“I was told only that many men were lost in the wreck.”
“That was how half the dead man perished, to the appetites of Jaqqas, after they had escaped the wrath of the sea.”
And I looked away, that he might not see how pale I was, nor how shaken by the dread memory.
He seemed unaware of my emotion, for he went on talking in the lightest way, saying, “They are bold fellows. Perfect savages, with not a trace of humanity in them. I saw some, once, that we hired to do a battle on our behalf—for they will hire themselves out, you know, when the mood takes them. They were like a band of devils, so that I kept looking to their shoulders, to see if the black wings did sprout there. Yet were they well behaved and quiet. I hear they keep a market in their territory somewhere inland where man’s flesh is sold for meat, like sheep and oxen, by the weight. By the Mass, I wonder what method they use for its cookery, whether they stew it, or roast it, or bake in an oven!” He patted his ample stomach. “God forfend it, Andres, but sometimes— sometimes—I am curious about its flavor. I confess that thing to you that I would not tell even my confessor, and I know not why, except that I think you are a man to my humor. Would you eat man’s flesh?”
“I have seen it done, Don João, when I was a captive of wild Indians in Brazil. I was not tempted.” I would tell him nothing of the effect that the smell of the roasting meat had upon me, when I was so hungered on that sand-spit.
“And if your life depended on it?”
“I think it would not,” said I staunchly. “I could live well enough on roots and leaves and berries, and the small beasts of the wilderness.”
“Nay, I mean, if you were told, Eat this meat or we will slay you, and the meat were man’s flesh?”
“A strange question, Don João.”
“I do put it to you.”
With a shrug I said, “Why, then, I think I would eat of it, if I must! May God spare me from that choice, though.”
“You are to my humor!” he cried. “Wiser to eat than to be eaten, ever! Come, Andres, have some wine with me. And then to your own amusements.” He poured me a brimming goblet of sack and said, handing it to me, “Will the Jaqqas attack Loango?”
“I cannot say. The Loango people fear it greatly.”
“You have heard the tales of that time when the man-eaters struck at São Salvador in the Kongo, have you not?”
“The time when the king of that land was fain to flee to the Hippopotamus Isle?”
“Aye. In ‘69, it was. They will come here some day, Andres. They will come everywhere, in time. They are God’s own scourge, loosed upon the world.” He said this mildly, as though he might be talking about the coming of a breeze from the west, or a light shower of rain. “I think they mean to eat their way from nation to nation, until they have devoured all the world. They have a king, Imbe Calandola by name, whose appetite is said to be limitless. Why is it, do you think, that such destroyers are spawned among us again and again? The Turks, the Mongols, the Huns of old, the Assyrians of whom the Bible tells us—now the Jaqqas, and their grand devil Imbe Calandola, are the latest of that sort. They speak for something that exists within us all, do you not think? Eh, Andres? That love of destruction, that joy of doing wrong? God’s own scourge! There is a beauty in such evil. Eh, Andres? Eh? Here: have more wine.” He sat back, laughing to himself, scratching his belly. He was very far gone in his cups, I did perceive. His speech was thickened, his meanings monstrous. I did not know what to reply in the face of such amazing words. We were silent a time, and then he declared, “I will find me a few tame Jaqqas, Andres. And I will feed them on some useless Portugals to make things more quiet in this city. I will let them take a meal of Jesuits first, I think. And then the whoreson fool d’Almeida and his poxy friends. Hah! And my own cook shall brew the sauces for them, that is a master of his art.” He laughed, and drank, and laughed, and drank. I watched, wondering. Before long, I did feel certain, he would fall asleep of his own drunkenness. But instead Don João did quite the opposite, sitting up in his chair and pushing his wineglass aside, and saying to me in altogether a sober voice, no longer slurred nor strange, “There is much trouble here between Don Francisco and the Jesuits, and it will grow worse. I tell you, the man is stupid. He does not know how to handle those priests, and soon there will be open warfare between him and them.”
“Will priests take up arms, then?”
“Nay, I mean no actual war. But some kind of struggle is sure, and it will disrupt our lives. You know, the Jesuits came to Angola in the days of Paulo Dias, and they have always had a hand in governing here. Dias was strong and wise, and he kept control over them by consulting them in all matters of state, and letting them believe that they were high in his councils. Serrão, when he was governor, and Pereira after him, had so deep a barrel of other problems that they paid the Jesuits no heed, which let the priests collect new powers unto themselves. This, d’Almeida has tried to curb, and he is doing it the wrongest way, as he does everything. He threatens the Jesuits, and he should be seducing them.”
“In what way,” did I ask, “do the priests seek power?”
“Why, by claiming that the blacks are their spiritual flock, and they must be the sole shepherds of them. Already they make intrigue to construct themselves the only intermediaries between the governor and the native chiefs, so that in a short time the chiefs would do the bidding of the Jesuits, and not the governor.”
“But that would mean that the Jesuits would command this country!”
“That is my meaning in precise, Andres. They would relegate to the governor the power to make war and defend our frontiers, and keep all else of substance to themselves. And soon we would need no secular authority here at all, for the holy fathers would have builded themselves into the great power of the land. Well, and d’Almeida does not like that, and for that I applaud him: but now he schemes to forbid the Jesuits to meet with the chiefs at all. That is not the way. They must gradually be taken out of power, so gradually that they do not themselves understand what is happening to them.”
“Is such a thing possible, to cozen a Jesuit?” I asked. “We are taught in England that there is no one subtler nor more crafty than a member of that sly confraternity.”
“Yea. They are diabolical, Andres. They are veritable Jaqqas of the Church. Still, they can be controlled. Paulo Dias knew how to do it. I know how to do it.”
“And how do matters lie now?”
“We have had a meeting of the governing council. D’Almeida announced that the Jesuits have been using their spiritual influence most shiftily to induce the friendly chiefs to withhold obedience from the civil powers, and he did call for authority to deal with that. Which was granted him, by a vote of his brother and his cousins and other such leaders, I voting contrary. Now will he proclaim, this day, that any Jesuit seen entering the camp of a chief or holding conference with one is to be hanged.”
“What, hang a priest?” I exclaimed.
“It will not come to that. The priests are too strong for him. They will break him, Andres. Which would not be so bad except that we are surrounded by enemies in this land, and we have wasted years since the death of Dias, gaining no advantage for ourselves. Leadership is what we need here, not poltroonish squabblings of this kind.”
“Aye,” I said, knowing what leader he did have in mind.
“But if d’Almeida falls, there will be months or even years of fresh turmoil before order is restored. We can ill afford that. Let me explain to you, Andres, how I do believe we must conduct ourselves, if we are to achieve our purposes here.”