The Day of Atonement

by David Liss

  Once back in England, assuming I yet lived, I would confess everything to Roberta. Perhaps she would forgive me. Perhaps she would not. Perhaps it did not matter. She was another man’s wife, after all, and while I had thought we had been deceiving each other, I now understood that I, alone, had been deceiving her. She would, in all likelihood, spurn me. Why should she do anything else when she had no notion of who I truly was? Still I would do what I could to make amends.

  There was nothing to do now but see Settwell and reveal to him how things would proceed. He would not like it. Based on his behavior this morning, he would behave badly. I very much hoped things would not end violently.

  Chapter 25

  Whatever I intended to say to Settwell, I forgot it the moment I approached the house. Neighbors gathered outside, whispering to one another. The old mulatto woman was weeping and pulling at her hair, and an elderly priest stood arguing with Settwell. I had no idea what any of it meant, but I knew it would be a terrible idea to investigate while the priest was still there. I remained in the shadows, watching and silent, for the better part of an hour until the priest left, the neighbors retreated, and Settwell and the wailing mulatto returned to the house.

  I waited another half hour and then approached the door. Trying the handle, I found it open and entered without being announced. Settwell stood in the parlor, drinking wine. His face was a mask of grief.

  “The worst has happened,” he said without looking up. “The Inquisition has taken Mariana.”

  I stood motionless. “Tell me what happened.”

  “An Inquisitor arrived here,” Settwell said, “with an army of priests and nuns. They said that I had proved myself an unfit guardian for my daughter, who had expressed a wish to be raised in a proper Catholic home. Mariana, of course, denied it, but the priests merely said that children were reluctant to admit such things in front of their parents.”

  “Where will they take her?” I asked.

  “Eventually, she shall go to a family that will raise her. For now, I think she is at a nunnery, though they would not tell me which one.”

  I considered my options.

  Then Settwell said, “They know about you.”

  I felt everything inside me grow tight and coiled. “What do you mean?”

  Though I had asked, I already knew what he meant. I was exposed. The Inquisition knew I was an escaped New Christian. They knew I had deceived them from the moment of my arrival in Lisbon. All of my disguises were done. I felt my body course with a curious admixture of panic and joy. The most dangerous men in the city would come for me now, but my fetters were broken. I could meet them without pretense.

  Settwell sighed. “One of the reasons the priest said they could not leave her with me was because I consort with unrepentant Jews. They spoke the name Raposa. They know about you, and they mean to capture you.”

  “You must speak to the consul. He will help you,” I suggested. There were things to do; that was all. There had been things to do before, and there were different things to do now. Only the details had changed.

  “I can expect no help from the Factory!” Settwell shouted. He stomped upon the floor and raised his balled fist at me. “The consul can do nothing in these cases. I’m not the first Englishman whose child has been lost this way. Once the Inquisition takes them, they are gone. They are gone forever, and you know it. Indeed you told me as much earlier.”

  I stared at Settwell. There was more to this story. I had not been looking for signs of deception from him before, but I sought them now, and I was sure he held something back. “You say that, and yet you do not seem to believe that it is so.”

  “There was but one thing I could offer them to make them relent,” Settwell said.

  I drew a long dagger from the secret sheath along my leg. Settwell had surely traded me for his daughter. “You fool,” I said, my voice low and raspy. “You know the Inquisition does not bargain. They mean to have both me and Mariana.”

  “I know that, but I had to take the chance. I had no other choice.”

  “Your choice was to depend upon me to get her back. It is what I do.”

  “It was too great a risk,” Settwell said. “I am sorry.” He looked at the floor, and he would not raise his eyes.

  I examined the room, as if for a sign of what would come next. “What is their plan?”

  “They will take you as you leave the house. Then they will release Mariana.”

  Everything around me became clear. I saw every blemish in each piece of furniture. I saw every line upon Settwell’s face. Each tick of the clock was distinct. A fight was coming. I was determined to make it a good one.

  “You are lucky they bargained for a child,” I said. “If you had betrayed me for any other reason, I would be obliged to kill you.”

  “Once I saved a child for your father. Now you save one for me.”

  “My debt was already canceled,” I hissed, “when you deceived me into ruining an innocent family to feed your greed.”

  Settwell paled further. He looked down and muttered something I could not understand.

  “Yes, I found out about the Carvers. Now give me the banknotes. You’ve earned none of that money, but for your daughter’s sake, I will let you keep some small portion.”

  Settwell shook his head. “The priests knew about the money too. That was the other part of the bargain for getting Mariana back.”

  My identity was exposed, Mariana was taken, and the money vanished. I could not imagine how things might be worse, but I was certain I would find out, and very quickly. I checked the daggers in my sleeves and the one at my ankle. I gripped the knife in my hand more tightly. I had come to this city to do violence, and I had found reasons—good reasons—to postpone my confrontation with the Inquisitor. It could wait no longer. The choice was no longer mine, and what happened in the next few minutes would affect the lives of the Nobrezas, the Settwells, and the Carvers. All of the people I had touched were doomed if I could not unmake my mistakes.

  “What are you doing with that knife?” Settwell asked. “They are going to arrest you. They have soldiers.”

  “They don’t have enough,” I said as I approached the door.

  Settwell moved before me. Not too close, for he was afraid, and he kept his eyes cast downward. “I know I deceived you, and perhaps you are right to be angry, but that was merely business. Do not go out there looking to fight. You will be killed.”

  “There is no avoiding danger. They have come for me, and I cannot go with them.”

  “Then what of Mariana? They will think I’ve warned you. They will punish me by refusing to return her.”

  “They were never going to return her, and you know it. The Inquisition takes. It does not give and it does not bargain.”

  “They will give her back!” Settwell cried. “Consider what you do. It has been years since they have burned anyone. They will arrest you, question you, hold you, but you are an Englishman now. In due course, they will let you go if you but give them names and publicly speak the words they want to hear. It is a little humiliation, but you will survive. You must depend upon that.”

  “No,” I said. “I will not surrender to the Inquisition.”

  “There is no choice,” Settwell nearly shouted. “Have you ever heard of a New Christian resisting the Inquisition when they come to arrest him?”

  “I am not a New Christian,” I told him. “I am a Jew.” I walked out of the house.

  They were, as Settwell had said, waiting for me. Six soldiers in livery, carrying muskets so ancient it was reasonable to hope they might kill their wielders for me. And there, among the soldiers, was Azinheiro, his wide-brimmed black hat perched atop his head, his long black coat fluttering in the breeze. He stood staring at me, his handsome face bright with anticipation. He had spent his entire life hunting Jews. At long last he was about to catch one.

  I stood on Settwell’s stoop and looked at the soldiers. I looked at the priest. I noted the contours of t
he street. I felt the wind and the moisture in the air and examined the light.

  “An old friend of yours, a rather low fellow called Inácio, came to visit me,” the priest said. “He tried to sell me some information. Though of course, we paid nothing for it. It seems you are not a man of the Church after all.”

  “I was once,” I said.

  “This Inácio said you have come here to kill me.”

  “I have,” I said.

  “I am told I arrested your father,” Azinheiro said. “I do not recall it, and I have not checked the records. I’m sure they would refresh my memory. But they say you fled, and now you are back. Now you too will be made to answer for your sins.”

  “No,” I said. “I won’t.”

  “Do you mean to resist so that we must kill you?” Azinheiro asked.

  “I have no intention of being killed,” I said.

  “Come now,” the priest said, and there was something in his voice. Perhaps he sensed the coming violence, like static in the air before a storm. “You cannot fight six armed men and hope to live. Your bravado will not protect you if one of these soldiers fires a musket at you.”

  “Your men can’t fire their muskets if they are dead,” I said.

  One of the soldiers began to cock back the hammer of his weapon. I threw my knife at him, striking below his helmet, directly in his eye. An instant after I threw the blade, I leapt forward, taking hold of the primed musket and pointing it at another soldier, who was lowering his own weapon. I squeezed the trigger, allowing the musket to explode directly at the soldier, whose chest burst into a red mist.

  Twisting out of the way, anticipating and sowing confusion in the tight quarters, I closed the distance with another soldier, grabbing his musket by its snout and pointing it up. I then yanked it free and used it as a club to strike its owner. The blow landed with crushing force, caving in the helmet, and the soldier was down. I turned quickly to another enemy and swung the musket hard and fast into the man’s throat. Something snapped. The soldier gurgled and turned purple in the face as he fell with blood bubbling on his lips.

  I pulled the blade free from the face of the first man I had killed, and it came out of the eye with a sickening slurping nose. I pivoted and released the missile directly at one of the two remaining soldiers. This one stood some fifteen feet away, and was readying his musket. My knife blade penetrated the man’s neck. The weapon discharged at the sky.

  There was but one soldier left, and he was more than twenty feet away. I grabbed one of the still-loaded guns from the ground and held steady for an instant, then dodged for cover just before the other man fired. The shot missed me, and I sprang forward, knowing I had time. When there was but five feet between us, I pulled back the hammer and discharged the ball into the man’s torso.

  The violence had been brutal and merciless. It had also been swift. It had taken less than half a minute to dispatch the six soldiers. In the midst of the fallen men stood Azinheiro, looking stunned. In his long career he had seen men tortured and mutilated. He had overseen brandings and piercings, eyes gouged and fingers broken and severed. He had seen men and women burned alive. Never before had he seen soldiers of the Inquisition struck down while performing their duties. No one had ever dared. Now here were six of them, lying twisted upon the ground in pools of blood. Most were dead, the rest were dying.

  I stood, breathing quickly and steadily, my pounding pulse a distant rhythm. I knew the Inquisitor’s expression. It was the look of a man who discovered, too late, that he had taken on the wrong enemy.

  I had by now retrieved the long knife that I had used to kill the two soldiers. It glistened with blood. Grabbing the priest by one arm, I pressed the blade to Azinheiro’s throat. “You will tell me how to get the girl back to her father, or I will kill you now. And then I will find out from someone else.”

  “You cannot get her back,” Azinheiro said. “She is in my mother’s care, for I could trust no one else. She will be treated well for a few days, until a family can be found. I could get her out for you, but you would have to trust me, and I fear you will not do that.”

  “No,” I agreed. “I cannot trust you.”

  “You can’t win, you know. There is a reason no one has ever dared to harm soldiers of the Inquisition.”

  “The reason is that men have families they will not endanger. I have none. You killed them all, priest. That is why I dare to do what I do.”

  “You do have friends,” the Inquisitor said, his words rushed and stumbling, not risking the passage of an unnecessary second. “The girl, for one. We have determined, thus far, that she is a good Catholic, but what if we are mistaken? What if she is a heretic? What if you have corrupted her with your Jewishness?”

  “She is a child,” I hissed.

  Evidently, the priest saw no point in responding to this. “And then there is the family Nobreza. Even as we speak, soldiers of the Inquisition are at their house—”

  I let go of the priest and ran. I did not know if I could reach Gabriela in time, but I had to try. The priest was going nowhere. I would find him later. He would tell me what I needed to know. And then he would die.

  When I reached the house, I knew it was too late. There was no sign of habitation, and wooden planks had been nailed across the door, a sign I knew too well. I did not have to get close to read the parchment attached to the boards. I knew what it would say. The house now belonged to the Inquisition. Neighbors were out in the streets, talking in excited whispers, horrified at what had happened, delighted it had not been to them, and fearful they would be implicated when the Inquisitors went to work.

  I retreated into a dark alley. The staggering losses of the past twenty-four hours were almost beyond my ability to tally. Enéas was dead. Roberta was ruined, and the money I had stolen from her was in the hands of the Inquisition. Mariana had been taken, and so had Gabriela, her husband, and Luis, a man who was perhaps my only true friend in Lisbon. I had been exposed, and I could not return to my inn lest I be arrested myself. They would not make the mistake of trying to apprehend me with anything less than a small army this time, and I could not be certain of my ability to defeat the next force they sent against me.

  This, then, was the end of the road. I was out of options and out of hope.

  At least that was what the Inquisition would think. Mr. Weaver had always said that my greatest strength was that I did not give a fig for what happened to me. I was willing to take risks other men would shy from because I did not fear the consequences. I knew that this was what separated me from other people. It was, I believed, the darkness that lived inside me. The time to embrace it was now. I would be the monster the Inquisition had created.

  I had never killed anyone before today, but now six men lay dead at my hand. I could not say I felt much in the way of regret. They had stood against me, and they intended to harm my friends. Friends who were now imprisoned in stone and steel, guarded by blade and musket. They resided in a prison from which there had never been any rescue because there had never been any attempt—until now.

  I had a few days. I knew that much. They had to seek a family for Mariana, and she would not be harmed in the meantime. As for the family Nobreza, each of them, like all New Christians, had been taught since childhood how to manipulate the Inquisitorial system—what to say and how to say it to avoid torture and receive the lightest penalty. Only a fool claimed true innocence, for that only made the Inquisitors angry. Instead, they would confess to small crimes—lighting candles on Friday or refraining from work on Saturday. Yes, I refused to eat pork. Yes, I muttered a prayer in Hebrew whose words I did not understand. The Inquisitors devoured these lies like they were sweets.

  Gabriela and Luis and even Eusebio would be well for two or three days. By that point I would know what to do. I needed only time and resolve.

  I sat down in the dark alley and lowered my head onto my arms, folded across my knees. Anyone watching me, knowing what I had endured that day, would think me gi
ving in to despair, but it was not so. I did not weep. Instead, I began to think and to plan. I did not know precisely what I would do, but I knew a large number of men were going to die, and if all went well, I would not be one of them.

  Chapter 26

  I had little hope that my plan would work. The boy I paid to deliver the note was a stranger, and might well simply pocket the money. Even if the note was received, I could not depend upon its recipient coming to my aid.

  If only I had Enéas here to help me, I thought. That faithful boy who had trusted me, who was now dead because I had, in turn, trusted the wrong people. Again and again, I destroyed those I touched—the kind, the well meaning, the innocent. I wanted Enéas’s help, of course, but what I needed more was to believe that I was somehow worthy of his loyalty.

  I was in a bagnio in the Alfama. It was a terrible place of crooked floors and warped walls. The building smelled of boiled onions and unemptied chamber pots. The woman I had paid for sat in the corner of the room, her arms hugging her knees. She was the prettiest in the house, and the proprietress said she was the prettiest in the Alfama. It might have been so. She was tall, olive-skinned, and green-eyed, with curling coal-black hair. She’d smiled at me and showed me her white, even teeth. I had taken her upstairs without further comment. When I entered the room, I told her to leave me alone. She had done so, but the look of terror on her face made it clear she thought I was a madman.

  After the fight with the Inquisition soldiers, I had bought new clothes—plain woolen trousers and a shirt and a vest. A wide-brimmed hat, I hoped, concealed much of my face. I wanted to look like an ordinary Portuguese, and I suppose I did, but when I caught a glimpse of myself in the room’s mirror, my crazed expression frightened even myself.

  I had to do something. I had to do many things, but how could I? How could I wrest Gabriela and her family from the Inquisition? How could I find and free Mariana? And how could I save Roberta when the money I had taken from her was gone?