Lisbon

by Valerie Sherwood

  Only to dream savage nightmares, wild dreams in which she managed to kill Rowan—and woke up with her own harsh laughter ringing in her ears. And then she would sleep again and perhaps dream bittersweet dreams of Tom— and wake up sobbing.

  One night she waked from such a dream and sat shaking, her head sunk into her hands. When she lifted her head at last she realized that there must be a full moon outside, for a shaft of moonlight from that small high-up window cut through the darkness of the room and illuminated the tall pier glass.

  That pool of light seemed somehow to beckon to her, condemned eternally as she was to days of twilight. She left her bed and padded over to the pier glass and stared into the mirror, which gave her back a ghostly reflection. The woman she saw had, she thought, no vestige of her old self. This woman was a haunted vision with a thin haggard face and wild unruly pale hair—for Charlotte had not even been allowed a comb and must needs comb her long locks with her fingers.

  She shrank from what she saw.

  The mirror, she thought dully; that was why he had left it. So that she might see more vividly her own despair.

  The moon waned, and dawn came slowly, but the coming of the new day meant little to Charlotte. Here in the semidarkness of her cell—as she now dubbed her big square bedroom—there was nothing to do but to think about all she had lost. And about Rowan and how much she hated him.

  Midnight, the great black stallion, had been shot for publicly humiliating Rowan. Chase, the hunting dog, had been destroyed for not loving him enough. And she, the erring wife, was to be imprisoned forever and ever.

  Rowan would never come back for her, never. She would be kept here until the end of time. Tom was gone from her life, she would never see her children again, what was left for her?

  There was the sound of a key turning in the lock, and Alta Bilbao came in, bringing her supper. “You did not eat your breakfast and you have not touched your lunch,” she scolded Charlotte.

  Charlotte laughed crookedly. Did this woman really believe that food was important? Strange were the ways of fate. . . .

  That evening she slashed her left wrist with a knife she had filched from her supper tray. But Alta, who came up looking for the missing knife, found her in time, bound up the wound, and tied her to the bed so that she could not move and injure herself again. After that, all sharp objects were removed from the room. Charlotte was forced to drink from a wineskin and even had to eat with a wooden bowl and a wooden spoon—no knives were allowed. Oh, they were very efficient, she thought sadly, these demons Rowan had set to watch her.

  So the interminable half-lit days came and went. Soups and broths and stews—Alta was not a very good cook— followed each other in dreary procession. Since Rowan had left Charlotte with naught but the clothes on her back and thrifty Alta was not about to buy clothes for Charlotte out of her own money, it was necessary for Charlotte to wait naked or wrap herself in a sheet while her own garments were washed downstairs. Her suggestion to Alta that she might make new garments for herself out of those sheets if Alta would bring her scissors, needle, and thread was met with shocked reproof. What, destroy those fine linen sheets? Why, Alta would be held accountable for them by the master when he returned!

  Charlotte gave up. She was condemned to wear the same gown forever, it seemed.

  All Saints’ Day came and went, and Portugal’s national holiday December 8 honoring Our Lady of the Conception. On Christmas Eve the Bilbaos shared with her their traditional boiled codfish and potatoes and rice pudding. But not even the rabanadas, that extra treat which Alta had made by frying bread dipped in egg sauce and then simmering it in sugar sauce, could lift Charlotte’s spirits.

  Back at Aldershot Grange this Christmas her children would be playing in the snow. Or if Rowan had taken them to London, they would be listening bright-eyed to the songs of Christmas carolers. Or perhaps, muffled in woolen scarves and stocking caps, they would be shepherded by Wend through merry, jostling, laughing crowds in the street and stop to eat hot roasted chestnuts or watch a puppet show. Dear God, how she missed them! Her smile was wan as she thanked Alta for including her in this special dinner.

  About Tom and his fate, she dared not let herself think, or she would break down completely.

  On New Year’s Eve, Alta gave Charlotte a slice of the round fruitcake she called “king’s cake’’ and explained that they must lock her in early, as they wished to go out into the town for the New Year’s Eve celebration.

  Although England had stubbornly refused to follow Europe’s lead, and still celebrated the New Year on April 1 as they had for so many centuries, Charlotte—who loved light and life—felt bitter at being cut off from what little gaiety there was. Tears glittered on her lashes as she heard all over the city church bells clanging in the New Year.

  The torchlight parade of the Feast of St. Anthony reached her in glimmers through the louvered shutters. And on Twelfth Night there would be the famous battle of flowers at Louie in the Algarve—she remembered hearing Rowan telling someone that if they were still in Portugal in January they would go to Louie to see it. . . .

  Charlotte’s spirits ebbed even lower when Easter found her still confined to her darkened room. Holidays were always the worst, for Alta loved holidays and never failed to report glowingly about the parades and frivolities— enjoyments Charlotte was never permitted to share. The Bilbao family knew on which side their bread was buttered. They sympathized with her lot but they had their orders and they were faithful to the coins tbat reached them monthly, their payment for holding a madwoman captive.

  On Whitsunday Charlotte took to her bed and refused to leave it. She turned her face to the wall and refused food.

  The Bilbaos hastily held a council of war. If the senhora died, their income would cease. Alta explained this carefully to Charlotte and was rewarded by a short bitter laugh.

  Alta warned that they would force food down her throat.

  “It will not matter.” Charlotte shrugged. “For I will surely die if I am allowed no sunshine. ”

  After much debate, Charlotte remaining adamant, her captors were helped in their decision by nature. A great storm visited Lisbon and a flying roof tile broke some of the louvers out of the shutters in Charlotte’s room. With this excuse, the Bilbaos, father and son, promptly pulled the nails and unlocked the balcony doors, and Charlotte, blinking at the glare of sunlight after her long confinement, was carried—for she was by now too weak to stand alone—to a cot on her third-floor balcony.

  On that balcony Charlotte ate her first solid food in a week. She looked down at the carts and people threading by in the narrow street below and pondered hurling herself headfirst to her death on the cobbles below.

  But that was exactly what Rowan wanted—-for her to take her own life. He had said so! Her frail resolve strengthened. No matter how desirable death seemed, she would not do it.

  Besides, the sunshine was working a magic in her feelings. Of a sudden she wanted not to die but to live ... to live and find her children wherever they were, and, if he had perchance escaped death, to see Tom again, somehow, somewhere, no matter how impossibly long it took.

  Once that day she thought she saw someone she knew— florid Lord Claypool, whom Rowan called Ned, striding over the cobbles below in his ginger wig and bottle-green satins. Before she realized that the man below was a stranger, she had risen on one elbow and called down to him—at which point Alta seized her and dragged her back inside and slammed the shuttered doors, blocking out the sun.

  Charlotte was too weak to resist, but she wanted to be outdoors in the sunshine. To gain strength. To escape this place.

  “If I promise not to call out, will you open the doors?” she asked Alta.

  Angry, Alta tightened her lips and shook her head.

  “Then I will not eat, I will die, and your money will stop.”

  Charlotte threw herself facedown on the bed.

  Alta stood, biting her lips, considering the mad senhora. Sh
e stood thus for a long time.

  But when Charlotte heard the doors to the balcony creak open and sunshine flooded in, she knew that she had won. She had won the battle but not the war.

  26

  Summer 1741

  Two years after he had been carried off as a prisoner aboard the Douro, Tom Westing came back to Lisbon.

  For him, all things had changed. Captain Yarbrough, content with a ransom for his wealthy Portuguese prisoner, had sailed away over the horizon, perhaps to Madagascar. But Tom had accompanied Sebastião da Severa deep into the green interior of Brazil to the rich mines that were the major source of da Severn’s wealth. And there he had quelled an uprising and once again saved the older man’s life. And gotten a poisonous arrow in the leg for his pains. It had been a near thing, and even amid the comforts of Sebastião’s handsome plantation house, Tom had been a long time getting well. When he had taken ship at last, Sebastião had clapped him on the shoulder and told him in an emotional voice that if he chose to return to Brazil he could come back as his son and heir. It was a dazzling prospect.

  “I’ve first to find a lady,” Tom told him, gripping his friend s hand, his sun-browned face smiling beneath its shock of white-blond hair.

  “Find her and bring her back with you,” said Sebastião sincerely.

  “Aye, that is what I intend,” was Tom s hearty response.

  His ship had crossed the equator, sailed northwest across the Atlantic’s Cape Verde Basin, crossed over the submerged Great Meteor Seamount, with the Canaries and Madeiras off to starboard, and beat its way at last over the dangerous undersea Gorringe Bank, where incredible pressures were building up as deep beneath the sea the European Plate strained against the African. Neither Tom nor the other mariners knew that this vast undersea world existed. To Tom the ocean was made up of soundings that told him they would not come aground, just as the night was made up of stars that guided his way by night, and winds—winds that were carrying him back to her, his heart sang with the wail of the winds in the rigging. Charlotte, Charlotte once again!

  He trembled that she would be all right—but of course, of course she would! Hadn’t fate done enough to them? She would be waiting, loving him still, and now he had money, he could sweep her away with her children, he could give them all a good life—in Brazil.

  And if Keynes stood in his way . . . Tom’s square jaw hardened. If Keynes stood in his way, this time he would kill him.

  And so it was that Tom came ashore in Portugal with a springy step.

  Only to find the great flat-fronted mansion in the Portas del Sol shuttered and closed.

  Eventually he found the owner. Keynes? Yes, he remembered leasing to a man named Keynes. An Englishman. He had let him out of his lease because he wanted to return home to England. His young wife had died and his country was girding for war.

  “Died?’’ asked Tom incredulously. “Died, you say?”

  The owner looked perplexed. “Yes, something about a fever, I think. I remember there was quite a handsome funeral procession.”

  That was not good enough for Tom. Charlotte could not be dead! Records were not good enough for him either. He found the doctor who had certified to her death, fully expecting to find there had been some mistake, a wrong name, a servant girl—Wend perhaps.

  The old doctor—who for all he had the face of a plaster saint was an inveterate gambler who had squandered three fortunes and would do anything for money—looked uneasily at this square-jawed Englishman. Nervously, he confirmed that Charlotte was indeed dead.

  Keynes has murdered her, was Tom’s first thought. A rush of blood came to his head. Aghast, he seized the doctor by the throat. “How did he kill her?” he said gratingly. "Tell me, how?’ For if it was by the sword, he would slash Keynes to pieces. If it was . . . ! He shook the doctor violently. "How?’ he demanded hoarsely.

  The old doctor had seen death in other men’s eyes, and he knew he was seeing it now as he looked into Tom’s gray face.

  "I swear to you,’’ he gasped. "Keynes did not kill her.’’ "Who then?’’ Tom shook him so hard his teeth rattled. "No one! No one!” He was afraid to add, I know Keynes did not kill her because she was alive and well when I attested to her death! Instead he gasped out beneath Tom’s crushing fingers, "She died of a malady—you are choking me, young sir!—of a sudden fever that carried away many.” Best not to mention madness to this dangerous fellow! Out of sheer fright he added, "Her husband was most grieved, I can tell you. He broke down completely.” His gratuitous lie had worked. Tom had guessed Keynes loved his beautiful young wife—he just didn’t know the tortuous way that Keynes’ mind worked. His fingers relaxed their grip on the doctor’s throat. "You were there when she died?”

  "Oh, yes, yes!” was the eager response. "A lovely young woman, her death was most tragic. ”

  Lovely indeed. . . . And more than tragic—this confirmation that she was gone had blasted Tom’s world apart. "Where does she lie now?” he asked dully.

  "Lie?” Alarm sprang again to the doctor’s features. "Oh, you mean where does she lie buried? I was not informed, but I can direct you to the most likely place.” He gave Tom directions to a cemetery and quaked in his heart, hoping the Englishman Keynes had raised a stone to her.

  The Englishman had. Tom found it, a simple stone giving only her name and the dates. Tom knelt beside that stone and grieved. He felt as if the very heart was being torn from his body.

  At last, gray-faced, he rose and hied himself to a stonecutter. That simple stone was not enough to mark the resting place of his wonderful Charlotte. He commissioned the fashioning of another stone, a footstone of whitest marble, a delicate spire pointing toward heaven, whose gates, he was certain, would have opened wide to receive her. And he ordered carved upon it—no matter what Keynes thought if he viewed it later—a message that came straight from his heart: “Here lies Charlotte, beloved of Thomas, ate o fim do mundo.” Until the end of the world. . . .

  While that stone was being carved and erected, Tom prowled south through the countryside where he and Charlotte had been so briefly happy. He slept in the tiny inn where she had lain in his arms beneath a crescent moon— and wept for her. He wandered on to the village of Azeitao and rested beside the stone fountain where they had shared ewe's-milk cheese and drunk muscatel wine, and on to Palmela. There he climbed up toward the battlements of the ancient Knights Templars’ Castle that crowned the heights, where he and Charlotte had made their fateful decision to return to Lisbon, and looked out upon the glitter of the Sea of Straw. If only he had taken her away—carried her off by force if necessary—she might be alive today.

  Through the drifting sweet scent of the orange groves he made his way back to the Tagus and across it to Lisbon. But for him the lights of the city had dimmed. Moodily he wandered the streets, gazing on sights she too must have seen—as if that would bring him closer to her. His feet carried him through the steep winding ways of the Alfama. Walking in the Alfama made him feel closer to her somehow; he could not imagine why. After all, Charlotte had lived in the handsome Portas del Sol, not in the old Moorish quarter.

  Once he lost his bearings, inquired his way, and was told he was on Nowhere Street. A grim smile flickered across his grief-ravaged face. Nowhere Street. . . . Perhaps that was where he belonged.

  Halfway along, he paused and for no reason suddenly looked up at a third-floor balcony. He would at that moment have given all that he owned or would ever have and all hope of heaven just to see her once again. . . .

  The balcony was empty. Jorge Bilbao had limped home in a hurry and told his wife to get Charlotte off the balcony, for he had just sighted the Messenger at the end of the street. The Messenger’s orders had been strict: if the Bilbaos wanted to go on receiving their monthly coins, then the mad senhora must get no sight of the Messenger.

  Had Tom come by just minutes before—or indeed a few minutes later—he would have seen Charlotte, pensive, on that balcony, and their entire future would
have been altered.

  As it was, Tom stared at the empty balcony, felt a tug somewhere inside him, and then was jostled by a donkey struggling through with a load of oranges. He moved on.

  That afternoon he took ship for Brazil. After a brief but joyful reunion with Sebastião da Severa, who now looked upon him as a son, he plunged deep into the interior. To forget her. He combed the wilds of the Minas Gerais looking for gold.

  Instead he found diamonds.

  Charlotte had finally given up hope for Tom. He was dead, he must be dead or he would somehow have found her. At night she dreamed of him, of course, and by day she longed. Just as she longed for her children and trembled for their welfare.

  But now she no longer pinned her hopes on a miracle— that Tom would save her. Instead she pinned her hopes on the Messenger who brought the Bilbaos their money every month—if she could only talk to this man, win him over, make him understand! And perhaps the Bilbaos feared she would do just that, for she had overheard their muttered conversations in the hallway when Jorge told Alta that Charlotte must be gotten out of sight—the Messenger was coming.

  At last, on the day the Messenger was to arrive, she managed to kick off one of her shoes as Alta hurried her inside, so that the shutters Alta promptly slammed shut before she left the room did not quite close. Alertly Charlotte listened for the front door, heard it open and close behind someone—the Messenger! She dashed to the balcony, closed the shutters behind her, and leaned over the railing, peering down to see who would come out onto the cobbles.

  After a while her patience was rewarded. A man—or perhaps a youth—came out of the low front door. Came out stooping, for, though slight, the figure was willowy and tall. Whoever he was, he wore the long black stocking cap traditional to Portuguese fishermen, a shapeless shirt, and baggy trousers over bare sun-browned feet. There was something vaguely familiar about the figure that puzzled Charlotte. Did she know any fishermen?