God's Fires

by Patricia Anthony

  A paltry guard stood ready at the jail, most gone to Mass. He took the missal from his pocket and held it in one hand, his rosary in the other. He took a breath and walked down the stair, going first to the men’s cell, not daring a look toward the women. He stood silent at the door until the jailer brought the keys.

  Castanheda was sitting against the wall, a blanket over his lap. He looked up.

  “Guilherme,” Pessoa said.

  It must have been the manner in which he said his name, or perhaps it was merely because he was a tall black figure in a dimly lighted place. Castanheda knew. His eyes filled, and he bent his head. Pessoa knelt down, took the man’s hand in his own. The fingers were trembling.

  “Guilherme,” he whispered.

  The broad shoulders shook.

  “We tried to stop it, the seculars and I. But Monsignor … and we have sent a message to Bishop Dias. I want you to have faith, Guilherme, that the message will make it through. Can you have faith for me?” he asked, who had no faith at all.

  Castanheda did not lift his head, but still he nodded. His fingers tightened around Pessoa’s hand. “My daughter?” he asked.

  “To be strangled. No, no. Listen to me. It is a quick death. I have seen it. The executioners are skilled. Her soul will leave in a blink.”

  His grip tightened so, Pessoa feared his fingers would break. “And me?”

  “Burnt.” Pessoa told him, “Pray with me. Not an Act of Contrition, but a happy prayer, for I do not accept that you will die. Gloria in excelsis Deo.”

  There was a hesitation before Castanheda joined in. “Et in terra pax hominibus.”

  “Bonae voluntatis.” The men of goodwill all in Lisbon, and between there and here, the rain.

  “Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te.”

  Through the Gloria, Lamb of God and Son of the Father, and then Amen. Castanheda loosed his hand and Pessoa got to his feet. Over him, he made the sign of the cross. “One of the seculars will come in a while. He will instruct you what to do if the worst happens. Can you trust in God for me?” he asked, and seeing the nod, Pessoa went out.

  Then he went to the women’s cell, and toward that solitary figure in the corner, huddled as motionlessly as Bernardo that morning. For a moment Pessoa was terrified that she was dead; hoped beyond hope that she was.

  I will believe, he promised. If You will only kill her well.

  At his footsteps, she looked up. She looked up, and she knew. He sat, put his missal and his rosary in his lap, and took her hands. “We’ve sent a message to Lisbon that this be stopped.”

  At the window, that red morning, and rain falling faster. The smell of beeswax, the candles now burnt out. All through the room was the dry odor of straw. If he lost her, he could never again pass a marigold, never smell lavender.

  “When?” she asked.

  He said, “Tomorrow.”

  She was stronger than Castanheda. Berenice said, flat-voiced, ‘They will burn me.”

  There was no way to soften it. “Yes. That is Gomes’s judgment. But the message will get through. If perchance it does not, though, I want you to abjure yourself. Kiss the cross when it is presented to you. Do all the things that the Holy Office expects. In any case, I will be there.”

  “He will be with me.” A single tear dropped, as if in error, from out her eye. “He is waiting. If I looked about the room now, and had the sight of the dying, I could see him.”

  Pessoa took his hands away and put them, all lonely, in his lap.

  She wiped her cheek. “I should not be frightened. Death is nothing to be frightened of. I know that. And I feel that I fail him when I am so frightened, that I should have more faith. But it is more than the pain, Manoel. It is the walking to the pyre. It is the wait. It is watching the wood be set alight… .” Her voice trailed off and she stared up to the window. “The wood will be wet.”

  “Gomes bought from a smokehouse. The wood is in sheds. No. He is experienced, and has planned well. I’m afraid.”

  Without looking at him, she said, “See to my burro.”

  “I shall.”

  She reached out and briefly clasped his hand. “Go to the others. They have need of you.”

  She left a chill on his fingers. He looked down. She had returned his gold cross. He got to his feet. *“Are you hungry? Is there anything you need?”

  “No.” And so he left her looking at the blank, moisture-weeping wall, awaiting her lover.

  He sat by the three other women. He held their hands and prayed with them. Marta wanted the Stabat Mater.

  At the “Vidit suum dulcem Natum morientem, desolatum,” Maria Elena came to herself and began to cry—not for herself, Pessoa knew, but for hurtful words again—imagining her own son forlorn in death.

  “…fons amoris…” Font of love. He saw it in Senhora Teixeira, who would ascend the stake imbued by her own hard sort of affection.

  At the end of the prayer, at the inflammatus et accensus, when the mention of leaping flames made the Teixeiras both lose their voices, Marta’s became strong. ‘‘Per te, Virgo, sim defensus.” Did she yet imagine that Mary would quell the flames? That the Blessed Mother would stay the garrote?

  Marta tolled the last of the petition, loud as a challenge: When my body shall die, see my spirit to Paradise.

  Afonso went out into the rain and saw that the acorn had shifted in the night, the mud slid from underneath it. The door was pointed upward now, and the light inside still shone. A soldier standing at guard stopped him, although regretfully.

  “Captain’s orders, sire.”

  “But I can stand outside and shout to Him. Captain said nothing about shouting.”

  The guard stood beside Afonso, shoulder to shoulder. Afonso cupped his mouth, leaning farther into the light. “Hallo!” Afonso called. “Hallo!”

  Not even a whisper of an answer reached him. Below the acorn, his soldiers were digging in the mud, God’s grave yawning. It was probably best that He did not know what was to come.

  Afonso went back to camp. He entered his tent, took off his cloak, and threw himself into bed. He pulled the covers around him and closed his eyes. He thought very hard, and imagined Jandira, who came and laughed at his distress. Since Jandira could not please him, he thought again, and this time he saw God.

  The rare and improbable pink of some flowers, the brilliant green of mosses. Afonso pictured those colors sparking under earth.

  Who are you? God asked.

  “Afonso, the king,” he told Him. “I have been coming to see You, and I would still, but the fat priest fears You, and something has happened with my brother, and the captain says that I cannot come see You anymore.”

  I forget, God said, but Afonso knew that He remembered the void. God’s thoughts were dark—not the dark that is evil, nor the dark that is dull, but a ferocious dark, like the dark of a doe’s eye or the dark of a jet-black horse.

  He saw that God’s thoughts were of emptiness, too; but it was the emptiness of expecting—like waiting to open a gift. For life was. God told Afonso so. Life was everywhere, in the dust of the stars, in bitter clouds around poison worlds. Life spewed out in a gladness and could not be quenched. Even Death begot it.

  Comets and falling stars rained life down. It fell gently. It struggled, and ate itself, and teemed.

  Afonso called for Jandira to come see.

  Life is not remarkable, sweetling, she said.

  Everywhere, in all the universe, in sulphur pits and lakes of frozen gasses, life burst out and multiplied, it killed, was murdered and reborn.

  She whispered, It is the only miracle we can touch.

  The sight of her empty house. The smell of the herbs.

  Pessoa sat by the cold of her hearth until he stopped trembling.

  When he finally rose and pulled back the curtain, her burro whuffled, happy at the company. He dipped his velvet muzzle into Pessoa’s hand. Pessoa loosed the halter lead and, clucking, enticed him out into the threa
tening noon.

  He led him up the hill and down, then past the old rectory and the church. Mass had ended, and the congregation already fled the muddy yard for home. They went through a meadow to the stable, where Felicidade put her head over the stall door to see who had arrived.

  Pessoa went to the rectory next, but it was empty. He hurried out and rushed back the way he had come. The ram had started up again, and the sky now was a frightening green. Lightning played in the distance. Thunder boomed like coming war.

  The church door was so heavy and he so tired that he could scarce open it. It groaned against its hinges; he fought his way inside. At the font, he dipped his fingers and crossed himself. Through the next door he could see the length of the church, down the line of niches and their candles to where the sanctuary lamp was burning. Other than Mary and a crucified Christ, the church was empty. He turned left.

  The confessional stood mute and waiting. He entered the penitent’s box and quietly closed the door. It was dim inside—ashen light filtering through the door’s lattice. By where Pessoa knelt was a silken rope, its tassels palm-soiled. He pulled it, and heard the bell chime through the nave, the sanctuary, until it died somewhere near the altar.

  He had left already. Gone to the jail, perhaps. Perhaps out to visit the sick. Pessoa started to rise, but heard a cough and approaching footsteps, a pause that signaled Soares’s stop at the font. Then the footsteps resumed, the neighboring door creaked, and the grille clacked open.

  From behind the woven cane screen came another cough, the sounds of a body moving, and the play of shadow.

  “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.”

  He heard Soares stir, recognizing his voice; then heard duty quiet him.

  “It has been three months since my last confession. Father, forgive me the sin of pride.” His voice trembled. He took a breath and waited until he had mastered himself. “Because of my pride, others will suffer.”

  From that faceless silence came the anonymity of the reply. “Your penance is to watch the suffering, my son. God demands aught else. Is there anything else you wish to confess?”

  Pessoa listened a while to their duet of breathing.

  “The sin of fornication, although I will not sincerely abjure that, for I lay with the woman in affection and not in lust, but in telling that to a boy, I killed him. At least telling him that I loved her—that much was the truth. So forgive me, father, the sin of murder.”

  A priest-whisper came in reply, so little of Soares in it. “If you find yourself not punished enough tomorrow for your sin, come to me and I will order penance. And as to the fornication, I absolve you, for you were right to show her honest affection and care for her, when no one else was willing.”

  Pessoa sat back. The place smelled like all confessionals. It smelled old. It stank of a parade of bodies. It held in its air years of candle wax, of furniture oil, of incense.

  “Forgive me the sin of despair.”

  From the dim space beyond the screen came a breathy sigh.

  “I’ve tried, you see. Thinking on it, I cannot imagine life continuing.”

  Pessoa caught a glitter of eyes through the weave of the cane. “Manoel…”

  “Not suicide. It is just that I have no imagination, you see? No fantasy to hold on to. I keep trying to imagine myself leaving after the auto, continuing my rounds, and coming back here when the time is due. I try to picture arriving at the rectory, what we would say to each other. I try, really. I try to imagine your cats, seeing the streets, imagining how people might greet me. I try to imagine never going to her house again. Ah, God, Luis. I think I cannot come back.”

  “What will you do?”

  He drew his cloak about him. The cloth was so damp as to be useless. “Flee to England,” he said. “Leave behind my mission and my vows and my priesthood, for if she is to die because of me, I would have had enough of it. Another thing: I know where Guilherme’s gold is hidden. And before I leave, I shall steal it. And I will not ask penance for that, either, for I will donate most to the poor; but keep some, for unfrocked, I will be as poor as any. I must take the money. Otherwise it will fall into the hands of Gomes and the Holy Office, and I would have them win naught else.”

  A grunt, then: “Even though you do not ask for atonement, I order you to make a restitution. For otherwise your soul will cause you torment.”

  “What?”

  “If you take the gold and leave, you must take Rodrigo Castanheda with you.”

  Booming, howling darkness woke Afonso. The wind pummeled the world like a teetering, drunken bully. Under the savagery, the tent ripped down its belly. Water poured in, drenching the lamps, bringing a blind and confusing night.

  There was a frantic bustle at the door, and the captain came in, pulling Afonso off the wet bed and into the cubbyhole between the foot and the dresser. He shoved Afonso’s head against his chest and wrapped his arms about him so hard that Afonso could feel the man’s heart pounding.

  He shouted, “Hold those tent poles!”

  A panicked voice spoke out. So close was it, and so loud, that it hurt Afonso’s ears. “The men want to dig the acorn back up again, sir! Permission?”

  “No.”

  “But the storm started just as the dirt topped it, and that light still burning down there. Mary and Joseph! I’ve never seen aught like this, sir. Wind blew the wagon off the hill. It blew the wagon plain off, horses with it!”

  Afonso wanted to go see the fallen horses and the wagon. He wanted to see the rain wash God free of His grave. He lifted his head, but saw only lightning-struck darkness, and then the captain pushed him down again.

  “It will blow over directly, man. All storms eventually do.”

  “Pardon me, sir, but that’s what you said yesterday. And yet God’s peevish.”

  Afonso popped his head up from under the captain’s arm. Close by stood a man-shaped shadow. “Tell Him.”

  The shadow moved. “Sire?”

  “Go tell God. If you go stand by His grave and say that it was not you, but that fat priest who ordered it, He will stop the storm.”

  Nearly lost in the tempest’s outraged bellows was the soldier’s grateful “Thank you, sire. Thank you.”

  Afonso ducked his head again, and let the captain hold him. The captain wasn’t as soft as his nanny or as warm as Jandira, but his heartbeat was strong and steady, and his arms gave a muscular sort of comfort.

  Then Afonso noticed that he could see, for the day had brightened. And he could hear, too, for the wind had died. The striped tent fluttered, fluttered again, and went still. The captain unwrapped his arm from Afonso and stood.

  Afonso got up with him. The tent was all a wreck of drowned lamps and lifeless candles and loose papers and bedclothes. An end of the tent sagged, weighted down by water. From the rent in the canvas side, rain dripped, a steady beat like a drum.

  “The storm quit,” the captain said.

  “Yes.”

  “Sweet Mary,” the captain whispered. “One instant to the next, the storm simply quit.”

  Pessoa arrived at the Castanheda house when the storm was passed, and the sun out, and still all was lost. He came as the rivulets about the town swelled to muddy rivers, and once peaceful streams washed uprooted trees down their cascades. He arrived with his saddlebags empty, and met Emílio and Tadeo on the stoop just as they were leaving. They looked at him strangely.

  “What do you do here?” Tadeo asked.

  “Come to find clothes for the boy, and a trinket of his father’s to remember him by.”

  The seculars nodded. “A bad ending.” Emílio looked about hopelessly at the sopping litter in the street.

  Tadeo said, “I assure you we will petition the Holy Office on the boy’s behalf—but true—best you save mementos for him now before some sticky-fingered inventory.”

  “Well.” Emílio shrugged, held his hands palm up. “My conscience is clean, and I have need of a brandy. We sup at the inn tonight. Why do yo
u not gather the boy’s clothes and come with us, father? Monsignor has declared a day of fasting and prayer. He even dismissed the servants, can you fathom that?”

  That evoked a sharp bark of laughter from Tadeo. “Well he might, for he has a year’s surplus of food stored in that belly. Come to the inn with us, father. We would have your company.”

  “Come,” Emílio urged. “For we have gone to instruct the prisoners, and it leaves a bitter taste in our mouths.”

  Pessoa took the saddlebags from off his shoulder and folded them over his arm. “Perhaps later.”

  “Yes, yes,” Tadeo said. “Later. Please do. For it will be a long night without the succor of wine. We have ordered up brandy for the prisoners, all that they will take. And whatever food they wish, although it has been my experience that the condemned do not eat.”

  Emílio said. “Best they don’t. I have seen some eat wantonly, then vomit all about. The auto is to be held in the afternoon, so mind you break your fast, father, for you will need your strength. But do not eat after, for I have seen priests and witnesses disgorge their luncheons, too.”

  “Enough, Emílio, with your morbid attractions! Yesterday the creatures’ offal and vomit today.”

  Still bickering, the seculars made their way down the stair. Pessoa watched them go. When they were out of sight, he went into the house and made his way to Rodrigo’s room. He packed two sets of clothes, a nightshirt, a brightly colored ball, and a wooden soldier. Would he need of aught else? His boy? His. The irony of it, a vow of chastity, failed seed; and at age thirty-nine, fatherhood come upon him.

  He went downstairs. The house was empty, the servants gone. He walked to Castanheda’s study and took the shield from off the wall. The chest was still there, and the money. Pessoa wrapped the coins in Rodrigo’s clothes so that they would not clank. He set the chest back in its niche, placed the shield over it.

  That military study. What did Castanheda remember there—the glory? The noise? The murder? Pessoa took from the wall the green sash and the sunburst medal. He folded it and put it atop the clothes. When he boosted the saddlebags over his shoulder, he was unprepared, and staggered under the weight.