“They will eat me. It was as my mother died. I will go into their pot, and they will carve me, and this one will eat my breasts, and this one my thighs, and—well, and what does it matter, when I am dead?” She stared me cold in the eyes and said, “And will you eat your share of my flesh?”
“It is a sickening thing you have said.”
“Andres—O! I would not die, Andres, not so soon! Is it to be tonight?”
Softly I said, “That is their intent.”
“And will you not save me? Is there no way? You are brother to these Jaqqa lords: go to them, plead for me, ask a pardon, tell them they can banish me instead, that I will go to the Kongo, to Benguela, to any place they choose, an’ only they let me live, Andres!”
“I have pleaded for you strongly. It has not availed.”
“But you have power with them!”
“I count myself lucky not to have been drawn down into your guilt, as Kinguri would have had it befall me. For I did stake my honor you would not do a treason. They would be within their rights to punish me for your deed.”
“What could I do, then? Allow the city to be sacked, and send no warning?”
“It was folly. They were on their guard against some such thing from you.”
“Well, and what does it matter now? I am to die,” she said, wholly dejected and defeated. “You cannot save me? You will not?”
“I cannot. Though I have tried, and will try again, at the very last. I will speak again with the Jaqqa king, when he has had some wine, when he is easy among his women, and perhaps then at last he will give you pardon.”
“You do not sound hopeful of it.”
“I will attempt to save you. I can give you no promise I will succeed. I will attempt: I will ask again, Teresa.”
She said, “Let them not eat me, at least.”
“If I cannot have your life spared, I will beg the Imbe-Jaqqa to allow you a Christian burial, if it come to that. But I hope it will not come to that.”
“O Andres, I am not ready for this! I loved my life. I was a great woman in Angola, do you know? I was like a queen in that city. Look at me now! I am ten years older in a single week. My beauty is destroyed. I am afraid, Andres. I was never afraid of anything, and now I am a column of fear, and naught but fear, the whole length of my body. Will I go to Hell, Andres?”
“You should not fear it, if you die a Christian.”
“I have sinned. I have done sins of the flesh—”
“They were acts of love, which are not sins.”
“And other sins, of pride, of avarice, I have been treacherous to you whom I loved, Andres, I have told lies of great evil nature to work harm on you—I did love you, is that known to you?”
“Aye, Teresa. And I had love for you. Mingled with a certain fear, I think, for you were so strong, so frightening in your strength.”
“My strength is all gone from me now. I will beshit myself with fright when I walk out to be slain.”
“I think not. I think if it must come to that, you will do it well. Like a queen.”
“Like an English Queen? What did your King Harry’s Queens say and do, when they came forth to lose their heads?”
“Why, I was not born then,” said I, “but the tale is that they were most courageous, and faced their doom without the least quiver. As also did Mary the Scottish Queen, that was done to death just in the years before I left England. And you will be bold and strong like all of them, for you are queenly too. If it must come to pass that way.”
“Hold me, Andres.”
I took her into my arms. She was trembling, and folded herself against me like a frightened child.
In a voice I scarce could hear, she said, “When first I saw you in São Paulo de Loanda so long ago, I said within myself, He is beautiful, he shines like the sun, I want him. You were a pretty plaything. And then I came to you in the fortress, and I nursed you when you were sick and gone from your rightful mind, and as you slept I looked upon you and loved you. And when you healed, and I bathed you with the sponge, and your manhood rose, I wanted you as I have wanted no other man, and so we became lovers, and would have been lovers all the years since, but for circumstance. I dreamed of you. When I was in bed with Don Fernão I pretended he was you. When you got yourself that blackamoor wench as your slave and concubine, I thought of killing her—or you— or myself, so strong was my love. Well, and so I felt, and I could not help myself for it. And did you love me, Andres?”
“That I did, most deeply, Teresa. For I think you have been the great love of my life.”
With a little laugh she said, “And the wonderful Anne Katherine of whom you spoke so much?”
“Long ago. A ghost that flits in my mind. I knew her only a little, when I was a boy. You have been at the center of my heart these fourteen years.”
“Andres—”
“Aye, Teresa. It is true.”
“I am afraid of dying now.”
“We will pray together.”
“I am afraid of praying, also,” said she, with a glance behind her, where she had dropped her little magic-thing of straw and twigs. “I have fallen away from the true God, Andres.”
“He welcomes always the strayed sheep,” I said. I reached past her and took the little pagan thing in my hand, and said, “You must not damn yourself, so near the end. Put this witchcraft aside from you, and spurn it, and give yourself over to the loving Son of God.”
“Will you pray with me, now?”
“That I will.”
She shredded her idol, and strewed its fragments on the ground.
“Pray in English. Pray what prayers you would pray for your English wife,” she said.
“If I remember the words, I will do that,” said I.
And the words were slow to come, but come at last they did, and I knelt beside her and I did say, “The Lord is my light, and my salvation; whom then shall I fear: the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?” And I said the words then in Portuguese also, and she said them with me. And also I said, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: from whence cometh my help. My help cometh even from the Lord: who hath made heaven and earth.” And she said this after me. And I said, “Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.” Which she the like did say.
Then Dona Teresa on her knees alongside me did begin to speak to me as though I were her confessor, and to tell me her sins, which I had no right to hear, I being no priest and scarce even of the same faith as she. But I listened, since that she had a need of telling, and I would not ask of her that she go unshriven to her death, if this night were indeed to be her last. And the sins that she told me were some of them trifles, and some of them not such trifles, and some that gave me great amaze. But though I have spoken in such fullness of all that befell me in Africa, I will not speak of Dona Teresa’s sins here, since they were hers alone, and if I was her confessor then I must respect the sanctity of the confessional, and let God be the only witness to my knowledge of her heart. So I heard her out, and when she was done she spoke the Credo to me, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth,” saying it in Latin while I spoke in English with her, and at the last I did say to her, this one last thing, “Good Lord, deliver us, in all time of our tribulation; in all time of our wealth; in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, Good Lord, deliver us,” which she did pray most fervently.
Then we rose and we embraced, and through my mind there rolled as though upon an endless scroll all the images of my life with this woman, from first unto last, our great carnality and high joyous lusts, our sorrows and disturbances, our partings and our reunions, and I felt tears within the threshold of mine eyes, and I withheld them lest I induce grief in her. But at last I could withhold them no more, and we wept together. And I kissed her tenderly and she said, “Go now. I am ready for what must come, Andres.”