The day would turn fair, the message get through. What o’clock was it? Not yet seven-thirty, surely. Time enough for the sky to clear and the ground to dry. No. Tragedy was a thing that happened elsewhere, to others. It was writ in history books and studied in schools. As with the seculars, Pessoa’s life was all of a sameness, potato-bland but for Berenice’s olive oil and spices.
He thought of her and felt a mad jittering in his belly, an indigestion of dread. When this was over—for help would surely come—he would have her learn a little caution. He would be kinder and would bring her things. He would badger his brother for money. Did Pessoa not deserve it? And knowing João as he did, Pessoa knew he would have backed Pedro’s winning side, and probably made a profit.
Yes, he would visit João, showing up as a surprise on his doorstep. Ah, hut I see you are prosperous, Pessoa would tell him.
And João would spread his arms in a suspicious welcome, frightened, as they all were, as to the reasons Pessoa might have come. And how goes the Inquisition? he would ask.
Pessoa would see her dressed in warm clothes, for she spent too many winters sneezing. He would buy her something pretty’, so that the village could not help but look. He would let them talk, for talking mattered not now. It mattered nothing.
They had reached the jail. Cândido was outside, shaking his head. Through the door, and past the guards muttering around their fire, and then down the steps. A blanketed mound waited in the women’s cell, all alone. Pessoa turned and looked at the men’s.
It was a scene of such impossible peace: Bernardo lay in a corner, the two creatures about him. One cradled the boy’s head in his lap.
With a clang of keys, the jailer opened the door. Soares walked inside, Pessoa behind him—both of them walking into the smell of flowers and beeswax candles. The creature holding Bernardo’s head looked up, its arms spread as if entreating them to look, as if it was offering that inert body, as if it was expressing that nothing else could be done.
Nothing could. From where Pessoa stood, even in the dim glow of the lamps, he marked the pallor of that face. He came forward and knelt. Bernardo’s eyes were closed, his body curled. Pessoa reached to touch that marble forehead, but a hand seized his own.
Soares: “Look at his wrists.”
They were tom apart, with wounds opened like bloody screams. Such a violence done, how could he rest so sweetly?
Pessoa crossed himself, then kissed his fingertips; and despite the sin of those wounds, he touched Bernardo’s chill brow.
Behind him, Soares said, “I will go awaken the monsignor, since no one else has the fortitude for it.”
He heard Soares’s footsteps recede, then heard the door clang shut. He sat as the creature held its burden and the other sat close beside. The message would certainly come, but for Bernardo, all too late. “Lie nakedness to nakedness,” he had told him, yet when the boy obeyed. Pessoa found his choice unpardonable.
In Bernardo’s lap sat a rosary, Pessoa took it. The beads were gummy with blood.
Pessoa was halfway through an unspoken prayer for the dead when he heard Monsignor’s booming voice. “God! Fool that he became, he compounded it.”
Pessoa thought the comment directed at him, until he turned about and saw where Gomes was staring, saw the unexpected grief in his face. “Damn the boy! He throws away salvation! He abandons me!” Then he whirled to the jailers. “Take his body up, do you hear? Take him up and put him in a potter’s field straightaway. O, this place is a glut of unconsecrated graves.” And with that, he rushed from the room.
The women were staring. Berenice, all sleep-rumpled, stood at the bars, and so he looked quickly away. With a rustle of robes, Soares knelt at his side.
“It is Sunday,” Pessoa said in surprise. “Isn’t it? Already Sunday.”
“Yes. I must leave for Mass soon.”
Pessoa nodded. “The homily of the Watchman.”
“Twenty-third Sunday, Ordinary.”
Pessoa remembered Soares preparing the sermon, eating the bowl of figs. I have appointed you Watchman over the house of Israel.
“I must go, Manoel. I fear the church roof has lost tiles from the storm. It may be leaking.”
I have appointed you. Pessoa saw the creature’s bony hand resting atop Bernardo’s shoulder, saw how the hand of the other lay atop the point of the boy’s hip. “How do I convince them to give him up?”
Soares rose, patted Pessoa’s shoulder. “Ask.”
Then he was gone. Pessoa heard a low rumble outside, and hoped that it was distant Spanish cannon, for even war would be more welcome; but he knew that it was not. Thunder rolled again. Rain splattered the sill.
The jailers came and stood without the bars. They told him that the grave was ready. “Not as it is fancy, father. But we found a nice place for him all the same, nearby an apple orchard.”
They stood waiting, one with the grave cloth folded over his arm. Pessoa looked into the creature’s ebon eyes, felt aught but a prickle at his nape. “Will you give him up?” Neither of them moved until he explained softly, “I am the Watchman.”
They put Bernardo down then, and retreated to the damp at the back of the cell. They stood in the mist from the window. The guards came, opened the rectangle of cloth, and laid it on the straw. One took Bernardo by his habit’s shoulders, another by his hem.
Dear God. The boy was unshod. Pessoa had never noticed, not last night when he stood before them weeping and shamed, not even when they had marched him down the cobbled street to the jail, and Pessoa was so imbued by righteous anger that he had forgotten, too, to offer the comfort of a blanket. But should not a Watchman remember? Those poor bare toes, the clean and tender instep.
The guards seized the edges of the cloth and bore Bernardo up—his body sagging in the unbleached cotton—his pallid, serene face at one end, his cold naked feet out the other. Pessoa took his missal from his pocket and held it to his chest. He followed them from the cell, followed as they grunted their burden up the stair, the boy’s corpse swaying.
He will die, and I will hold you responsible.
No choir marked their passage. Not even the guards huddled about the fire stood. Under his breath, for no one must hear him: “Kyrie eleison.”
Outside, blowing rain wet his face. Droplets crawled his scalp. The two guards steadied their burden with one hand and adjusted their cloaks with the other. A small boy, really.
Sicut cervus. Like a hart which yearns for springs of water. He remembered the longing he had seen on Bernardo’s face—the passion of Jeremiah. “Christi eleison.”
Love like a burning fire.
Pessoa looked at those bare toes and knew that the boy had found it, if only because he had sought it so diligently. What had he said of him once? A secretive and moated nature? Little humor, hurtful joys? Yet ruthless ecstasy fed him.
Pessoa ducked his head into his collar and walked on. “Kyrie eleison.” They trod the dank street, passing through the litter of last night’s garbage. In a house window, a woman looked down at the procession and crossed herself.
The Watchman fallen asleep at the gate, the Enemy overrunning.
Afonso tried to dress himself, but became tangled in the legs of his pants and twisted the arms of his jacket into bewildering knots.
Jandira laughed at him. Ah, sweetling. You can scarce do without me.
In a tempest of failure, he threw down his jacket and stamped on it. “I want you back!” he cried. “Why won’t you come back?”
She was stubborn. He called her; he begged and cajoled, as was unbefitting a king.
It matters not to me that you are royal.
“It should.”
You climb the trees, sire.
“Do not!” he said, for she knew that he meant he was become monkey and looked for God in all the wrong and high places. But Afonso did not, for he had seen God in the fallen acorn, and had talked to Him there.
Afonso pulled off his breeches and threw them down; the
n he sat in his chair and glowered at the carpet. “Do not.”
The same cook’s boy came with breakfast. He remembered a little how to dress him, but did not remember as well as Jandira, who remembered everything.
“Father de Melo said that he must speak with you,” the boy said.
And Afonso told him, with the gravity that was proper, “You may send him in.”
The boy left. Father came. “I see you dressed in white today,” Afonso told him. “Sunday? Is it Sunday? Well. I will not ask for the Corpus Christi, for you are probably stubborn and will not give it me, and I have begged enough of servants today.”
Father drew two chairs together. He sat down on one, patted the seat of the other. “No, sire. No Corpus Christi. I come from the soldiers’ Mass.”
Afonso perched on the edge of the seat.
“Do you know what the homily was today, sire? No? It is about how when someone is in grave sin, it is our duty, as good Christians, to point out their failing. Do you see?”
“No.”
Father scratched his head. “Ah. Well, then. This is as the Inquisition does, sire. The duty of the Holy Office is to point out failings, and if necessary, to cut the spot from out the apple. Do you see?”
“No.”
Father lifted his gaze to the roof. He sighed. “The Bible says that we should advise our brother, and if he does not listen, we should take the cause to others. And if he still does not heed, we should take it to the Church. If he does not listen to the Church, well…” Father spread his hands sadly, as if letting a sinner drop.
“No one gives me spotted apples, and if they do, I would throw them back.”
Father took Afonso’s hand and held it. He regarded the carpet. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we must go to town and attend a short Mass that is to be held in the square—a low Mass. It will be over quickly.”
“I don’t want to go to a Mass outside. It is wet.”
“I understand.” He nodded. “There is no choice in the matter, I’m afraid. If there is rain, your soldiers will hold a canopy over you.” He squeezed his fingers. “It will not be very long. You will dress in your black velvet and wear your gold crown, the small one that we have brought. You must behave yourself and say nothing.”
“What will your homily be?”
“I will stand by the altar, but Monsignor Gomes will celebrate. All the priests will stand by the altar. So you must be very quiet, and not hold yourself in the shameful place nor laugh out loud nor stand up when you shouldn’t.”
Afonso tapped his foot. He peered out the door of the tent, into the rain. “I cannot keep myself from laughing out loud when the fat priest speaks. It looks like he will spit turds. I want my breakfast now.”
He started up, but father pulled him down again. The look on father’s face scared him.
“You must not laugh during Mass, sire,” he said. And then he took both of his hands. “When the Mass is over…”
“I’m hungry. The sausages get cold.”
Father held him so tight that it hurt. “When the Mass is over, sire. Listen to me. I beg you, for this part is hard both for me to say and for you to hear. Are you listening? Good. When the Mass is over, we will all go out beyond the town, and there will be those there wearing black shifts with flames and carrying unlit torches. And I will be present, although not near you, and many of your soldiers, and the captain. Monsignor Gomes will be there, and other important people. But you, sire, will be the most important of all. And we will walk. Not ride. We will walk, even if it is raining. And we will not speak nor laugh nor wave at the crowd. We will not smile.”
The press of father’s thumbs made his hands ache. He twisted and wriggled, but father held him tighter.
“They will set those dressed in black afire, Your Majesty. The executioner will put them atop wood pyres, and they will set the wood aflame. And some will be strangled before, and some will not, and those who are not will scream most piteously.”
Afonso snatched his hands free and jumped to his feet. “No! I will not wear black! Never! You will see if I will not wear black!”
“No, no, no…”
Father tried to catch him, but Afonso wrenched away. “I will wear the red or the purple!”
“Not you’. It does not matter what you wear, they will not burn you!”
Afonso walked to the little table where his breakfast lay, but he was too anxious to eat, too anxious to sit. He walked to the door of the tent and went out. He would walk to God. He would walk to his castle and lie down on his bed there, and pull the covers up over his head. He would have Pedro find him another Jandira, for Brazil was full of them, and the new Jandira would put his head upon her shoulder, and hold him, and tell him a story, and sing him a song that had no words.
Father de Melo caught his arm. “Your Majesty, come out of the rain.”
“No.”
“Come. You have no cloak with you, sire.”
“No.”
“Listen to me, then. You are to watch the burnings, Your Majesty. That is all I meant to say. There will be diverse executions, and you must stay for them all and be a good and quiet boy, and I warn you that it will be arduous, for to see them burn will be a ghastly sight.”
Afonso put his hands over his ears and let the rain slide down his forehead, his cheeks. “No! Not executions. Executions are where heads are struck from bodies and the bodies twitch, but not as bad as chickens, and blood comes all out in a gush, and they have sawdust to catch it. Executions are where necks are tied with rope, and the person pushed off a high place. That is executions.”
Father de Melo pulled Afonso’s arm down. “These are the executions that the Holy Office orders.”
“Then they must learn how to do them right. So we will tell all those people not to wear black, if that makes the Holy Office angry. We will put them in happy colors like pink and red and green so that the Holy Office cannot find them.”
“Your Majesty…”
“We will not let anyone wear black, ever. We will make a decree: no black.”
“Sire…”
“And we will teach them executions. The rope, for that seems sudden and pleasant, although sometimes they dance a funny jig, and shit their pants or sometimes they wet themselves, and I do not care for that overmuch. So we will not attend the Mass in the morning, for it is a low Mass, as you said, and not worthy of a king. And we will not allow the walking afterward. Everyone shall stay in town, and all the black clothes be taken up, and then we shall see what next, is that not clear? We shall decide then. For I am not of a deciding this morning, having already had to think about clothes and chamber pots.”
‘‘Sire…”
Afonso saw the look in Father de Melo’s face and heard the regret in his voice; and he knew this was to be like attending his own father’s funeral or his own coronation or like sitting through the tedious meetings of council. He shivered, for the rain chilled him. “I will not go,” he said.
Still, he knew he must.
Tadeo met Pessoa on the road. The rain had stopped, and the morning sky, already past sunrise, was an unlikely rust color, the hue of long-spilled blood. Pessoa opened his hand and looked down. Bernardo’s blood still stained his palm. So simple a prayer: Fac me plagis vulnerai. That is all that the boy had asked for, to be wounded with His wounds.
“I’m bound to Mass,” Tadeo said, and hiked his cloak about his neck. “But I came to warn you: Monsignor Gomes is a bear this morning. He will not be comforted, and will not be reasoned with. I heard about the boy.”
Cruce hac inebriari. Drunk with the cross, that was Bernardo.
The gentleness of the secular’s touch surprised him. “Buried, then?”
Pessoa nodded. If God existed, Pessoa would forever be damned, to so beguile such a poor drunkard.
“Are you all right?”
Forever damned. He said, “Yes.”
“Monsignor instructs me to tell you to inform the condemned without delay so that they may h
ave time to make peace with their fates. Emílio and I will be glad of going with you, for we have experience in such things, not in the informing so much, for that is a cleric’s job, but in instructing the condemned how to die well and quickly. That may be difficult for you to do, seeing as how…” He looked about, as if seeking guidance from the morning.
A freshening breeze spanked Pessoa’s cheek, tousled his hair. It made the hem of his cassock flutter like a flag. Rain coming. Once again, rain. Pessoa would believe in God if He stilled the rain. If He got the message through.
Tadeo cleared his throat. “I have been told by an executioner that the air becomes rarefied above the flames, and that if the condemned breathes deeply, they will breathe in not only heat, but smoke as well. He says, and I have seen it happen, that the burned then die with less struggle. He says that pitch gives off a poison. For he himself had often become light-headed standing about the fires. Thus it is best to lean toward the flames, instead of away, as the condemned feels compelled to do.”
The wind blew. The tops of the trees bent. Tadeo looked up into the sky. There was a bloody cast to the stucco walls, to the wet cobbles. “I’ll tell them.” Tadeo said. “After Mass.”
“You’d best hurry,” Pessoa told him.
Tadeo nodded. “And you? Co-celebrating?”
“No.” He could not. The palm of his right hand was not clean.
“To the jail, then?”
“They need someone with them.”
“Easier for me to go with you, father. For if you have never had this duty, I warn you that it is more a hardship than you can imagine. And worse if you have any sort of affection. God does not ask you to do it all.”
Rain began to fall in huge battering drops. They stung Pessoa’s face. They struck the cobbles in dull smacks, like the sound of fists. They left craters in the mud the size of ducats. Tadeo drew him into the shelter of an overhang. Pessoa would believe in Him, if God would only stop the rain.
“Damn the weather,” the secular said. One squeeze of his shoulder, and Tadeo was gone, ducking through the driving wet. The street was empty, lit by the morning’s dies irae. Echoing through the close-stacked houses came the clang of the church bell. Pessoa walked, letting the rain pelt him. Simple, really, for a God who had parted the sea.
God's Fires Page 33
