let them dance and prance for hours and hours, so that the rescuers, if they are to come, will have time to come. I put great faith in that rescue. I was confident of God’s own providence that would spare Dona Teresa from her death.

  But yet—what was that speech of Faustus?

  The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,

  The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d.

  They will not understand Kulachinga’s message, I thought; or they will not believe it, thinking it to be a deceit; or they will ignore it. Why did I not go myself? Why did I not send to the Portugals earlier? I belabored myself with a thousand such whys, every one of them futile.

  My brooding was broken by the touch of the Jaqqa Kasanje against my arm, and he said, “Calandola would speak with you, O Andubatil.”

  Terror! O mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me, and hide me from him! For I was sure he knew of my betrayal: that Kulachinga was taken, that she had confessed all, that I would be reproached for my treason and sent down below to die beside the Portugal woman.

  I did make my face firm and unrevealing, and went me down the high table to the Imbe-Jaqqa. Who greeted me in somber fashion, most stark and grim; and when his eyes met mine it was needful that I call into play all my strength of will, so that I did not go down to kneel before him and babble forth my contrition.

  To me he said, “When this festivity is at an end, Andubatil, I must speak most urgently with you.”

  Ah, then, he knew my treachery!

  But no: it was another matter entirely. For he said, as I so stonily faced him, “I have learned much that is important to me, this day. The conspiracy against me that I feared, and of which I have spoken to you: it is real, it is ripe. Its leader is known to me. He is planning shortly to strike. But I will strike first, Andubatil, and you will be at my side in the slaying of my foes.”

  Then he knew nothing at all of my betrayal, for which I felt vast relief.

  “Ah, then, who is the enemy?” said I.

  “Afterward will we talk, in private.” He clasped my hand between his great paws. “You alone can I trust. You alone are my brother.”

  Which filled me with shame, that he should have such love for me and I having done such treason against him. And also it made clear to me who the enemy must be, from Calandola’s words, “You alone are my brother.” So this night would be a night of many reckonings.

  But one above them all was primary. Thinking that out of need of me, or out of love, he might yet grant me that one great boon, I said in a low voice to him, “May I ask you now one more time, O Imbe-Jaqqa, to relent toward the Portugal woman, and—”

  “Nay!” he roared, like an angered lion.

  “I beg—”

  “Nay,” he said again, more quietly, shaking his great head to and fro. “It may not be, Andubatil. I ask you, plague me not on this score. She is doomed. Nothing can save her. Nothing! She has done treason against us; she must die, or my power will be wholly without credit here.”

  “Ah.”

  “Forget her. She is lost to you. Go, now: to your place. But afterward, come to me, and keep ready your sword, for tonight I think you will need it.”

  There was no hope. He was fixed upon her death.

  And what now, how did I halt time? Of Portugals there was no sign. There was no one to whom I could turn but Calandola, and he had refused me, and short of some madman’s deed that beyond doubt would cost me mine own life, I could do naught but stand and watch, and pray, and wait. Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer! Yet could I not turn back the striking of the final hour, which was all but upon us now.

  The wine-bibbing had reached a high moment, and the Jaqqas did mill about, spilling the stuff down their chests and bellies in their wild surfeit. Imbe Calandola arose, and gave his signal, and the giant black headsman of the tribe stepped forward with his titanic blade, and the drums went still and the fifes ceased an instant, long enough for me to hear Dona Teresa say most sorrowfully, “Sancta Maria ora pro nobis,” and some other like phrases.

  Now, Portugals! Now erupt, and fall upon this heathen band!

  But they did not come. And, I came to see, they would not come, and the clock could not be halted, and the last moment was at hand. And I was helpless.

  I looked toward Dona Teresa and had my final sight of her bare supple body, still so beautiful and full of life, and I thought me of Anne Boleyn the Queen’s mother, and of Katherine Howard, and of many another whose death had early been inflicted in this fashion, for truly this is a vale of tears: and there was a sudden frightened cry, “Andres!” and she bent forward.

  And the huge Jaqqa did strike from her her head. I did avert mine eyes for the pain of it in my soul, but I heard the terrible sound of it; I cannot ever forget that sound. And when I looked again I would have rejected the awful evidence of my vision, but I could not.

  So it was done, the which I was witness to, and yet even after I saw it carried out I did not fully believe it, so sharp was my memory of her in my arms, so warm was the impress of her upon my soul. I could not associate the sundered thing lying bloody in the clearing with the slender girl who had come to me in my prison, or with the noble woman who had gone striding so queenly through the avenues of São Paulo de Loanda, or with the companion of my arms of only a few days past. It was done.

  “Give me wine!” I cried, and pulled a cup toward me, and gulped it down to ease my pain.

  “So it will be,” said Calandola, “with all the Portugals of that city. You will see it, Andubatil: we will take them prisoner while they slumber, and we will cut from them their heads, and we will swallow them back into us and they will be gone from the land. You alone will wear the white skin on these shores, Andubatil. We will have no others here.”

  And he did call for wine, and pound his cup until he had it. And when he had it he poured for me, and then for him, and for Kinguri; and I saw Kinguri smiling with special joy for the pain he had brought upon me by the death of my beloved.

  “We will wrestle, you and I,” said Kinguri, “after we have eaten. Eh? Will you face me in the match, Andubatil?”

  “With the Imbe-Jaqqa’s leave, that I will,” said I.

  He turned to Calandola. “What do you say, brother? Am I to wrestle the Christian tonight!”

  Calandola stared at him a long while, and finally he said, “Yea, you will wrestle with him, Kinguri. So be it, you and Andubatil.”

  Kinguri’s eyes gleamed. “I have waited long for this, Andubatil.”

  “As h
ave I, brother,” I said to him.

  “Ah,” said he. “You will call me brother no longer, after tonight!”

  I shrugged and turned away. My soul was still stunned by the death of Teresa, and I wanted no bickering with Kinguri to intrude on my grief, not now: there would be time later to wrestle him, and, if God gave me the strength, to break him in pieces, and pull his long limbs from his trunk, and cast him like offal into the bone-pit. But that would be later.

  Because that there was a cold place now beneath my breastbone like a lump of ancient ice, I drank heavily to warm it, a stoup of wine perhaps and then another, a bucket of it, a hogshead, a barrel. Yet it barely moved me and did not stir my soul; the coldness within burned it all away.

  Some Jaqqa servants meanwhile gathered up Dona Teresa’s body and took it to the kettle, and her head they did remove from the scene, to give it interment and prevent the mokisso of her from molesting their souls, I suppose, or to keep her zumbi from haunting their sleep. To all this I paid little heed. For I was sunk deep in gloom of her death, that cut me so deep. And I thought me of her ambitions to greatness, her dreams of glory and lust for high place, and all those other aspects of her, reduced to nothing now, for that she was mere dead meat, and that gave me great sadness, at the injustice of her death and the injustice indeed of all death.

  Yet as the wine entered at last upon me and lulled my sorrow, I came to be more accepting. Truly what did it matter that Dona Teresa had died now instead of then, since that it was foreordained that one day she must die? I remembered me the words of one of the wisest men that ever was, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose book of meditations I had pored over as a boy, and his words now floated through my soul, that were, “Do not act as if thou would live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee.”

  Aye! And where today is Marcus? And where are all those who stood beside Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field an hundred year ago, so proud as they were then at the winning of the commonwealth from King Richard Crookback! So why feel torment for the death of a woman now, or fear indeed for mine own death to come, when our lives are like unto that of a butterfly? Everything is only for a day.

  These thoughts did ease me some, and also the wine. But I did sit morosely while those about me were in wild frenzy. There were Jaqqas making festivity as far as my gaze could encompass, all of them heavy gone in drink, and rolling about with their women, and coupling on the warm bare earth. Slaves went among them, bringing slabs of meat from the slaughtered cattle, and all manner of fruits, and other dainties.

  And then came the monstrous moment when the banquet was at its fullest and the flesh of Dona Teresa was deemed to be ready, and they did bring this most awful food to the high bench for the delectation of the Jaqqa lords.

  Kinguri rose, and smiled a cold savage smile upon me, and addressed his royal brother, saying loudly, “O Imbe-Jaqqa, since that this woman was Andubatil’s wife, it is fitting that you surrender unto him the choice of all the meat of her, though it be your right to take the first selection.”

  Calandola did at that look startled, for he had not expected it, and I suppose was not sure whether Kinguri meant some mischief toward him from it. But then he considered, and I think it did seem proper to him. Turning to me he declared, “Aye, that is the fitting thing. I grant you the Imbe-Jaqqa’s portion, O Andubatil!”

  I gaped at him in amaze. “You would not have me do that, my lord!”

  “It is honor most great.”

  “Nay,” I said, deep in my throat. “I will not eat of it!”

  But this enraged the Imbe-Jaqqa, for he was not accustomed to refusal, nor was he practiced at being told by Kinguri how he should comport himself, and all this had put him in a whirl. His eyes grew furious and veins stood out upon the great thickness of his neck, and he cried, “Take her and make her into you.”

  “I beg you, Lord Imbe-Jaqqa—”

  “I command you, Andubatil!”

  To which Kinguri said, “Would you dispute the command of the Imbe-Jaqqa?”

  “Give over, brother,” I answered him. “I want no part of this festivity.”

  “Ah, we should have slain you at the first,” said he. “Instead of cherishing you, and nurturing you, and feigning that you were of our own kind. A white Jaqqa! What madness! You are the cause and root of all our woe! Take and eat!”

  And Kinguri did seize and shove into my face the broad green leaf of a jungle tree, wide as a platter, upon which lay steaming a cut of meat, a section that—nay, I will not write it, my mind rebels, even now my gorge rises—

  But this dreadful meat the Imbe-Jaqqa’s brother did most insistently offer to me, exclaiming all the while in stentorian voice that high acclaim was being done to me by this, and urging me to have it for the good of mine own spirit. I was steadfast in my refusal, and he in his insistence, and he pressed the steaming meat upon me, and I did force it back. Both of us were shouting most furiously. I did not fear Kinguri’s wrath. I did not at that moment fear even death: but I would not die with the shame of this bestial meal upon my soul.

  Calandola, too, was in outrage that I had refused the meat.

  “You will not say nay!” he cried. “Eat! Take, eat!”

  And he held me and shook me, and I fought back at him, which made me indeed feel like a butterfly in his mighty grip; but the wine and my grief and rage did arm me, and with a strength I did not expect I pushed myself back from him a bit. Yet did he seize me again.

  “Eat! Eat!”

  And from behind him came Kinguri, cackling with delight at the strife he had let loose, crying, “Eat, Andubatil! Eat!”

  Calandola’s strength was diabolical and could not be resisted. He held me and forced me backward, and that loathly fillet of once-beloved flesh he did most terribly bring into approach of my mouth, though I resolved I would not open for it, no matter how frightsome the torment he applied. His face hovered an inch from mine; his sweat fell upon my skin and scalded me; his eyes were great beacons that burned into my skull; truly he was the incarnation of the Dark One, truly the authentic Diabolus, and in that nightmare noise of shouting and battling and musicking my spirit began to reach the limit of its tether, all but overcome by the dread force of this cannibal chieftain.

  I know not what would have happened then, save the Imbe-Jaqqa would have had the flesh of Teresa into me to satisfy his crazed need to overmaster me; but at the moment of it, as the meat neared my lips, Calandola did utter a sudden great cry of surprise and pain, and released me. I beheld Kinguri standing behind him with a war-hatchet raised, having struck at his brother and cut him deeply.

  So the insurrection had begun, and the enemy had had his first blow. I saw that all this was a ruse on Kinguri’s part, a diversion, this business of the meat, to enrage Calandola and cause him to put aside his prudence so that he could be slain. Now blood poured down the Imbe-Jaqqa’s back and he looked dazed and stunned by his wound, and Kinguri was making ready to strike a second and fatal time.

  At the sight of this, the Jaqqas below and around us began to shout also, and caper, and strike one another; the dissension at the high table seemed to act very like a kindling, that struck into the dry tinder of the camp, they being so far gone, all of them, in wine, and so wrought-up from the long delay before marching into battle. And the striking of Calandola by Kinguri was, I perceived, the signal for a general affray, a war between two Jaqqa factions, one faithful to the monarch and one loyal to his brother.

  The Imbe-Jaqqa’s bodyguard, stupored somewhat by wine but not yet altogether incapable, rushed toward Kinguri and pulled him some dozen feet away before he could strike the second blow. All was engulfed now in madness. Thousands of drunken Jaqqas roared and thrashed about like ape-creatures, scarce human, more like hairy baboomas or wild pongos and engecos, smashing whatever lay in their way, tipping over the kettles of scalding water, hacking at trees and at cattle and at one another. I looked to escape, but no escape was possible, for that a turbulence of berserk men surged on a
ll sides, a stew of flailing crazed humanity, and it was like the great maelstrom or whirlpool of the northern waters, that becomes so irresistible a vortex as to swallow everything, and there is no fleeing from it. So was I buffeted about, and swept here and there. There was killing everywhere; and I saw the bloody Calandola roaring and bellowing and fighting a dozen men at once.

  Then in the general upheave I found myself nose to nose with Kinguri. Blood did flow along his scalp and forehead in torrents, and his eyes were a wild man’s.

  “You!” he cried. “The peril, the curse among us!”

  “Let me past you, brother,” said I.

  He struck at me with the butt end of his hatchet, and laid bare my cheek almost to the bone, cutting athwart the older scars of my tribal ornamentation. I felt the streaming of my blood, but there was no pain, not then, not yet. He came to me with a second blow, but there was good frenzy upon me also, the kind that in battle does arm a man to surpass his own power. And as his hatchet descended did I catch his wrist and hold it high over me, so that neither of us could move.

  We stood there maybe five hundred year, or maybe five thousand, frozen, wholly stilled, with all the drunkard Jaqqas circling about us and none daring to come near. Kinguri could not bring his great long arm down upon me to do injury, and I could not push that arm above me back to shake the weapon from it, so well matched were we, and so thoroughly equal in force. But if hatred alone had heat, I would have fried to a sizzle beneath his gaze.

  To me he said, as we stood in that way, “You will die now, and you will join your Portugal witch in our banquet.”

  “Ah, nay brother, nay, not so! I will have my vengeance upon you for her death!”

  And with a surging of strength, such as comes upon a man perhaps once or twice in his life when he is at his greatest need, I took his arm and drew it down, and twisted it so that it snapped: for we were wrestling at last, but it was not the graceful dance of the Jaqqa sport-wrestling, but rather a wrestle for life or death, and the contest was to me. I heard the bone yield in his arm; his lips drew back in a horrid scream; the hatchet fell, and I snatched it up, and made ready to have his life from him.