God's Fires

by Patricia Anthony

  Bernardo poured coffee from a silver pot whose handle was of carved malachite. How much gold would this inventory harvest? Should he remind him that Castanheda left an heir? No. Monsignor knew full well, and any complaint might endanger the dove.

  “A completely wonderful morning! Sugar, cream. Bernardo. Plenty of it.” Monsignor snatched up a sausage, laid it between slices of bread. “I want you to have the seculars review the cases this morning, for I shall return mid-morning, no later than ten o’clock. I should think. At that time we shall decide judgment. Tell that Jesuit. He must be present. I must strike now while Pedro’s thoughts are elsewhere and the country is in an uproar. Tomorrow is Sunday, Bernardo. The auto is to be held Monday. That will give the condemned time to make peace with their fates. O, yes! And stop by the tailor shop to order up sanbenitos, nine of them, without matching caps. Order the sanbenitos black, with simple flames at the hem. No cavorting demons, for I will not pay for frills. Tell him we will need a pair of straw effigies… . Salva me! Do not peer about like an idiot, Bernardo. Effigies for Neves and his wife, who will surely be found guilty in absentia. Tell him to keep it secret, since the judgment has not been announced. … Ha! Ha! Not even to the rest of the tribunal! Bernardo, I tell you—to be selected as God’s warrior, to know that I alone deliver the world from anarchy—it fair humbles me.

  Bernardo looked up through his lashes. Monsignor, chins high, glared at the fog as if posing for a coin. “Will you not take some sausages with you?”

  Monsignor fingered his missal. He contemplated the platter.

  Bernardo shrugged. “Pork and sage. They seem not so rich to me.”

  “I know not what idiocy the woman was speaking.” With his nimble, fat fingers, Monsignor gathered sausages and fried pastry into a linen napkin, “Stones rattling around in the belly. Hah! And she thinks I will go faint from what she says, and miss the devilment that her lecherous Jesuit plans.” He sucked his fingertips. “Just a dusting of sugar, Bernardo, on those pastries. Very elegant.”

  “Yes. And not so rich, I think.”

  Monsignor started for the door, tossing over his shoulder a “Comb your hair.”

  Afonso woke, confused. No one had put his night-shirt on him. No one had turned down his bed. He had fallen asleep alone atop the covers, wrapped in his fur-lined cloak. Where was Jandira? Outside, all the hills were fog. The standing guard asked if he wanted something, and Afonso said that he did not know. He went back into his tent and waited. Suggestions should be made: Would His Highness not care for some breakfast? Was it not time to change His Majesty’s clothes? Would the king care for cakes this morning, or a chop? There should be simple choices: yes-no, now-later, cakes-chop. To be asked what he wanted—well, the whole bewildering world stood as answer.

  He wanted Jandira. He wanted Pedro. He wanted to go back to bed and hide under the covers, even though he was not sleepy. He knew that if he cried out, they would come—father and the captain and the guards and the cooks—and none of them would know what to do, either. He wanted to feel Pedro’s hand on his cheek. He wanted to ask Pedro a question and hear something definite in response. O, and something had happened only two days ago—hadn’t it?—something about Pedro. Two days. Afonso must mark that, lest he reach the end of his numbers and the news of Pedro be lost.

  A cook’s boy came with breakfast. Afonso said that he had to use the chamber pot, and the boy, all left hands and thumbs, tried to help him. Then he stood there, a boy no older than Afonso, who probably did not know the decisions to make, either.

  “I should be dressed,” Afonso said.

  “Yes, sire.”

  “I think the dark blue tunic and the black breeches.”

  The cook’s boy brought them.

  “But underclothes first,” Afonso said.

  The boy rummaged among the cedar chests. “O, they are silk. Look! Silk and lace. How fine.”

  “You may have a pair,” Afonso said, and the boy stuffed them into his pocket. “You must kneel here at my feet so that I may put my hand on your shoulder. And then you hold the underpants out, and then the breeches, so that I can step into them.”

  They managed together, but by the time Afonso was dressed and the battle of the ill-fitting boot won, his head was weary from giving instructions. He looked at the platter of meats and cheeses and pastries and fruit and breads, and walked out, not having the temper to decide.

  The camp was quiet. Through the fog came noises, most muffled, some sharp, giving no hint of distance or direction. If he called Jandira, if he rang her bell—how would she find him?

  “Did you wish for something, sire?” the standing guard asked.

  “I want to go to Jandira, for I do not think she can find me.”

  The guard bowed and ran off, coming back in the company of the captain. “Sire?”

  “I would go to Jandira now, for I think that I have had enough of decisions and giving instructions, and of people who do not know what to do.”

  “Sire…” The captain lifted his arms, then let them fall with a great sigh. “Perhaps I can send word to your brother that he buy you a new slave to replace the one.”

  “O?” Afonso wondered if Brazil held rooms and rooms of Jandiras. “But this one knew me. I would rather have her back.”

  “Sire, I know. And if I were able…”

  “Where did they put her?”

  “Let me call Father de Melo.”

  “No. I don’t want Father de Melo. I would go to Jandira and ring my bell for her and see if she has been changed—for I think she has had time enough.”

  The captain did not look happy, but he nodded. “Call the pair who dug the grave,” he said to the guard. The guard left and came back with two soldiers. “Escort the king to the grave site,” the captain said.

  One soldier scratched his beard. “But we did not mark it, sir.”

  The other said, “Sir? Father instructed us not to mark it.”

  “You have some glimmer of an idea, do you not? Good God, men. Did you walk south? East? Did you go uphill? Down?”

  The two soldiers looked at each other. “Downhill,” one said.

  “I think more westerly,” said the other.

  And then they politely, and very correctly, asked if His Highness would not care to accompany them. Afonso followed through the fog, past the campfires and the cookfires and the tents. Afonso slid in the mud and they caught him up between them, their gloved hands strong. All together thus, they walked downhill until they reached a rivulet. There the soldiers stopped and argued.

  “There was no stream,” one said.

  “It has been raining.”

  “It was raining last night like God’s piss, don’t you remember? And us bringing up clumps of mud.”

  They peered about. Halfway up the hill, fog swaddled the grass. Afonso rang his bell, and sheep baaed in reply.

  “This way.” One soldier walked back the way they had come.

  They searched that hill, then the next. They found a muddy place where one soldier thought that she was. The other said that the slope was too steep for a grave and asked if any barren spot looked good enough to him. The first soldier said that he would be buggered before he lied to the king. The second asked if he was sure of the site, and the first looked down and shook his head and said that he did not know.

  They went on, searching through mud and dung, Afonso ringing his bell. They blundered through jagged outcroppings and slid in grass. Afonso watched sheep, all dirty white, move like small ghosts through the dingy mist.

  Father de Melo called through the fog: “Ho! Your Highness, ho!” Then suddenly he was there, stark and black. “‘Monsignor Gomes has come to see you, sire. He awaits you in the camp.”

  “Where did you put Jandira?” Afonso asked. “We cannot find her.”

  He sighed. “Sire. Will you not come?”

  Afonso turned around and around, ringing his bell. Dew collected on the wool of his cloak, on the breastplates of the guards.
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br />   “Sire?”

  “Tell him to come here.”

  “Sire,” Father de Melo said, “I think it more politic that you go to him.”

  They went, Afonso ringing his bell so that Jandira could follow. In the camp, amid the dripping tents and the smoking fires, the fat priest waited with a rough-looking guard. The captain stood beside, scowling at the ground.

  “I will not kneel this time,” Afonso told the fat priest. “For there is mud all around. Besides, I don’t need your Paters and your Filii Sanctis anymore.”

  “You may not, sire,” the priest said. “What you need is my goodwill, but you shall not have that, either. For I come not to ask but to command. I command, for instance, that your captain dig a hole large enough for the acorn. I command that the acorn be put in it and be buried. I command—”

  Afonso’s heart went into a tumult. “No!” he cried.

  The captain brought his head up fast.

  “You!” Alfonso said. “You tell the fat priest no!”

  The fat priest raised his voice. “I command that this blasphemy be buried straightaway, and grass planted atop it, and no sign left to show its grave, buried as nameless as your black-skinned slave who slew her own infant, and whom God saw fit to slay as well.”

  “Jandira is not dead! She will rise up, you will see! I know that it can happen, because the midwife told me. And you are an asshole mouth to think God killed her!”

  The fat priest bent forward. “The midwife told you what, sire?”

  “That she died, and when she came back, she saw the colors. She sees God in the colors, so she knows God better than you, who are a liar. So you had better leave, hadn’t you? You had best get in your carriage and go away, or I will have my soldiers send you.”

  “Will you.” The fat priest took out a piece of paper. “Well, I have a note, Your Highness, writ in your brother’s own hand, and received this morning. If Father de Melo would be so kind as to read it?”

  “You are a fat pig’s belly and an asshole mouth!”

  Father de Melo touched Afonso’s arm. “It is from your brother, sire. Do you not care to hear it? Listen! Listen, sire. ‘To his most excellent Inquisitor-General Monsignor Gomes: I regret that I cannot quit Lisbon, being otherwise occupied.’ O, what a shame. But this part is sweet: ‘However, I beg to remind Your Excellency that as Christ showed forbearance, you should show forbearance to the king. He often says things which he does not himself understand; and oftentimes finds great significance in baubles. He means no evil by it.’ Ah. Now I understand the importance. It further reads, ‘If you feel this acorn has attracted him in ways it should not, then you, as arbiter of what is proper, must take it. I beg you to take it gently.’ And it is signed, ‘Pedro de Bragança, Regent.’ Well, sire. I am sure that were he able, he would come.”

  Afonso did not understand the note, except that Pedro was not coming and the captain looked angry. He said to the fat priest, “You are an asshole mouth and you shit my chocolates. They are my chocolates, and you cannot have any.”

  The fat priest turned to the captain. “Dig day and night if you must, until the grave is made. In the meantime I will take twenty of your men to help prepare the podium for the auto-da-fé, and the pyres.”

  “They are my chocolates,” Afonso said. “You will give them back.”

  The fat priest said to Father de Melo, “The auto is to be held on Monday. See to it that the king is present and properly dressed and that he does not make a spectacle of himself. He will attend the Mass, but is to be prevented from partaking of the Eucharist. Then he will stand by and witness the burnings.”

  “Burnings?” Father de Melo said. “O, Monsignor, I know you will forgive me for pointing out, well… There exists the possibility that it may not be proper for the king to attend the executions. It certainly is not customary.”

  “Customary or not, he will stand witness.” Afonso felt the weight of the fat priest’s gaze. “This auto is no exhibition for idle townsfolk. The sanbenitos will be plain, the ceremony short, the podium unadorned. There will be no Inquisitorial banners. No processions. This auto is an act of purging. And so I would have the king look upon the flames in Quintas. I would have him hear the screaming of the condemned. And then I would have him consider carefully the torment of his own soul.”

  Quintas was wreathed in dripping enchantment. Ghosts floated at the level of the tile roofs. Bernardo found the sign shaped like a shirt which read alfaiate, and walked the four steps to the door. As he opened, a bell rang. The two daughters and the wife and the tailor looked up, and the wife gave a sharp cry.

  “No.” Bernardo put his hand out to her. “Not come for that.”

  The tailor had already retreated to the mouth of the hall. The younger girl stood, scissors at the ready.

  Bernardo told them, “Monsignor has asked for sanbenitos to be made. Nine sanbenitos. And two effigies. And they must be ready by this Monday.”

  The wife was nodding. The tailor came forward, his ear cupped. “Eh?”

  “Sanbenitos!” the wife shouted.

  The tailor shook his head. “Had one,” he said. “Never done aught since to merit another.”

  “Sew them!” the wife bellowed. “Nine!” She held up both hands, fingers spread, one thumb folded. “By Monday!”

  The tailor’s eyes went wide. Then they went sly. “O, father. That might cost, you sec? Hurried job such as this.” He came close, peering into Bernardo’s lowered face. “And the particulars?”

  “Painted black.”

  “Eh?”

  “Black!” the wife shouted.

  “And with flames.”

  The tailor heard that part right enough. “A bad business, talk of virgin births and such. A bad heresy of imposter angels.”

  “No demons.”

  “Eh?”

  The wife looked perplexed. Bernardo raised his voice. “Monsignor does not want demons!”

  The tailor shook his head. “O sir, like as not no one wants demons.”

  “On the sanbenitos’. No painted cavorting demons. He will not pay for demons.”

  “Ah.”

  “But he wants pitchforks, surely,” the wife said. “Pitchforks are cheap. And nine? Well, we could make a special price.”

  Bernardo waved his hand. “No, no. No pitchforks or demons. Only flames, and just at the hem.”

  The tailor rummaged through the clutter on the cutting table, found a quill and an ink pot. He looked about for paper, found a scrap. Then he discovered that the ink pot was dry. “Catarina!” he cried. “Ink!”

  The girl fetched it. He scratched his ear. “So.” He dipped the quill. “Nine sanbenitos, black and with flames at the hem. What sizes?”

  The question laid Bernardo’s thoughts waste. Large for Senhor Castanheda, broad at the shoulder, long at the leg. Small for his daughter. Yet even smaller for the virgin. The mother, certainly—a medium size. That was four. Two more for the effigies, so six. Still three left.

  No. Never. The angels would be transported to Heaven, taken up in a shaft of light, their flesh too much air and vapor to burn.

  “What sizes, father?” the tailor asked loudly.

  “Two to fit the effigies,” he said. “One for a large man. One for a grown woman. Two for young women. Three for children.”

  The tailor peered up at him. “Children?”

  Bernardo’s chin quivered. He rubbed his jaw to still it. Monsignor might dare try, but God would not let him. “Three children,” he said.

  Instead of growing brighter, the day grew more foreboding. Pessoa arrived at the jail to find the seculars already gathered. The two, dressed in fur-lined cloaks, were huddled to an iron brazier, warming their hands.

  “Yet colder, father,” Tadeo said, wiping his nose.

  Pessoa looked around. Lamps smoked on wall brackets. All but for one, the windows had been shuttered: and that admitted more damp than light. He pulled his cloak closer about his shoulders. His neck and feet were chille
d. “We should see that the prisoners are comfortable.”

  Emílio said, “Already done. Tadeo and I ordered more blankets brought, and saw that everyone had something hot to drink. I warrant they’re more comfortable than we.” He coughed and ducked his head into his fur collar.

  “When is Monsignor due?” Pessoa asked.

  Emílio laughed. “He takes his own time. Probably closeted somewhere with a coffee and brandy.”

  “And enough food for an army,” Tadeo said.

  “But God help us if we left to find someplace warm.”

  Tadeo echoed bitterly, “God help us.”

  Emílio paced back and forth before the brazier, flapping his arms. “When that notary comes back, we should take a statement from the girl—what is her name? Marta? The one whose feet were burned.”

  Fog barricaded the window. “Yes,” Pessoa said, faint-voiced. “Marta.”

  “Always arduous to watch the tortures,” Tadeo said quietly. “Let us hope she does not retract her statement, so we need no repetition of it.” Then he said, “Emílio. Tell him.”

  “Yes, yes. We should.” Emílio halted in front of Pessoa. “Father, we feel it best to warn you how we lean, for your arguments as to the creatures’ divinity have been compelling.”

  “Even brilliant,” Tadeo said.

  Pessoa felt ache come on him. He would have sat down had there been a chair near; would have held on to something had there been support.

  “We see no sign of angels.”

  “O but, sirs.” The angel debate was a froth of sugar and egg white. As he had always known it would, it crumbled to dust in his hands. “Have you not considered the virgin conception?”

  Tadeo shrugged. “I have heard of cases where women bloat, and pregnancy is suspected, and yet no infant is found inside. A rare instance, but to be frank, virgin births have proven rarer. One pop”—he clapped his hand together—“and the pregnancy is gone, either in tumor or liquid or, I suspect in this case, air. Such an outspilling of air that it ripped the maidenhood apart. Women.” He threw up his hands. “A mystery.”