by Jessica Dall
Most holy Mary, Mother of God, through all my weaknesses, please guide me. Give me the help of your grace, for I’ve never been this lost. I know I shouldn’t have left home, but how do I atone? Should I stay here? Do I need to go back? Is this a test of my patience?
She was far too close to failing, if that were the case.
Please, let me know what I should do.
“Senhorita Cecília.”
Her name pulled her out of her prayer, and she looked right. Jorge was coming along the side of the house. She looked heavenward—thank you—then moved toward him. “Jorge, thank Heaven you’re back.”
He smiled, though it didn’t look happy enough for her liking. He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his jacket. “I’m afraid your mother isn’t in Loures, but I thought you might want to know that Senhor Durante spoke to me yesterday, after you did, and asked me to go to Loures as well with a letter for your grandfather. This is the response.”
Cecília wasn’t certain what she had done to earn Jorge’s loyalty over her uncle, but she supposed she shouldn’t question it. The Holy Mother had obviously interceded to give an answer. Cecília unfurled the letter. Gritting her teeth, she squinted at her grandfather’s loopy handwriting. She read as well as she could, quickly picking up the most important sentences: We have unfortunately not heard from Maria das Dores, but please do send us Cecília. We are happy to have her until the rest of her family can be located.
She folded the paper once again and looked back at Jorge. “Do you mind if I give my uncle this?”
Jorge hesitated for a moment before he nodded. “Say I saw he was... busy.”
Cecília watched Jorge’s eyes narrow as he looked at all the Englishmen moving around in front of the house. She started to speak before realizing that Jorge’s eyes had settled, and his look had become dark. Cecília turned as well as she could without twisting at the waist.
Mr. Bates glanced over from where he was talking to the portliest of the other Englishmen—Mr. Quigley?—then away sharply as he realized he had been noticed. It seemed it wasn’t the first time he had looked toward them.
“Has he been bothering you?” Jorge asked.
“Mr. Bates?”
“He’s been following you around.”
The fact that the sentence hadn’t been a question made Cecília tense. She shook her head. “It’s fine. I’ve barely spoken to him since the rest of the British Factory showed up.”
Jorge nodded once.
“Truly, though”—she tried to change the subject—“you have no idea the debt of gratitude I owe you for today, Jorge.”
His eyes finally came back to her, and the dark look lessened somewhat. “Of course, Senhorita Cecília. I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
“I’ll bring this to my uncle.” She limply motioned with the letter to excuse herself.
Jorge lowered his head and turned for the back of the house.
Pressing her lips together, Cecília tried to plan her next move. She had to go to Lisbon. She had prayed for guidance, and she had been answered. Her family wasn’t in Loures. If she wanted to find them, she would have to go, return to their house, if it still stood, and atone for having left in the first place. Of course, if Mr. Bates had been so fervent about her not going to Lisbon, she couldn’t imagine her uncle would be any more enthusiastic about the idea.
Mr. Bates finished whatever he was saying to Mr. Quigley and moved toward her before she’d had a chance to fully decide what to do.
“Something wrong?” he asked as soon as he was close enough to not shout.
She lifted her eyebrows, questioning.
“You look concerned.”
“Just thinking,” she said then motioned toward the cart. “You’re about to leave?”
“Your uncle wrote your grandparents.” Mr. Bates seemed to be attempting to placate her, saying the answer was yes. “We can hope you’ll have good news from them soon and will be able to go to Loures yourself.”
If he could ignore her question, she could ignore his statement. “I need to speak to my uncle.”
“He’s rather busy at the moment.” Mr. Bates twisted to look where Tio Aloisio was talking to another vineyard worker. “But—”
Cecília strode forward, seeing no reason to give Mr. Bates the opportunity to try to talk her out of anything. “Tio?”
Tio Aloisio barely glanced at her. “Cecília, not—”
“I want to go with you.”
Tio Aloisio, for perhaps the first time since the Englishmen had walked in the front door after them, fully turned to look at her. Cecília just wished he weren’t looking at her as though he hadn’t understood a word that had come out of her mouth. Just as she was beginning to wonder if she should ask Mr. Bates to translate into English for Tio Aloisio to understand her, her uncle finally said, “Pardon?”
“I want to go to Lisbon.” She squared her shoulders, trying to sound like Mamãe when she intended to brook no argument.
Tio Aloisio shook his head, bringing his hand up to massage his temple. “You can’t come with us, Cilinha.”
“I can help.”
“There is more than enough for us to do without having to worry about you as well.”
“But—”
“The answer is no.” Tio Aloisio sent her a more chilling look than she had ever experienced from the man. “I thank the Lord Almighty that you have made it this far to safety. I am not bringing you back into what Lisbon’s become. Now stay out of the way. I’ve written your grandparents. You should get a letter back tomorrow. I pray your mother and sister are safe there, and you’ll be able to join them.”
Cecília started to form another argument, but something about how adamantly he had said “tomorrow” made her hesitate. It was almost as though he had specifically planned it so he would be gone before they knew one way or the other.
Before she managed to gather her thoughts, Tio Aloisio dismissed her. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need, or I have everything ready for you to go to Loures while we’re gone. I’ll write as soon as I am able to tell you more about the situation in Lisbon. Just trust me, it is no place for a young girl.”
“I’m nearly eighteen.”
“A young woman, then,” he said. “You’ll be able to go back to Lisbon at some point. Senhor Carvalho has already taken steps to bring the city under control, but I would not want anyone’s daughter to be brought into what is happening there, least of all my own brother’s.” He glanced up at the gray sky. “You should get out of the rain.”
It’s barely a drizzle. Cecília’s frown deepened, but she didn’t bother arguing. Between Tio Aloisio and Mr. Bates, it didn’t seem likely the men would willingly welcome her along. No, if she was going to follow the Holy Mother’s guidance, she would have to sneak along herself. And to do that, she would need a few supplies of her own.
THE CART BOUNCED AS it rolled along the dirt road, jarring Cecília’s side enough that she was half-ready to make herself known just so she wouldn’t have to remain perched amongst the bags of rice any longer.
Just a little longer, she told herself. Without a watch and under the tarp they had stretched over the wagon to keep off the persistent drizzle, she couldn’t tell how long they’d been traveling. They had to be getting close to Lisbon, though, or at least closer to Lisbon than they were to Queluz. She just had to wait long enough that it would be simpler to bring her the rest of the way into the city than to send her back.
The right wheel hit a hole, tipping Cecília onto her injured side. She bit down a yelp, clenching her jaw so tightly her teeth ached. As the pain passed, what was left of her patience evaporated. Carefully, she shifted so she could push the tarp up an inch to see over the side. Her stomach bottomed out. They were closer to Lisbon than she had realized, but the familiar countryside was dotted with sorry-looking shelters. Even-sorrier-looking people sat outside tents made from dirty sheets or awkwardly leaning wood planks, most with their heads down as t
he light rain continued to fall. As Cecília studied them, the sick feeling grew worse. Some of the pitiful people looked as though they had never lived in a much better state than what Cecília was seeing, but beyond the caked-in dirt and hastily wrapped bandages, many sitting around were as finely dressed as Cecília had been on All Saint’s Day. She wasn’t looking at the homeless she had always seen on her trips through Lisbon’s streets. Poor or rich, they were all brought low, looking sickeningly abandoned.
Is Mamãe out here? Bibiana? Would I...? Cecília couldn’t bring herself to finish the last thought as she slipped back down into the cart. Hope tried to flicker somewhere inside her—Things could be better in the Baixa. We’re outside the city. Maybe these people lived where I was—but with the image of the people sitting out in the rain, the fevered dream that she would find her mother sitting at home, waiting, was slowly dying.
Mr. Bates had mentioned that people were living in the fields around the city. She had accepted that she would possibly have to look for Mamãe and Bibiana in one of the camps, if they had been displaced. Cecília’s mind had simply refused to accept the sheer scale of things. Flashes of the quake tried to fight their way out of the dark part of her mind she had been forcing herself to forget. The images came back in all their glory: the tremors, being trapped, the ruins of Lisbon she had almost managed to convince herself were just a dream, a nightmare. Her hands trembled as her breathing became short.
A mix of rising voices and wailing helped snap Cecília from the swell of panic. Swallowing to hold on to her last shred of composure, she rose back up enough to peek past the edge of the cart. A few of the poor souls had found their way closer to the caravan. An equal number argued and pleaded with Tio Aloisio as he seemed to turn them away. The name “Carvalho” reached Cecília, said multiple times with varying effects. A few of the angrier camp dwellers stepped closer to the carts, their insults shifting to the English with them.
“Estrangeiro!” Foreigner.
“Protestante!” Protestant.
The words mixed with others Cecília wouldn’t have dared repeat.
A few of the Englishmen turned back toward the carts, and they started forward again at whatever was said. Cecília lay back against the rice, closing her eyes as the cart painstakingly maneuvered around the growing crowd. She sent up a prayer for safety, half expecting the tarp to be ripped back by an angry, hungry mob at any moment. But they continued to roll forward, past the worst of the shouting. Cecília had to imagine that more than one of the men in their caravan was armed. She couldn’t imagine much less would have deterred the vitriol spewing from the people outside.
You prayed for guidance, she reminded herself. The Blessed Virgin answered herself. Cecília would have to put herself in God’s hands and trust that, whatever happened, it was His will and her atonement. Keeping her eyes squeezed shut and accepting the pain throbbing through her side with the rocking, she prayed for herself, for those outside, and for all of Lisbon.
THE CART STARTED AND stopped repeatedly, to the point that Cecília wondered if they were ever going to reach wherever Tio Aloisio wanted to be. She didn’t dare push the tarp up again, not with all the tension still hanging in the air.
Once again, the cart stopped, and Cecília listened, trying to pick out the voices around her. If any of the men were speaking Portuguese, though, she couldn’t hear them clearly enough to make out the words.
Finally, the end of the tarp that was tied to the corner of the cart rustled. Cecília tensed. With no shouting, she could be relatively sure that it wasn’t an angry mob storming the carts, but that meant—
Mr. Bates pulled back the fabric and froze. He stared at her for a moment, glanced farther off, then looked back at Cecília. “What in the blazes are you doing here?”
Cecília slid forward, keeping her expression haughty as she attempted as graceful an exit from the cart as she could manage—more easily said than done as she pushed her stiff body over the rough, shifting sacks of rice. “My family’s here. I’m going to look for them.”
“Your uncle just sent a letter to your grandparents—”
“And no one is there.” Cecília pulled the letter out of her pocket, the folded paper quite a bit worse for the wear. At Mr. Bates’s raised eyebrows, she continued, “I asked Jorge to go to Loures last night. He brought me this back.”
A mix of emotions moved over Mr. Bates’s face too quickly for Cecília to pick any single one out, and he took the letter from her. The conflicted emotions turned to genuine concern as he read.
Tio Aloisio appeared before Mr. Bates could speak. For one second, he just stared at her as though too exhausted to be angry, then her presence seemed to register. His face went pale before deep-red splotches climbed up his cheeks.
“Mamãe isn’t in Loures.” Cecília pointed at the letter, as though it would protect her from her uncle’s wrath.
His mouth opened and closed for a moment, as if he was trying to yell but couldn’t quite manage, before he snatched the letter from Mr. Bates.
As Tio Aloisio read it, Cecília finally looked around. With the sheet tents and sorry wooden barracas—shacks—the new camp didn’t look much different than the one outside the city. Too many people sat around, dirty, half-dressed, and broken, filling up the landscape. But slowly, as Cecília forced herself to truly look at the people around them, the differences became clearer. Rather than the mix she had seen outside the city, most of the people sitting around looked as though they had been well off. Looking farther out through the tents, Cecília even saw a carriage or two that were now obviously being used for housing. Her eyes fell on the river, and some sickly recognition of where they were settled into her stomach. They were back on the road to Belém.
Tio Aloisio flapped the letter at her, pulling Cecília out of her thoughts. “You’re going to Loures. First thing tomorrow.”
“No one is in Loures,” Cecília said. “Mamãe and Bibiana and Tia Ema and Francisco—”
“Trust me, Cecília Madalena, I want to find them as much as you, but you here won’t help anything.”
Cecília Madalena. She wasn’t certain she’d ever heard her uncle use her full confirmation name. Her skin pricked icy cold at the sound of it. “I—”
“You nothing. This isn’t a game.”
“I never—”
“It’s too late to do anything now.” Tio Aloisio looked at the horizon, as if he would be able to stop the sun sinking in the sky by sheer force of will, before he pointed at Mr. Bates. “Keep her here. I’ll have to make arrangements for this now.”
“Tio Al—”
Mr. Bates caught Cecília’s arm before she could follow Tio Aloisio back toward the tents.
“Let me go.” She tried to shake him off.
His grip tightened. “He already has enough to deal with.”
“He doesn’t need to deal with me.” She fixed him with as evil a look as she could muster. “He can do whatever he needs to. I need to look for my family.”
“How, exactly?” Mr. Bates looked nearly as angry as Tio Aloisio had, his eyes flashing right back at her. “Wander around in all of this? Hope you run into someone?”
She refused to show her own uncertainty. Things were far worse than she had let herself believe, but she had made it that far. She couldn’t simply slink off and not try, already in so deeply. “I know plenty of lisboetas. If I go to the Baixa—”
“The Baixa’s gone,” he said. “It burned. The only people you’ll meet in town right now are people you certainly don’t want to. There are Lord knows how many bands of soldiers roaming the streets, trying to get rid of all those people.”
The panic from earlier started to build in the pit of Cecília’s stomach at the idea of the fires. “Stop it.”
“Your uncle didn’t want to worry you, but do you really want to hear how bad it is? How people trapped in the rubble burned alive before anyone could help them? How those prisoners who broke out are now robbing and murdering their way
through the people who are left? Do you need to hear it all to understand why you can’t be here?”
Blood rushing through her ears, Cecília wrenched free and started away.
“Cecília!” He followed.
“Leave me alone.”
He grabbed her arm again. “I’m not letting you wander off.”
“Let go!”
“No.”
Her chest clenched tightly enough that the world spun. She couldn’t stay there. Too much was fighting for space in her mind. She had a plan. She had to follow her plan. She had to find her family. Jerking, she tried to get free, but he had her, surprisingly strong with his left hand. The words bubbled up. “Ajude-me!” she called for help, glancing aside just long enough to see if anyone had noticed before giving Mr. Bates a desperate, challenging look. “Estrangeiro! Protestante!”
Those words certainly got attention. Mr. Bates pulled back as if burnt, and some of the men nearby shifted toward them, obviously ready to intervene. Cecília didn’t wait to see what she had left Mr. Bates to, turning away to outrun the horror in her head.
Chapter Six
Cecília stood in the middle of Hell. That was what it had to be. Somehow, she had made her way through the skeleton streets to what had been her home. The last lingering sliver of hope that she would find someone there—that things would somehow go back to the way they had been—shattered, and the emptiness knocked the wind from her lungs. Nothing but the stone foundation and ash remained of her home. The smell of charcoal and burnt flesh coated her nose.
“People trapped in the rubble burned alive before anyone could help them.” Mr. Bates’s words echoed around Cecília’s hollow skull. Her throat constricted, gagging her. Without that hope—without any hope—she couldn’t fight off the possibilities. Was Mamãe trapped? Was Bibiana? Cecília remembered the votive she had lit before leaving. Such a little thing. Something she had done a hundred times before. Did that votive topple in the quake? Did I start the fire that burned my family alive? Could God possibly be that cruel?