Robert Silverberg - Lord of Darkness

So it befell me. I remained in Loango three years, and was well beloved of the king, because I killed him deer and fowls with my musket.

Another thing that I did was go down again in the recovery of that sunken idol, which in all these years they had hoped to bring to the surface. This time I caused to be made a suit of leather all greased and pitched, that no water could enter into it, and I caused a great head to be made all pitched, with a great nose, and at the nose were three bladders, and at the mouth two. Putting on this suit of leather, I had them cast me into the sea in eighteen fathom deep, with a mighty great stone tied about me. The weight of the stone carried me downward, but yet I was able to breathe somewhat, although the air quick became hot and foul. In the depths did I grope about, and lo! there was the leg of the mokisso coming forth from the muck and silt that had enveloped it. I was in much pain by then, for the stone pulled me downward and the air in the head pulled me upward, so that I thought the cord I was tied withal would have cut me in pieces. When I felt myself so tormented, I took a knife that was tied in my hand, and cut the cord, and held fast to the idol. Upward was I carried, and as soon as I came above water, I tore the bladders from my face, and cut my suit before, for I was almost stifled. After this I was greatly dizzied and walked in circles close upon an hour, and did not feel a healthy man for some days or peradventure a week. But I had found them their idol after all so many years, and they hailed me as a great hero for this, and bestowed many rich gifts upon me.

I think I would have passed all the remainder of my days in Loango. For, as the ndundu said, I had made my voyage, and I had come to rest. Striving was no longer my way. I lived peaceably among them and ate of their foods and went to their festivals, and was not shunned by them. When I passed the house of Kikoko the great mokisso I did clap my hands for good luck, as they did. The king gave me a wife, who was the last of my African wives, whose name was Inizanda, and gentle and tender she was, though she spoke little, and I think regarded herself as my slave rather than my wife. Yet when we lay together she stroked me soothingly and gave me good pleasure, such times as I required it. Which was not so often as in other times, I now being fifty years of age, and a little more. That is a fine full age, and the fires burn a little low when one comes to it, if one has lived as arduously as I have lived. But when I turned to my Inizanda and placed my hand upon her thigh, her legs did open to me and she did take my head against her breasts, and my yard into her warm nest, and that was a great comfort upon me.

So was I lulled by life in Loango, and one year glided into another. And I thought me of all my struggle and avowal to reach my homeland, and how far from my soul that aim was now; and I smiled over that, to think I now no longer cared. England? What was that, and where? I was in the Lotus-eater land! Be the English nation under the rule of King James, or King Peter, or King Calandola, it meant nothing whatsoever to me. Did Englishmen now dress in Scots garb? Were shilling coins struck these days of clay? Had London slipped into the sea? Why, it was all one to me: foreign, dreamy. I was content. I had made my voyage, and I had come to my rest.

Then one day a band of Portugals did march into the city of Loango, and at the head of them was Pinto Cabral, who was returning to São Paulo de Loanda from yet another voyage to São Tomé, and who had come to inquire after me.

I was summoned. I came forth in my palm-cloth skirt and my necklace of shells, which took him somewhat athwart. But he laughed and embraced me and said, “At last we find you! We stopped here coming north, but you were away on a hunt. I carry good news for you, Andres.”

“And what might that be?”

“Why, that you are sought, and urged for England, by Governor Pereira Forjaz! Your tale is known to him, and he has sent word along the coast, that your pardon is fully granted.”

“Nay, it is a jest,” said I. “They will take me, and send me off to make war on King Ngola, or some such service. Or make me pilot on their voyage to the Pole Antarctic. It cannot be that I am pardoned.”

“You are too much hardened by adversity,” Cabral replied. “This is God’s own truth.”

I laughed at that.

“Why do you laugh, Andres?”

“I laugh because I no longer care,” I replied. “It is ever thus, that we are granted our deepest wishes when they have come to have no weight. I am happy here. My life is quiet. It is a good harbor for me, this place. And now you come, saying, I am pardoned, I am free, the ship is waiting to bear me home. Home? Where is my home? I think sometimes Loango is my home.”

Pinto Cabral at this grew most solemn, and stared me close, and took my hand.

“Is this so? Shall I leave you here, old friend?”

I did not at once answer. I was not sure of my way.

He said, “It is all the same to me, stay or come, if only you be happy. I would not tear you from this place.”

“Nay,” I answered, after a long quietness. “Nay, I am old and foolish, and I know not what I say. But it is England that I want. Take me from hence! Of course, take me, friend Cabral, take me and send me toward England, for that is what I want, and nothing other!”

“Be you sure?”

“I am sure,” said I.

And I was, after that moment of hesitance; for Andrew Battell had awakened in me, that was slumbering, and did say unto me, You are an Englishman, you are no man of this black world, no Jaqqa, no ndundu, you are Andrew Battell of Leigh in Essex, so put off your beads and your palm-cloth, and get you down to the city, and take you home to England where the cold rain does fall all the year long, and sit by the fire and tell your tales to the fairhaired children that crouch wide-eyed at your knees. And I did hear that voice within me say those things, and my strength returned, and my resolve sharpened, and also there came back to me my sense of who I was and where God had designed me to dwell.

And I gave over my habitation in Loango and went with Pinto Cabral down into São Paulo de Loanda.

This time there were no deceptions practiced upon me. This time they meant to deal most honorably with me.

Governor Cerveira Pereira had gone home to Lisbon to face certain very serious accusations concerning his rule in Angola, and the governor now was Pereira Forjaz. Cabral said that this man was no better admired than his predecessors, for he was laying heavy taxes on the tribal chiefs and draining this money into his purse and those of his favorites. But such things were mere vapors to me; and to me this Pereira Forjaz was a veritable saint and a Solomon of wisdom. For he said to me, “I have looked into your record, and a great injustice has been done upon you these many years. So you are to go home.”

“And may I have a writ to that effect?”

“That you may,” said he, and gave me a document in writing, and a purse of gold as well. It was not much money, and little enough recompense for the fortunes I had twice lost in this land, but I would at any rate have some coins to jingle when I set foot in England. There was but a short time to wait, until the next ship departed from Europe for Spain. I was sure that in that short time they would find some means of retracting this gift of my liberty, but it was not so.

Whilst I was in São Paulo de Loanda waiting, a Dutchman named Janszoon that was trading there said to me that there was another Englishman in the city, old and ill, living in an inn by the waterfront. The news that a countryman was here did buoy my spirits greatly, for that I had not seen anyone of mine own race in twenty years, since Thomas Torner had made his escape from Angola. Indeed, I did have some wild notion that this old Englishman might even be Torner, who perhaps had been wandering all this while on paths similar to mine, and in the end had been beached upon the same place. So I went me to the inn, and said to the Portugal that was the keeper, “Do you have an English lying here?”