Robert Silverberg - Lord of Darkness

Torner and I were prodded like sheep, or more roughly than that, through the midst of this place, down dusty mazes of scurfy streets. Everything was hot and dry, the rainy season having given way to the long time of no rain that is the only way to tell winter from summer in these latitudes, the winters being parched. As we proceeded, some Africans came out to stare, first a few, and then great crowds, like floating swarms of bulging white eyes in a cloud of blackness.

“Why do they look so fiercely at us?” I said to Torner. “Is it such a miracle, then, that two Englishmen should be paraded here?”

“It is your hair, Andy, your yellow hair!” he answered me.

Beyond doubt it was, and soon the boldest of the blacks crept forward to touch it lightly, as if to find out whether it was made from spun gold, I suppose. White skins were no longer strange show for these folk; but fair hair, I trow, must be a vast novelty, the Portugals all universally being a dark-thatched people. So they stared at me and I at them. What a splendid complex world, where some are pink in our fashion, and some are red and some yellow-skinned, and some are ebon! These Angolans were pure black, both the men and the women, some of them somewhat inclining to the color of the wild olive. Their hair was curled tight and black, though I saw in a few a slight red tint. Their lips were not as thick as those of such other blacks as I had seen in other lands, and their cheekbones were precious sharp. The stature of the men was of an indifferent bigness, very like that of the Portugals. The women looked strong, with deep and heavy breasts, which they exposed without shame.

What would become of me in this place was utter mystery to me. I knew not why the Portugals had troubled to ship me here nor what use they would find for me, and nothing was certain save that I would be a long time in seeing England again.

They thrust us forward to the fortress. The sun was fire in my eyes, blinding them, and then I fell blinking and muddled into a dungeon both damp and chill, carved out of the earth. Torner and I lay side by side in a great dusky mildewed chamber, with a barrier of sharp stakes between us. Our ankles were bound with light chains, so that we could not run without stumbling, but our hands were left free. The Portugal soldiers hovered around us, stinking of garlic and oil, poking their faces close upon ours, prodding us here and there to see if we had bones and ribs, and finding that we did, and prodding us again. Like superstitious heathen they made the sign of the cross often at us, and waved their beads and other toys about, and spoke to one another in a Portuguese so barbarous, so crusted with nonsense, that I could make little of it, except that they were instructing each other that we were to be kept without comfort.

And then they left us. “God bless Queen Elizabeth!” I called after them. “Dieu et mon Droit! England, England, England!” and more such things.

There we remained in darkness and misery for three or four days, receiving meals from time to time but otherwise ignored. Insects paid us visits, spiders with fur, and small chittering things, and lizards of the night. The stink of piss and shit was all we breathed. Barbosa had said, as we parted from him in the plaza of the town, that we would soon know our fates, but I wondered if these ill-gendered Portugals had simply forgotten us. Finally, though, came a clanking of gates and a rattling of distant locks, and Barbosa appeared, holding a guttering taper. Two of our jailers were with him, but they lay back some paces.

The good man was kind enough to bring for us a bowl of the wine of the country, which is made from palm-juice: for such courtesy may his saints give him peace, may his Madonna hold him in the bosom of her repose. The wine was milky and powerfully sweet, and had a tingle to it.

“Are you being fed?” Barbosa asked.

“Not often, and not well, but we are not being starved,” I said. “They give us a sort of porridge, mainly. Are we to be left in this hole forever?”

“There is a problem,” said Barbosa. “The old governor is dead, and all is confusion here, and warfare with the blacks is threatening. The King of Matamba and the King of Kongo and the King of Angola have made league against us, and the Jaqqas lurk on the other side, hungry for evil meat. There will be war. At such a time the officials here can give little thought to you.”

“Then let us go, if we are too much trouble!” Torner cried. “Set us free to make our own ways toward home!”

Barbosa shook his head sadly. “You would not live a week, my friend. This is no country for such adventures. You must stay in São Paulo.”

“Why are we kept?”

“They will find uses for you,” said Barbosa.

“What?” shouted Torner. “Never!” said I, in the same instant.

“Uses,” said Barbosa. “We are so few, and the blacks are so many. The administrators have decided to employ captive English here, of which you are the first.”

“It is folly,” I said. “We will never serve. And if they send enough of us to this place, we will rise and swarm upon your pitiful troops, and take this empire for Queen Bess.”

“I pray you, no such talk,” said the Portugal mildly, “or the hotbloods here will have your heads.”

“Does it matter?”

“It might, to you, when the moment comes.”

Torner said, “What counsel can you give us?”

“Patience, endurance, silence. Offer no defiance, and hope for better days. The death of the governor puts everything into paralysis here, for he was such a man as holds the center of all authority, and when he is gone there is only empty air, a vacuum through which whirlwinds swirl.”

This governor who had lately died, he told us, was one Paulo Dias de Novais. The garrison had elected its captain-major, Luiz Serrão, to his place. “Serrão in his time was a fine soldier. But he is old and weary,” said Barbosa, “and he is forced to fight a war little to his liking. I think he will make no disposition of you twain until his other problems are behind him. And that day may never arrive.”

“So we will rot here without limit?” I demanded.

“Jesus and Mary give you comfort,” the good Portugal said gently. “Better for you that you had never left England, but here you are, and I will remember you in my devotions, for I think it will be long before you see daylight again.”

In that, however, the kind Barbosa was mistaken.

Hardly a day later we were called out of our dungeon and summoned to the governor’s palace for an audience with this Serrão. He was old and heavy, and he sat in a slouching way, breathing thickly, for that he was fleshy and ill, with unhealthy grayish skin and beads of sweat bright all over him. For a long while he stared at us as if we were some strange beasts of foul stench, and I looked back at him with rage and detestation, for that this man was our single foe here, the one with power of life and death over us, and stood between us and home, and I knew he would not set us loose.

At last he said, “The letters tell me you are dangerous brigands, that sought to overwhelm the government of the Brazils. Is this so?”

“Brigands, yes,” I answered. “But all we sought was some of the gold of the Indies, out of the treasure-ships of the Rio de la Plata.” There seemed no purpose in holding to the pretense that we were innocent Virginia settlers, when we were plainly condemned here.

“You speak our language well, though your accent is poor.”

“It is the language that is poor. I speak it as well as it deserves.”

“Oh? Are you so full of fire, then? That you rail at the man who owns your life?”

“I rail at you because you own my life, sir.”

“I did not ask for you,” said Serrão. “To me you are a burden, a thorn in my side.”