I said instead, with a great distance in my voice, and a light frost, “Well, and we shall not be enemies, then. I wish you all comfort and blessing, Dona Teresa.”
4
Though I would not submit to her, nevertheless by Dona Teresa’s good offices I was once again made a free man. But it was a limited sort of freedom, nothing like that which I enjoyed in the old days when I was pilot of the governor’s pinnace. There still lay over me the double charge of treason and rape, for which I had been banished to Masanganu, and there was on top of that the crime of escaping from that fort; and I was given to understand that I still would have to undergo some penalty for those offenses. Yet I would not have to bide my time longer in the dungeon here, nor was I was going to be returned to Masanganu. So my condition had improved somewhat over its former state.
I was not restored to my former cottage by the sea-breezes. Instead was I given a much humbler place, a room on the ground floor of the barracks where the common Portugal soldiers dwelled, nor did I have any servants this time. Yet I could hardly have expected anything better than that, and even the barracks was a goodly step upward from the vileness of the dungeon or the malign vapors of Masanganu. So there I resided without complaint, and took my meals with the soldiery, dining as they did on humble gruels and porridges and the stringy stewed meat of unknown beasts, and washing it down with the stale beer and flat palm-wine they were supplied.
Among these troops I formed no friendships, for they were all half my age, having come out from Portugal or its other colonies in the last few years. They looked upon me, I trow, as some sort of phantom, and found me frightening: a gaunt tall Englishman, with wild eyes, who was said to have committed terrible crimes, and who had done hard years of service in the interior of the country, a place that they dreaded. They did not understand why I was come to be in Angola at all, nor could they begin to approach me as a companion, I being so alien from their minds. There were times when I came nigh to saying, “Nay, I am only good-natured Andy Battell, who means you no harm,” but I did not. For already I was beginning to see that good-natured Andy Battell, that amiable young man who had set forth from England to win a little gold with which to marry his sweetheart, was long since dead and buried within the husk of the man who now bore that same name. I had been innocent and cheerful, sweet-souled, even; and for all my sweetness God had seen fit to let me pass from captivity to captivity, from torment to torment, and it had altered me greatly, very little remaining of the original save a certain stubborn persistence and, I hope, a certain measure of honor.
Other alterations had taken place around me in this land. The most obvious was the growth of São Paulo de Loanda, which had been but a place of mud streets and thatched dwellings when Thomas Torner and I were dumped down into it in the June of 1590, and now, after ten years and some, was becoming a true city, which had fair palaces and churches and govermental halls everywhere about. That did tell me that the Portugals must be pumping heavy profits out of this place, and had made it their great headquarters along the Atlantic side of Africa, shifting themselves almost entirely from their former domain within the kingdom of the Kongo.
There had been changes among people. I have already spoken of the changing of Dona Teresa from handsome girl to formidable and awesome woman, virtually the queen of this place. A few others whom I had formerly known were yet in evidence, much enhanced. Pedro Faleiro, my shipmate in the coastal voyages, now was the high admiral here, with my other sailing-fellow Pinto Cabral as his lieutenant. Mendes Oliveira was dead; Manoel de Andrade was in the south, commanding the harbor at Benguela; Manoel Fonseca, who had had authority at Masanganu when I was brought there after the Kafuche Kambara massacre, now was the captain of the presidio at São Paulo de Loanda. His predecessor in that role, Fernão da Souza, I saw occasionally being borne to and fro in a hammock by native slaves that were arrayed in the most pompous of costumes. Souza still inclined himself toward ornate dress of wondrous color, but looked softer, less gallant, for he was beginning now to slide into the sort of middle age that overcomes some of these dashing Portugals when they rise too high and are given overmuch to wine and sloth. I had no encounters with Souza and desired none. As for my other enemy of old, Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues, he had lately taken himself off, to my great relief, to the Portuguese lands in India.
Another whom I saw only from afar was Don João de Mendoça, and the look of him greatly saddened me. He had gone puffy and liverish, his face almost green of hue and much bloated, and his eyes, hidden within folds of unhealthful flesh, were barely to be noticed. He walked slowly and with a painful limp, and it was plain that the hand of death was closing about him in a gradual but inexorable way. I had no direct dealings with Don João. Gone were the days when he would summon me to his palace for a feast of many meats and wines, and speak with me about his dreams and hopes for this colony. I had fallen now far beneath the notice of all these great men of Angola.
Of all the transformations I observed, though, the most somber was that of one who had been closest of all to me, that is, my former slave Matamba. I found her again by accident only, and so changed was she that I nearly passed her by, unknowing.
There was now in São Paulo de Loanda a kind of whoring district, behind the main market, where soldiers who did not regularly consort with some black or mulatto woman could go, and find natives who would lie with them for a handful of cowrie-shell money. Sometimes in the early days of my return to the city I passed this place and looked in with idle curiosity, but I did no more than that, for I have never greatly favored hiring the bodies of strangers in that way, except when need is extreme. Yet from time to time the itch does become so strong in me that I fain must scratch it. It happened that an errand took me down to the harbor one day, and there I saw a few Angolan girls of thirteen or fourteen years splashing naked in the warm surf, and the sight of their firm outthrusting breasts and rounded plump buttocks, all gleaming with sea-water and sunlight, did reawaken in me the desires of the flesh. So I went next to the quarter where whores did consort, and looked about to find me some reasonably clean and unpoxed black lass on whom I could ease this sudden pressing want.
There were several young and likely ones, among whom I stood choosing, when an old beggar-woman—as I thought—plucked at my sleeve and said in a low downcast way, “Por favor—”
I would have handed her a shell without glancing at her, and continued about my business, but some familiar note in her voice did strike a deep level of my soul, and, not knowing why, I turned to her. I beheld a woman in tattered and flimsy cloth of a faded orange color, with stooped shoulders and a broken, defeated look about her: yet her eyes still retained a glow, a spark, of some finer nature, and to my great horror I came after a moment to understand that this was no old beggar woman but one I knew full well; in sooth it was my Matamba, aged more than I could easily credit in these six years. For I might just as easily have believed this to be the mother of Matamba, as the person herself.
“Is that you?” I asked.
“I am—I forget the words—”
“You know who I am, Matamba?”
“The English—Andres—”
“Yes! But I can scarce believe this change, Matamba. Can it truly be you?”