God's Fires

by Patricia Anthony

  “…she is to appear and answer an inquiry. Speaking in general, Senhor Castanheda, it is always best for the accused to abjure. Privately, I admit that only a de levi is safe. An abjuration de vehementi carries with it death as punishment for relapse. Marta is young. And her heresy is grievous.” He pursed his lips, toying with an ink-stained quill. “I believe it interesting, Guilherme, that although the Holy Office has the ecclesiastical power to pursue a fleeing accused, in practicality they have little means. This tidbit of information, as you understand, passes only between us.”

  Between them fell a sad taut silence, like that before battle. Through it, Pessoa could hear the slow march of Castanheda’s breath. Suddenly the man hissed, “Damn you, Pessoa. You speak like a turd-tongued lawyer.”

  “Yes. That is exactly what I am.”

  Without raising his eyes, Pessoa pushed past, wrestled the bolt open, and stalked out of the house. It was only when he reached the street that he found he could breathe again.

  He shoved his hat on his head and walked down the cobblestone road, away from the Castanheda house, away from the Teixeiras’, away from it all. Townsfolk stared as he passed. Dishearteningly few called out good day. After two blocks he noticed a child trying to keep pace. When he recognized who it was, his feet—his heart—stumbled. Rodrigo Castanheda.

  “Marta stole my toy soldier and put a dress on him and pretended he was a doll, and now she won’t give him back.”

  Pessoa slowed to a stroll. “Did she.”

  “Uh-huh. She comes into my room all the time and steals things.”

  “I see.”

  They rounded a corner, where the smaller of the town’s two bakeshops filled the street with the smell of warm yeast.

  “She pulls my hair and yells at me, and breaks things and tells papai that I did it. She doesn’t ever study her lessons, not like I do. And when the tutor asks her questions, she cheats.”

  Pessoa walked, nodding politely, past a street vendor and a trio of shopping women. They did not nod back.

  “Is that enough, father?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Rodrigo bounced excitedly on his toes. “Is that enough heresy to arrest her?”

  Pessoa stopped dead.

  “Are you all right?” the boy asked. “You’re not going to faint like Aunt Maria Perpetua?”

  Pessoa laughed. When his legs were steady, he started walking again.

  “I can stand on my head. Watch, father. Watch.” The boy bent, propped his hands on the cobbles, and promptly tumbled ass over end.

  Pessoa put out a hand to help him up, but the boy leaped to his feet. “Better against a wall.” He shrugged. His hose had tom. His shirt was mud-stained at its hem. “I can stand on my hands forever. Better than Julio or Alonzo. And when I’m on my hands and I can’t fight back, Maria pinches me. I pray for the angels to throw her into the pit, but it hasn’t happened yet. If you sin, you’re supposed to go to Hell, isn’t that right, Father Inquisitor?”

  Pessoa hoped he looked contemplative rather than entertained. “Well, Rodrigo, even though we may aspire to justice, one should not pray for another’s damnation. I don’t think that’s quite right.”

  The boy shoved his hands into his pockets.

  “Besides, this seems a matter for your earthly father, not your heavenly one. Why don’t you talk to him?”

  Rodrigo kicked at a pebble. Something in his eyes. Something… .

  “Does he beat you? Your father?”

  His shrug turned Pessoa’s chest to ice.

  More sharply: “Does he?”

  Beyond a cluster of tile roofs gray-green hills hunched. Pessoa and the boy walked past a dusky-leaved stand of laurel, then a granite wall speckled with orange lichens.

  “She makes him cry,” the boy said.

  “Who?”

  “Marta. She makes papai cry.”

  Pessoa’s thoughts floundered. “So he does hit your sister.”

  “No, no, Father Inquisitor. He promised mamae. She said never hit my children, and he promised he wouldn’t, and then she died. Sometimes papai gets so mad that he lifts his hand, but Marta starts yelling, “There! There in the corner! Don’t you see her?’ and she’s talking about mamae, and she pretends she can see her, the way the witch did.”

  “The herbalist saw your mother?”

  “Uh-huh. Big and bright as life, she said. It was when papai got sick, and everybody thought he would die of the brain fever because he was seeing ghosts. The witch said she saw mamae wearing a sky-blue scarf with gold roses, and papai said that was the scarf he bought for her in Spain. But he lost it, you see? No one but papai ever saw the scarf, so I think maybe the witch really sees ghosts. But Marta talks about visions all the time. She says she sees everything.”

  Pessoa halted. From down the winding street came echoes of a trickling fountain. A yellow strawflower bloomed in a crack in a stucco wall. “Never repeat that story,” he said.

  “But—”

  “The story about the herbalist seeing the ghost. It would be a grievous sin. Rodrigo, to repeat that.”

  A cry went up from the next street. Approaching footsteps pounded. Pessoa wondered if it was God, coming to strike him down for his lie. Then from around the corner came a dark blur and a bruising collision of flesh. Pessoa staggered.

  It was Castanheda. “You black-frocked bastard! Get away from my son!”

  Hot wine-scented breath bathed Pessoa’s face. At the edge of his vision he saw the glint of a blade. Something burned along his ribs. Pessoa tried to cry out; but the street reeled and he toppled, warmth gushing from his side.

  Above him he could hear Rodrigo’s pleading shouts of “No, no, pai!”

  He heard other voices, too. “Malandro! See what you have done!”

  “Trouble comes when you kill a priest. Bad as breaking a mirror.”

  Pessoa tried to rise, but he was weak. Dice. Say it. Say it quickly, before it was too late. Not the Act of Contrition, but a simple statement, long overdue: Credo.

  If God existed, He was feeling Pessoa’s pain. He knew his sick fear, and could cure it. I believe, Pessoa thought, and waited, anxious, for an answer.

  A chiding: “Don’t you remember when we had to have Spanish inquisitors, Senhor Castanheda? And no one could understand them when they spoke? This one’s not so bad.”

  Pessoa rolled over on his good side and looked up into a foggy circle of faces. He opened his mouth to bid someone call Luis, but had not breath to speak.

  “Sugar water. That’s all he needs. Quick, girl. Go bring the father—”

  “A scratch. Seen worse in the war.”

  “You seen dead men in the war.”

  A chorus of laughter followed. Someone bent and gently pressed a cloth to his wound. “Go home, Guilherme,” the man said. “You’ve been cause of enough trouble.” Pessoa squinted to bring the face of the speaker into focus. Cândido Torres.

  Pessoa licked his lips. Credo in unum Deum, he thought, thought it against all logic. Thought it so hard that it seemed he had cried it aloud. Cold sank into him, bone-deep. Shivering, he held tight to Cândido’s sleeve. “Luis.”

  “No, just Cândido. What’s the matter? You hit your head when you fell?”

  One God. Patrem omnipotentum, Almighty Father. Yet did He know of milk puke and teaching colors? What sort of father was He?

  Whether God or Hell existed, Pessoa could not take the chance, could not afford to die with mortal sins on his soul. “Call Luis. I need extreme unction.”

  “O, I don’t think—”

  “Call him! I feel Death’s cold. Each breath comes labored.”

  “You’re fearful,” Cândido said.

  “Of course I’m fearful, you misbegotten imbecile!” Pessoa bit his lip. Bad enough to die apostate…

  “No. I mean that’s how fear feels, father. Known it myself before a battle. Thought I was dying, too.” Cândido grasped him by the shoulders of his cassock and hauled him to his feet. “Come
on, I’ll walk you home.”

  Afonso sought him by torchlight at Caneças and Camarões; as the sun rose he asked for news in Almargem do Bispo. What seemed simple had become as perplexing as finding the end of a rainbow. Still he kept on, for it was not Castelo Melhor or Pedro who had been chosen. God had reached out to the least of His servants and said, Come.

  He heard the moaning of the cows of Santa Eulalia long before he saw them. Their pain tolled down the rounded hills, sounded in the grassy valley. At a bend in a stream he came upon the herd, udders swollen and leaking milk. And there was the rest of the fair: the Gypsies, wagonloads of carrots and parsnips, crates of chickens, live rabbits and their hanging dead.

  In the fetlock-deep grass ahead of Afonso, the banner carrier reined his horse to a stop. The flanking guards halted. Merchants silenced their cries.

  And when he had the crowd’s attention, the banner carrier said, “The king.”

  Afonso kicked Doçura forward. “I come to ask your help.”

  Cloth merchant looked round-eyed to shopper, shopper looked to butcher, then everyone looked at Afonso, and he grew so afraid of their attention that he trembled.

  There was a little boy with a spotted apple standing beyond the crowd. To make the words come easier, Afonso kept his gaze on him. “Last night there was a pretty star. And it traveled south to north, and when it reached some point, a finger of light came down.”

  The boy’s eyes were brown and still. Heedless of worms, he took a great, cheek-stuffing bite of fruit.

  Afonso asked, “Did you see it?”

  The boy nodded, chewing.

  Afonso grabbed the pommel of his saddle and dismounted. A guard came forward, but Afonso gently pushed the help away. He squatted until he and the boy were face-to-face. “You would not lie to me,” he said.

  From the gathering of shoppers, a woman came and stood watching.

  Afonso spoke softly so that only the boy would hear. “I went on a quest,” he told the boy. “Just like Don Quixote. And only a little while into it, God made me choose whether I would fight for good, and I chose wrong. Then God made me choose between my brother and Him, and I chose right. Because I love my brother very much, but all Portugal depends on me. So that’s why I must ask you: did the star come here?”

  When the boy shook his head, Afonso grabbed his arms. “Then where?”

  The boy twisted in Afonso’s grip and pointed to his mother. Her hands flew to her face. “What is it?” she cried. “What has my son done?”

  “No. The star,” the boy said. “The man wants to know where the pretty star went last night.”

  One by one, the merchants and the Gypsies and the shoppers and the boy’s mother all turned and pointed. They pointed the same direction the boy had: up the stream, through a gathering of chestnut trees and oaks.

  North.

  Cândido had pulled off Pessoa’s cassock and settled him into his cot when Berenice poked her head in the rectory door. “Castanheda stabbed me,” Pessoa told her.

  Cândido looked to see who had arrived and, mindful of hexes, looked away.

  Head lowered, meek as a nun, she entered. She knelt by the side of his cot. “You should have seen, Berenice,” he told her. “Fierce and maddened, the man was. Totally unreasonable.”

  She pulled the blanket to his waist and began to peel off Cândido’s wrappings. Pessoa ventured a look at himself. Beneath the blood-stiff cloth lay a scabbed welt. Surely that could not be all of it—not a wound that had felled him. He craned his head for a better look.

  She pushed him down. She washed him with marigold water, and applied a poultice until the bitter herbs in it made his wound numb.

  “I was minding my own business, can you imagine it? Doing nothing, Berenice—really nothing. A few moments before, I had actually tried to help him. Then the man attacks me right in front of a crowd, and no one cared enough to come to my aid.”

  Cândido crossed his arms. He cut a heroic figure, and postured as if he knew it. His quilted tunic was unbuttoned nearly to his waist. His collar ruff was loose. His kidskin boots hugged fashionably muscular legs. “Check his head, woman,” Cândido said. “I believe he hit it when he fainted.”

  “Fainted? Fainted?” Pessoa’s face flamed with rage. His head pounded. “Not likely! I slipped! And I tell you, had my heel not caught on a cobble—”

  Berenice got to her feet and, carrying her basket, went to the fire. “I’ll steep you some nerve tea.”

  “Beata Maria! It would help my nerves to know that that infestation of Dominicans in the Holy Office cared enough about my mission to send me an armed guard. Now see what has happened! I was forced to depend on locals who care not whether I live or die.”

  Cândido dropped his arms so fast that Pessoa recoiled. Hand resting on his sword hilt, he walked to the cot. “Guilherme and I will have a talk, father. From now on you should go nowhere without me.”

  Pessoa spent his sarcasm against Cândido’s boots. “Oh, yes, or—who knows?—I might be stabbed.”

  “Exactly so. I’m glad you see it. Well, I’m off to see Father Soares and make the final prison arrangements.” Cândido marched smartly out of the rectory.

  A slice of afternoon brightened the open doorway. Light puddled on the floor tiles. Berenice came to him, holding a steaming cup. She knelt, lifted his head, and brought the cup to his lips. The tea tasted of mint and chamomile and bitters. It left a nettle prickle on his tongue.

  He breathed in the musk of her skin, the lye soap smell of her clothes. He luxuriated in her warmth. “If I had died, would you miss me?” He rubbed his palm over the soft mound of her breast.

  She slapped at him.

  Her nipple was hardening. He teased it into an erect nub. “Would you?”

  She let go his head, and he fell hard onto the pillow. He thrust his hand into her lap. “Close the door,” he whispered. “Life is short. Lie by me and give me comfort.”

  She pushed at him. “Soares will be here. And Cândido with him. And then what?”

  He tugged her blouse free, put his hand under, and dallied with what he was able to reach. “They’re gone to arrange a prison. I ache for you, Berenice. Lie by me. Only your attentions can give me ease.”

  “Wait. All right. All right. Close your eyes.”

  Pleased, and more than a bit surprised, he obeyed. The quiet of the room was barely disturbed by a delicious rustle of clothing. He felt a tug at his blanket and the slide of dainty fingers across his belly. Warm, slick with grease, her hand slid over his pau and milked a groan from him.

  “Ah.” He shivered. His ovos felt in danger of bursting. “Ah. Faster.”

  Up and down her fingers went, root to tip. Blankets flapped. Anyone passing the door might glance into the rectory and see. “Ah yes. Yes,” he breathed. “Harder.” He was ready to explode, yet he held back, savoring the danger. His pau tingled. Tingled madly. Went hot, then cold.

  His eyes flew open. Berenice slid her hand from out the blankets. The room stank of goose grease and pungent herbs. “That should help.” she said.

  He grabbed himself. His “stick” was dead as its namesake. “How could you?” he cried.

  “So you can get some rest.”

  “Rest? I will lie in want for some little jolt of pleasure.”

  She wiped her hands on her apron. “I visited Maria Elena.”

  He pulled on himself fitfully. The flesh between his legs seemed as though it belonged to another. “How long will this last?”

  “You asked me to go, you remember?”

  “My pan has died, Berenice. How can you talk of aught else?”

  Her lowered gaze. That secret smile. The custody of the eyes the town’s superstition had taught her. “Blessed are those that mourn.”

  “Muliercula! Venefica! How long?”

  Her body shook with laughter.

  “Here I lie … ah, perhaps it is here that you want me. I was told you visited Guilherme Castanheda after the death of his wife. You sa
w her ghost. Is that all you saw? Perhaps you met him at the well, and perhaps there was more seduction in the meeting than rape. Did Guilherme try to kill me for Marta’s sake, Berenice? Or for yours?”

  Berenice snatched his ear and twisted it hard. He cried out in pain. She put her face close to his—kissingly near—bitingly near. “What misery is yours, Manoel?” she hissed. “Fed by the Church. Clothed by the Church. Suckled at the teat of the Holy Office. A scratch along your side that would not make a child cry for long. All the while Maria Elena lies abed, her nose crushed, her ribs not scratched, but broken.”

  Her fingernail dug into his earlobe, but he didn’t dare complain. Her eyes weren’t hot and angry as he might have expected; they were cool and distant as the meat between his legs.

  “She will die, Manoel.” Berenice loosed his ear. The lobe was numb and cold; then the blood rushed back and it began, sickeningly, to throb. He wondered if, when feeling returned, the rest of him would feel the same.

  “She will die all because from one day to the next,” she said, “the girl has ceased to be virgin.”

  More goose, father Andrade?” the elderly Marquis de Paredes asked. Alerted, a footman stepped to the table, armed with platter and serving fork. The bird had been roasted in lemon and savory. Its skin was browned to a crisp. The slices oozed seasoned juices. A small mortification—Bernardo waved the offer away. For he had seen the message sent to Monsignor that morning: an appearance of angels not sixty kilometers distant. And if God heard Bernardo’s prayer, Bernardo would see them, too. Te igitur, clementissime Pater…

  “You barely eat.” The marquis turned to Monsignor. “Look. The young father barely eats.”

  … per Jesum Christum Filium tuum Dominium nostrum…

  Monsignor popped a forkful of chestnut stuffing into his mouth. “So by destroying the sovereignty of the Church, do we set ourselves up for Hell? Is that logical self-interest?”

  “I don’t really know,” the marquis said in a voice as spidery as lace.

  Bernardo closed his eyes and let the voices, the room, the world slip away. Supplices rogamus…

  “Why doesn’t he eat? Is it the goose? Is the goose poorly cooked?” The marquis patted Bernardo’s hand.