“I say again, it is not of the Devil.”
“It is no Christian thing, though.”
“Nay, that it is not.” She put her fingers to her lips. “We are Christian here, but we know some of the old ways, too, those that are of merit. This is one. Keep it by you, Andres, close against your body, and all will go well for you.” Then did she put her hand over mine, that held the talisman, and she said, “One thing more, though. Keep it from the sight of the Portugals, for they do not understand these matters. And if they should find it, I pray you do not say you had it of me. For I am thought of by them as full Portuguese in my ways, and I would not have them knowing I do follow a few of the old teachings. Eh, Andres? Will you pledge me that, Andres?”
She frightened me. I felt it was a Devil-trap she was leading me into. Perhaps it was because I had lately written in my mind that play of Samson who was snared by the Dalila who destroyed him, that woman of another tribe, in enemy employ. And here she was, yet, toying with my very hair, as Dalila had with Samson’s. Aye, I feared Dona Teresa. I feared her for her beauty, which was overwhelming, beyond that of any woman I had known, and I feared her also because she was part Portugal and part African, which is to say, Papist on one side and demon-worshipper on the other, but not an atom in her that was English. At that time of my callowness I looked upon women who were not English as something terrifyingly other, for all that I had chosen a French one to lie with first, as a boy. To me Dona Teresa was a bubbling pot of mysteries and magics, a stew-cauldron of unknown perils. And then, too, I suspected that she might be spying for her Portugal masters, which made me naturally cautious of revealing my heart to her.
And so I was wary with her and did not reach to embrace her, which I think she was inviting me next to do. But I did accept the little idol from her.
She felt my coolness and retreated after a bit, and said, hiding her annoyance well though not completely. “It was not easy for me to gain permission to visit you.”
“Will you come again?”
“Do you want it?”
“Why have you come?”
“When you were ill, I nursed you. I feel an ownership of part of your life, from that. Now you suffer again, in a different way, and my soul goes out to you.”
“You are most kind, Dona Teresa.”
“They say I can come every second day. I will do so.”
She looked to me as if waiting for me to refuse that. But I did not. Uncertain of her though I might be, I was not so foolish as to spurn the first companionship I had had in many months. Thus I told her I welcomed her return, and indeed it was no lie. I spent the day that followed counting away the hours. She had broken entirely the rhythm of my solitude, and I could not employ the little diversions now, the conversations and fantasies, that had whiled the time. Despite myself Dona Teresa had unsettled my philosophical equilibrium and reawakened me to life.
When she returned she brought two things with her, that she carried one at a time into the cell. The first was a flask of wine: not the sweet palm-wine of the blackamoors, that Barbosa once had given me, but true claret of Portugal, whose taste I had all but forgotten.
“This was not easy, either,” she said. “It is rare stuff.”
“You do me great kindness. Come, let us draw the cork!”
“Not so fast, not nearly so fast.” She put the wine aside and went beyond the palisade, and came back a moment later bearing a broad basin and a great rough yellow sponge. “Put off your clothing,” she said to me.
“Dona Teresa—”
“Do you think your odor is fragrant?”
“Nay, they issue no perfume to captives here. But this shames me, to put off my clothes before you this way.”
“In the hospice you lay with no clothes at all, and you had no shame of it then.”
“I was far from my right mind.”
“But the shape of your body comes not as news to me. And if we are to sip wine together, you must be more clean. Come, sir, do as I say!” She snapped her fingers at me as though she were a queen.
On that day she had chosen to wear a light bodice, cut very low, that all but revealed her breasts. They gleamed out from their captivity like fine polished carvings of precious wood, round and smooth and dusky-bright, reminding me of the breasts of her little idol. I felt myself swept along on a tide too powerful to resist.
But yet I was determined. Still did I intend to remain faithful to my Anne Katherine, whatever temptations this Dalila dangled at me: and if the words sound overly innocent to you, as they do to me, yet I will not deny them, for that was my intention, poorly conceived but deeply felt. I knew I might remain the rest of my life in Africa, and then my fidelity would be a fool’s medal, but thus far, thus far at least, I meant to cling to it, having held it so long already.
So I intended, at any rate.
Yet to clean my body was not a bad idea. I have always felt a fondness for bathing. I suppose if I were a grandee of the court, I would be content with powders and unguents and perfumes, and never once put my skin into water; for that is how they do it, so I hear. But simpler folk of the outlying towns have cleaner ways, and especially those that go to sea, for one often stands naked in a driving rain and the touch of water against the skin is neither unfamiliar nor painful, but rather becomes to be enjoyed. Here in my dungeon I was much bothered by the crawliness of the filth that was accumulating upon my sweltering body. So for all my uneasiness with Dona Teresa I did drop my clothes, and made as though to take the washbasin from her.
“I will do it,” she said.
There was no refusing. She wet her sponge—a harsh thing, not long from the sea, that scratched like briars—and scrubbed it down my back, and then my shoulders, and she spun me around and sponged my chest, not gently, so that my skin began to tingle and a rosy hue came into it. “How foul they have let you be!” she said. “Look, the water runs in dark streams from your hide!” I thought she had done with me when my upper body was cleansed, but no, she was most devilish thorough, and took her sponge over my belly, more kindly this time, and down my thighs, and along my legs both front and back.
In doing this service, which she performed as calmly as though she were swabbing a statue, she traveled most intimately close to my private parts, though she took care not actually to touch them. Yet she might just as well have caressed my privities fondly with her hands, for the effect was the same on me, that had not lain with a woman in two years and some. Her eyesight alone, casting its beam on my flesh as she knelt to rub my haunches, would have been enough to inflame me with lust. I strived to keep my body in check. I felt the sap rising in my loins, I felt my member quickening with life, and it was most shameful to me to know that it was getting stiff. I did not dare look down. But I could tell without looking that my mast was up, and royally so. And my heart thundered, and my throat went dry, and I recited the catechisms and other such dreary things to keep myself from throwing myself upon her, for how could I let myself do that?
How, indeed? When I meant to be faithful to a fair young woman in England, how give myself to a dark wench out of the jungle of Africa?
You smile. You say, Go to, only a monk would have retained his fidelity, or a eunuch, under such provocation. A man and a woman alone in a locked cell, and the man naked and the woman nearly bare-breasted, and so long a chastity for him, and the temptation so overpowering—surely the man would yield, and quickly and gladly, in that circumstance. I smile, too, at the recollection. But I was there, not you, and I swear by the bloody palms of Jesus that I kept myself chaste that day.
But not, I needs must add, in any way that was creditable to me. For as this bathing of me continued, my mind went hazy as with sunstroke and my vision clouded and my perceptions became narrowed down solely to that aching rod sprouting from my loins. And I sucked breath deep into my lungs and knew I could no longer withstand the gift of what seemingly was so freely being offered. I was on the verge of reaching for her, to take her to my pallet and push up her robe and slide myself deep into her harbor, with all thoughts of England and Anne Katherine and chastity blasted from my mind. Then suddenly she rose and stepped back and said, coolly, with a brusqueness, “There. Now at last you are properly clean. Clothe yourself, and let us enjoy our wine.”