God's Fires

by Patricia Anthony

  The angels. God’s light in the sky. Caelestia replet laetitia. Bernardo spoke into his napkin. “No, no. Quite tasty.”

  The marquis pulled the footman over, speared a slice of breast, and dropped it onto Bernardo’s plate. The old man’s smile was devilish. “Oh, yesterday was Friday, father. Fish, to be sure. Only fish. Pike and sturgeon and cod. But today, meat! If not goose, then the venison.” He dropped the fork back on the platter with a clang and motioned to the footman. “Get the venison, and be quick.”

  Word of the wonder that the king and his soldiers had witnessed, the sight that had sent an entire company to its knees. A tingle shot from the base of Bernardo’s spine—the same tingle that came to him during prostration. Se libet. O memento me, Domine.

  “Hobbes,” Monsignor said.

  “Ah?” the marquis asked.

  “The rule of Leviathan—French idiocy to follow where that madman goes.”

  “Ah.”

  Bernardo put his hands in his lap and dug his nails into his own flesh until the small pain cleared his mind. Memento me.

  The footman arrived with the haunch of venison. The marquis carved two thick pink slices and put them onto Bernardo’s plate.

  “Eat,” the old man urged. “Eat, father. Put some meat on those bones.” He leaned toward Monsignor. “Watch this boy’s chamber pot for worms.”

  Monsignor dropped his fork. “Castelo Melhor…”

  The king and all his company, awash in that light.

  The old man elbowed Bernardo from his reverie. “Vain as a rooster,” the old man said. “Beard as thin as a boy’s. He cuts hairs from his head and pastes them in that mustache of his, you ever notice? Mark my words—he’ll go bald before he’s thirty.”

  “It seems to me…” Monsignor raised his voice, snaring even Bernardo’s attention. “My dear marquis!”

  “Um?”

  “It seems to me,” Monsignor said, “that foreign ideas have turned the rest of Europe into a Babel of philosophies, everyone shouting at one another: Descartes and Hobbes. The English with their Calvinists. The French bedeviled by their Huguenots.”

  “Can’t trust the French,” the old marquis agreed. “You know that, father?” His face was translucent, as if his soul was bursting, luminous, from his skin.

  Bernardo returned the old man’s smile. Sun cascaded from the high windows, threw splendor across the linen tablecloth, the candelabras. Glory sparkled in the silver sugar bowl.

  “Only God keeps us from anarchy, wouldn’t you say?” Monsignor finished his plum sauce. The footman stepped forward and filled his plate again.

  Bernardo marked it: three more flames for gluttony in Monsignor’s ledger. Then his thoughts returned to the miracle and his hand trembled so, he had to set his wineglass down. The old marquis peered at him sharply.

  Monsignor said in a voice loud enough to capture the old man’s wandering notice, “The world is turned upside down. What are we—a noble unfairly stripped of his power, and a poor cleric stripped of his Vatican’s solicitude—to do?”

  “Perhaps we might—” the old man locked eyes with Bernardo. The sweet vagueness in them had disappeared “—revolt?”

  The voices of Soares and Cândido awoke him. Pessoa’s head felt stuffy, his mouth furred. Sensation had returned to his pau: a bothersome stickiness. He ran his tongue over his teeth and asked. “What o’clock?”

  Cândido answered. “Past eight. You slept like the dead.” He laughed. “You snored like a goat.”

  “Some dinner, Manoel?” Soares asked. “Rabbit stew.”

  Pessoa coughed and sat up. Night thickened at the open door. A lamp cast its ruddy light over the table: an iron pot, a triangle of hard cheese, the remains of a loaf. He saw Berenice’s empty cup by his cot and memory of her smell, her touch, made his pau flex its muscle.

  “We’ve already eaten, but we’ve left some for you.”

  Pessoa shook the sediment of Berenice’s drug from his mind. He stood, wrapping the blanket around him to hide his pau’s enthusiasm.

  “Prison’s ready, Father Inquisitor.” Cândido said. “You’ll like it. We used the old inn, the one that burned. There’s a room for the inquest. Below, you have stout iron bars, and we laid in good fresh straw for the floor. There are windows, even. Nice and bright. Father and I chased the rats out.”

  “Excellent. We will go to Castanheda’s house, on the morrow, sometime past two o’clock, and take Marta Castanheda into custody. Then we go to the Teixeira house, and take Maria Elena as well.” Pessoa put on his undershirt and, seeing that he was covered, let the blanket fall. He turned. They were watching him.

  Soares asked, “Will we not hold an inquiry, then?”

  “Yes, Luis. As I have explained, we will hold some form of informal inquiry.”

  “Tomorrow is Sunday,” Soares said.

  Pessoa clapped hand to forehead. “O, Monday. Monday it is, then.” He bent and rummaged in his bag for an extra cassock, found one, and dressed.

  “Where are you bound?” Cândido asked. “See the prison? You can do that Sunday afternoon.”

  Pessoa turned, buttoning. “I thought perhaps a walk.”

  Soares, studying the tabletop all too intently, gathered bread crumbs with a fingertip.

  “Wouldn’t do that,” Cândido said. “Your choice, though. Father Soares: I’m headed home before the wife locks me out. And Father Inquisitor: I’d ask myself if a dip in the oil pot’s worth my life. If it is—so be it. I’ve felt the need as fiercely myself.” Chuckling, he walked out the door.

  Soares scrutinized his fingertip, then rubbed it clean with his thumb.

  “Just a walk, Luis.”

  Soares nodded.

  “I suppose I shall take my dagger.” Pessoa took the sheathed weapon from his bag. The handle fit his palm as naturally as a Teixeira’s glass goblet, as Berenice’s breast.

  “A lamp also?” Soares asked.

  “Perhaps not.” Whether in the safety of Berenice’s house or unsafe on the road, it was best not to be seen. Pessoa cut a crumbling slice of cheese, took the rest of the loaf, and walked out into the night.

  Above the black hills, sparkling heaven arched. Pessoa walked beneath the shelter of stars, through a nave of dark hedgerows and past orderly cabbage pews. Around one hill and up another, then beyond the edge of town and past intermittent farmhouses where lamplight gleamed from windows.

  At the clotted dark by a grove of trees, he left the known quantity of the path for the surprises of the hillside. He stuffed the rest of the bread into his mouth and, lifting his cassock, climbed his way through the grass. Just over the lip of the hill, he stopped.

  The windows were open in the small house below. In the glow of a lamp, he saw Berenice seated at her table, her head bent. She was studying a child’s arm.

  Pessoa sat on a boulder and watched her. The frame of the window formed a puppet play, a silent one. Berenice got up, walked out of sight. To her hearth? She came back with bandages and a knife. Then the child’s mouth opened to blackness and her small arms flailed. The mother came forward to hold her down.

  Berenice was more deft than Castanheda. One touch left a crimson splash on the child’s arm.

  Did she love him? Castanheda was everyday—a constant.

  In the puppet-play window a mother, with lowered head, offered coins. Head lowered, Berenice accepted. How could the townsfolk not admire that exotic face? How could they help staring into those luminous eyes? Did Castanheda ever truly see? Even from that distance she had the power to stop Pessoa’s heart.

  The child and mother left, arm in bandaged arm. Their lamp cast a circlet of light along the road, as if they carried all world, all safety with them. Berenice extinguished her lamp and snuffed her candle to save it. He had forgotten to pay her, had never brought the food he promised.

  She closed the shutters, and still he sat, studying the edge of hearth glow about the square where wood failed to meet wall. About him, constellations rose and set
. Somewhere down the hill a dog yapped twice, then fell silent. The night smelled of bruised grass and sheep dung.

  He rose, his knees creaking. The wound on his side was a sullen complaint. Lifting his hem, he stumbled up the dark hillside and started down.

  There he stopped, for an apparition halted him. A radiant star shone as large as a plum. So bright—O dear God, so unexpectedly sweet—that he blinked back grateful tears. Exul-tate. The star shone its circlet of warmth onto the far hill—a spot of safety, just for him.

  Silent and majestic, glory sailed near, filling the heavens with joy. Ave. Ave. Not once, but twice He had shown Pessoa a miracle, that patient loving Father who wiped sin’s milk puke, who taught all colors, who forgave doubt.

  Unaccustomed humility felled him. Pessoa dropped to his knees. The star swelled until it seemed to be God Himself shouting: Credis hoc?

  Credo. Belief tolled through Pessoa like a bell. He lifted his hands, his eyes streaming.

  The star sailed over his beseeching fingers. He turned and watched it go. It shone wonder on Cândido’s vineyards and lent splendor to a lacy field of mustard, before dashing itself loudly against the side of a hill.

  Lest the screams wake the monastery, Bernardo forced a cloth into Monsignor’s mouth. He checked under the covers and gauged the temperature of the pig’s bladder. The water in it was still hot.

  “More senna tea.” Bernardo urged. “And hold the pig’s bladder closely.”

  Monsignor’s eyes bulged. He spat out the cloth.

  “Its heat relaxes the stomach.”

  Monsignor flailed, in his exertions catching Bernardo a stinging slap across the cheek. “Pray for me!” Monsignor cried.

  “Shhh.” Bernardo dipped a cloth into the brass basin by his chair, and laid it, cool and dripping, over Monsignor’s forehead.

  Monsignor flung it off. It hit the wall with a smack. “My confessor. Be quick.”

  “It is merely an indigestion.”

  Monsignor grappled for Bernardo’s hand, held it tight. “Heed me. Take up your dagger—”

  Bernardo tried his best to pull away, but Monsignor’s grip was fierce.

  “I beg you. Take up your dagger. Bernardo, and pierce my side. I pray you before God. Open me as a shepherd would a foundered sheep.”

  Bernardo dipped his free hand in the cool water and wiped the sweat from Monsignor’s face.

  “Let me die, then! Better the verum corpus God has promised. I beseech you. If you love me, you will open my stomach, lest I stab myself and be buried a suicide.”

  “Turn over. I’ll rub your back.”

  With a whimper. Monsignor turned aside. Bernardo opened the jar of unguent, pulled the linen nightshirt up, and rubbed the brown, pungent salve into Monsignor’s dimpled skin. He kneaded the meaty shoulders. He pressed his thumb into the loose-fleshed back, along the buried knobs of the spine.

  The tincture of poppy had begun its work. Monsignor’s thick-tongued plea stirred the candles on the nightstand. “Domine, clamavi ad Te.”

  Bernardo offered response: “Et sanasti me.”

  Neither healed nor soothed yet. Monsignor groaned, inarticulate and sonorous as a bullock.

  The salve smelled of camphor and eucalyptus. The fumes pricked tears from Bernardo’s eyes, so that when he blinked, the candle flames were magnified and all the darkness driven out.

  Small daily wonders. Could Monsignor not see? Had gluttony and pride so dulled him? Bernardo worked, impressing charity into the skin, planting obedience.

  He thought of angels; the king and all his company, struck dumb as Bethlehem’s shepherds. Memorare me. Domine.

  “Like Luke,” Bernardo said.

  The large-pored flesh quivered, giving voice to another dull-witted animal moan. The candle flames fluttered, routing shadows.

  “How like the story of the angels, when they said to fear not. And yet the shepherds, I’m sure, fell to their knees. There is naught else to do when in the presence of angels.”

  A sound at the door made Bernardo turn. Death stood in the shadows. It pushed back its cowl and Bernardo recognized the face, the tonsure. Friar da Costa held up a small lantern and said, “Still not asleep?”

  Bernardo wiped his face with his sleeve, careful to keep the salve from his eyes. “The tincture of poppy settles him. Near morning, the senna tea should unstop his bowels.”

  “Deus gratia. For his moans down the corridors are terrible. In the darkness, it puts me in mind of a haunting.” He chuckled. “And, maxima gratia, my duties end at matins. I need not face the terror of that chamber pot. There is another message.”

  Bernardo’s pulse quickened. He held out his hand. Next to him Monsignor let out a loud snick, then a snore.

  Friar da Costa gestured with his chin. “For him. Given me by a soldier with orders that I put it in Monsignor’s hand.”

  “My hand is Monsignor’s.”

  “And your ears, too? For he will cuff them when he spies the seal is broken.”

  “Will you wake him? Or stay?”

  With a snort of laughter and a wry shake of the head, the friar came forward and put the envelope into Bernardo’s waiting palm. “I pray you note that the seal is intact.”

  Double swans. The old marquis’s seal. Bernardo slipped the envelope into his pocket. “So noted.”

  Still the friar lingered. “For I fear the Holy Office, but I fear the nobles and the crown even more.” At last he turned and, sandals flapping, made his way to the door.

  When the friar was gone, Bernardo took the envelope from his pocket and split the seal. He opened the page and read.

  O Castelo caira.

  Ora por nos.

  Bernardo rose, took the letter to the candelabra on the nightstand, and set the thick ivory colored paper alight. He put it in Monsignor’s pewter dish and watched it burn to ash. Neither kings nor angels, but Bernardo was not likely to forget the message:

  The Castle will fall.

  Pray for us.

  The clamor of the star’s fall brought candles to burn in windows. Three ruddy sparks bobbed through the Torres vineyard, moving fast. Borne on the wind was the sound of hoofbeats and excited shouts: the voices of Cândido and his sons. They rode toward a burning coastline of grass, an orange archipelago in night’s vastness.

  Pessoa would have gone home, but the ruins of the comet drew him, its pull the lure of the extraordinary. Ahead, the three embers flew up the ebon slope. More shouted words, man’s and boys’, went astray amid the echoing hills. One ember drifted down the steep incline, gaining speed, to be lost momentarily among the trees. A wild crescendo of hoofbeats, and on the road below, Pessoa caught a glimpse of a lathered horse and an upheld lantern and a frightened face. Then Cândido’s middle boy was gone, leaving questions in his wake.

  Had the comet fallen on a house? Was someone hurt? Dying? Pessoa quickened his pace, for what did it matter if the fingers that anointed the forehead, that closed the eyes, had no conviction of Heaven? Long before the Jesuits discovered Pessoa’s aptitude for law, long before the Holy Office claimed him, the gift of comfort formed his contract with the Church. I will deceive, and give this thing, he had promised, arms outspread on the flagstones. And in return, you will feed me. Never had he asked for aught else, except for some harrowing nights when blackness squatted over the hills and wolves bayed on the road and the prayers he uttered dissipated like incense.

  Pessoa gave obedience and never expected faith. Tonight he learned how much he longed for it—enough longing to seek purpose from the unexpected, to look for pattern in chaos. Enough longing to send him, weeping, to his knees.

  He rushed down the penultimate hill, skirting the next. The wind shifted, flinging pungent grass smoke into his face. Wrapped in lantern glow, Cândido’s eldest stood, holding the reins of two horses, the grassy incline around him sparkling like mica-laden earth. Beside him, children.

  Pessoa cupped his hands to his mouth. “Mario Torres!”

  The boy held
up his lamp, looking wildly into the dark. “Who calls?”

  “Father Pessoa!” Head down, stumbling on stones. Pessoa hurried. “How many?”

  The boy had still not sighted him. He stared at a place to Pessoa’s right. “What?”

  “How many felled?”

  “One. I think.” came the answer.

  Another child? Or their mother? Around Mario the pair of children milled. Whose children were they? Pessoa thought of his own inert seed and felt such a rush of protectiveness that it made his eyes swim. And then he was closer, and while his mind was still saying “children.” his eyes were telling him no.

  He might have fled then, but it was too late, for one of the child-shaped things turned to look. Pessoa stumbled to a halt, adrift in those eyes, at peace.

  It mattered not that the face was a smooth mask, nor that the eyes seemed carved from polished jet. It mattered not that the hands were not hands at all, nor that the whole of the creature was so whimsically improbable. The only importance was, for that instant, the night was neither dark nor lonely.

  Then Mario said. “Beware their eyes, father. They tell stories.”

  Pessoa tore his gaze away, his heart thundering. “Miserere nobis! What manner of creatures are they?”

  From the pall of smoke Cândido came, bearing an inert bundle. When he reached the glow of his son’s lantern, he set his burden down. “Heard the clamor, father? I’ve sent for constables. There’s a silver acorn over the lip of the hill that birthed these things. Imps, you suppose?”

  Two living creatures were wandering about, their silver garb as tight as skin. The third lay where Cândido had put him, fanciful eyes open to the heavens. Pessoa came closer, despite dread of questions and more fear of answers.

  “Watch your step, father. There’s comet litter about.”

  Confetti. Gold leaf. Pieces of pewter. Pessoa picked his way through the clutter and knelt beside the fallen child. “Mario.” he said. “Quickly. Get me water. And oil, if you can.”

  “But…”

  “Quickly! Is there no stream nearby?”