Jandira’s lids fluttered. She licked her lips.
“Press my hand tight,” the midwife said. “Good. Good. Don’t be afraid, for I will not leave you until they take you by the hand and lead you from me.”
ORDERED before the tribunal one Gregorio Neves, charged with the heresy of having said that God had visited his potato field. An officer of the Inquisition came forward to attest that he and two of his men had that day gone to collect Sr. Neves, and found him fled along with all his family. It was then mandated that Sr. Neves’s goods and lands be seized and inventoried and sold immediately for what they could bring, and the monies given to the Holy Office to defray the costs of the tribunal.
BROUGHT before the tribunal, one Rodrigo Castanheda, age eight. Fr. Pessoa asked the prisoner if he recalled saying that he did not believe his sister’s story of angels. The prisoner said that he did remember making such a statement. He said that he also remembered having told Fr. Pessoa that he prayed that the angels would throw his sister into the pit. The prisoner said that he was very sorry for praying that, and he wanted to take it back. Fr. Pessoa said that the affliction his sister had gone through had nothing to do with his prayer, but had everything to do with his sister’s own stubbornness. Fr. Pessoa said that he believed God sorted the good wishes of children from the bad, for, as He Himself had made them, He knew that children had little discernment. Fr. Pessoa admonished the boy not to feel guilty, then conferred with the rest of the tribunal and said that he was of the opinion that the boy had committed no heresy. The seculars agreed, and Fr. Pessoa then excused the boy, and said that he was free to go. The accused asked if his sister and his father could go with him, and Fr. Pessoa said that they would see on the morrow. He said again that the boy should leave, at which time a guard came forward and led him away.
BROUGHT before the tribunal Guilherme Castanheda, accused of saying that God did not reside in Spain. Msgr. Gomes asked him again about the statement, and asked if he had searched his heart. The prisoner came of a sudden to his feet, knocking over his chair. A jailer restrained him, and Msgr. Gomes and Fr. Pessoa both asked the prisoner to sit. In a loud and distressed voice, the prisoner said that he had heard what the tribunal had done to his daughter. He had seen and smelled the burning flesh, and saw how she now huddled weeping in her cell. He bellowed, “May God strike all of you dead where you sit, for only this will be a justice.” And when he was finished shouting and shoving at his guards. Msgr. Gomes asked if that was all the statement the prisoner wished to make; at which the prisoner fought his way free of his restraints, picked up the fallen chair, and flinging it at the tribunal, cried, “See there. I have prayed a just prayer, and yet He does not answer. I knew He was not in Spain, and now I find that God is not in Portugal, either.”
The gray day darkened. A soldier came and lit the lamps. Jandira stared glassy-eyed at the wall. Her breath came so hard that it jolted her, head to toe. It did not sound like breath at all, but more like the snick of an iron key in a lock.
The captain asked the midwife if a grave should be dug. The midwife said to dig it. Father de Melo said that Jandira’s grave should be dug apart, and Afonso knew that was because Jandira’s death would be special.
Afonso looked across at the midwife, where she held Jandira’s hand. “Jandira is going to become something beautiful.”
“Yes, sire. I am glad that you can see that.”
Afonso understood that becoming hurt, yet he wished that Jandira’s breathing would calm. He thought how weary it must make her to work at breathing that way. He tried it himself, and felt the midwife’s eye on him. “How can you tell the melon baby is dead?”
She said, “By the colors.”
“O! God talks in colors!”
“Shhh. I know, sire.”
“Well, have you gone into the acorn, then? No? But how can you see the colors if you have never gone into the acorn?”
She laid a finger across her lips. “Shhh. We must be quiet, and not disturb her now. Agreed? Anyway, it was when I died, as I told you. And when I came back, I saw rainbows around each and every thing. The pink around you tells me that you are kind, but of a certain nervous energy. The yellow tells me that you are happy, and of good health.”
“Jandira has a lot of colors.”
“Indeed she does, sire.”
“And she wears robes that are like a chatter from God. She laughs quick, and she makes jokes. I cannot keep up sometimes with Jandira’s colors.”
The midwife stroked Jandira’s forehead. “She is like I was: an angry little thing.”
“She will come back from Death, like you.” He bent down to Jandira’s gaze, but her eyes did not meet his. “It is time to get up now,” he told her. She took a rib-cracking breath. “I am tired of watching you become.”
She would not talk to him, so he took out his book of Don Quixote. He looked at the illustrations. He admired the windmills. He drew his finger along the page and pretended he could read. He turned the book upside down to see if the words made better sense. Bored, he put up his book and got the little golden bell. He rang it. Jandira convulsed. He rang the bell, and Jandira made a noise like wind through dry leaves. He rang the bell, but she didn’t move. The midwife loosed Jandira’s hand. She crossed Jandira’s arms over her chest. Since Jandira would not close her eyes, the midwife shut them for her.
The captain left and came back with two servants. Father de Melo asked Afonso if he would like to leave; Afonso said that he would not. Father then asked if Afonso would sit in the chair, for the servants had preparations. Afonso took his bell with him.
He watched the midwife pull the pillows from under Jandira’s knees and head. He saw her straighten her legs and put her feet neatly together. Servants brought a length of fresh white linen, and Afonso watched them wrap Jandira, head to toe, like a present.
“She is becoming, now,” Afonso said.
Soldiers came to say that all was ready. Afonso watched the servants lift Jandira, one by her shoulders, and the other by her knees. They carried her away, and Afonso thought of how she would burst from the linen, all the hues of a butterfly. He thought of how she would surprise the soldiers when she came running to him through the gray rain. He rang his bell so that she could hear it, and know that he was waiting.
The midwife packed up her herbs and asked if he was well, or if she could prepare him a valerian tea. There was blood pooled, a boisterous happy red, on the blankets. Afonso said that he was fine. He rang his bell.
Night darkened at the window. The rain softened to mist. Servants came and took away Jandira’s pallet. They cleared the dirty basins. They scrubbed the red spots on the carpet until they lost their joy. They asked if Afonso wanted dinner, and he said that he did not.
They left. Afonso sat in the glow of the lanterns, in the emptiness of his tent. He wondered where Pedro was, and if he wouldn’t visit. He wanted to lie in Jandira’s arms. He wanted her to tell him a story. He rang his bell.
The Castanheda dining room was too lavish for honest digestion, being all crystal and china and silver. Especially for a Friday, the food was far too rich. Bernardo plucked a clam from its shell and ran it listlessly through the wine sauce.
At the head of the long table, the seculars were arguing. “Not demons, surely, Tadeo,” Goatee said.
Scarecrow broke a loaf and called for a waiting servant to bring him more polenta and cheese. “No, no, no. But neither angels. Good God, they’re blank-gazed and dull-witted, seems to me. Ho!” he said, peering down the length of linen and lace to where Bernardo sat. “Notary! You’ve said you’ve seen something. An emotion? A fright? A what?”
“Holiness,” Bernardo mumbled. The table was too long. He raised his voice. “A holiness!”
“Ah.” Scarecrow knit his brows, turned to Goatee. “But you see nothing?”
“No. You?”
The servant bustled in with a platter. Scarecrow watched his plate being filled. He shrugged. “So it cannot be proven.
”
“It puts me in mind of basins of water.” Goatee pushed his dinner plate away and pulled his dessert plate to him. He chose an apple from an alabaster bowl and, with knife and fork, began to peel it. “You know how when you peer intently into a basin—when there is only faint light?—and the basin seems to cloud over, and then it appears that you see visions?”
Scarecrow paused, fork in mouth. He frowned across the expanse of silver and china. “No.”
“Well, scryers do it.” Goatee had denuded his apple. There was now a curl of red on one side of the plate, and white moist pulp on the other. “They think they see things, if there is shine and dimness. Of course they don’t.” He sliced off an edge of pulp, speared it with his fork, and popped it into his mouth.
The house carried memory; the sight and smell of the boy. Bernardo looked into a wall mirror and thought he saw the dove’s reflection. The dove would be sitting where Goatee sat, at his father’s right hand. Bernardo thought he caught sight of a dark-haired milk-fair boy lost amid icy glitter. A mutter drew his attention. Castanheda’s servant was standing by with the platter of fried polenta. Bernardo shook his head and the servant went away.
“Their eyes are dark and featureless, therefore…”
“Yes, yes.” Scarecrow said. “I get your meaning. The viewers imagine something in their own reflections. Precisely.”
Goatee, fork in one hand, knife in the other, stared down at the sacrificial apple. “But then, if not supernatural, what?”
“Animals. Lord knows there are enough strange animals in Africa, in Brazil, in the Spanish New World.”
“Ah!” Goatee hoisted his knife. “Of course! Brilliant, Tadeo! A Spanish plot! They find the strange animals in some New World colony, see that they are very like human, and they drop them where? Precisely where they know the king to be. They planned this all along, the disgraçados!”
Scarecrow sawed into his polenta. “How?”
Goatee leaned forward, cupped his ear.
“How did they drop them here?”
Goatee sat back.
Bernardo pushed his plate away, half-eaten. He put an orange on his dessert tray, impaled the thick skin with his fork, and cut it into tidy, fragrant segments. The dove would have a taste for oranges, for other sweets. He would have sat thus. If Bernardo looked up quickly, he could see him in the mirror.
Goatee slapped the table. “Catapulted!”
“Ah, good! Yes! Well, then. All decided. A Spanish plot.”
Bernardo said. “What about the women?”
Goatee leaned over, cupped an ear.
“The women’s story.” Bernardo put down his silverware. “What about that? And although Gregorio Neves is not here to testify, he told Senhor Magalhães that he saw the selfsame star hang in the air above his fields before darting away the same direction it had come. Is such a thing possible with a catapult?”
Goatee and Scarecrow looked at each other. Goatee sucked a tooth. “Ah! The catapulted acorn came over the field, thus.” He demonstrated a slow arc with his hand. “And when it reached its apex, from the perspective seen below…”
“Of course.” Scarecrow nodded. “It seemed to hang. A trick of the eye.”
Goatee’s hand came down, fingers meeting the table. “And so it fell, a long ways away, thus was never discovered. Who knows how many acorns they shot? Apparently the aim is not exact.”
Scarecrow crossed himself. “Lauda Dei.”
“Praise God, indeed. And the women?—well, perhaps they lie.”
Scarecrow poured himself more wine. “Amalia Teixeira strikes me as sincere. Heretic, certainly, and bound to be burnt—but altogether most painfully sincere. So much so that I sat down after her testimony and wrote a most loving letter to my wife.”
Goatee sighed.
From the stairs came a bellow of “Bernardo! Where is the boy? Bernardo!”
Neither secular looked up. Goatee said, “Dreaming.”
Bernardo wiped his mouth with a lace-trimmed napkin. He heard Scarecrow say, “It seems to me to be a great difference between dreaming that one’s daughter has been ripped from one’s arms, and actually experiencing it.”
From the floor above: “Bernardo!”
Bernardo got to his feet. He dusted his robes, he set his chair neatly to the table. As he left the dining hall he heard: “True, Tadeo, despite what the notary says about God’s terrible and hurtful glory, this still sounds more like Spaniards.”
“Bernardo!” The shout came blustering down the hall and sought out Bernardo where he stood, regarding himself blankly in a gilt hall mirror. A passing guard laughed. “He’s in a fit with his belly, Father Andrade, and has been all night. Mind you don’t strike a candle too near him.”
Bernardo could not remember stopping in the corridor. Could not remember—but for an ache of loneliness—what he had been looking for. Then the bellow: “Bernardo!” He lifted the skirt of his habit and hurried up the stair.
So many almonds, and yet no odor of them. Monsignor’s room stank of sulfur. The bed curtains had been pulled to. The moan behind the drapes carried in it all the afflictions of Hell. On an ivory inlaid table, a candelabra burned. The window was flung open, and a wet breeze stirred velvet, brought inside the sweetness and sound of the rain.
“Some senna tea, Monsignor?”
“Bend over and let me shove your senna tea hot and in you backward.” Another groan, and a creak from overburdened wood, and with that, the noises of a heavy body floundering on the mattress. “Once you rubbed my back,” he said piteously. “Once you would hardly leave my side. So damned overtaken by your angels, are you?”
“No, Monsignor.”
“Deluded, boy. You are deluded by the devil.” Monsignor discharged a tight little squeak of a fart.
“Shall I bring you some dinner now?”
There came another creak of wood, and a groan. “Bring me that herbalist.”
Bernardo remembered the wink of crystal. The heady scent of citrus. A doe-eyed boy. He remembered seeing his own face in a glass, and it frightened him that he could not recall when it had happened, or which image was reflection and which was flesh. “Herbalist?”
“The herbalist! The one that Jesuit finds tasty! Did you see his eyes upon her? I warrant he knows her as well as a shepherd knows his favorite ewe. Send her up to me.”
Bernardo lost feeling in his hands, and realized that he was clasping his fingers so tightly that they had turned milk white and unblemished; the nails had turned blue. It came to him that he was picturing Monsignor’s neck there. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “What should I tell her that you want of her, Monsignor?”
“God, boy! I don’t seek entertainment! Not in this distress. Tell her you need some herbals for digestion.”
Bernardo left, and in the downstairs hall found a jailer. “Have you seen the herbalist Berenice Pinheiro?”
The man looked surprised. “I thought we had not evidence to jail her.”
“Monsignor calls for her, as he is in distress.”
His quick smirk was even more quickly hidden. “Ah, well. May God look more benevolently, then, on the monsignor’s digestion. And would that I knew medicine, for that herbalist obtained a goodly amount of gold today from the king, and now attends that girl prisoner’s feet. Take the wind from out Monsignor, and she will have earned herself a few dinners.”
Bernardo thanked him and, collecting his cloak, went into the rain. Puddles soaked his boots. He hurried and, in his haste, drenched his hem.
By the time he reached the jail, he was shivering, and his mind had cleared. He rushed inside, ducking, shaking water from his cloak. The guards had built a fire in a round of gathered stones, and they huddled there, warming their hands.
There was no singing from below; no sounds but whimpers. Bernardo descended the stair, his eyes drawn first to the funeral candles, to the angels. Guilherme Castanheda sat hard by the bars, watching over his daughter.
Marta lay in
the cell opposite, her head on Senhora Teixeira’s lap. Berenice Pinheiro sat at the girl’s right foot, applying a poltice. Bernardo put his hand to the bars and looked down at her. “Monsignor Gomes suffers an indigestion.”
Senhora Teixeira snorted. “Have him hike his skirt. I’ll put coals to it.”
“Hold her,” the Pinheiro woman said. She touched the knife to the edge of the charred left foot. The girl kicked savagely, and twisted out of Senhora Teixeira’s grasp.
The Pinheiro woman’s shy eyes met Bernardo’s. “Please, sir. Can you not help us?”
Bernardo went upstairs and asked for a jailer to let him in the women’s cell. A guard took the ring of keys, and Bernardo followed him down, hearing from the guards behind mutters and lewd little chuckles.
“Should I stay, then?” the guard asked.
“I will call.” Bernardo heard the door clang shut at his back, heard the key click in its lock.
“Hold her ankles,” the herbalist said.
Bernardo knelt. The girl’s feet were swollen to twice their size. Where the soles were blistered, they leaked a clear fluid. He took one ankle and held it gingerly. The skin was as pearly as her brother’s. He imagined his hand moving up, up, exploring the forbidden. His hand—all independent of him—himself all blameless—only his hand, and out of Bernardo’s control. Only his hand, moving into the damp heat.
“Both, please,” the herbalist said. “You must hold both, sir, and hold them well, or she will kick. She is wild with pain and brandy.”
Bernardo seized both ankles and squeezed. The girl gave such a shout and fought so hard that he nearly let her go.
“Hold!” the herbalist cried. “You hold her!”
Senhora Teixeira pressed the girl’s arms to her sides. She cooed nonsense in her ear. The girl smelled of apricot brandy and raw potato. Her gaze was vague, but for the anguish. Her mouth was slack.
“Done.”
Bernardo looked around. Blackened flesh and blood rested in a bowl, and the herbalist was dousing her gore-covered knife into a basin of water. She rubbed the blade with horseradish root, then wrapped it in thyme.
God's Fires Page 26
