God rest me, but I never thought I would weep with joy at entering Masanganu again. Yet this time it was as welcome to me as the shores of Paradise.
12
At Masanganu the Portugals did make much over us, for they had not expected any survivors of the massacre to come among them.
News of that disaster had reached them five or six days previous, when the first who got away had come into the presidio. These were the ones who had escaped by horse, mainly the ranking officers, who had galloped valiantly toward safety, leaving all their infantry to be slain behind them. Such men as Balthasar d’Almeida and his captain-major Pedro Alvares Rebello had already left Masanganu for São Paulo de Loanda, to confer with Governor d’Almeida, but others who had come safe away were still in the town, and great was their amazement when they learned that we had managed to bring ourselves alive from the place of battle.
We were taken to the hospital and given food and drink and medicines, and our wounds were treated, and an officer named Manoel Fonseca, who had the charge over the Masanganu garrison, visited us to learn how we had achieved our escape.
“Why,” said our Portugal surgeon, “we were rescued by five Jaqqas, who guided us thither and provided us with food along the way.”
To which Manoel Fonseca responded with loud laughter, and cried, “You are mad with fever, man!”
“No,” I said, for I lay on the next bed, “it is the truth, by God’s eyes! They spoke not a word, those Jaqqas, but said with gestures, Come, follow; and they kept us close by them until we saw the palm-trees that stand by the river’s edge.”
“I will not believe that. Jaqqas? How do you know they were Jaqqas, pray tell?”
“Because that they had teeth knocked out above and below,” said I, pointing to my own front teeth. “And because that while we were with them, they did roast and eat three dead blackamoors that they hauled off from the battlefield. Is that not proof enough?”
Fonseca still could not believe it, though, and not until he had had the same tale from all the others of us did he credit it to be truthful. Which caused all the more amazement, since no one could recall the Jaqqas doing the like in all the time of the Portugals in Angola. Yet there was no denying that we were here and safe, and it had not been angels that wafted us here.
I was in Masanganu some weeks healing. That is no place to heal, with its foul air and poisonous climate, but I was too weak then to travel further, and in any case there were no ships there to make the journey to the coast. After a time I left my bed and walked about, and regained some strength. The town at that time was closed tight like a turtle in its shell, with sentinels posted night and day, for the Portugals were badly frighted and did not know what disaster might come upon them next. They had suffered the most terrible defeat in their African history at the hands of this Kafuche Kambara, having lost hundreds of men and much equipment and nearly the whole of their black auxiliary force, and they believed Kafuche might try now to finish them off, or peradventure that the other sobas, emboldened, would rise and overthrow their yoke. But none of these things happened, and in July of ‘94 a ship finally came to Masanganu bringing reinforcements. When it returned to São Paulo de Loanda I was aboard, and did pilot it on its voyage down the river.
Vast surprises awaited me in the capital city.
There was a great huge new galleon of Portugal riding out in the harbor, a 600-ton vessel at least, and when I entered into the city proper I saw all the buildings amazingly decorated in banners and ribands and brightly colored flags, as though the Portugals had not just suffered a monstrous defeat at all, but rather were celebrating some colossal victory. Streamers in scarlet and green flew in the breeze, and the palace of the governor was especially bedecked with buntings and velvets of great gaiety.
I asked the bearers that were taking us to town, what had befallen to merit such brave decoration, and they replied, “It is in jubilee of the new governor that Portugal has sent.”
“New governor? Where is Don Jeronymo?”
And they pointed most somberly toward the presidio, toward the very same grim fortress where I had been held prisoner four years before. So there had been great reversals and transformations in the colony, it did seem, during my many months of absence.
But I knew less than the half of it.
I went first to my cottage, which I found all in order and well kept. Matamba was there with my other slaves. She gave forth a little gasp as of fright and shock when she saw me, and ran to my side, tears starting from her eyes, and she dropped to her knees before me and looked up troubled, saying, “You are so changed! You are so altered!”
“Am I, now? Come, stand up, girl.”
I drew her gently upward and sent the slaves away, and embraced her, and she ran her fingers over my cheeks.
“You have been ill,” she said.
“Aye, and a little damaged, too. But I am the same man.”
I went to my chamber, where I kept a dim old looking-glass, and peered at my image. And in truth it startled me some to see what I had become, for my face was five years older at least, with deep lines cut alongside my mouth and about my eyes, and a general shrinking of flesh, and a rising of the cheekbones. The heat of the interior and my exertions there and the wound I had suffered had all worked to boil and distill me down to the hard essence: I looked gaunt and fever-eyed, and dangerous of spirit, like some wild brawling bravo of the city taverns. Why, I trow, if I had met a man looking like me on the streets of London I would have been struck with fear of him, so mean and piratical of face had I become!
I removed my clothes, that were sweaty from voyaging, and Matamba sponged me clean. Water is always scarce and most precious in São Paulo de Loanda, since that there is no source of it in the city, but all must be brought in from the island through a trench, and that is much contaminated by the nearness of the ocean. As she bathed me Matamba did finger and inspect my new scars, both the angry one in my back that the arrow had left me, and the lesser ones, fading but not yet wholly gone, that I had taken by crawling around in those murderous thorny plants. In her thus fondling me and making much of me I had new proof of her devotion to me, and once I was refreshed I thought to take her to my bed, I having had months of abstinence in my soldiering and she looking most desirable to me, wearing a simple white shift with her breasts bare, and a blue circlet about her throat, and her eyes shining with eagerness. But then came a knock at the door and a messenger from the governor, saying that I was summoned at once to his palace, and the man handed me a writ to make it more official.
I opened the paper and read it and I like to have choked in my astonishment, for the writ was signed most boldly with the name of the new governor, and the new governor’s name was Don João de Mendoça.
“But he is dead!” I cried out. “How can this be?”
The messenger, who was only a slave, looked at me as though I had gone mad, and Matamba knew nothing of governors except that the Portugals of the town had lately done much marching about in the plaza, with pompous changings of the guard and raisings and lowerings of flags, but that was all Greek to her. So, consumed with curiosity, I got me into my best clothes and bade her wait there until my return, and hurried to the palace. I could not comprehend this, for how had Don João escaped the assassins? I thought me that perhaps he had had a son of the same name, who had come from Portugal to avenge his father’s murder, but I wondered much at that.