Mario dropped his argument and ran off through the dark.
Cândido said, “Don’t think water will do much good, father. Unless you believe he’s asleep, not dead.”
“I mean to baptize him. And grant extreme unction.”
“Why?”
“I must.” Because it was all that he knew to do. Besides, any child of God deserved that much welcome to life, that much eulogy leaving it.
The two other creatures still roamed the hill. One picked up a bit of shiny metal, acquisitive and curious as a magpie. But watching them was too much a strain of logic, and Pessoa looked away.
“So. Demons? Faeries? Where do you think they come from, father? Heaven or Hell?”
Two legs, two arms, one head. Nearly human in the shadows, but disorienting in the light. “Borneo,” he said.
“Um?”
The day had held far too many embarrassing misconceptions. Pessoa would not allow circumstance to make a fool of him again. “Really, Cândido. Let us not give in to superstition. They are odd, yes, but still flesh and blood.” Flesh slick as oiled paper, strange and cool to the touch. An open wound, and blood like milk. Pessoa wiped his fingers on his cassock and put his trembling hands in his lap. “Obviously from Borneo or Brazil. Or Africa. Yes. Perhaps Africa. I’ve read stories of giants in the African highland, with black hair all over their bodies and silver stripes down their backs. And men no taller than my waist who kill by blowing through their mouths. And men tall as trees who can converse with cattle. Why, these creatures may look curious, but for God’s sake, Cândido, can you not see they live and breathe?” His voice had risen to an indignant bellow.
Cândido shrugged. “Imp looks dead to me. Might be hard to tell, though.”
Then Mario came, bearing water in his cap. With whispers, Pessoa blessed the soaked wool. He wrung the cap over the Borneo man’s head, and watched drops slide the smooth gray slope. “In nomine Patris.”
Behind him came a clamor of raised voices and Cândido’s angry, “Jorge! I told you to bring Marcio and João. Half the damned village is here!”
The boy whimpered, “I couldn’t help it. They all followed.”
Pessoa did not look up. Undaunted, he stroked the cross with his thumb, forcing his hand to be steady, compelling his lips through the benediction: “…et Filii et Spiritus Sancti…”
Then a woman screamed, “Kill them!”
Pessoa shot to his feet, holy water blessing his cassock, the ground. In the light of the torches, Dona Inez had started for the nearest imp, lunging like a fearsome demon, moles abristle, hair wild, garden hoe raised like a pike. “Lustful, lustful angels! I saw! God threw you out of Heaven!”
Cândido wrested the hoe away from her. “Not fallen angels, you idiot woman. Can’t you see they’re just men from Borneo?” He waved the hoe at the crowd. “Go home. Nothing more to see here. Go on home. These are my prisoners now, under arrest for destruction of private property and trespass.”
It was late in the evening when Afonso and his company came upon the place the star had fallen. He expected wonders, but found only the aromatic remains of a grass fire and two boys huddled in the glow of a lantern.
The captain kicked his mount forward, his armor clanking, and asked of news.
A boy called back, “Something fell from the sky. That acorn there just over the hill.” The one Afonso’s age pointed upslope, toward a meadow of scorched and sparkling ground. His voice trembled like Afonso’s did when he was very cold or very afraid. “It birthed imps from Borneo. Who are you? And why do you come armed?”
The two boys snuggled against one another. The elder was so like Pedro that it made Afonso ache.
“I ride with the king.” And then the captain said, a chuckle in his voice, “Who might you fierce soldiers be?”
The two peered curiously into the darkness where Afonso sat astride Doçura. “I am Mario Torres, and this is my brother Jorge. The king? You won’t take the acorn? I warn you—I have a dagger. Father said we must guard it with our lives. And he says not to let anyone go inside, because he has been in there, and he says it is full of mysteries and impish Borneo things.”
“I want to see!” Afonso said, and felt Jandira’s tug at his sleeve. “But I want to see!”
The two boys shielded their eyes against the torchlight.
“I am the king.” Afonso told them. “And God has called me. You must show me the mysteries and the imps.”
“Imps are in the village,” Jorge, the younger, said. “You can’t see them. Father put them under arrest for the Inquisition. He’s the inquisitor’s bravest familiar, and he wears a sword, and pledges himself to the Church and Holy Office.”
Mario elbowed his brother.
“Well, he does”
Afonso climbed off his horse and walked to them. Mario scrambled to his feet and pulled his brother up beside him.
“I wish to see the acorn and talk to the imps,” Afonso said.
Jorge said, “They don’t talk. And you can’t go in, because father went in there, and he is a soldier, and he said it scared him near to weeping.”
“I say I want to see.”
“I’ll take you.” Mario picked up his lantern and started up the incline, Afonso at his heels.
From behind him came the jingle of a snaffle and the captain’s querulous, “Sire?”
Afonso waved him back.
“Sire!” Jandira called. “Stay awhile. We will see it later.”
“God wants me!” His voice was so big that it caused the captain to start. Afonso stood straighter than he ever had stood before, and he ordered them all to stay—the captain, the company, Father de Melo, even Jandira. To his surprise, they did. Then he and Mario, shoulder to shoulder, mounted the crest of the hill.
“How many imps?” Afonso asked.
Mario looked up, his brow knotted, his eyes anxious. “Highness?”
“The imps. How many?” Ahead was strewn a rose-petal scattering of silver.
“O. Three, if you count the dead one. Father Inquisitor baptized it, and it didn’t vanish in a puff of smoke, so I guess it wasn’t a demon. Don’t you have imps in Lisbon?”
Before them stood a scorched boulder; beside it, a scar in the earth. “Not good imps,” Afonso said.
Then they were over the rise. The acorn below was huge. From a rent in its side poured light so strange that it made the hair on Afonso’s arms and neck stand. He came forward, anyway, and peered into the acorn’s gashed side. Silver walls. Silver floor. An icy-white light came from nowhere, illuminating a hallway that beckoned to wonders, that led to terrible deaths.
“Father found them just inside.” Mario spoke with quiet awe. “He said what he saw there would have aged another man twenty years. Here.”
Mario was holding the hilt of a dagger toward him.
Timid, he said, “Take it. Please take it, Your Highness. And if you cannot return it, well, that’s all right.”
Afonso shielded his eyes against the cold illumination. It felt as if his soul was coming loose from his body.
Doubt in his voice, Mario suggested, “Maybe it’s better by day.”
Afonso swallowed hard. He wanted to see more. The little he sighted was so tempting: curved walls, shadowless spaces, a groundhog tunnel of a hall.
“Day, you could maybe see better. Maybe that ugly light would burn out by morning.”
Afonso listened, the buzzing silence drawing him. A whisper teased down the curved hall, just out of range of hearing. God calling? Or Death?
“I’d go with Your Highness, but I have to guard the thing. Besides, father made me take an oath not to go in. He says he wants his sons brave, not stupid. O, sorry. I didn’t mean…”
Mario was as broad as Pedro in the shoulder, as slim as Pedro in the hip. Like Pedro, he stood as if already commissioned a soldier: legs apart, chest out. But Mario’s chin was trembling.
The whispers from the corridor hushed. Whatever called Afonso was waiting. Truly, morni
ng might be better. “I’d like to see the imps now.”
Mario whistled his relief. He wiped his brow with a sleeve. “Yes, yes. Let’s go.”
The strain on Pessoa’s credulity was intolerable. They simply could not be. Faces like smooth gray pears, expressionless but for brief, probably imagined suggestions of wisdom. Legs too spindly to bear weight, heads too huge to lift, the living imps stood by their brother in the jail cell’s sweet straw.
“Look comfortable enough,” Cândido said. “I’d bury the one, but you can’t tell about imps. Might be up and around by the morrow.”
Comfortable prisoners in a cozy jail. The basement of the old inn was high-ceilinged; its floors and walls dry. It smelled of straw and dust and the faint ghosts of soured wine.
A commotion started up at the door. Cândido drew his sword and called up to the constables at guard. “Ho, João! See you keep them out!”
It was only Soares. The old Franciscan came stumbling down the stone steps, his eyes scanning the brick arches, the inset iron bars, the vast rooms where kegs twice the height of a man had once been stored. Then his gaze fell to the creatures, and he crossed himself.
Cândido said, “Good-looking imps, aren’t they, father. Well, but for the one. Come see.”
Soares came, his expression dazed, his hair in just-awakened disarray, his mouth moving. When he was closer, Pessoa could hear the hushed three-word litany: “O magnum mysterium.”
The old priest’s cheeks were so pale that Pessoa feared for his health. “Luis,” he cautioned softly, and tried to hold him back.
Soares shouldered past. One of the imps raised its huge-head, and to Pessoa’s flustered embarrassment, Soares dropped to his knees. The old priest held on, white-knuckled, to the iron bars. “Sanctus, sanctus.”
“Luis, please.”
His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Look! O look what is there, Manoel. God in their eyes.”
What wonders did Luis think he saw? After the peace that came with the shock of seeing them. Pessoa had felt naught else. Now he searched those black eyes for miracles, stared until his own eyes watered, until his head ached.
Cândido was nodding, satisfied. “Pair of good-looking imps.”
“Not imps.” Soares slumped. He rested his forehead against the rusting iron. “Cherubim.”
Malefica. Why couldn’t the damned Franciscan be more circumspect? “Very interesting theory, Luis,” Pessoa said. “However. I don’t know if we should…”
Soares’s expression was pinched. His voice was firm. “Cherubim.”
“Whatever.” Cândido cleared his throat. “Still, don’t think we should bury that one. Can’t ever tell about cherubs.”
Shouts rose outside. Metal clattered against metal. The door flew open and Mario Torres came running down the steps, another boy in tow.
“Mario! Damn you for a coward!” Cândido shouted. “Where is your brother? And what makes you leave your post?”
Mario halted. Under the lash of his father’s voice, the roses in his cheeks turned to ash. The other boy, stout and slope-shouldered and awkward-limbed, stopped beside him. The stranger wore a rich tunic of plum velvet. His face was as bland and sweet as pudding.
“The king.” Mario said.
“May the king be fucked!” Cândido’s profanity brought a murmured admonition from Soares. “Sorry, father. But, damn it all, Mario. Where did you leave Jorge?”
“No. pai. Please.” Mario wrung his hands. “You’re supposed to bow. I brought the king.”
Somewhere outside a horse whinnied. From its perch on a nearby wall, a lantern sputtered and hissed. Pessoa heard the crackle of straw as a creature moved, heard the meaty thud as Cândido’s knee hit stone.
The king scrutinized the imps: the pair of creatures scrutinized him. Suddenly the moon face went alight. “O!” the king cried. “O. how clever! There are great haunted reaches between the stars; and the earth goes round and round and round the sun!”
DAY 5
They came upon Bernardo in the chapel, praying bare-kneed on the stone.
“Urgent message,” Friar Costa whispered.
Bernardo had no strength in his legs to rise. When Costa helped him to his feet, he left blood puddled between a sharp flagstone and the grout.
“King’s seal,” Friar Costa told him. “And Monsignor is in his rooms. Not appeared for matins nor Mass nor breakfast.”
Bernardo’s knees ached. Later, when they warmed, they would sting. “Ill. I will take it.” He slipped the envelope into his habit pocket and left.
Beyond the row of windows a gray dawn was breaking. Light silvered the dark walls of the corridor, cast shadows of blue. Saints slumbered in their niches.
He opened the ornate door to find Monsignor moaning on his chamber pot. The room reeked. “Message,” Bernardo said.
Squatted, frowning, Monsignor raised a hand. Bernardo put the envelope between the waiting fingers. He went to fill the censers with incense. He opened the curtains, let morning and air fill the room.
“Freezing,” Monsignor said.
Bernardo pulled the curtains to.
“Damn, damn, damn, and damn.”
Bernardo turned. Monsignor was pounding the wadded message against his hairy thigh, his expression terrible. Thunder exploded in the chamber pot. With a groan, the message dropped, forgotten. Monsignor’s face suffused with a longing that approached adoration. “Damn,” Monsignor said.
“Shall I draft a reply?”
Monsignor grunted, ejecting a muddy patter into the bowl, one that held the Hellish stench of loose bowels and sulfur and half-digested chestnuts. “burn it.”
Bernardo picked up the message and took it to the candelabra.
“Wait.”
He paused, flame crisping the edge of the page.
“Read it to me. I barely credit what was said.”
Bernardo put the page on the tabletop and flattened it with the heel of his hand. When he saw the words, they robbed him of breath and reason.
“ ‘A fall of angels in Quintas.’ ” Angels. The paper trembled. “ ‘And the scepter voices the heresy of the apostate Galileo Galilei.’ ”
“Damn,” Monsignor said.
A fall of angels. Bernardo’s eyes flooded. The candle became a lake of fire. “Reply?”
Memorare me, he prayed.
Another grunt birthed a sodden, malodorous avalanche that ended on a sustained flute note. “No reply. Pack my bags. Send a message to the Marquis de Paredes. I need at least ten men—two of his inquisitorial-trained lawyers, three state-sanctioned executioners, the rest in trained armed guards—and I need them by noon. Inform him they are to carry their own food and clothes. I won’t deplete the coffers for this idiocy.”
Bernardo set the letter aflame and put it in the pewter dish. A word blazed in dying glory: Angels.
Memorare me. “Where do I tell the marquis that his men ride?”
“Bernardo, you misbegotten imbecillus. We ride to Quintas. And make certain that you bring enough paper and quills.”
Joy shot him through. Angels. And Bernardo would see. Angels. Falling from Heaven bright hot, yet gentle as feathers.
Twenty-second Sunday, Ordinary. No feasting, no fasts. Pessoa co-celebrated, heard Soares read from Jeremiah the anguished and betrayed cry: You seduce me, O Lord. I would speak Your name no more, but my flesh pines… . Marta Castanheda, small and ardent, among the crowd. Then a breath of sanity: St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Next, Jesus spoke to his disciples saying He must to Jerusalem and suffer greatly there.
They all had come: Castanheda, Teixeira, the soldiers of the moon-faced king. At Communion, Soares offered the host, Pessoa the wine.
Marta Castanheda came to the railing, mouth open like a baby bird.
Flee.
Pessoa thought escape to her as he offered the chalice, then wiped its edge. When her father knelt, Pessoa fixed him with a blistering stare. Damn you. Make your daughter flee.
Castanheda misun
derstood. His eyes sought the sanctuary of the floor and he opened his mouth for Soares.
“Corpus Christi.”
The wine. “Sanguis Christi.” Pessoa’s voice held so much rancor that it caught Soares’s attention.
Castanheda left the railing. Soldiers came, the ones who would receive those to be strangled, those to be burnt.
to suffer greatly at the hands of the elders
Then Teixeira and his wife and, to Pessoa’s astonishment, their daughter. Soares gave the sacrament—so Maria Elena was confessed and absolved, but for which sin? Pessoa gently lifted the chalice to the girl’s split and swollen lip. It took an effort to hold his hand steady. Dear God, flee. She drank, and her mother helped her to her feet. He wiped her imprint from the cup and leaned toward the next communicant.
The line to the altar dwindled. Finally came the prayer and, none too soon, the Dominus vobiscum, et con tuum and the last Gospel.
Pessoa watched the church empty. He did not follow Soares outside for the glad hands and the lovely-day-isn’t-it-fathers. Instead, he sent the altar boys home. In the sacristy he folded his vestments and put them away in a drawer of extra candles and incense, a gesture of permanence that dismayed him. Should he send word to the next town that he was delayed? For his own safety, should he inform the provincial tribunal at Mafra? Dizzy with worry, Pessoa braced himself against the cold marble top of the chest.
suffer, and then be put to death
He grabbed his coin purse and his hat and walked out through the small rear door, past the remains of the old rectory, and up the next hill.
On the way to her house he hoped to spy her, but the road was empty. When he arrived, he found her house unoccupied, her hearth fire cold, her burro gone.
Gone.
He sat at her abandoned table, hands clasped on its worn top. She had fled quickly and left everything: pots, plates, herbs, the cheap cross he had given her. Gone without a word.
Grief overcame him. He lowered his head and cried—not enough tears to breed weakness or humiliation, not enough to bother wiping. And when he was finished, he searched for her, anyway, down a path worn like a hair’s parting in the hillside grass, through a sun-freckled glade. His pace quickened. She had gone, and well considered, but still…
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