God's Fires

by Patricia Anthony

  Soares stood next to him, praying in whispers, and what prayers were worthwhile? Best to kill Guilherme where he stood, wrapped in flame, howling. A musket. Pessoa whirled, saw only pikestaffs. Of course no muskets, for either God was not, or He was of a mean and waspish nature.

  Then mercifully the screams were over, and the day was almost done. Gomes was standing apart, a solitary figure, his gaze cast not to the pyres, but to some distant spot across the meadow. Weeping again, as he had at Communion? And not weeping in pity for the condemned or even for the affection of a best boy. Pessoa knew that the man mourned private griefs: the loss of gluttony’s delights, the humiliation to which the king had put him.

  Pessoa looked down the dwindling line of pyres and saw her sitting, head cocked, as if listening for whispers. She had never heeded Guilherme’s shrill cries. She was selfish, like Gomes, building all her walled gardens, her private dungeons.

  Pessoa had had enough of the afternoon and the flames. He would have left, but Pessoa was of a truer nature than she ever was, she who cared for no one. He would be priest for one more day, and his vow was to give comfort. Pessoa had seen his lambs to the flames. There was one more duty to consider. He could have walked out and left everything if it had not meant abandoning her.

  I think that God will not be happy,” Afonso said as he watched the two cherubs be led to their stakes. The angels went where the executioners told them to go. They let themselves be tied. They complained of nothing.

  The old priest climbed the pyre and offered the cross. The fat priest, who had mostly seemed asleep, came to himself then. He shouted for the other priest to put his cross away. ‘‘You will not sully the crucifix for those demons’ I will not have their lips against it!”

  An executioner led the old priest down. Once the pyre was clear of everything but angels, the fat priest ordered in a loud voice. “burn them without delay!”

  The executioners touched the angels’ unlit torches to the brazier. When the pitch-soaked ends had caught, they put them to the kindling.

  “God will not like this,” Afonso said.

  It was just a little fire at first, then the wind snatched at it. Flames swept up the wood. The angels said nothing as the blaze approached. They did not cry out even when the flames touched their hems. They looked about, at the sky, at the soldiers, at the meadow. Then one’s eyes met Afonso’s and the world vanished.

  Come with me, the angel said.

  The vapor that was Afonso flew through bright Heaven and into the pari that is forever dark. He and the angel flew so far, they reached that border where emptiness turns back on itself. There Afonso came to understand that the angel loved the void, loved it as much as God did. And Afonso knew that emptiness was the place angels went to die.

  It was peaceful there, the angel at his side. You are dying now, aren’t you? he asked.

  In eyes as dark as the place it had been born. Afonso sensed laughter spark. Yes.

  Afonso was sorry that God and His angels had to fall all that way to teach the shod people, and he was sorry that, for their trouble, no one had learned much oi anything. Still, he looked around Heaven and thought how nice it was to float there, the answer to everything within arm’s reach.

  Worlds and answers were as close as plucking oranges. Take one, the angel said.

  The secret of the colors. That was what Afonso picked. And when he had taken the ball of the colors down and had opened it, he saw that the answer was empty, for all colors were one, and all lives one as well, and the answer was so puzzling and the emptiness so huge that if very much scared him, and he wanted to go home.

  He turned around and around, floating there in the void, but the angel had left, and Afonso could not see God. “Hallo! Hallo!” he cried, but his voice found the border and bent back.

  Afonso was terrified to be alone. He seized another answer, the answer of home, but that was empty, too. And the emptiness, which had no real voice, explained that the void was part and parcel of the whole, and that it stood behind everything, behind hills and skies and cities. Afonso knew that the dark, just like the angel, was trying to teach him something; but Afonso did not care to learn.

  I want to go home now. Let me go home.

  The darkness told him that the void was home, and emptiness embrace; but Afonso needed comfort that he could touch, and so he screamed for someone to come save him.

  The dark absorbed his pleas. It gave him back joy. Alonso did not want it, for the pleasure that the void gave was strange; and so he took another answer and cast it down and burst it, and then he dashed another, and again another, and the third answer was the captain’s face.

  “Sire?”

  The captain was kneeling at Afonso’s feet. Over the captain’s shoulder, Afonso could see that the pyres were burning down, the angels all turned to string and liquid.

  The captain’s face darkened at the edges, for the void had claimed Afonso, and was not about to let him go. He clung to the arms of his chair, fighting to keep the world.

  Yet the meadow faded, the sky went black. Angels were calling. Ah. Angels calling, and the dark was so ruthless a joy that at last Afonso gave himself up to it. The void took him gladly. Its arms were huge, yet warm in their own way. And the dark held an ardent brightness of its own. The answers were so easy, really. Why had he not seen before? There in the void Afonso came to understand everything, all within the space of a heartbeat. He understood not just the edges of things, but the invisible within.

  Pessoa saw the king fall in a twitching fit, saw the guards and the executioners back away from the pyres, crossing themselves. The soldiers went restless.

  They must stop the auto now, for Death had claimed enough of the day. Could Gomes not see the king on the ground convulsing, Soares weeping, and all the king’s soldiers dazed?

  Berenice, terror in her eyes, stood only two meters away, ready to mount the pyre. So soon? When had that fear come upon her? And why had Pessoa not noticed? Why was it not him, but Soares at her side?

  Soares would not know how to give her comfort. Pessoa heard the old priest trying to lead her into an Act of Contrition. He shoved him aside. “Stop! Stop!” He pushed Soares so hard that he nearly knocked him down.

  Berenice seized hold of his alb, her fingers taking the place of Maria Elena’s dying hand. “I look and look for him, Manoel.” Her breath came fast and shallow. “And he does not come.”

  Fantasy had abandoned her. Pessoa had known that it would, for the man of light was of a nothingness. Only Death was tangible.

  “I call him. Why does he not come?” Her lovely intelligent face was turned witless with her panic.

  Pessoa did not know faith, but he knew faithfulness. He knew touch. He seized hold of her fingers. Too soon the executioner was beside them, saying that it was time. The man pulled her up the logs, Pessoa together with them. Hand in hand, he and Berenice would walk up the hill of wood, then down the other side. They would set out across the meadow. They would leave the hills of Estremadura, walk the pine forests of Tras Os Montes, go beyond the kingdom, to fogbound fishing villages where only Basque was spoken. Together they would walk until they reached England. And there he would buy her a warm cloak; and she would be so beautiful that the English would feel privileged just to look her in the face.

  Her mouth was moving. He bent his head, thinking she meant to tell him something. But bewildered, she was telling the pyre, the stake, the very air, “He does not come.”

  A restless stirring among the soldiers below. Was the king dead? He was lying so limp in his captain’s lap.

  Pessoa heard her whimper, and saw that the executioner was already tying Berenice’s hands to the stake. “God!” Pessoa pulled him away. The man slipped on the logs and fell at Pessoa’s feet, his arm over his head lest Pessoa strike him.

  “Get him down!” Gomes shouted. “Get the fool down and let us have this over!”

  A second executioner mounted the pyre, but Pessoa would not leave her. Let
the man run him through. Let them all see a priest’s blood spilled. The man caught Pessoa’s arm. Behind the mask, his eyes were shocked. “Please, father,” he said. “Please do not hurt him. We have all of us seen the trials, and we know a little law. We do not agree with the verdicts, either.”

  That voice. Those eyes. This was Maria Elena’s executioner, the one of the merciful strength. “Will she not kiss the cross?” he asked.

  That wide sky. The marigolds and the meadow. No, she could not die here, not with the breeze so agreeable and cool. Pessoa made his way around the pyre to where she was tied. Her eyes were lifted to cloudless, comfortless nothing. Her breath came as quick as a startled rabbit’s.

  He made the sign of the cross over her. “Berenice.” When she would not look at him, he raised his voice. “Berenice! Say that you are heartily sorry for leading others into heresy, for you knew not what you did. Say that now that you are made aware, you are made ashamed, and say that you beg God’s forgiveness. Damn you,” he hissed. “Say it.”

  She was so small. And from where he stood, there by her side, he could see how fretful her hands were as they worked against themselves, needing something more than air and light to hold.

  “Say it. ‘I am so heartily sorry.’ Say it!” he shouted. He would have struck her down, had she not been tied to the stake. He would have beaten her as he beat Magalhães, until she said the words. “ ‘I am heartily sorry!’ Damn you! Say it!”

  Someone touched his arm. “Time, father.”

  “She abjures. I heard her. She said it just now.”

  “Please. Come away.”

  Since he would not go, the two executioners forced him, and they went stumbling down the pyre, traveling so far from Heaven, the freedom of the meadow grown small in perspective. Then his boots were on the soft ground and Pessoa saw the third executioner. Berenice’s torch was already lit, and fire was quickening in the pyre’s furthermost corner.

  Pessoa broke free and started up the pyre toward her, crawling. It was not too late. He would loose her bonds. He would strangle her with his own hands before the flames could make her shriek.

  The wind changed. Smoke choked him. Through the billowing pall came the strange, quiet crackle of the inferno. A sudden blast of heat whipped the hair back from his face and set his cheeks, his alb, aflame. He fell where he was, squeezing his eyes shut against it, and yet, even so, all he could see was brilliance. The heat took his breath. There was no air, and so he could not tell if he was screaming, did not know if he could. Such a brightness was it that he could not know up from down, knew aught except that he had erred, erred so badly, and that he would die there.

  Hell stood all about, dark as choking pitch, yet through it came a furious dazzle and a voice. “You idiot whoreson Jesuit!”

  Such agony scalded his right side that he was certain this time that he had cried out. A force jerked him back, if not God, then the devil, for Pessoa was tumbling, sparks whirling up in a mad splendor, logs rolling.

  He hit the cool mud as the burning logs did, as the executioner fell atop him, still cursing. Then it was all a tangle of logs and legs, his alb burning, and the executioner splattering mud to put him out.

  Another voice shouted, frantic. “Pull him away! He will make a mess of it!”

  But Pessoa was still afire, his arms and hands in a hot torture, his alb in blackened tatters.

  “Pull him away!”

  His hands were burning. No, not so. His skin was but reddened. He found himself jerked roughly to his feet. Pessoa saw what horror he had done. One side of the pyre was burning cruelly, Berenice striving to lean away. She could not flee, and it would take the fire so very long to catch her.

  “Idiot!” The executioner who had saved his life threw Pessoa back into the mud. “You will make her suffer worse!” The other executioner ran, hurriedly lighting the other corners, but not running fast enough.

  Nothing would be fast enough. Pessoa’s skin from hands to elbows was scalded, a miser’s share of her coming agony. Then Soares knelt beside him, pulling Pessoa’s face down hard against his shoulder. In Pessoa’s nostrils was Soares’s familiar smell: powdery age and wool and something oddly cat-clean.

  Even though his arms were torment, he grasped Soares close, embraced him until he realized how quiet the day was, and how she had died without a sound.

  He raised his head. The executioners were staring upward in awe, guards and soldiers alike gaping in wonder. Gomes was standing, consternation in his face. Berenice stood alive atop the pyre, backlit by radiance like a saint in a stained-glass window. In the tender hush of the meadow, the breeze was dying.

  He started to his feet, knowing not what he intended. Soares pulled him down again, crooning in his ear, and Pessoa was confused as to why. Why was Soares trying to shush him? The day was silent, Berenice not screaming.

  She had turned to look beside her, but nothing was there. Nothing. So what pleasantry was she peering at, and so intently? Would that she had ever looked upon him that way. Would that she had cared for Pessoa thus—caring enough for the invisible that she would die trusting.

  Next to her was a parapet of flame. She had to see it. Yet her man of light must have shone even more brightly. Then a gust of wind whipped east, and she died swallowed by splendor, in the remarkable silence of angels.

  Soares rocked him, whispering in his ear. “Be strong.”

  Of course Pessoa would be strong. It was over, was it not? And though God deigned not to save her. Pessoa must believe now, for this tranquil death was miracle enough.

  It was only when the ropes burned through, and her body had fallen dark as mystery down through the flames, that he realized how loudly and how without shame he was weeping.

  He sobbed and let the old priest rock him, for faith brought not the comfort of holding. Berenice had died knowing that. Faith had never been the comfort of holding. Ah, sweet God. It was the comfort of being held.

  DAY 22

  When blue twilight was settling over Lisbon, Prince Pedro kicked his stallion through Castle Sao Jorge’s gates. The Count de Ericeira trotted his long-legged English mount behind.

  “Sire!” the count called.

  Pedro had had enough of councils. He wanted a gallop. He wanted to see Afonso’s eyes go alight when he gave him the present.

  “Sire!”

  Pedro finally reined his gray. The stallion crab-stepped across the cobbles. “Not ‘sire.’ I will not have you call me ‘sire.’ Especially not in my brother’s presence.”

  The count inclined his head. “My prince.” The man was already out of breath.

  Pedro stood up in his saddle. All around the seven hills, lamps shone in windows. From where he sat he could see the quay and the fish sellers, now closing their awnings against the night. “One day I will build a palace there by the Tejo.”

  The count hiked his cloak about his shoulders. “Consider textiles, my prince.”

  Pedro laughed. “Yes, yes. Textiles.”

  “And after we see your brother off, we will to the merchants, then?”

  Down by the quay, the royal caravelle was docked and waiting, its lanterns aglow. Pedro spurred the Barbary. It danced nimble-footed down the hill, the count’s “It was his own fault, you know!” following.

  Pedro took regret with him down the narrow streets. He raced anger and left the count and his guards behind. The stallion’s hooves rang among the close-packed houses.

  At the docks, the captain of the king’s guard was waiting. When he caught sight of the Barbary, the old soldier started to his knees. Pedro leapt off his saddle and motioned him up.

  “I have brought him a present,” Pedro said, holding out the statue.

  “Good of you.” He smiled, but with such a melancholy.

  “Was it so bad, then?”

  “Harder for me, I think.”

  The quay smelled of tar and salt and fish. From someplace nearby, just beyond the Baixa, came the clang of a solitary church bell. “Captain
, there is no need for you to accompany him into exile, if you do not wish. I could—”

  A sharp and too curt “No.”

  “Well.” Pedro hugged Afonso’s gift to his chest. “A year or so. Then he can come back. The Inquisition will busy themselves with other matters and forget him.”

  “My prince,” the captain said, “with what His Majesty has seen, the Inquisition can not afford to forget him. Your brother not only saw terrible deaths, but also witnessed a great beauty.”

  The captain’s words caught Pedro off his guard. He was so confused by them, in fact, that they made him feel irritatingly callow. He dared not ask the man’s meaning. Instead, he took his leave and went up the gangplank.

  The Tejo’s torpid swells rocked the boat like a cradle. In the light of the lanterns, the ship’s wood gleamed. As Pedro boarded, fighting for his sea legs, the shipmaster bowed.

  Along the quay came a clatter of hoofbeats. The count had finally arrived. He called up, “Soon, my prince! We are to meet them soon!”

  Pedro asked the shipmaster, “Where?”

  “Down in his cabin, sire,” the man said. “Waiting.”

  Pedro took his unsaid objection below. Father de Melo stood at the foot of the stair.

  “I brought him a present,” Pedro said, showing him the statue.

  De Melo clapped his hands together. “O, how nice that you thought of him, sire, for I know how busy—”

  “Not ‘sire.’ Afonso is king,” Pedro said. “I am prince regent, and I ask you to please remember that.”

  “O! Yes! Of course. How silly of—”

  “How is he? I have heard diverse stories, and do not know what is true. I would have visited earlier, but I had not the leisure.”

  De Melo’s voice lowered to such a sugary confection that it set Pedro’s teeth on edge. “Well, of course you could not, my prince. Affairs of state, and…”

  “What is the truth of it?”

  “Ah.” De Melo sought for help on the ceiling.

  Around them, lamps flickered. A door nearby stood open: the shipmaster’s cabin, its desk littered with charts and an astrolabe. An ordinary room, but beyond it, waves slapped, water gurgled, spars creaked. Pedro remembered how afraid Afonso was of the sea.