God's Fires

by Patricia Anthony

  A nod. A weary “Yes.” He stood aside and ordered Cândido to treat her considerately. Then he said, “Will you not call out your daughter? Else the guards must go inside and bring her out. I think you do not want the other children to see.”

  Senhora Teixeira bade the cook fetch her. Maria Elena came, bruised face lowered. The maid begged them to wait. “Please! O, just a moment, father. A blanket!” The maid’s hair was wild, her face hectic. She took a pile of folded blankets from the entranceway and put them in Maria Elena’s trembling arms. “And cook packed food! A feast! Roast chicken and honey bread and potatoes and an apple torte. She put in a store of mint for digestion, and a supply of fennel for the breath. All manner of things, didn’t you, cook?” The cook was sobbing too bitterly to answer, so the maid took the basket from the entry and placed it in Senhora Teixeira’s hands.

  “See that Ana does not kick her covers off at night,” Senhora Teixeira told the maid. “And do not let that lout of a husband hit my Claudio.”

  Cook and maid nodded, daubing at their faces with aprons. Safe in their houses, hidden by shadows and lace curtains, neighbors watched. Cândido’s attention was fastened on a thrush singing in a persimmon tree. His four hired men stood in a fit of embarrassment, their gazes meeting, then bounding away.

  She said, “And see that my Claudio does not climb the fig tree nor throw stones at the geese. And before Ana goes to bed, always tell her the story of the man in the black hat. She likes that story.”

  Pessoa gently took Senhora Teixeira’s arm. She looked at him, perplexed. He told her, “We must go now,” for there was one more stoop to visit. One more door to knock.

  She started down the road with him, but he soon felt a pull on his arm. She had stopped to look back. “See they do not forget me.”

  Pessoa let Cândido take her. One step. Another. The first few always the hardest. Then the weeping of the household became hushed by distance, and the gray cobbles began to look alike, and all the stoops the same. Pessoa walked, head down, hands clasping his breviary.

  The two women were whispering. Prayers? The clank of swords and the muttering of men nearly drowned them out. The small processional rounded the next corner and the next.

  Pessoa stopped at a white wall with a blue tile frieze which bore letters entwined like ivy: castanheda. He took a breath and clutched his breviary tight, then mounted the stairs. Before he could knock, the door flew open. Senhor Castanheda came out.

  “Leave my sight.”

  Pessoa blundered back, holding the shield of his missal between them.

  Castanheda was ill-shaven. His tunic was begrimed, his cheeks flushed. “You! Cândido Torres! You come as this devil’s familiar?”

  From the street came an apologetic “He just wants to talk to her. And she was the one who said the Virgin. Seems logical to me. Besides, jail’s warm enough, and I put in clean straw. Chased the rats out. Imps seem to like it. Just a few questions, Guilherme, and then she can go home.”

  Castanheda’s desperate, questioning eyes sought Pessoa’s. Pessoa’s bolted to the refuge of the man’s forehead. “Bring Marta out, for she has questions to answer.”

  “But she is just a little girl.”

  At the base of Pessoa’s throat throbbed the lunatic beat of his pulse. “Bring her out, Guilherme.”

  “Please.” The man reached for Cândido, then put an empty beggar’s hand toward Pessoa. “Have mercy, can’t you? Please, can you not show mercy? She’s only a little girl.”

  Acknowledged by silence, Castanheda let his arm drop.

  Marta came to the door. She held a rosary in one hand, in the other she clutched a basket. She walked out, her father trying to stay her, and she eluding his embrace. Head up, she descended the stairs to the street, bid a good day to Maria Elena and her mother. She told Cândido that he looked well.

  When Pessoa went to join them, Marta said, “I will be asked to abjure.”

  “We only seek the truth.”

  “I warn you, I will not forswear Our Lady. And I know she will not forsake me.” Her words finished on a hesitant flutter, and she clutched her rosary tight.

  It always ended thus: the same mounting of the stoop, the same knock, sometimes debate, but in the end the jurisdiction of fear. Pessoa might have consoled her, but lies had become moot. “Best you bring a change of clothes,” he said, not without kindness. “And food, too—although the Holy Office will certainly feed you potatoes and turnips enough. Marta Teresa da Penha Castanheda, are you prepared?”

  She nodded. They continued down the cobbled road, Castanheda bellowing her name and begging for Pessoa’s mercy long after he was gone from sight.

  “Bedbugs.”

  Monsignor’s voice roused a blear-eyed Bernardo from his nap. He blinked, confused by the mid-morning sleep, puzzled to find himself riding in a carriage. What was it that Monsignor had asked for?

  “Lice.” Monsignor looked out the window. “They might have been lice.” He scratched one arm, then another.

  The air in the carriage was hot; it stank of horse dung and sweat and dust. Bernardo squinted and tried to capture the magic of angels; but he was too tired, the sunlight through the window too bright, and the rhythm of the carriage too tedious.

  “Fleas possibly,” Monsignor said, scratching. “Some sort of vermin.”

  Bernardo wiped a palm over one eye, then the other. His mouth was stale; his skin greasy; his mind torpid.

  “Cayenne in the bedclothes, the only remedy for rural travel, Bernardo. See to it before I retire tonight.” Monsignor pulled open the curtain and called in a voice to wake the dead, “Ho! I need a man to ride to Quintas straightaway!”

  In the window appeared a dun horse’s side, a pantalooned thigh, a sword. “Sir?”

  Monsignor scratched his chest through his robes. “Have you your letters, my son? For you must possess either a sharp mind, or you must be able to read.”

  “I read well enough.”

  “Good. Bernardo, take this down so he does not forget.”

  Shaking off the dregs of slumber, Bernardo reached for the writing plank. He fumbled for the ink pot and a trimmed quill.

  “Not all day, Bernardo.”

  “No, Monsignor.” From the stack of journal pages, he plucked a single piece of foolscap. “Yes, thank you, Monsignor. I’m ready.”

  “Cayenne. Plenty of it. Are you both listening?” Monsignor called through the window, “Hallo out there! Are you listening, my son? What’s your name?”

  “Alfredo Pires.”

  “Alfredo! Ride ahead and secure me lodgings. Better than the accommodations of last night.” Monsignor clawed furiously at a shoulder. “Understand that I do not sleep in tents as the king chooses to do. And I have no love for infested inns. Perhaps the rectory, although I have little faith in country churches. So if the rectory is ill-appointed—do you understand ‘ill-appointed,’ my son? Ill-appointed, for example, would be the inn that you found us last night. Best a house. And, please, let us not accept the hospitality of a parishioner, unless of course, our host is substantially wealthy. Rent a house, and let the landlord know it is for the Church, then tweak either guilt or fear of God—I refuse to pay more than a pittance. But arrange for a decent house, mind; one with space enough for a rather large feather bed.” Monsignor rubbed his neck raw. “Bernardo! Have you all that?”

  “Yes, Monsignor.”

  “Hallo! You there outside! Hallo! I want you to inform the king’s company of my arrival…. Ha, Bernardo! Would it not be fine to see the surprise on their faces? A little mystery. Yes, yes. Make them wonder how I knew their destination. You there! What was your name again?”

  “Alfredo.”

  “Yes. Just so. You will inform the parish priest of my expected arrival. Tell him he needn’t overtire himself preparing some rustic welcome with pathetic choirs and flower-bearing children. And tell him, no, I do not need to celebrate a special Mass. A purely judicial trip—that’s what brings me to Quintas. He
is free to attend his parish business, and can simply pretend I am not there. And further, ah…”

  Bernardo whispered, “Alfredo.”

  “Further,” Monsignor called, “tell the king’s cook that he will be preparing meals for me. No doting parishioner’s tiresome suppers, please. Let the parish priest dine on white beans and tripe. And God save me from the devout’s frightening experiments with salted cod.” Monsignor scratched the inside of a thigh, then reached for the paper. “Note.”

  A flourish of Bernardo’s quill. Monsignor snatched the note, held it out the window. A gloved hand lowered to accept.

  Monsignor tossed a benedicto out with it, and a “God speed, my son.”

  “Alfredo,” the man said.

  Maria Elena came to her prison cell with lowered head, holding her blankets tight. Marta walked the steps, her knuckles paling on her rosary. Pessoa watched Senhora Teixeira’s eyes dart here and there, from the sunlit squares of the high windows to the lamplit reaches beyond. Then her gaze fastened on the creatures, and she halted.

  “They will not hurt you,” he said.

  Stuporous, Maria Elena lifted her head. Blankets fell, rash fluttering suicides, to the floor below. She dashed headlong down the steps—heedless of Pessoa’s staying hand, ignoring Cândido’s shout and her mother’s sharp warning.

  She halted at the cell, clasping tight the bars. “Where is my baby?”

  One creature turned to regard her. Then the other. Their eyes glinted like basins of dark water. They stood in a shaft of sunlight, in a square inferno of straw.

  Maria Elena, her cheek swollen and purple, her lip torn, rested her forehead on the iron. One of the creatures came near her and put its skeletal fingers to her face. She leaned into the touch. “May I see my baby?”

  “Those are nothing,” Marta said.

  The intense dark-eyed regard gave Pessoa pause. He studied the gentle dance of those thin fingers against Maria Elena’s battered cheek.

  “Maria, those are not angels,” Marta said.

  “They are the angels that I saw.” Senhora Teixeira had discovered the limits of her courage. She guarded her daughter scrupulously, but only from her post at the bottom of the steps.

  Tears glazed Maria Elena’s face. Pessoa went to her, relieved beyond words that the creature retreated. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “Come away, child.”

  “The angels that I saw were beautiful,” Marta said. “All tall and white with wings. They had hair of gold and silver, and faces so perfect that it was hard to look. These things are not angels.”

  “Please, child.” Pessoa bent to Maria Elena. “Come away.”

  From Marta, a snort of exasperation. “O, come away, Maria. Don’t be a goose. And leave those things alone. Demons, most likely. They’re certainly ugly enough.”

  With a great clank of iron, Cândido unlocked the cell opposite the creatures. He guided Senhora Teixeira inside. He motioned for Marta, and she came, sour-faced.

  Pessoa gathered Maria Elena up with one arm, cradling her head on his shoulder. “Come.”

  A miracle: her ruined lip lifted into a radiant smile. “Father Pessoa? The angels told me my baby lives in Heaven.”

  He patted her cheek, but had not the light touch of the creatures. To his chagrin, she winced. “Forgive me.” As the words emerged he knew that it was not present pain, but the future’s, which wanted absolution.

  Afonso left the protests of the captain and Jandira’s chidings to go inside the acorn. He walked to the silver room alone and bareheaded, hat in hand. There he begged forgiveness and asked to be saved from Hell, but God greeted him with such glad colors that forgiveness was pointless. This was grace—this sunlit yellow, this shimmer of tender green and grateful sapphire.

  He sank to his knees and let the colors hold him the way his nanny had done. The colors smelled of her: the sour yellow and salt white of her skin, the orange of the cloves she chewed, the blue of her apron’s lye soap.

  From a flare of eager crimson, the question issued: Can you mend me?

  Afonso was not worthy.

  You can mend me.

  And Afonso said, “Show me how.”

  Ropes of pink, threads of vermilion and ocher, a woven skein so complex that no eye could follow, that no hand could grasp. The colors became a road, and the road led to a city, and there he saw where God was tom. A rent in His side bled indigo and emerald, pouring out the cold hues of pain. Afonso wept for God then, for he felt His infinite agony, His vast and uncharted fear of Death. Afonso wept because he knew he had not the wit to mend Him.

  The colors bore Afonso up in unrelenting tapestries, saying, “Here is this; this is such; that is my nature,” things Afonso could not understand. And still God spoke, spoke until the colors were gone, and only the pain remained.

  “I will stay with You always,” Afonso promised. “I will come visit You every day until the rivers run dry, and the stars fall, for surely those things will happen if You die.”

  Afonso lay down on the silver floor and put his head on his folded hands. He closed his eyes and, since he was drowsy, asked if God would be kind enough to tell him a story.

  And so God did—He told a tale of how stars are born in burning fogs, and how they die in coals. He told of stars birthed in violence, and stars which die in flashes that leave hungry things at their cores. God took him to a gray cool place where dark-eyed angels came and went. He showed him everything: the roundness of worlds, the attraction of moons.

  God showed him all there was of Heaven, and Afonso was not afraid.

  Father de Melo came to the door of the old inn. He arrived smiling, Pessoa’s note conspicuously in hand. “You sent for me?”

  Pessoa took hold of de Melo’s sleeve and drew him inside, closing the door behind him, shutting out the cool breeze and the sun. De Melo let himself be led to the ornate dining table which Cândido, for a fee, had lent the Holy Office.

  Pessoa avoided Soares’s questioning look. Instead, he contemplated the table and pictured what they were about to hold there: a feast of judgment. His tone was overly curt when he ordered the Augustinian to sit.

  “O, my!” De Melo’s head bobbed up and down, quick as a chicken’s. “Are we…”

  Soares tapped a warning finger against his lip.

  “We must keep our voices down.” Pessoa paced the area where the accused would face their judgment. His scuffing raised airy wraiths of dust. “Father de Melo? You seem to be anxious for the king’s sake.”

  With a chest-expanding breath and an “Ah.” de Melo’s eyes darted to Soares, then to the shuttered windows. The room was haunted by the smells of spilled wine and burned oak. “I am hoping, of course, that things—or perhaps I should say heresies, although I pray that His Majesty may be dissuaded. The good Lord knows I sadly lack the skill—which is why I came to you—and he truly is a sweet boy, Father Inquisitor, if you will permit me. He works very, very diligently, and takes to heart my lectures.…”

  De Melo paused for breath, and Pessoa took advantage of the momentary quiet to tell him, “I swear to you on my soul that everything spoken here will stay inside these walls.”

  De Melo’s hand arrested itself on his cheek, mid-scratch. “O. Well. That’s… Well.”

  “So, promise made, how far would you be willing to go to save the king from the Inquisition?”

  De Melo’s hand hit the table with a thump.

  Pessoa asked softly, “Would you lie?”

  “Lie? I don’t—not quite…”

  “Bend the truth?”

  A circular sort of nod. “Speaking hypothetically, of course, Father Inquisitor, and only in the most dire of… but given certain circumstances…”

  “Then no more discussion, Luis. He can be trusted, I think. At least we have no choice. This will be my consulta Right in this room.”

  “A consulta?” De Melo sat straighter. “Da fé? O, not for the king!”

  From Soares there came a negligent wave
and a “No.”

  Pessoa studied the charcoaled pegs in the wall where shelves had once stood. His eyes traced the sooted strokes of the planks’ remains. “There are three women in the prison downstairs, Father de Melo. Because of your inopportune arrival, we must dispense judgment on them without delay. I warn you: this consulta is illicit, but I bear responsibility. The most punishment you can expect from the Holy Office is a sharp reprimand.”

  “Punishment? O, well, much as I would like … bless me! A consulta! A great deal of study required, as I understand. A law degree, have you?” he asked Pessoa, his spaniel eyes watery.

  Soares sniffed, derisive. “Two.”

  “Well, then. Two law degrees, and—”

  “We will interrogate the women,” Pessoa said. “Luis will take notes. All I require of you is that you remain in your seat and stay awake. Afterward, I will talk to the king. In fact I will, Father de Melo, put the fear of God into His Highness—a picture lesson of Hell he shall never forget.”

  Pessoa fell silent. Singing. One of the women below was singing, and the clear sound was bright, and as keen as grief. He whispered, “Then it will be over.” The notion of “over” was unblemished, too, and so powerful that, like alum, it constricted his throat. “And then I will continue my rounds. You will go back to Lisbon. Luis can care for the women. This place is spacious and clean enough. They can remain jailed a year or two….” His voice trailed off, he imagining songbirds in stone cages. “Just a while—until all talk of angels and virgin births has ceased.” When he was certain his expression was under control, Pessoa turned. “Two of them are young girls, Father de Melo. The third a doting mother. Prison is penance enough. And we shall entice those creatures into leaving. Let some other town receive them.” He offered a wry, if forced, smile. “Some town not, I pray, in my district.”

  Soares trimmed the lantern. In its expanded glow, Pessoa could clearly see de Melo’s pallor.

  “Virgin births?” he asked.

  “I call the girl’s claim not heresy but insanity. Neither infant nor corpse has been found, so I will vow that she was never with child at all. She is the easiest case, really. For insane, she cannot be judged, and will be released from jail tonight.”