She rested her forehead against the arm of the chair and whispered, “Father, forgive me the sin of fornication, for I have lain with a man, although I was not willing.”
Bernardo, himself sinning, looked to where the two were gathered in a lamp-fall of light, in the intimacy of confidences. He heard a muffled question from Monsignor, and then he heard her reply: “I bear the king’s bastard.”
Pessoa found Soares where he supposed he would find him. The old priest was kneeling in prayer by the jail’s iron bars, before the silent creatures. His eyes were closed. His deft fingers ran the well-traveled road of his rosary.
“Luis?” he called softly.
From the dark beyond the stairs, Pessoa heard the women stir.
Soares raised his head and, blinking, looked around.
“It’s late, Luis.” He lifted his lamp. “See? I’ve come to take you to the rectory.” Straw rustled. Marta Castanheda came forward into the circle of lamp glow by the bars. She was yawning.
Pessoa smiled at her. “Are you comfortable enough?”
“Um-hum.” Her face was sleep-swollen.
“For you must tell me if you are not. Or if the others have any complaint. It is my duty to see that you are comfortable.” And then he whispered, “Go back to sleep.”
He sensed Soares standing at his shoulder. The Franciscan marked his prayer book and put it in his pocket.
Marta rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. “Those aren’t pretty enough to be angels, father. Come bless me.” She put her hand through the bars.
Soares knelt with her and took her hand in his own. “But, child, how can we judge Heaven’s beauty, when Heaven to us is so foreign?”
“Pray with me,” she said.
“Ave Marta, gratia plena…” Then her clear soprano joined in. “Dominus tecum…”
Pessoa looked up the stairs and saw Cândido’s man staring down. He lifted the hem of his cassock and walked up to join the guard.
The man dipped his head. “Father. That monsignor sent two soldiers.”
“Keep your voice down. I don’t wish to frighten the women. Where?”
The man jerked his thumb. “Up there. In the inn—well, upstairs, what’s left of it. They just come, and them drinking and all. Don’t know that I like that.”
Pessoa whispered, “What is your name?”
“José Domingo Rios, sir, ah, father.”
“I will not have the women disturbed, if you understand my meaning….”
José Domingo’s eyes grew round. He crossed himself. “O no, father. Never. I mean, if anything happened to the women, Senhor Torres would flay me, ears first. O no, never you fret, sir—”
“Good. And whatever the creatures need, you are to get.”
His head bobbed like a fish-struck cork. “The imps got plenty of blankets. And they took some water, sir, about half a jar full. And they liked their bread well enough. They left the meat and wine, but I didn’t touch it. I won’t touch no one’s food or belongings, not me. But those soldiers up there, sir? They’re ruffian looking.”
Pessoa walked around him and made his way to the head of the stairs. The two brawny strangers, one mustachioed, the other bearded, had cleared themselves a place near the ruined hearth. By the light of their lamp, they were drinking and pitching coins.
“Why were you sent?” Pessoa asked.
The two smirked at each other. With a flick of the wrist, one man tossed a maravedis. The coin hit the wall with a clink. Two gruff voices raised: blistering curses from the loser; the winner’s laugh.
“If you bother those women or my own guard, I will see you handed over to the crown for hanging.”
They looked at him then. The bearded one said, “Will you? Well, I was soldier ten years, then jailer for Lisbon’s Holy Office, in service to the Marquis de Paredes and the Inquisition. I’ve been commissioned by the crown. I have strangled seventy, and set over forty heretics afire. I know the potro, and how to best put feet to the coals. There’s nothing any fancyboy Jesuit can teach me about prisoners.”
Pessoa imagined throwing the lantern in his face, and the desire was so keen, the vision so clear, that for an instant he was convinced that he had done it. Then he took a deep breath and mastered his fury. “Leave the women alone.”
The man got to his feet.
An arm slipped through Pessoa’s. He turned. Soares.
“Such a long day, Manoel! Goodness. I am made so weary that I stumble.” A smile for the soldiers and a pleasant “Good evening to you, my sons.”
The mustachioed man scrabbled to his feet. With two cheery “good evening, fathers,” the pair bowed, all the time grinning like a pair of simpletons.
Soares blessed them, and they lowered their heads. “My. Such a responsibility—three frightened women in your care.”
Before the “O, yes, fathers” were fully ended, Soares nudged Pessoa out the door. Once in the street, he dropped his arm.
The night smelled of coming autumn, coming rain. In the dark canyon of the street they walked. Soares’s sandals flapping a lackluster rhythm. They went past a doorway scented by the astringent smell of geraniums.
Pessoa asked, “Why did they not flee?”
The flapping rhythm slowed.
Pessoa slowed with him. Soares was but a dimmer smudge among the shadows.
“I went beyond what was safe, Luis. Before they were yet arrested, I warned them to search their hearts. I told Castanheda the exact day and time that Marta was to be arrested. I warned Maria Elena’s mother of what was to come. They had time to send their children to safety. No one would have pursued them. Why didn’t they just go?”
From the gloom ahead came a kitten’s questioning meow. Soares, either answering the need or out of habit, bent and clucked to it.
“So many years of the Spanish, Manoel. And they came but rarely.” Kittenless, Soares stood and dusted his hands. “We had no Judiazers—none but yours, anyway, and she is survival-clever. O, there were stories of burnings in Lisbon and Evora and Braga, and you sent tailor Magalhães to Mafra for a trial and a sanbenito. But all in all, there was never an Inquisition here.”
Stars blazed, a glorious ceiling, above the close corridor of the houses. Pessoa put his hands into his pockets. His fingertips touched his missal.
“And then you,” Soares said. “Likable enough, and never pushing. Smiling and reading the Edicts as if they did not matter. Smiling at the congregation of a Sunday. You had too many smiles, Manoel.”
Pessoa’s heart lurched. Somewhere in a nearby alley the kitten mewed for its mother in a voice as poignant as song. Three women—none frightened enough to escape. Three women doomed because he had neglected his duty.
DAY 7
Bernardo woke in a panicked sweat, his cock spurting, his testicles still making their pleasure.
He thrashed out of the covers, bringing the dregs of impure dream with him, part of him wanting yet to linger, to touch, to impale. He hit the floor with both knees, the pain of his impact stunning, and was surprised to find that the floor was not stone but planks. The window was out of place, too, and the room too large. Then he remembered the inn and Quintas, and what he and Monsignor were to do there.
Quintas. So in the presence of angels, he had yielded to lechery. The succubus arrived smelling of vanilla, mouth ripe as a plum.
He rose and, hands shaking, searched the darkness for steel and flint. He lit a candle. He snatched his robe over his head, picked up the nightstand bowl, and poured its water down himself, The cold plundered his breath and left him gasping. His muscles knotted, his flesh chilblained. Judas cock shrank to a pale nub.
Hidden in his travel bag was a small carpet woven of stinging nettles and a handful of nails. Not for his knees; this time he must punish the offender. Bernardo put the carpet on the floor and lay belly-down, legs spread, grinding himself into it.
The nettles stung his groin in an ant-bite frenzy. He held a nail in each hand, the sharp point in the center of his palm, his middle fing
er pressing.
He thought of Psalms, but recoiled from its impassioned poetry. He thought of Judges and Ecclesiastes and quailed. Wisdom 3:1—yes, that one—God’s promise to the righteous: “Justorum animae in manu Dei sunt.”
In God’s hands. God’s hands. That mad stinging and the icy predawn air. He shivered so hard that bones threatened to wrench from joints. He felt exquisite pain at the center of each palm, and on the tender skin of his testicles was such an unbearable blistering agony that his lungs quaked and his eyes coursed tears.
In God’s hands.
Between his legs, flesh charred and blackened skin peeled away to expose a body pink and renewed. God’s grace covered him like a blanket. Bernardo lay, numbed by mercy, half drowsing, listening to the slow patter of his palms’ blood against the floor.
Into the silence of the inn, he whispered the rest: “Et non tanget illos tormentum mortis.”
In God’s hands. And a promise to the souls of the righteous, that no torment would ever touch them.
The knock came at breakfast. Pessoa looked up, alarmed, from his plate. Soares went to answer.
At the door stood nightmare. The Dominican was young and whippet-thin. Head lowered, he mumbled, “Dominus tecum.”
“Et con spiritu tuo.” Soares opened the door wider.
He ignored the welcome. “I bear a message from Monsignor Gomes, Inquisitor-General of Lisbon, who early this morning has gone to see the king and bids—”
“Where are your manners, Luis?” Pessoa bolted to his feet so quickly and with such desperation that the Dominican flinched. “Come in, my boy! We don’t have much to offer, but a little something to fill the belly. And coffee, although I must warn you that Luis always burns it.” As he approached, the young man’s gaze fled his.
Doggedly chasing his attention, Pessoa bent. “I am Manoel Pessoa, one of the inquisitors for this district. And you are…?”
From those tight lips came a faint whisper. “Bernardo Andrade, Monsignor’s secretary.”
“Bernardo! Well! Young for so important a mission. Twenty? Twenty-one?”
Such a low, moody “Twenty-three” issued from the boy that Pessoa despaired of even desultory talk, much less a harvest of information.
“Young indeed, and yet I am reminded that you are but three years younger than our beloved Count Castelo Melhor, whose burdens are so weighty. Well. And I imagine that you have not eaten. Such a long trip, and so much to do.” He grabbed the boy’s sleeve before he could shuffle a retreat. “You must have coffee. Sugar? Honey? Milk?”
The boy gave a quick suspicious glance, a shake of his head.
“Plain, then. Luis!”
Soares was standing spellbound. At the sound of his name, he turned to hearth and kettle.
Pessoa clapped the boy on the back, ushering him across the room and into a chair. “So. Imagine this. All in one week Quintas receives a king and an inquisitor-general. Will you be staying long?”
Bernardo sat and contemplated his folded hands. “Monsignor Gomes bids you meet with him at the seventeenth hour today, in the place the prisoners are jailed.”
He was a boy of few words and less humor. A sad boy, one of a steep-walled and moated nature.
“Your coffee.” Soares put the cup on the table.
With a spare restrained motion, Bernardo reached for it. Pessoa caught sight of the boy’s palm, and his pulse leapt. “Bread!” Pessoa’s cry startled both priests. He went to the sideboard for the loaf. “A rough sort of bread, to be sure, Bernardo, but an honest one.”
Smiling, he held out the remains of the loaf, saw the boy look warily through his lashes. Then the left hand opened to accept, and Pessoa caught glimpse of a second raw wound. Not accident, then; but key to a stronghold.
Bernardo gathered his food and drink and sat hunched.
Pessoa sat down opposite. “It is my belief that too much soft bread softens the soul. One should work for things, even bread, as one works for salvation.”
From the left, Soares’s frank bewilderment; but from the boy an instant in which their eyes met, a moment of clear blue orbs and breath-catching candor.
“I remember when I was your age, and every day seemed filled to bursting with God. Does it you? Each sunrise was a miracle, each leaf a blessing. How I do envy you that.”
Through that brief azure gaze wafted a question. Ask it. Damn you, ask it. The boy was distracted as Soares went to refill his cup, but then Pessoa saw a second flicker of interest, and, “What made you change?”
“The Jesuits.”
He had the boy’s attention now. Fingers moved along the cup as if counting beads.
“They gave me so much, my son, and yet their training robbed me of wonder.”
An earnest little nod. “Yes. It is difficult to capture, and easy to lose.”
It was just the two of them now: that zealous regard, and Soares faded into background. Pessoa leaned close. “Yet I remember when I was younger, and that grace would come over me—
“Like a great sea of light,” Bernardo said in his timid voice.
“Yes, just so. Yes. Like a sea. And I was blinded by it and felled by it and swept away, like a current. It drew me.”
“You drown.”
Pessoa was struck by the intensity of the boy’s stillness, muscles and tendons taut as harp strings—a small body that could never be at rest.
“O yes, my son. Indeed. Drowned in splendor. Transformed by holy pain. My lungs exploded with light. They turned my skin outward, soul first, so that I became a new creature. And when the thing was over I was left shaking and wearied, fearful of God, yet aching for Him again. I know not quite how to describe it.…”
“O, but you do. You take wonder and put it into words.”
Pessoa seized him by the wrist. “Let no one steal God from you. Let no one leave you jaded with reason.”
A quick shake of the head. Who had taught the boy such frugal gestures? Such punishing joys?
Pessoa let go the boy’s wrist and stumbled up hastily, wiping his eyes. On his back he could feel the heat of Bernardo’s curiosity and the quiet cool of Soares’s. Pessoa put another log on the hearth, poked at the fire, and wiped his eyes again.
Say it.
He could hear breathing: Soares’s was measured, the boy’s quick.
Then: “We have had news of a happening here.”
Pessoa filled his lungs with the smell of burning hardwood, the stench of Luis’s scalded coffee.
“Is it not true?”
Pessoa said, irate, “I will not gossip about the king, my son, or any other man. That is not my—”
“No, father. I meant what fell from the sky.”
One more stab at the fire drew sparks from a log and opened in it a flaming wound.
A small shy voice came from behind him. “Are they not angels?”
Pessoa turned. The boy’s eyes were wide and wet with yearning. “Yes,” he told him. “Angels.”
Over breakfast, father de Melo made a great to-do. “Remember to bend your knee to Monsignor so that you may have his blessing,” he reminded Afonso. “A little humility, particularly toward important clerics, is a handsome trait in a king—besides, you will need every jot of Monsignor’s goodwill. Mind you, it’s best that you do not speak until asked. We want no unpleasant topics raised. And heed closely what he tells you. Even if you do not understand, nod and nod and nod and I will explain later.”
Even though he did not understand, Afonso nodded. He looked into the basket, chose a roll filled with jam.
“And please, please, sire. Be polite, and let us always remember that even if you are made anxious, or even if you must use the chamber pot—do not, I pray you, touch yourself in the shameful place.”
Jandira wiped jam from Afonso’s mouth.
At the noise of an arriving carriage, Father de Melo leapt to his feet. “Here already! O, O dear, he is come. Now, think on what I told you, sire. Do you remember at least some of it?”
; Afonso did not, and so he nodded.
“Up! Up! We must go to greet him, mustn’t we. And if you would be so kind as to put your roll down, Your Majesty? Good. And smile, yes, just so. Excellent, sire.”
Afonso walked outside. He saw the fat priest with the small pig eyes, and remembered that he did not like him. Still, when the priest approached, Afonso went to one knee and let him say the Patrii and Spiritus Sancti.
Then he got up and dusted his knee. “Would you like breakfast?” he asked.
At the priest’s, “Why yes. Thank you, sire,” Father de Melo called for the royal cook, who asked for the fat priest’s pleasure. From those pink lips came such a list that cook sent for quill and ink.
When the list of food was finished, Afonso said, “I cannot remember your name.”
The fat priest tipped his head. His jowls shook so amazingly that Afonso barely heeded when he said, “Monsignor Gomes, Your Majesty.”
Afonso turned back to his tent. “I want my roll,” he said.
Priests and soldiers followed. Afonso sat down on his inlaid mother-of-pearl chair and, mindful of his manners, did not eat until the monsignor had sat down, too.
“You are well, I hope?” He plucked a sweet roll from Afonso’s basket and spread onto it a great golden nugget of butter.
Afonso said, “Yes.”
“Um.” A nod was soon followed by two more. Had he said something that the monsignor did not understand? “Very good, sire.”
“The rolls are very good,” Afonso said.
The monsignor looked at him from under his brows. He stuffed so much bread into his mouth that Afonso thought he might choke. Afonso could not hold himself the way he wanted to, yet he was too anxious to sit. And so he tugged at the hem of his tunic. He fidgeted in his chair. He watched the monsignor swallow another bread whole.
“The miracle of the loaves,” Afonso said.
The monsignor halted mid-chew. Behind the monsignor, Father de Melo covered his eyes. His mouth moved silently and fast.
“Beg pardon, sire?”
“You. How you eat, in one huge bite. Is that not a miracle?”
The monsignor sat back and did not answer. Cook brought him sausages and cheese, and still he did not answer. He ate. Afonso waited.
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