“That is the one. When Don João fell ill, the new King Philip sent him to us, with authority to conquer the mines or mountains of Kambambe. To perform that service, the King of Spain has given him seven years’ custom of all the slaves and goods that are carried from Angola to the West Indies, Brazil, or whithersoever, with condition that he should build three castles—one in Ndemba, where the salt mines are, another in Kambambe, and the other in the south, at Bahia das Vaccas.”
“And will he come to Kambambe, while these Jaqqas lurk so close?”
“He knows nothing of the Jaqqas. It was Don Fernão’s commission to investigate these provinces, and report to him. Well, and I see there is large report to make.” She leaned near, and plucked at my arm. “What is this army the Jaqqas have formed, in league with Kafuche Kambara?”
“It is as you see: an army.”
“To what end?”
“The usual end,” said I. “War.”
“But who is left for Calandola to conquer, if he has made peace with Kafuche? Will he march against King Ngola in Dongo?”
“I think not,” said I.
She was silent a time. Then she said, “But there is only São Paulo de Loanda otherwise.”
I made no reply.
“Is that the scheme? Will they march westward, and attack the city, as in my father’s time they attacked São Salvador of the Kongo?”
I could not lie to her. “I think they will,” I said after some troubled hesitance. “It has been discussed.”
“More than discussed! It is determined, is it not?”
“That it has,” I said.
“How soon?” said she fiercely. “When will they march?”
“I cannot tell you this, Teresa.”
“Come, come, hide nothing from me! How do you say, you cannot tell me?”
“Because I do not know,” I did reply. “We will march when the auspices are proper, by Calandola’s lights, and no man knows that but Calandola. I do swear it, Teresa. I conceal nothing in this. There will be a war: but the time of it is not yet chosen.”
“Ah,” she said, and looked most solemn. After a moment she said, “You know that these are the Jaqqas that slew my mother, and put her in their kettles. And they have slain my husband now also.”
“Your husband, yes. But these are not the same Jaqqas as long ago slew your mother.”
“That matters little. Jaqqas they be, all the same. I dread these folk, Andres. I would banish them to the dankest caverns of Hell, and be rid of them.”
“They are much maligned, I think.”
Her eyes went wide and she laughed most scornfully. “What? You defend the man-eaters? Are you altogether mad, Andres, from your jungle wanderings? They are monsters!”
“Aye,” said I.
“How can you speak aught that is good of them?”
Softly and sternly I said, “This land is a den of monsters, both white and black, that do steal each other’s land, and take each other’s lives. The more I saw of Portugals, Teresa, the less I did loathe Jaqqas.”
“And so you are become one of them, then? And will you fight beside them against my people, when they march on São Paulo de Loanda?”
To that I gave her no answer.
“Will you? What will you do, in that war? What have you become, Andres? What have you become?”
As we exchanged these words, we did move along the perimeter of the Jaqqa camp, that did spread like floodwaters over the dry plain outside the town of Agokayongo. And on all sides preparations for war were going forth, the fashioning of blades and the stringing of bows, which Dona Teresa did not fail to note. Beyond us lay the second army, that of Kafuche Kambara that was joined with us in alliance, nearly as strong as ours. This, too, Dona Teresa did observe, and I knew that in the eye of her mind she was seeing this barbarian horde pouring in a torrent into São Paulo de Loanda, to the number of ten savages or more to each Portugal, and unleashing there a hecatomb and holocaust of terrible slaughter and rapine. I noted the somberness on her face, and comprehended the fears in her heart: yet did I proffer her no comfort then.
Not far away from us I spied a towering figure moving slowly through the camp. It was the Imbe-Jaqqa, taking some survey of his men, alone but for a bodyguard that lingered some paces behind him.
“Andubatil!” he called, upon the sight of me, and beckoned.
“It is your king summoning you,” said Dona Teresa in a bitter way. “Go to him!”
“Let us both go.”
“I will not,” said she, and drew back, and lingered near a tree of great coiling roots like swollen serpents on the ground.
I found Calandola to be in a reflective and somewhat tranquil frame of mind, with none of his great roaring manner about him; yet even so did he give forth that manifest sign of grandeur, of barely controlled power wound and ready to spring forth, that I think was the most terrifying thing about him. He rested his hand upon my shoulder and stared deep into my eyes with his cold glistening diabolical stare, and said, deep-voiced, awesome, “Well, Andubatil, and are you pleased to have your wife with you once more?”
“That I am, and greatly, Lord Imbe-Jaqqa.”
“It has cost me much fury out of my brother Kinguri, who dislikes her with a heavy disliking.”
“This I know,” said I. “I would see Kinguri, and ease his fears of her, but he avoids me.”
“You and he were deep friends, so I thought.”
“So thought I as well, Lord Calandola.”
“He is very wise, is he not?”
“His mind is a searching one,” I said.
Calandola smiled, and looked away, putting his hand to his vast bull neck and squeezing it, and after a moment he declared, “Kinguri is also a great fool.”
To this I replied nothing.
“A fool,” said Calandola, “because his mind is thick with thoughts of Portugal, and England, and Europe, and other places that are of no importance. And he wants to know of your God, and your Devil, and the other Christian mokissos. Why do such things matter? They are unreal. They are trifles.” All this still calm, though I sensed, as ever, the smouldering furnace within this man, or demon, or whatever he might be. He continued, just as calm, “All these things I will sweep from the world. And then will come a time of happiness and simplicity. There will be only one nation. There will be only one tongue. There will be only one king. It will be better that way.”
I met his terrible gaze, and I nodded when he spoke, and gave him no gainsaying. And he did go on, expounding his vision of the purity and virtue of the Jaqqa realm when extended to every nation of the world, that I had heard before, but he said it much grander this time, with the zeal not of a demon but of an archdemon. I was engulfed in it. You may laugh, to think of the cities of Christendom blotted from being and replaced with wild forests full of dancing painted cannibals, and you may say it can never be; yet I tell you that as Calandola spoke, painting for me once again that vision of all our vices abolished, all our crooked streets and soiled lanes ploughed under, all our encrustations upon the skin of the earth purged away, saying all this in the most level of tones in that deep and magical voice, it seemed to me almost as if it would be mankind’s great gain to surrender all that we had built since Caesar’s day, and yield ourselves up to the whirlwinds of pure nature. It was madness. I felt the philosophy of Imbe Calandola running anew like quicksilver in my veins, and it burned me like fire, for that it was foreign to my nature but yet had impinged itself deeply into me. I knew it to be folly. I knew he could never extend his sway beyond the forests of this wild land. Yet out of the dusty plains of deep Asia had come the Khan Genghis of the Tartars with much the same dream, riding down upon the settled nations of the world like a whirlwind of scimitars, and had he not made all of Europe tremble in his day? And who could rightly say but that it would not all happen again, under this Calandola? For the moment, if only for the moment, I saw the Imbe-Jaqqa marching in triumph at the head of his black legions through the streets of London, and on to Canterbury for wild bacchanal amid the tumbled paving-blocks of the cathedral, and I did feel the hard chill of that dread fantasy, and the frosty beauty of it.