God's Fires

by Patricia Anthony

  “Since we may possess some proof, I believe it worthy of inquiry.”

  Wind rattled down the ruined chimney, whipped an invasive tendril of ivy against the windowsill. It crept into the room, tickled the hair at Bernardo’s cheek, and whispered in his ear the magic incantation: Proof.

  “Come. I’ll show you.” Father Manoel walked toward the stairs. Halfway there, he stopped and turned back. Monsignor had not moved; and so Bernardo, even though his feet begged to follow, had not moved either. The monsignor’s face was a study in scorn. Never had Bernardo felt so constrained. Never had he felt so forceful a temptation for disobedience. Miserere mei, he prayed, uncertain what God would want him to do.

  Then Monsignor, as if contemplating an evening stroll, moved toward the stairs, down to where a virgin stood swollen with child and cherubim proclaimed the news. Bernardo clutched his rosary as they began the descent into adoration. O beata Virgo. Why had he not noticed her earlier?—all his attention on the heralds.

  But the veneration below was in the cell opposite the women, where straw had been cleared to form a bed of stone. And there lay the fallen cherub, his arms crossed over his chest, his head on a lace pillow. Around him burned a serene conflagration: two tall funeral candles at his head, two at his feet. In the oily scent of beeswax, Father Soares knelt, missal open, rosary in hand, at prayer.

  Bernardo did not realize that Monsignor had stopped until he nearly stumbled into that broad meaty back. Father Manoel waited for them at the cell door, his hand on the iron bars, looking up to where Monsignor stood, rigid.

  “The body shrinks inside the clothing,” Father Manoel said. “So there is death, but no corruption.” He whispered the invitation: “Come see. For from the body drips a liquor which smells of sugared flowers.”

  Monsignor took another step and Bernardo noticed that he was not peering at the fallen cherub at all, but at the living ones. The cherubs were staring back.

  Father Manoel said, “My own familiar tasted of it. Then he took some outside and anointed one of his men with it. The man claims that he felt he was coming down with a gripe, and that the liquor cured him. Not enough proof of miracle, but—”

  “Satanas,” Monsignor hissed. He held his missal aloft, and the pallor of his cheeks mimicked the ivory in which the book was clad. “Videsne, Bernardo?” He cried, pointing down to the angels. “Videsne hoc?”

  “Yes,” Bernardo answered. “I see it.”

  “O here. O here. Adsum mallus!” Monsignor crossed himself furiously.

  Father Manoel’s cheeks paled as well. “No, Monsignor. Please come, I beg you. No corruption. No blood. Yet the body disintegrates into a sweetness. Such a miracle cannot be evil.”

  Monsignor whirled and, still crossing himself, beat a swift retreat.

  DAY 8

  An eerie howl through the darkness jolted Bernardo awake. It made his hair bristle. It banished reason and all promise of mercy. That sound was followed by a second shriek—the discordant music of a soul in torment.

  He sat up in bed, digging his fingernails into the flesh of his arm. He peered at the solid black wall of the night—making the world concrete not with vision, but with his own cruel touch.

  He was not dead, was not with the damned. He was in the inn, and someone was screaming. Fear was so preposterous, so unknown for that voice, that Bernardo first thought the weeper to be a stranger. Then he knew.

  Astonished, he stumbled from his bed, groped for the door, and felt his way to the neighboring room. Another piercing cry came, one that ended in a terrified babble, half-Latin, half-Portuguese. Entering the room, Bernardo called, “Here. I’m here, Monsignor.”

  A thin cry for “Light!”

  Bernardo found the tinderbox and sparked a candle. When he turned he saw Monsignor sitting up in bed, his eyes wide and sightless.

  It was so unearthly a scene that Bernardo’s veins ran ice. He whispered, “Monsignor?”

  He received only a blind gaze in answer, then in an eerie hiss, Monsignor pointing at the blank wall. “I see it. See it, there? Videsne, Bernardo? The church fallen to nothing. Nothing. Seminaries emptied, rectories abandoned. Clear as day.”

  Bernardo lit another candle, then a lamp. The room sprang to life and color: the blue of the rumpled coverlet, the crimson where Monsignor had, in his duress, scratched himself awake.

  Gently: “Monsignor?” Bernardo came forward, placed the lamp on the nightstand.

  Monsignor seized his wrist and his eyes gained focus. “I saw it: nuns and archbishops murdered, priests subjected to scorn.”

  “You dream.”

  He gave a vicious shake of his head. “No. Armies marching. An invasion of ideas. The elevation of the rabble. In all of Europe, kings overthrown.”

  “Let me fetch you a tincture of valerian, some catnip tea. It’s not yet three o’clock. You can sleep.”

  Such horror crossed Monsignor’s face that Bernardo was made terrorized. “Not sleep!” Monsignor cried. “No! Keep the lamp lit! The world ends! Changes of rule like will-o’-the-wisps. They care not for the Church. On the wall! See? O, I see their eyes yet, Bernardo—black and demonic. Look, and you view Hell.”

  “The angels?”

  “Demons.” He said in an oddly plaintive tone, “Will you not stay with me, Bernardo? The shadows come too close.”

  Bernardo sat down at the edge of the bed. “Tell me about your vision.”

  The air was heavy and hushed with night. Over Bernardo’s head, mice stirred in the attic.

  Monsignor’s eyes fluttered. “Armies of commoners,” he said. “The kingdom of the devil. A dominion of men with unruly ideas.” His eyes closed. “God save us from men with ideas.” The face, at long last, found peace.

  The quintas fair was a tumult of smell and noise and color. Geese and hens stuck heads from cages to squawk. A human squawking rose among the vendors, too, cries of “Fat pullets!” and “Eels! Fresh ribbon eels!” and “Apples! See no worms. Apples!” Even the Gypsies had come, bringing wagons of cracked iron pots and herds of spavined horses.

  Pessoa walked past lowing milk cows, cages of rabbits, carts piled with turnips and white beans. The meadow smelled of decaying cabbages and dung.

  When Soares stopped to buy some cheese. Pessoa stopped with him. “Buy an extra,” he said.

  Soares laughed. “Manoel, I promise not to eat it all.”

  “Buy an extra. I will pay you.” Pessoa leaned toward the Franciscan. “For the Pinheiro woman. I promised her. Just some cheese, a little fruit. A hen, perhaps.”

  He expected an objection, but Soares bought the cheese and walked on, stopping at an apple stall and lifting an eyebrow.

  “None for me. Three for her.”

  There followed a clinking exchange of coins. From fair goers came passing nods and smiles and “Good morning, fathers.” Ahead, a pair of royal soldiers had stopped to flirt with a milkmaid. Royal cooks strolled the stalls, shaking their heads in dismay and arguing loudly.

  The fair held so much zest and life that Pessoa found himself smiling; then the geese in their cages reminded him of the women, and the soldiers reminded him of trials.

  “Are you ready to go?” he asked Soares.

  “Just another stall or two.”

  They passed bushel baskets of brown eggs packed in straw and a selection of fine fruitwood casks. Soares paused to buy rabbits. Pessoa watched as the fragile necks were broken under the vendor’s practiced hands: a quick and silent death. Pessoa turned away as they were skinned.

  The stench of their blood and the smell of their guts reminded him of a garroting in Evora, and the state executioner’s swiftness, the accused’s brief struggle. Unlike those burned, the strangled died mute on their stakes, as mild as rabbits.

  Fair day. Wednesday. Only the week before—had so little time passed?—he remembered the expectation that had so illuminated Marta Castanheda’s small face.

  They walked on. Soares bid a potato seller good day and stopped for a vis
it amid the crush of the shoppers, the cries of the hucksters, and the stench of offal and blood. Uneasy, Pessoa looked around. Across the way, a group of king’s soldiers stood surrounded by gawking country folk. Pessoa put the basket down and, interest piqued, walked closer.

  A soldier saw him coming, displayed first consternation; then guilt. A hand was shoved too quickly into a leather sack. A warning was muttered.

  Pessoa quickened his pace. There was panic now, of soldiers turning. Among a pallid sea of faces he could see the questioning looks from the farmers.

  Then Pessoa was among them, demanding “What? What are you hiding here?” and reaching for hands. Prying open one soldier’s trembling fist, he found a piece of scorched silver. A framer drawled, “Is it not pieces from Heaven, then, father?”

  Behind the crowd was a blanket piled with melted pewter. He heard the country people’s “Came down from Heaven, didn’t it? That’s what the soldiers told us. That’s what we’re paying for.”

  Pessoa snatched up a corner of the blanket. Pieces of star whirled into the air and came down in a glittering shower. A soldier put out a hand to stop him, but with a cry, Pessoa knocked him to the ground. Before his wordless howling rage, farmers scattered. Soldiers backed, white-faced, hands on their swords.

  He felt a tug on his arm. Pessoa whirled and nearly met the tug fist first.

  It was only Soares. “Come, Manoel,” he whispered, pulling him away. “They will do as you said, I think. And I think the fair is over.”

  Pessoa let himself be led. By the time they had gone a half league down the road, his anger had cooled. He took the heavy basket from Soares’s hand and said curtly, “Remind me to pay you for the Pinheiro woman’s food.”

  They passed a farmhouse, then through a spot of road where the stench of pigs lay thick as a cloud. Beyond a nearby wattle fence came snorts and grunts and the movement of heavy bodies.

  “No matter. I should do more, I think. Bless you, Manoel, for reminding me. She is not Christian, to be sure, but that does not excuse my lack of mercy.”

  “And excuse me for my anger. I embarrassed you. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t give it a second thought.”

  “No excuse for what I did.” The road unraveled like rope, curling over one hill and circling the next. He hungered for travel; he loathed it. So many years, thinking he had escaped the dolorous climate in Mafra—only to find that the Inquisition had followed.

  “I have been far too haughty, Luis,” Pessoa said. “You are absolutely right.”

  “Um.”

  “Thinking I could contain all this. Deciding matters on the spur of the moment without consulting you.”

  Shoulder to shoulder, they passed under the spreading branches of a cork tree, its shade as viscous as night.

  “All other avenues are gone now. I find myself forced to prove angels, and I don’t know that I will be able. My own fault. I should have clapped the women in jail early, if only to keep them from talking. Now the whole town has heard of virgin births. And if I am to prove that…. Dear God. Only Duarte Teixeira and Berenice Pinheiro as witness to the girl’s virginity? Bring Berenice forward, and I doom her. What an inquisitor I make! I am an incompetent. A buffoon. Scorned by Gomes’s men and all of Quintas. No one fears me.”

  To his surprise, Soares burst into hearty laughter. “Soldiers flee from you in terror. Single-handed, you put an entire fair in disarray. I swear, Manoel, you alarmed even the Gypsies.” He patted his arm. “No, no, my boy. Christ among the money changers. That’s what you were.”

  Monsignor had awakened rested. There was a sly sparkle in his eye. And when the king’s courier arrived with a cinnamon-fragrant basket, he breakfasted with abandon.

  “I meet with the royal idiot this morning, Bernardo,” he said, pointing with a butter knife. “I want you to remain in town. Collect the two secular lawyers that the marquis sent us. Let us add a little something to that Jesuit’s account—O, a bit of testimony, shall we say. The troublemaker seems overly fond of the blank page. What was the name of that witness again?”

  Bernardo, who had sat the night in vigil by Monsignor’s bedside, squinted blear-eyed at the journal. “Dona Magalhães. Dona Inez.”

  “That one precisely! Dona Inez!” An overly exuberant gesture with a loaded forks sent morsels of sausage flying. “So, to repeat: gather the lawyers. Talk to this Dona Inez. And go to the jail and speak with the women. Make certain that all dictates have been followed. See that the accused have been told to search their hearts, to confess the truth, to trust in God, blah, blah, blah. Make certain they have been offered counsel, and if so, who their lawyers are. See what rebuttal, if any, they have to offer. See if the Jesuit’s story has any correlation to fact.”

  “Yes, Monsignor.” Bernardo made a note. Did the man not remember his nightmare? Bernardo dared not look up lest Monsignor see hope in his eye.

  “Well, go! Go!”

  Bernardo set a spare inkwell into his box of quills. He tucked the box under one arm and the red journal under the other. He walked out, closing the door quietly behind; then he strode through a sunlit corridor and down the narrow backstairs. At a chipped door, he stopped and knocked. A duet of jovial voices bid him welcome. On a bed inside, two men contemplated a backgammon board. The pair looked up so optimistically that Bernardo presumed the game’s attraction had paled.

  The man with the goatee lifted his hand and said, “Emílio.”

  “Tadeo,” said the rumple-haired scarecrow. “I remember you. Father Andrade, correct? I’ve seen you in the company of the monsignor before.”

  “You the notary?” the other asked.

  Hugging his journal and quills to his chest, Bernardo inclined his head.

  “The rooms are terrible. And breakfast was worse. And some idiot screamed all night.”

  Bernardo looked at them through his lashes. Which was Emílio and which Tadeo? He was so dulled by lack of sleep that he could not keep them straight.

  Goatee snorted. “Have you not yet learned that Gomes pays for nothing? Best take your complaints to the marquis.”

  Scarecrow laughed. “No. You complain to the marquis.”

  “Two days on the road, and now stuck here. Listen, father. I do not mind aiding the Holy Office—after all, they trained me. But I have other clients besides the marquis, and my business languishes.”

  “Ha!” A thigh-slapping guffaw. “Emílio hires out to the Holy Office, then hires out to the accused. Slap them in jail; bail them out.”

  Emílio. Goatee was Emílio. But the next instant Bernardo had forgotten.

  “So you finally have a duty for us, father?”

  “And what is all this secrecy? Gossip about something fallen from the sky, and—”

  “I heard of a stone falling from the sky once. Hah! The stupidity of peasants! As if a stone could fling itself into the air and come down when it wills.”

  “Are we not to bring the accused to Mafra, father? That is the district, is it not?”

  “Quite right, Emílio: provincial district of Mafra.”

  “Probably better lodgings there.”

  Comments and questions flew like arrows, too fast for Bernardo to follow. The tempo nearly took his breath away.

  From Scarecrow: “So what is the heresy?”

  “No! Don’t tell him, father! Asking the notary is highly irregular.”

  “Really, Tadeo! You are so constipated by the law that I’m surprised any decision is expelled.”

  Suddenly they popped to their feet. “Shall we go?”

  Hugging his quill box, Bernardo led them into the courtyard and past a leaf-choked fountain. At the stables, he asked a boy for directions. Then it was up an alley of garbage and cats, both lawyers complaining of the route, then down a street no cleaner and not much wider. Scarecrow suggested they return to the inn for a carriage.

  Bernardo kept the pace steady. They crossed a bridge spanning a rocky stream. Scarecrow asked if it was much farther. Goatee asked
what o’clock, and said that he was getting hungry.

  He chose a shortcut through a meadow, where Scarecrow orated upon the price of new shoes and the damp of muck and cow dung.

  Bernardo called over his shoulder, “The third house after the cistern, the boy said. See it there ahead?”

  The pair stripped themselves of their coats, even though the breeze was chill. The brisk walk left them huffing. But when they arrived and Bernardo had knocked and no one had appeared at the door, the two suddenly regained their wind.

  “Well, not home. See, father? You should have sent a runner ahead to make certain they would be here.”

  “O, come now, Tadeo. The accused and the witnesses should be called before the tribunal, not the contrary. The boy has it all turned about. Were Monsignor here—”

  The door flew open. In the doorway stood such a gargoyle that Bernardo’s first impulse was retreat.

  “What?” she barked. “What are you on my threshold? And what priest are you?”

  An eye-wetting stench of old urine and sweat and rotting fish came either from her or from her cottage. Bernardo heard a shuffle as the lawyers withdrew a pace.

  “I said”—her voice was the screech of saw against nail—“what priest are you?”

  Her face was adorned by three huge moles. Bernardo found himself staring and quickly lowered his eyes. “Father Andrade, notary of the Holy Office, come with two Inquisition lawyers to take your deposition.”

  “O?” Just that.

  Bernardo longed to gauge her expression, but given the grotesquery of those moles, he did not dare.

  “Well, well, well. My deposition, is it? I was wondering w hen the Inquisition would smell what this town had stepped in. Come inside! I have barley water for what ails you.”

  Before Bernardo could think of a gracious way to decline: “What a lovely day! Don’t you find it lovely, Tadeo?”

  “Just smell of that air!”

  “Ah! And a sky clear as a crystal! Don’t see that in the city.”

  “No, no. Absolutely. And—you know?—I spied a spot, just in the shade of that elm.”