So not only did Miguel write poetry, but he wrote for the newspapers as well. Important articles, like the difficulties of veterans. Alejandro was impressed. “Which paper do you write for?”
The gaze Miguel turned on him was markedly cooler than his friendly expression toward Roberto. “Whichever will publish a cripple’s work.”
So his mother was right—a grudge as wide as Portugal. “Miguel, whatever it was I said, I know it was offensive. I don’t know how I can apologize for something I don’t recall, but I am sorry we’re no longer friends because of it.”
Miguel continued to glare at him.
Alejandro sighed. “Surely you’ve heard by now that I don’t remember anything.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
But he didn’t believe it. “I truly can’t remember whatever it was I’m apologizing for. I know that Old Alejandro was a horse’s ass, but I can’t recall the specific sin here. Tell me what I said, and I’ll beg your forgiveness, but otherwise I can’t.”
Miguel jaw clenched. “You said I should be grateful I’m a cripple so I wouldn’t be sent to war for my king.”
Alejandro felt his mouth fall open, and couldn’t seem to close it for a second.
I hope I was drunk when I said that.
He could grasp exactly how those words had come out of his mouth. Or rather, Old Alejandro’s mouth. If he’d foreseen the conditions in Belgium, if he’d foreseen that terrible battle, he might have said just those words. It was possible that he hadn’t meant it as a reflection on his cousin.
Miguel would only have heard the words, You’re a cripple.
He’d probably heard it as an insult to his bravery, a belittling of his desire to serve his country. He might have heard it as an insult to his manhood. He would have heard it as a statement that he wasn’t Old Alejandro’s equal. And even if Alejandro had forgotten saying that, Miguel never would. He’d clearly shared it with Miss Anjos.
Alejandro cursed under his breath, grateful that Miguel hadn’t repeated those words to Serafina. “I do apologize, Miguel. I . . .”
Miguel waited.
“I am trying not to be the person I was before,” Alejandro said. “I am trying to be a better husband, a better friend. I’m sorry that it’s come so late.”
Miguel frowned. “You thought you were the center of the world, before.”
Joaquim had told him that, although not in such damning terms. Joaquim had phrased it in terms of responsibility. “I gather that humility wasn’t one of my virtues.”
Miguel let out a short bark of laughter. “God, no.”
“I’m working on it, Miguel,” he said. “I am trying. For Serafina’s sake can we try to be friends? It’s important to her. She wants your insight on her work, but feels like she can’t ask while we’re estranged.”
Miguel shook his head, but after a moment, asked, “So she’s writing again?”
“Yes,” Alejandro admitted, taking hope in the change of topic. “What I’ve read seems very good, but I’m not a judge of poetry. She thinks you would be able to advise her.”
Miguel touched one of the files on his desk. “I can do that, I suppose.”
“Could you come for dinner some night this week?” Alejandro asked. “Or next week?”
“Do I take it that you’re reconciled to being married to her now?”
So Miguel was offended for Serafina as well. “I don’t know what Old Alejandro thought, but I’m very fortunate,” he said. “She’s talented and lovely, and I don’t deserve her.”
Miguel looked over at Roberto, as if for reassurance, then turned back to Alejandro. “No, you don’t, cousin.”
An uncomfortable silence followed, and Alejandro had no doubt now that Miguel had fancied Serafina at some point, no matter what he intended toward Miss Anjos now. He could easily understand that, given their mutual interest in poetry.
Breaking the silence, Miguel nodded toward a bottle of Vinho Verde sitting on a bureau across from his desk and asked, “Would you like a glass?”
Alejandro hadn’t had dinner, but he wasn’t going to turn down what seemed like an olive branch from his cousin. “Yes.”
Miguel opened the bottle and poured three glasses. He handed one to Alejandro and one to Roberto before picking up the third. “To Serafina,” he said, raising his glass.
They joined him in his toast. The wine, more potent than Alejandro expected, went to his head quickly.
An hour later, all three of them sat on the floor, apparently believing that was necessary.
Alejandro stared down into his empty glass. At one point, Miguel had threatened to take a swing at him, and Roberto intervened. Now the footman-cum-bodyguard sat between them, a solid buffer. It was their third bottle. Or perhaps their fourth.
“And you were shit to her before you went to France,” Miguel was saying.
Alejandro was fairly certain they’d covered that ground three times already. Or perhaps four, once per bottle. “I know, Miguel. I’m sorry.”
“You feel bad now,” Miguel said, “but you’ll go back to being a horse’s ass soon enough.”
He didn’t want to do that.
“He doesn’t want his memory back,” Roberto told Miguel. “Doesn’t want his powers back.”
Miguel shook his head blearily. “No.”
“It’s true,” Roberto said, rubbing a hand along the scar that lined his face. “If I could forget the war, I would, too. I hate the English, leaving us out there to die on the front line like that. I wanted to be valiant, but we had no chance against so many Germans.”
“You’ll have your chance,” Miguel answered. “Remember, I told you.”
For a moment, there was silence. Alejandro felt like he’d missed something.
“I did annoy the English,” Roberto said then. “I was never more pleased to hit someone.”
“What are you talking about?” Miguel asked.
Roberto blinked at him owlishly. “The English fellow, the witch who tried to curse Jandro’s insides out.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t curse you,” Alejandro said.
“I listen,” Roberto said, puffing up. “Came up behind him. He never saw me.”
“Oh,” Alejandro noted. Line of sight. “Smart of you.”
“What are you talking about?” Miguel asked again, louder this time.
“He wants me to find some diamonds,” Alejandro explained, “but I don’t know where they are anymore.”
Miguel leaned forward to regard Alejandro with exaggerated seriousness. “Like in that story? Where you mailed a sack of diamonds to the Holy Sisters?”
A fierce pounding on the door made them all start guiltily. “Alejandro, I know you’re in there,” Gaspar called. “We need to talk to you.”
Recognizing the seriousness in Gaspar’s voice, Alejandro pushed himself to his feet. He crossed to the door and, grasping the doorframe to steady himself, threw it open.
Inspector Gaspar stood outside, his dark face grim. “Serafina’s missing.”
Joaquim scooted over in the large Ferreira coach, making room for Miguel and Alejandro to sit across from him and Gaspar. “When your wife didn’t return from her afternoon at her parent’s house, Marina became concerned. She sent a footman to check with Serafina’s parents, and they said she’d left over an hour past.”
God, no. Phillips or his henchman had to have grabbed her in a twisted attempt to get Alejandro to help him find his diamonds.
“Can you find her?” Alejandro asked through the fog in his brain. That was Joaquim’s special gift—he could find people if he knew them or if he could touch something of hers.
“I’m having trouble,” Joaquim said. “I get a brief glimpse of her, but nothing more. That tells me she’s being hidden.”
“Hidden?” Miguel asked, rubbing a weary hand down his face. “How?”
“According to Markovich—the Englishman,” Alejandro explained for Miguel’s sake, “our Irish associate is half fairy.”
<
br /> “So he can cast a glamour around her?” Miguel asked. “Like Mrs. Gaspar does?”
Gaspar, sitting across from them, held onto the hand strap as the coach made a turn. “That’s my guess. If Joaquim is sensing her at all, that means either Phillips doesn’t control his glamour as well as he’d like, or . . .”
“Who is Phillips?” Miguel asked, massaging his forehead now.
“The Irishman,” Alejandro said.
Miguel shook his head and then grimaced. “Wait, is this still the story with the diamonds? With the Irishman and the Russian?”
In the evening light that filtered into the cab, Gaspar fixed Miguel with an intense gaze. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s read that story, Uncle,” Alejandro said.
“I used to read through Jandro’s stories for him,” Miguel said waving one hand as he spoke. “Edit them. I still have a bunch of his older ones in my files.”
Gaspar’s brows rose. “The story I read didn’t mention an Irishman.”
Alejandro puzzled at that.
“There wasn’t an Irishman,” Joaquim agreed. “Not in what we read.”
Miguel groaned. “No, it’s the version Jandro left with me. He made changes to it and left the most recent version with me before he went to Angola. I have that notebook . . . somewhere.”
The driver made another sharp turn. His stomach lurching, Alejandro asked, “Where are we going?”
“Matosinhos,” Joaquim said. “When I do get a flash of Serafina’s location, it’s in that direction.”
“And combined with Rafael’s encountering a fairy seeming there this morning, I suspect that’s where our half-fairy is.”
Alejandro wondered if he’d missed something or if he was just drunk. “A fairy seeming?”
“It looked like a spell circle, so someone sent for the Special Police. That’s what Rafael was off doing while you were with Markovich this morning. It was a diversion, I suspect, or a way to see who would respond.”
Alejandro shook his head. He’d wanted to talk to Rafael, but he hadn’t been at the police station. Had that only been this morning?
“The seeming was already fading away by the time Rafael got there, but he had a feeling about that place,” Joaquim went on. “He’s currently gathering up Markovich. They’ll meet us there.”
Alejandro hoped he didn’t cast up his lunch on the way. Between what Markovich had done to him, the coach’s rattling over the cobbles, too much wine on an empty stomach—and worry—he was queasy. What was happening to his wife right now? Had Phillips hurt her? He pressed the back of his fist to his mouth.
“Have faith,” Gaspar said. “He needs her to negotiate for the stones.”
“I don’t have his damned diamonds,” Alejandro pointed out. “And I don’t have any idea how to get them back.”
“You mailed them to the Holy Sisters,” Miguel said, eyes squinted shut. “In . . . some town that had beer.”
“Every town has beer,” Gaspar said.
Joaquim turned a sharp gaze on Miguel. “Is that in the version you read, Miguel?”
Miguel was thinking hard, mouth pressed into a grim line. “João gave them to the mail-girl to post, then warned her to leave Armentières immediately because the Germans were about to invade. She wrote the address on the package because João didn’t know it . . .”
João was the name of the main character in that story, Alejandro recalled. The name he’d taken after leaving France.
“Popper . . . something . . . was the name of the town,” Miguel added.
“Poperinge?” Gaspar asked.
“That’s it,” Miguel said and snapped his fingers. “The Church of Saint John, for the war orphans.”
An orphanage. He’d sent the diamonds to a church orphanage.
Alejandro crossed himself as a thousand pounds of guilt lifted from his shoulders. It didn’t help him to get Serafina back, but he silently begged God to be merciful because Old Alejandro had tried to make something good out of a bad situation.
Did I know before that Serafina would be taken as a result of my actions? That she would be endangered? Surely if he’d foreknown that, Old Alejandro wouldn’t have chosen this path.
But it didn’t matter what Old Alejandro had known . . . only what he was going to do now. Alejandro opened his eyes. “Did Rafael say anything? About whether we’ll get her back safely?”
Miguel hit Alejandro’s leg with a fist. “Don’t tempt fate.”
“I need to know,” Alejandro hissed at him.
“Rafael said it wasn’t up to us,” Joaquim said softly, “so he couldn’t answer.”
Alejandro blinked at his older brother, appalled. “What does that mean?”
“Serafina has to save herself,” Joaquim said. “If she doesn’t keep herself together, we won’t be in time to help.”
Alejandro managed to shove the blind aside before retching out the coach’s window.
Chapter 5
* * *
Saturday, 26 June 1920
THE LAST REMNANTS of the fake spell circle could still be seen in the light of the setting sun, overlaid like a shimmering mirage atop the chevron-patterned paving stones of the square. Only a fine tracery now, earlier it would have been bright and alarming. The square lay in front of the magnificent baroque church of Bom Jesus; it was no small wonder that the priests had been offended when they found it. This was what had drawn Rafael away from the police station this morning, when Alejandro had wanted to talk to him.
Alejandro stood there with a terrible taste in his mouth. He wanted to pace, to work off some of his worry, but he felt queasy. Miguel didn’t look much better. He leaned heavily on his cane, his narrow face pale. Neither of them was drunk any longer.
“Where do we go from here?” Alejandro asked Joaquim and Gaspar.
“I’m going to go sit on the bench,” Joaquim answered. “I don’t have a feel for her right now, but if I could concentrate, I might be able to pinpoint her the moment he lets his glamour loosen.”
And that’s our best hope? Alejandro surveyed the church. Phillips wouldn’t have gone there, not if he was part fairy. They loathed holy ground. They hated moving water, which eliminated the banks of the Leça and the port. Everything around the Douro River as well. How much fairy blood did Phillips have?
Gaspar turned on Miguel. “If you read that version of the story, you’re our best hope for remembering whether Jandro wrote all this down at some point. Think, man.”
Suddenly put on the spot, Miguel frowned, eyes focusing inward. “I . . .”
A carriage pulled into the square at a quick clip. As it rolled to a stop, Rafael Pinheiro opened the door and jumped down without opening out the steps. Markovich followed at a slower pace, expression discontented. The swelling across his jaw had darkened to a livid blue in a few spots, a sign of how hard Roberto had hit him.
“Is that the Russian?” Miguel asked.
“He’s English, but of Russian descent,” Alejandro supplied.
“Hmmm.” Miguel shook his head. “He has to be here.”
Rafael approached the three of them standing near the spell circle, Markovich trailing him. “Miguel, what are you doing here?”
“Alejandro gave me a version of this story to edit, Father,” Miguel said. “So I remember more than he does. I . . . I know more, so I’m here.”
Rafael let out a colorful curse. “I should have asked myself about that. So what are we waiting for, Gaspar?”
“Joaquim is trying to get a feel for where Serafina is,” Gaspar answered, then turned to Markovich. “What can you tell us about Phillips?”
“Not much,” Markovich said.
“Not good enough,” Gaspar responded. “You work for the English government, and he’s an Irish separatist. They have to be gathering information on him. Given the threat he poses to you, I’m sure they kept you apprised.”
“I don’t know what I can tell you that you don’t already know,” Markovich sai
d.
“The maledictor has to be here,” Rafael said. “But I don’t think he has any information. Son?”
He’d looked to Miguel as he said that.
Miguel closed his eyes, mumbling, “Story with a fairy . . . and a girl . . . and . . . I’m not sure what to say.”
Alejandro wanted to shake Miguel for being so unhelpful. “What do you mean by that?”
Roberto returned to the square just then, a paper sack clutched in one hand. “Bread,” he told Alejandro, holding out the bag. “You’ll feel better if you get something into your stomach.”
Ah, that was where Roberto went. The young man had been talking to Miguel, and then wandered off. Alejandro gave Roberto a heartfelt thanks and opened the bag. It held a loaf of sweet bread. His mouth began watering, and he reached to pull it out.
“Don’t eat that,” Miguel warned him. “We’ll need that later.”
“What is it, Miguel?”
“He’s made a portal,” Miguel said. “He’ll threaten to throw his hostage through it. We need the bread for . . . for the fairy.”
That hostage was Serafina. Why was Miguel being so coy about what he remembered? Alejandro folded the top of the bag closed. “What do we do then?”
“We have to find the portal,” Miguel said. “He’ll be there, waiting for us.”
Gaspar stepped away from them and began sniffing the air.
“And how are we supposed to find it?” Alejandro asked.
“A fairy portal?” Markovich sneered. “Wait. You actually believe in these fairy stories?”
Halfway across the square to the church now, Gaspar stopped and said, “My wife is half fairy, son. We don’t have to believe. We know.”
Markovich surveyed the men gathered around him, mouth agape. “You’re serious? All of you?”
“If you grow up knowing they exist,” Miguel told him calmly, “there’s nothing strange about it. Everyone believes sereia exist. Why should fairies be any different?”
Markovich gazed at Miguel with disbelief. “Who are you?”
“My son,” Rafael inserted, giving Markovich a warning thump on his back.
Gaspar had returned to sniffing the air.
After the War: A Novella of the Golden City Page 8
