by David Liss
“Then what has this been about?”
“The pastry vendor has a wife,” the priest said. “I am told she is newly pregnant with her first child. Do you think she is also guilty? Certainly hers would not be the first baby born in the Palace dungeons. Shall we punish her for her crimes? Does she deserve the same fate as her husband?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “How could I know?”
“Then perhaps we should find out. We cannot be sentimental about sinners simply because they are women or with child. I shall have her arrested if you like.”
“I do not like,” I said, trying hard to keep the anger out of my voice. Instead I pretended to be another sort of man: I was frightened, I was trapped. I was a fool who had stumbled into something dangerous and powerful.
“Then if you agree to aid me, here and now, without difficulty, I shall overlook her indiscretion in marrying a Judaizer.”
“What about the pastry man?” I asked.
“Oh, he is gone,” Azinheiro said. “That cannot be changed.”
I stood still for a long moment, my eyes cast down. “I see there is nothing to be gained by resisting.”
“Now you understand.” Azinheiro flashed his patronizing smile. “But you shall find that there is much to be gained by cooperating. Your success is now of particular interest to me, and that means you are in a very advantageous position. I shall make certain you become a very rich man, Mr. Foxx. In return, I hope to see more Englishmen in the Palace dungeons than ever before in history. Does that sound like an agreeable bargain?”
It sounded like madness. “It seems the best bargain I am likely to get.”
“That is most certainly true. Good day, Mr. Foxx.” The priest now began to walk toward the Palace, and it was clear that he did not intend for me to follow him.
That night a woman cried in the dark of a ramshackle house in the Baixa. Earlier she had wept in the arms of her friends, but they had gone home. Now she sat on a rough chair, arms wrapped around herself and rocked back and forth. She wept for the man she loved. She wept for the life that they would not have together, or the things for which she might no longer dream. She wept in fear for the moment, perhaps tomorrow or the day after, when the Inquisitors would come for her and the baby that grew inside her. She put a hand on her stomach. She had begun to feel a swelling only recently. She might well have made her husband feel it tonight, guiding his hand along the slightest of bulges, and his face would have been as bright as the noon sky.
“Our son,” he would have said.
She would have smiled, not troubling herself to point out the obvious. They had both pretended the outcome was assured. Now nothing was assured except disaster. Her husband would be starved and beaten and tormented until he was made to name other sinners. They would make him name her in the end. He would try not to, but no one resisted forever. That was common knowledge. Her husband was gone. Soon she would be gone too. Even if her baby survived birth in the Palace and life in a church orphanage, he would never know who his parents had been, what they had been made to endure.
Her sobs and moans masked the sound of her front door being forced open—it was no difficult thing to force the latch up with the blade of a knife—and the stranger entering her small house. She did not hear him walk upon the warped and uneven floors, and only noticed him as he blocked the moonlight streaming in from an open window.
The woman looked up at this man—tall and broad, wearing rough clothes that appeared too big for him. Her face betrayed confusion and fear and then resignation.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he told her.
“Who are you?” she asked, sniffling, wiping her nose upon her sleeve. She hadn’t the will to scream or cry out. If a thief wished to cut her throat and take what little she had, perhaps it was for the best.
“I saw your husband arrested today on the Rossio,” the stranger said.
She coughed up a laugh. “And you think I need a new man already?”
“No,” he said, squatting down so he could look at her eye to eye. She was not pretty, but there was something kind about her face. “I think you need to leave Lisbon before the Inquisition takes you as well. You and your child must be made safe.”
“And how can that happen?” she asked, bitterness blasting out the fear and confusion that had been in her voice before.
“You will use this,” the man said. He held out a purse and put it on the floor by her feet. “There’s enough gold to buy passage to wherever you would like to go. The power of the Inquisition is diminished in the countryside. You’ll have enough for food and a place to live for several months, longer if you are careful. You can find work, perhaps another husband. It is the best I can do.”
“What do you want from me?” she asked. Her voice was now a throaty whisper, part wonder, part terror. What could he expect in exchange for this chance to survive? To bring her child somewhere safe?
“I want you to live,” he said. “I want you to be free of them.”
He rose and walked toward the door, opened it, and stepped out to the street.
“Bar the door behind me,” the man said. “Lisbon is not safe at night.”
Back at the inn, I had Enéas replace the clothes I had taken from Franklin. The innkeeper would never know they’d been missing for an hour. I then poured myself a glass of wine and settled into the armchair by the window.
I did not know the woman. I did not know if she was worthy or wretched, but I did not care. If someone had helped Gabriela all those years ago, perhaps she would still be alive. Helping the woman did not make me feel better, but it was one less thing to regret.
Chapter 10
The Portuguese did not have a culture of public houses, but Englishmen could not live without their wine and coffee and porter, so at the base of Chiado Hill there were more than a few taverns that catered to Factory merchants and the men who served them. Tailors and chandlers and grocers and brewers and a hundred other small tradesmen bought from and sold to the English community. There were also men of other nations—the German architects, Swiss watchmakers, Dutch engravers—all of whom would lend their services to any man, but always chose to drink with the English rather than the Portuguese.
The tavern most frequented by Factory men was the Three Speckled Hens. Up the hill from some of the more unsavory public houses, including the inn where I resided, it was a large room filled with long tables, poorly lit by windows, and always full of tallow and tobacco smoke and the smells of food and drink.
Nearly a week after Settwell and I first discussed our scheme, we entered the Three Speckled Hens in the late morning. The room was thick with men. Enéas, who trailed behind us, paused to gaze in wonder. He had never seen so many foreigners, so many Protestants, in one place, and he whispered a prayer under his breath and crossed himself, and then prayed again. A portly Englishman observed the boy and laughed, but his fellows whispered in his ear, and the laughter stopped. Even in the heart of English power, a wise man did not mock Catholic faith.
I knew Settwell had not ventured to any establishments frequented by Factory men since he had been cozened by the Carvers and then failed to receive justice, and I wondered how widely knowledge of my friend’s circumstances had spread. I found out soon enough. We were not ten feet inside the tavern when all eyes turned to us. Men tilted their heads toward one another and whispered vigorously. Lips parted to show yellow teeth and graying gums as traders laughed and exchanged rumors. I heard a man mutter Settwell’s name. It seemed to me an inauspicious way to begin my masquerade as a man with whom to do business.
Enéas ran ahead and found us an empty table. When his calls for beer and chicken, in Portuguese, were met with guffaws, I repeated the order in English. Enéas blushed and looked down. It troubled me how eager the boy was to please and how easily embarrassed he was by his mistakes. He would grow a tougher skin soon enough. There was no other way in my service.
“Wait outside,” I told him.
E
néas dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together in supplication. “Because I shamed you by speaking Portuguese? I’ve tried not to fail you! I’ve tried to be a good servant, and now you will throw me back to the streets to be tormented and abused. Please, master. I beg of you. I will embarrass you no more!”
I met his gaze. “You have no power to shame me, only yourself. You must wait outside because that is what a servant of your order does.”
Enéas sprang to his feet like an acrobat. “Then that is what I shall do!” With a remedy to his blunder presented, his mood brightened considerably, and he hurried to the door.
“That boy dotes on you,” Settwell said. “What do you pay him to secure such loyalty?”
“I saved him from his tormentors, and then paid him ten reais.”
“Ten reais! You could have five servants for such a sum.”
“I don’t wish for five servants. I wish for one who will take any risk I ask of him.”
I did not miss the resentment that clouded Settwell’s face. He would have liked to have ten reais to spare for the loyalty of a servant. He’d been brought so low that such an expenditure seemed the height of extravagance.
Most of the onlookers had, by now, found their way back to their own conversations. The novelty of the strangers had passed, and there was little excitement in watching us eat and drink. After we finished our food, however, we noticed a hovering presence above us, and we turned to see a distinguished-looking man in his fifties, handsome, with sparkling blue eyes and a smile of unusually white teeth.
“Mr. Settwell,” the stranger said.
Settwell rose and, doing a poor job of masking his distaste, introduced me to Abraham Castres, who took my hand firmly and looked into my eyes in the way of a merchant trying to take another merchant’s measure.
“Mr. Castres is the consul, head of the Factory,” said Settwell. “The consul’s task is to serve as the bulwark between us and the native madness, and he is the final arbiter in all internal disputes.” Settwell looked away. “He is meant to adjudicate without bias.”
“May I ask what brings you to Lisbon, Mr. Foxx?” the consul inquired.
I bowed deeply. “Money brings me here,” I said with an embarrassed laugh. It was a mistake to play a role too confidently, for only dangerous men fail to doubt themselves. “I have recently come into property—a good income, mind you, though there are some current obligations. I must take my rents and, shall we say, my future rents, and turn them into ready money. Men I trust have convinced me that the Portuguese trade is the best and most efficacious way to do that.”
“It is indeed,” said the consul. He thrust his hands in his pockets and turned this way and that, surveying all about him as though he were king and the tavern his kingdom. Perhaps he was right to see himself so. Never had the Factory prospered so much as it had under Castres’s leadership, though those profits went mainly to the consul himself and his inner circle of favored merchants. “Many men, through serious application and judicious study, have succeeded precisely as you intend. Others, however, have found themselves in even greater debt.” Here he ventured a quick look at Settwell. “Among the most important decisions you can make now is with whom you associate yourself. Make yourself useful to the right men and you will go far. Surround yourself with the wrong sort, and your efforts will be doomed from the beginning.”
“Indeed.” I was a man pleased to have his own ideas affirmed. “I could not agree more. That is why I am so glad Mr. Settwell has offered to provide introductions.”
“Then you two are not previous associates?” asked the consul.
“We have known each other for years,” said Settwell.
At the very same instant, I said, “We have only lately become acquainted at my inn.”
We had practiced this blunder. Having Settwell appear to lie so brazenly gave me an opportunity to sever ties with him and do so with honor.
I coughed and blushed. “Some men make it so easy to form a friendship that one feels like he has known the gentleman in question for years.”
“First impressions are important,” said the consul, keeping his gaze upon me. “A merchant must trust his instincts, but those instincts are honed with experience. Come speak to me if you wish, young man. We shall make sure your introduction to Lisbon business is managed by good hands. You do not wish to fall into bad ones.”
Castres spoke so that I could not mistake his meaning. I glanced to Settwell and then back to the consul again. “Yes. I shall do that. Thank you very much, sir, for your generosity.”
Settwell stepped before me and puffed out his chest. “This gentleman is in good hands, and you’re a damned blackguard, Castres, for suggesting otherwise. Have you not yet done enough to me that you must poison my future prospects even as you have already destroyed my fortune? You are like a man who shits upon his neighbor’s stoop and then condemns him for keeping a dirty house.”
I let out a good-natured laugh that sounded forced and uneasy: I had made the decision to associate with someone, and now I regretted it. I would have to disentangle myself from one man and form ties with another, all without offending anyone. “Come now, Mr. Settwell,” I said, my voice rising in pitch, “you can have no objection to me meeting other men of business, particularly one so well placed as the consul himself. That is why, after all, you brought me here.”
“I brought you here,” said Mr. Settwell, “to show you what a pack of jackals you propose to treat with. Can you not see how they line up to steal your money, as they have stolen mine?”
Castres set a hand on Settwell’s arm, but Settwell pushed him away. “Do not lay hands upon me unless you want to resolve our dispute like a man of honor, which I very much doubt.”
Once again, all eyes were on Settwell. He pretended—quite convincingly, I thought—not to notice. Locking his gaze on Castres with undisguised malevolence, he reached for his porter and drained the mug. He then allowed it to fall at the consul’s feet. From deep in the tavern, someone gasped.
“I know you have suffered some ill turns,” the consul said, “but now you blame others for your own mistakes.”
“I blame others for their villainy,” Settwell responded through clenched teeth.
“You are drunk, sir.” Castres’s voice began to crack with anger. “I hear you are drunk all too often. Return to your home, and we shall forget this indiscretion.”
Settwell had wished to make a commotion, and he had done so. His public humiliation was complete. I could not but admire a man willing to commit himself so fully to a scheme. He had just now proved he was the man the Factory believed him to be: a drunk and a fool, someone men of sense should make every effort to avoid. Settwell had put everything in my hands—his future and his daughter’s safety—and that meant I could not fail. I watched Settwell walk from the tavern, his drunkenness mostly an act, and hoped we were not all doomed.
Abraham Castres put his arm around my shoulders. “This is what I love best,” the consul said, his voice lively and expansive. The incident with Settwell, now more than a full minute in the past, was long forgotten, as significant as an awkward moment of public flatulence. “A new man, a new face, and new prospects. Lisbon is the very place for a man of business. We have not the possibility of unimagined wealth that a man can earn in the Indies, but not the risks either. You may live in comfort and ease, enjoy the pleasures offered by one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and still quietly and efficiently increase your fortune. How do you like the sound of that?”
“I like it very much.” I looked about, straining my neck, making confusion evident. In truth, I was delighted. All my senses tingled. Settwell and I had concocted a scheme, and thus far it had worked perfectly. Such moments were as close as I came to happiness.
“Mr. Sebastian Foxx,” announced the consul, as he led me to another table of Englishmen, “allow me to present to you Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford Carver, among the brightest lights in our Factory constellation.”
<
br /> Both of the Carvers rose. Mr. Carver shook my hand, and Mrs. Carver curtsied. The husband was an unimposing man of some forty years, short and perhaps a bit inclined to be plump, with a slightly jowly face and eyes of a very pale gray that looked, even when he smiled, on the verge of tears. He wore a suit of dark blue velvet and an expertly tailored short periwig. While they were both fine-looking items, I could not help but feel that they were meant for an entirely different sort of man. Mr. Carver was not ugly, nor even unattractive, but he was certainly unimpressive.
Mrs. Carver, however, was a stunning woman of seven or eight and twenty, with a beautiful round face, sapphire-blue eyes, an unblemished pale complexion, and a charming nimbus of bright orange hair that fell in ringlets from under a prim little hat and about her lovely shoulders. And red lips that parted just so as she locked her gaze upon mine. Settwell had told me that Mrs. Carver was a flirt, and I intuited at once that she was a well-practiced one. It was no surprise that many a man had fallen under her spell. I felt some small sympathy for the consul. If he must make a fool of himself over a woman, it should be one such as this.
I joined them at the table, but Castres excused himself. “I fear I have pressing matters of state that call me, but Rutherford and Roberta will make very good hosts, I assure you.”
Rutherford Carver called for wine—Burgundy, certainly as an expression of how little he was bound to his host country—and proceeded to pour a large glass for me. While Mrs. Carver watched, apparently hanging upon every word, her husband made inquiries as to what brought me to Portugal, how I knew Settwell, and a variety of other questions meant to measure how much I understood about how business was done in Lisbon. My answers evinced an easy manner, an affect of pretended confidence, and, ultimately, a complete misunderstanding of the situation into which I had thrust myself.
“I hope you will forgive an indiscreet question,” said Mr. Carver, refilling my glass, “but to what degree are you prepared to invest in Portuguese trade? Men come here sometimes with a few hundred pounds, and that is all very well for them, but it is not enough to engage with the Factory.”