“The women?”
Women? Bernardo did not understand. His throat tightened. His heart flew into a commotion. “I’m sorry?”
Another thunderous belch and a bird-tweet of a fart. “Damn the king’s sausages! He likes them with an excess of garlic and a sprinkle of—if you will believe it, Bernardo—cardamom. He speaks of the sun as a burning fog, and will not abjure the Galileo heresy. I can choose to ignore it, of course, depending on outcomes. But the women, Bernardo? I’ve heard today of the women and their lunacy of Mary visions and angels.”
“Sorry, Monsignor. Yes.” His words came breathy, and rapid as the ninth repetition of a novena. “Yes, the women are well. Did you wish to hear news of the angels?”
“Good God, why? In the highly unlikely event that they are angels, our stupidities cannot harm them. And if not angels, they would do me the favor to disappear. I tell you. Bernardo, I asked the king three times to abjure. The idiot boy finds his spine at last, and for the most hazardous of causes. And how do you find the Jesuit?”
The question was bland, completely without guile, yet it robbed Bernardo’s knees so of their stiffness that he had to sit down. “The Jesuit?”
‘‘The Jesuit, Bernardo! The Jesuit! Salva me! We are not overrun with Jesuits. The district’s eternally traveling inquisitor, who else? You live in a fog. Ha, ha! Watch that your brain does not spin together suddenly, and a fire break out.”
Bernardo felt his cheeks drain of blood. He looked up, nearly speechless with confusion. “Monsignor? I don’t…”
Monsignor had so amused himself that he had fallen into a fit of laughter and farting. “You should have seen the boy, pulling at his own limp little sausage and nodding like a fool—well, no ‘like’ about it. Fool he undoubtedly is. The fog burns, I know not how, he says.” Monsignor spread his arms and, in dramatic excess, contemplated the ceiling. “Misericordia, Bernardo! Look at the mold on those beams!”
The knock on the door startled them both. Bernardo rose to answer, and found a small balding man on the threshold. Pale eyes searched Bernardo’s lowered face. “Inquisitor-General?”
“What business have you?”
“Inquisitor-General?” The man cupped an ear.
Bernardo raised his head. In a bellow that approached Monsignor’s conversational tones, he asked, “What bus-i-ness?”
The man wore a rash of pinpricks on his fingertips. A sewing needle, trailing cream-colored thread, was stuck in his tunic’s lapel. “O, could be that I have an information.”
“Name?”
“Eh?”
“Your name!”
The man looked right and left, then whispered loudly enough for all the street to hear, “José Filipe Magalhães.”
“A moment.”
“Eh?”
Bernardo shut the door. “Someone with information, Monsignor.”
“Station?”
“Tradesman. Tailor, most probably.”
Monsignor contemplated the rafters. “Does the room not stink of mildew?”
Bernardo took a deep breath. In the air was a lingering of sulfur and sausage. “Not to my mind, Monsignor. Should I let him in?”
A wave. When Bernardo opened to him, the little man entered, hat in hand. He peered about, squinting as if purblind. He evidently caught sight of the huge dark mass that was Monsignor, for he headed directly to him.
A meter away, he knelt. “Care for your blessing, Your Honor.”
Monsignor tossed a benedicto in the man’s general direction and then sat down. Bernardo backed until he was at his own chair. Quietly he took out the writing plank and the red journal.
Still on his knees, the tailor said, “Talk of angels in town, Your Honor.”
Monsignor picked at a nail.
“And visions of the Virgin Mary.”
Monsignor sucked a tooth.
Bernardo dipped his quill, and waited.
“There’s a Judiazer, too, that herbalist witch, the one of the evil eye. And the girl who sees the Virgin, Your Honor. That Castanheda girl? Moor, without doubt. Heard her singing songs in a curious language sometimes. They make much to-do over Saturdays, seems to me. And he has a painting of El Cid, brazen as can be, right in his hall for all to gawk at.”
“What is your sin, my son?”
“Eh?”
“Your sin!”
The tailor convulsed. He dropped his hat, and fumbled picking it up. “Sir?”
“You come to me with accusations of others. I ask if there is any blot on your soul.”
“O, well…” A shrug. The tailor looked ceilingward. Bernardo wondered if he could see angels there or if, like Monsignor, he spied only mold. “Years ago, sir. A little disagreement with the wife, and I abjured myself straightaway in an auto da graça, and Father Pessoa gave me a sanbenito, and that was the end of it. Never had any trouble again.”
Bernardo wrote in the journal: José Filipe Magalhães, abjuration de vehementi. He pictured Father Manoel’s judgment, in his wrath as glorious and terrible as Gabriel.
“I realize you have given the Church no more trouble, my son, as you are alive here to tell the story.”
“O, Your Honor!” The tailor crossed himself. “Nothing to do with it! I’ve never seen aught but a little light in the sky that could have been a star. I’m a humble man, and God doesn’t feel the need to talk to me. But that Castanheda, now—a haughty family. And wealthy, I’ve heard. Come back from that war, his saddlebags bulging. And he trades in things, all on paper. Loans money on expeditions, just like a Jew. And that Teixeira. Not one of the New Christians, but rich—a trader with the cunning of a Moor. Buys gold, Your Honor, and trades spices; buys spices and trades slaves. To my mind, you can’t trust a man like that. Never know how much he owns or what he stands for.”
“Do you owe them money?”
A wild, “What, Your Honor?”
“Do you owe them money, man? The truth now, for an inquiry will find out if you are lying.”
“No money, no sir. Not a copper. Not a maravidis.” He thumped his chest so energetically that he nearly felled himself. “Just come to you out of love of God, sir, and Christian virtue. And… and, too? I’m reminded, sir. That Castanheda? He once told me there was no God in Spain, sir. I heard him myself, as did the wife and Dona Inez. And he has a hooked nose, sir, if you take the pains to look at it right.” He leaned and squinted, demonstrating.
Bernardo scribbled: Castanheda: No God in Spain, witnesses Sra. Magalhães, Sra. Inez. To question: Sat. Sabbath?
“And that Teixeira girl? That Maria Elena? Got herself with child and said it was angels, Your Honor. And everyone gossiping how she’s virgin. Then from one day to the next, she loses that bulge in her belly, and no baby to show for it. Now the girl’s all downcast, and the house in an uproar.”
Bernardo’s hand trembled, quill tip drumming the page and leaving a spray of ink. O Jesu Fili Mariae. Foretold that He would come again. Now in Quintas, a gathering of angels and a virgin named Maria.
“Yes, yes, yes. Very interesting. Have you all that, Bernardo?”
Pulse hammering, he wrote: Maria Elena Teixeira, virgin birth. His hand was unsteady. The last word was a scrawl. “Noted, Monsignor.”
“Well. So. If we have need, Senhor…?”
“Magalhães, Your Honor.”
“You’re quite right: Magalhães. So, having a need, we shall certainly call for you.” Monsignor dismissed the tailor with a flutter of his hand.
The little man glanced at Bernardo as he left. When the door closed, Monsignor lifted a hip, let go a trumpeting fart.
“And that, Bernardo, is my frank opinion of the day.”
It was like being swallowed whole by color. The tunnels were happy in pink and apricot because God was glad to see him. But they were sad in indigo and violet, too; for part of God was dead.
Afonso walked the narrow honeycomb tunnel, passing his hand over dark cold spaces where color no longer sparked. “You’re becoming some
thing else,” Afonso told him. “That’s all.”
Is it? Fear was marbled with orange panic.
“Don’t be afraid.” Afonso rested his forehead against God’s soft metal flesh and felt the vibration of His colors. “I promise You’re not going to die. You fell to earth because You wanted to teach us things. Father de Melo taught me all about sacrifice, and he said that sacrifice means giving up something you like very much, something it hurts you to give. On Lent I sacrifice chocolate. So I think that’s what happened with You.”
I forget so much now, God told him. I forget why I fell, and how, and if I killed those who traveled with Me.
“Let’s see… .” Afonso watched colors come and go. “There were one—two—three angels. Only one of them doesn’t move anymore, so I suppose he might be dead.”
God wept in bitter yellow. I don ‘t remember.
Afonso tried to explain sacrifice again, but God was not listening. After a while he went to the big silver room and lay down on the floor, drifting in and out of God’s sorrow.
“Tell me a story,” Afonso said.
This time God told him of duty, which Afonso knew well. He told of toil, which Afonso knew little. The colors became too delicate to distinguish. Then God repeated that long story of responsibility.
Afonso told Him, “My chancellors and Father de Melo already told me this story, and I didn’t like it. Tell me about heaven again.”
God showed him veils of blue and red where swaddled stars napped. He showed him comets opening like luminous buds in their race toward the sun. God told of frigid black reaches where nothing moved but Him.
He took Afonso into the void. And there in that great barren waste they rested together, Afonso cupped in God’s colors. He realized that God loved that place, that He breathed of its emptiness and basked in its chill. Afonso wondered if the cold dark spots he felt in God were places where He remembered—a part of Him which would forever be Heaven.
Afonso understood such things, for he loved his quest, but he loved home, too. Even if he left it for good, part of him would always reside in the castle. That’s what hauntings were.
I remember the darkness, God told him.
“So you probably haunt it,” Afonso said. He thought of his rooms, his tall postered bed, the tapestry of his parents’ wedding on the wall (father tall, mother beautiful). He took a deep breath and smelled the damp of the castle, the tickle of dust, his pomade of cinnamon and cloves and orange peel. He saw everything so clearly that he wondered if the guard at his chamber door felt the chill as Afonso passed; if he saw a flicker out of the corner of his eye.
But still…. God’s sad azure sigh. I don’t remember falling.
Cândido’s son Mario arrived at the rectory winded and blowing, his cheeks crimson from his run. “Fathers! Fathers!”
Soares came out of his chair, round-eyed.
“Come quick! Pai says for you to bring all your holy water and oil and things. There’s trouble at the jail.”
Fire. O, a fire in the jail. It was an inevitable tragedy, was it not? The deep dry straw, the lamps. Those brutal iron bars. Pessoa bolted out the door. Half a block later he realized that he’d forgotten the oil. He whirled, saw Soares coming out of the rectory carrying his black leather satchel. Pessoa raced on.
Clouds had rolled in, shrouding the afternoon. Pessoa searched their huge underbellies for tattletale smudges. Dear God. What had he done? Lost in the immensity of fate, that insignificance of self. Ne me perdas. Neither, Lord, I beg you, lose sight of me. Straw flaming up with tinderbox speed and helpless women in that bright enormity, shrieking.
The next block his feet went out from under him. His shoulder crashed into an iron gate. His toe caught on a cobble and nearly sent him sprawling. A milk seller and his swaybacked dray stared.
He sped on, leaving even Mario’s quick footsteps behind. Then the jail was in sight. No smoke, but Cândido was standing in the street with his men. Two of Monsignor’s henchmen there as well. A fight? Someone wounded? Cândido caught sight of him and waved.
“Relics!” he shouted. “Come see!” And he ducked inside the inn.
A hot stitch knitted Pessoa’s side. Whooping for air, holding his ribs, he followed. Inside, he found the limit of his strength. Pessoa’s steps slowed to a bewildered and exhausted stumble. His bruised shoulder pained him, his toe throbbed. The place smelled of old smoke—nothing of new peril. “Cândido? Where—”
“Here!” A call from below. “Look!”
Steadying himself against the wall, Pessoa descended.
“Look!” Cândido stood in the cell with the creatures. Pessoa surveyed the dark eyes, the gaunt bodies. Nothing about them had changed. He was down the steps and into the cell himself before he realized where Cândido was pointing.
“Not corrupted! Two days, father. But even better: look here.” Cândido brushed straw away from the fallen creature. A puddle of water leaked from its side.
“Smells of honey and peach flowers. So my guess is angels, all right.” Cândido dipped his fingertips and held them up for Pessoa to sniff.
Flowers. Before Pessoa could stop him, the man stuck his finger into his mouth. Cândido’s face contorted. He shivered hard. “Like green persimmon.” He grimaced, dismayed, at his finger. “Still, smells good enough.”
Then Soares was there, panting from his haste. He held missal in one hand, satchel in the other, and he was scanning the room for the dying.
“Got proof of angels, father.” Cândido ran his fingers through the puddle again. He held up his hand. “Come smell. All blossoms and sweets. Should take it up in a vial or something, would be my guess. Good relic, angel water. Church could keep some. Could sell the rest off.”
Soares knelt beside Cândido, snatching his hand.
“Ai! Wait!” Cândido pulled away. “Don’t go licking on it now. Smells a lot better than it tastes.”
“Flowers.” Soares’s voice was faint from either the sprint or his exhilaration. “A liquor like honeyed flowers. Domine, mundum reple dulcedine. The body desolves itself into sweetness. And no corruption of the flesh? You’re certain?”
“Certain as can be, father. O, they’re cherubs for sure.”
Outside the inn’s windows, day darkened. Trees and hills cast shadows of blue. At the seventeenth hour, by Monsignor’s porcelain clock, Bernardo asked if they should not leave for the inn. Monsignor trimmed the lamp and kept reading.
Bernardo lit candles. He watched one quarter hour pass, then a second. He put his hands into his pockets, entwined his fingers in the cloth, and twisted them nervously this way and that. He said, “Monsignor?”
A furious slap as Monsignor threw the book to the floor. Bernardo, startled, withdrew.
Monsignor was glaring out the window into the dusk. “If we are to believe that English idiot Locke, I would not know that my feet smelled, or that the king is a dullard, or horses give out great flat turds. I could not be certain of anything.” He grasped the chair arms and, with a grunt, hauled himself to his feet. “What o’clock?”
“Half-past five, Monsignor.”
“Um. I believe that the damned king’s infernal sausages have long since turned to noise and vapor. Bind me tight.” He lifted his habit.
Bernardo took the linen from its box and hurriedly began wrapping, all the time thinking of Father Manoel in the jail and, waiting below, the cherubs.
“Tighter, Bernardo. I would look my best. Never let a Jesuit see weakness, for they’ll take the advantage.”
Reckless haste compelled Bernardo to have to undo a length of linen and rewrap it. It bought him a rebuking grunt from Monsignor.
“Um. I see it approaches six. Well. One must always remember that these rural folk have little concept of time. All ‘later’ or ‘sometime soon,’ especially if there is work to be done. They tell the o’clock by the passage of the sun, and crawl into their flea-infected beds at sunset.”
“Yes, Monsignor. Done, Monsignor. And thank you.”
Bernardo stepped away.
Monsignor dropped his skirts and perused himself in the glass. Then picking up his ivory-bound missal, he walked downstairs and out into the street, Bernardo at his heels.
The evening was blustery and indistinct, all lashing wind and mist. He and Monsignor walked the blue-hazed streets beneath a darkening roof of clouds. Ahead, in a circle of lamplight by the jail, waited the three state executioners and two of Father Manoel’s armed field hands. They bowed when Bernardo and Monsignor entered the inn. And in the place the inquisition was to be held, Father Manoel stood alone: one spot of warmth in the room’s cold indigo sea.
Monsignor halted in the glow of Pessoa’s small lamp. Lips pursed, he studied the Jesuit from boot to pate and back. Bernardo cast Father Manoel an apologetic look from underneath his lashes, but, head high. Father Manoel had met Monsignor’s gaze and seemed not about to let it go.
Monsignor’s hand shot forward. “Your notes.”
Without protest or flourish, Father Manoel gave him a cream-colored journal.
Monsignor flipped open the marked page and read. Then he clapped the journal closed. “Where is the rest?”
A quiet. “That is all.”
Monsignor’s reply was deafening and incredulous. “All? Where are the corroborating witnesses? The other accusations? Damn you for a fool!” Monsignor’s voice boomed through the room, startling even the shadows. “ ‘That is all,’ you say, as if you are blessed with wit enough to find your way through a door. O, well and fine. You jail three women on one man’s deposition? We have no legality. With no more witnesses, the women must be let go. You realize that, do you not?” Monsignor jutted his face forward: an onslaught before which a weaker man would have retreated. “Well? Answer me! Do you?”
“I stand witness,” Father Manoel said.
“You?”
“Yes. I stand as witness to a declaration of virgin birth and a statement as to the intercession of angels. So either we have a lunacy here, Monsignor, which cannot be punished, or we have heresy, and the jailing is lawful. Or the story is true.”
In a terrifying still voice, Monsignor said, “True.”
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