In such playing did I consume the days and the nights. I reflected often upon my own life, also, the strange twistings and turnings of it, that had me in and out of these Portugee dungeons, and back and forth up strange shadowy rivers, and moving like one ensorcelled through a realm of naked savages and man-eaters. It was as though I had fallen asleep on an April day in Anno 1589, and had entered into a long dream from which there was no awaking.
In dreams anything can happen, and nothing is cause for surprise. So now upon the failure of my bold escape from Masanganu did I resign myself to the dream-like flow of event, and let myself be carried along on its strong tide, without ever once expecting any further relief from prison and punishment, and without showing the slightest amaze when my life did undergo new transformations. By which I mean that I had lulled myself into a great calmness of spirit, from which nothing could rouse my tranquil pulse. Thus when warders came to me and smote the bolts from my legs and the iron collar from my neck, I asked no questions, and it was all the same to me, whether they were taking me next to the place of execution or to put me on board a ship to England. My blood ran quiet. My soul was accepting of anything equally.
So they took from me my rags and gave me rough but serviceable clothes of the kind a common yeoman might wear, and led me into the presidio courtyard and out into the heart of the city. And under the drumbeat blaze of noon I marched between them, a little weak in the leg from so long being cramped into a cell, but my shoulders straight, and I never asked a word, never demanded of them to know where they went with me or what fate was to be mine.
They conveyed me to a residence of the most palatial kind, with facings of white stone inset with gleaming tiles of Portuguese manufacture in blue and yellow, and sentinels with muskets patrolling outside. I thought I remembered that place from my former life in São Paulo de Loanda, but I was not sure, and the clouds did not clear from my mind until I was within. Then I realized it was the dwelling place of Fernão da Souza and Dona Teresa, but greatly rebuilt and made more splendid over the years. And setting foot in that place broke me at last from my placid trance, and put a dryness into my throat and squeezed my heart like a secret hand within my breast.
We went down a lengthy hall hung with heavy tapestries and into a drawing-chamber, where once Dona Teresa had fed me sweetmeats from a little tray. There was a woman standing there, of the greatest majesty and beauty. She wore a long black gown of Venetian silk, and a triple strand of shining pearls, deep blue in color and no two of the same shape, and in her ears were broad hoops of gold from which great emeralds depended. So opulent was her costume that the blaze of it nigh eclipsed her features, and I was slow to recognize her, even though this was, of course, Dona Teresa that I beheld.
“Leave him with me,” she said.
Her voice was cool and measured, the voice of one accustomed to command. She held herself like a queen.
I thought me back six years and more to my last view of her, when she had crouched near naked in my cottage, sweat-shining and as wild as an angry animal, her clothes in tatters and red scratches across her skin, and her bare breasts heaving up and down from frenzy and wrath. And there flashed into my mind also an earlier and happier time, when I was new in Angola and scarce recovered from my Masanganu fever, and in my prison cell she did drop her shift away and show her brown nipples to me, and wrap her thighs about my body. She had been mere eighteen then, mysterious and poised but still showing the soft unformed look of youth about her. But that was ten years past, or a little more, and she had ripened into something regal, and awesome in her strength. And yet was she so beautiful still, more beautiful even than she had been, that I could have wept for anguish at the perfection of her face and form.
I should have been frighted of her, I suppose. For in our last meeting, those six years back, she had shown herself to be a true witch, a dark sorceress, a woman of the greatest malevolence: qualities which I had seen in her from the beginning, but which had risen to their peak of envenomed power that time she had contended with Matamba. She was a magnificent creature: but yet was she a kind of monster.
Strange to say, I did not fear her.
Was it that fear had been burned from my soul, under the hot sun of Masanganu? Or that I had broken her grip on me, when that I had hurled her little idol into the river-waters? Or was it only that I knew she could do me no further harm, since that I had nothing whatever left to lose? Perhaps that last was the essence of it. Whatever, I faced her most coolly, with my heart altogether still. I felt anger toward her— aye, an anger most surpassing!—but not a shred of fear.
We stood apart, with a massive burnished bronze table between us, and she studied me as though I were some rare curio from the treasure-houses of Byzantium.
Then she said, “I feared your hair would have turned white. I am much pleased to find it golden still.”
“I am white-haired within, Dona Teresa.”
“Indeed? How old are you now, Andres?”
“I think I will be two-and-forty this year.”
“Very old, yes. Turn around. Let me see you from all sides.”
I obeyed, turning as if I were displaying some new mode of cloak for her, or fashionable breeches. For I did not dare let go of my tight rein upon myself, and come into reach of my true feelings, lest I launch myself at her and throttle her to death.
She said, “You look strong and vigorous, Andres.”
“Aye. Slavery agrees with me well.”
“Has it been slavery for you, then?”
“Six years at Masanganu, Dona Teresa,” said I most quietly. “It is not a pleasure-resort there. And then some days crossing the wilderness on foot, and afterward some months in these dungeons here, where the food is not of the finest.”
“Oh, Andres, will you forgive me?” she asked, and the steel went from her voice and she seemed almost a girl again.
“Aye,” said I bitterly, “for it was a light thing you did to me, to betray me on the eve of my escape, and prevent me from regaining my native land. Why should I hold a grudge for that?”
“Upon the cross, Andres, I had nothing to do with betraying your escape! It was some Portugals in the Dutchman’s crew, that learned of your plan and told Caldeira de Rodrigues.”
“Ah, so it was. You merely invented the tale of my raping you by force, that was all.”
She lowered her eyes. “I was greatly angered with you.”
“For refusing you?”
“For that, and for taking the slave-girl in my place.”
“You were not my wife. Was I to sleep alone, the rest of my days, except when you chose to favor me?”
She did answer to that, “I would have favored you often. I could not bear you coupling with that animal.”
“No animal, milady, but a good Christian, better than some in this city, that pretend to Christianity but deal also with the Devil. And having a warm and kind heart, where there are some here that have none whatever.”
“Why did you buy her?”
“To spare her from evil, in being shipped into a fatal servitude.”
“And to make her your concubine?”
“That befell afterward, which was not my prime design for her. And I had thought you were dead, do you forget? They said you had been thrown overboard on your way to Portugal.”
“But that did not befall me. Why did you not put her aside, when I returned to São Paulo de Loanda?”
I drew my breath in deep, and released it slowly. “What value is there in discussing these matters, Dona Teresa? She was my servant and my companion. You had taken a husband. You and I had separate lives to live, and she was a part of mine. When I told you these things, you would not grant them, but flew at her with your claws like a wild beast, and then told a monstrous lie, that put me under sentence of death. But why poke and prod into this stuff? It was long ago.”