Lisbon

by Valerie Sherwood

  And were awakened violently to a great roar, a sound like the end of the world.

  36

  All Hallows’ Day 9:30 a.m. November 1, 1755

  The terrible rumbling roar brought Tom and Charlotte to their feet and to the window. They looked out on an unbelievable sight.

  Although on their hilltop they were barely shaking, the buildings in the city below were dancing and teetering and collapsing. Steeples and chimneys were cracking and falling over into the streets, red tile roofs were breaking up, walls were collapsing. That first terrible jar had brought Lisbon to her knees.

  There was a sudden pause as if the earth itself was taking a deep breath—and in that pause there was suddenly, all over town, the licking of flames.

  The earthquake had struck during First Mass, and in the crowded churches thousands of candles had been overturned—not to mention the braziers over which the poor cooked their food in the open in winding streets and alleys. Hundreds of fires were kindled in an instant. The city had begun to burn.

  Abruptly the shaking began again. But this time it was no great single shock—this time it was a violent whipsawing motion that tore buildings apart, seesawing them back and forth as the ground beneath heaved and shimmied and buckled and rose again, bringing down palaces and churches and modest homes alike in a deafening, terrifying din.

  Again there was a pause during which the earth seemed to hold its very breath.

  “Oh, God!” whispered Charlotte. “Carlos . . . Cassandra . . . Wend!” She plunged for her clothes.

  But before she could get into them, the violent shaking had begun again, along with a deep growling fearsome roar that rumbled from what must surely be the very center of the earth. And now Lisbon’s very face was changing. So many great buildings had collapsed, and such a storm of dust was rising from the ruins, that an unreal night had settled over the city—a darkness pierced by jagged flashes of lightning that lit the scene briefly with a ghastly glare.

  Transfixed for a moment, Charlotte and Tom stared out into this gathering blackness and heard all the sounds of hell erupting from the dying city below: falling buildings, breaking glass, human screams, collapsing walls, crumbling masonry. And rumbling through it, drowning it, that hideous inhuman tormented din rising from deep within the earth as the bedrock cracked and tore and twisted. All of it combined into a single terrifying torrent of sound that froze the blood and stunned the senses.

  What they were hearing was the agonized jolt as continents collided.

  Nerveless they stood, staring awed at the blackness swirling toward them.

  And suddenly out of that blackness careened a riderless horse. It came up the hill at full tilt, and from one empty stirrup dangled an empty boot.

  Charlotte stared in horror at that boot. Boots did not easily depart their owners. Had this one’s owner been knocked from his mount by the quake and pinned under falling masonry that held him firm while his terrified horse jerked free, tearing off the boot as he went?

  “Oh, God,” she whispered again, and then Tom was leading her out of the inn “lest the building crash down upon our heads” and she saw the horse again. It stood trembling and exhausted, then at sight of them rolled its eyes wildly and galloped away.

  A lifetime seemed to have gone by since that first great jolt. In all, this violent upheaval had lasted no more than ten minutes—but it had brought the city down.

  The great earthshock which had torn into Lisbon from the southwest when the undersea Gorringe Bank had shifted had brought Lisbon down like a jigsaw puzzle. Beneath the city’s visible loose sands and gravel stretched other, deeper layers—of blue clay, of hippurite limestone, and of basalt. Those parts of the city that rested deep down on blue clay—and that was most of the central city and the waterfront—were totally destroyed, while those parts that rested on basalt or hippurite limestone—like the crowning hilltop of the Castelo de São Jorge—were, miraculously it seemed, undamaged.

  The Sete Cidades, the Seven Cities Inn, where Clive had brought Lady Farrington and her daughter, was on such a location—it survived, and so did the ladies. But Clive had gone into the city that morning. They never saw him again.

  The pink palace on the square miraculously held during the first violent shock. And when the pause in the shaking came, Prince Damião and Pereira, bellowing at the top of their lungs and pounding against the heavy door with their fists, felt sure they would be rescued. But the shaking had knocked the still-burning torch from its bracket on the wall and the torch had rolled across the long line of black powder, setting it alight. Black powder was scattered all about under the howling pair's feet as they had stumbled about, knocking over some of the kegs of gunpowder that were stored in the dark pantry. They saw the licking flames fizzing toward them underneath the door but they were powerless to stop them.

  The pink palace blew up like a powder magazine, taking the prince and Pereira with it. But its spectacular disintegration went unnoticed in the general debacle, for it blew up just as the violent whipsawing began that brought the neighboring buildings crashing down in a choking cloud of dust.

  The prince had sought a throne—and might have reached it. His macabre death was but one of many ironies to be visited upon Lisbon that day.

  And one of those ironies came to Don Carlos—and came to him in church. And it had been a long time since he had attended Mass.

  Sitting there in the vast dimness of the lofty church, with the light of the candles winking before him and the sonorous voice of the priest intoning, brought Don Carlos back to his childhood—and the faith of his childhood, so long forgotten.

  He had sinned. Before God, he had sinned—and not until he had returned to Lisbon on this last difficult journey, in hopes of restoring his health, had he ever been sorry. He had loved a woman, and although she did not know it, would never know it, he had found out all about her. About her husband, her children. And he had tricked her into a bigamous marriage with him by telling her he was soon to die. Which was certainly not the case then: he had known he had many years to live. He could have helped Charlotte, he could have restored to her the daughters she loved, he could have told her the fate of the lover she had lost—for he had found that out too. But to have done those things would have been to lose her, and more than anything else in this world he had wanted to keep her beside him.

  Don Carlos’ hands clenched with a fraction of what had been his old strength, and for a moment his eyes flashed with their old amber fire. He could feel death stealing upon him, although God alone knew how long it would take before he was laid finally to rest, but for the moment his thoughts were all for his beloved Carlotta.

  She was honest and true and he had used her ill. God would punish him for that. Indeed—his lips curled in a mirthless smile—God had already punished him for that: rather than visiting on him some merciful “accident” that would carry his soul away, God had made him suffer the torment of the damned—just as his father had. And he was even now fast wasting away, just as so long ago he had predicted to Charlotte that he would.

  It was just. He admitted it. And he—so long away from the Church and from grace, how long was it since he had been to Mass?—had been content just to keep her beside him.

  But then they had come to Lisbon, seeking a cure for him. Then her lover, the man of whom he had heard so much in her delirium back in the days when he had first known her, the days when her life had hung by a slender thread, had returned.

  Tom Westing, now a titled gentleman, Lord Derwent, and the richest man in Brazil. . . .

  Don Carlos had had no need to see them together. Just knowing that Tom was in town had sent a chill through his heart. But he could imagine them together as they would be if they met, for he had had a very full description of Tom. A magnificent pair, they would be, their faces full of splendor as they looked into each other s eyes, made for each other.

  He had known then that he could keep up the charade no longer.

  Nor could he br
ing himself to tell her. He could not bear to watch that warm expression he so treasured change and chill. He could not endure her scorn, her hatred.

  So he had chosen another way. He had sent Charlotte off to the Varváez reception for Lord Derwent, knowing full well she could not escape meeting the guest of honor. And he had told Charlotte not to disturb him, that he would go to early Mass, that he would not be back until after ten.

  He had given her a night with her lover. And even now, jealousy was grinding in his heart.

  He had meant to do it differently. He had meant to linger with her as long as he could, to confess and be given last rites, he had intended to make his peace with the God of his fathers and to depart this life cherishing the hope of an uneasy heaven where perhaps he would see her again someday.

  Now, sitting in this great drafty church, listening to the priest’s voice droning on, he knew that it was not to be. He had kept Charlotte apart from her lover all these years. Now, in a last handsome gesture, he would restore him to her—and in a way that would leave her without shame.

  He would forget confession, he who had so much to confess, for upon leaving this church he meant to go home and lock his door and cry out loudly that the pain was too much to bear—and then he would fall upon his sword and die a suicide.

  And Charlotte could go back to the man she had never stopped loving.

  It would be his gift to her. Perhaps the best thing he had ever done in a wasted life. And all it would cost him would be his immortal soul, for from his early rigid upbringing in Holy Mother Church he knew in the depths of him that to die by his own hand an unconfessed sinner and be buried in unconsecrated ground would cast him into a burning hell forever.

  For her, he would endure the flames.

  Don Carlos’ face was very set on this All Hallows’ Day, and suddenly through his dark thoughts penetrated a terrible rumbling noise that might have come from the very hell he had been envisioning. And simultaneously the floor beneath him dipped and swayed. About him people were lurching to their feet, shouting, screaming, running over each other in frenzy, trying to escape as the walls cracked and the holy statues toppled.

  Don Carlos looked up. The ceiling above him bore a long crack, a crack which fanned out into a hundred others. The lofty roof of the church was collapsing upon those within.

  Don Carlos’ gaze remained fixed upward during those moments when, wrenched loose by the fury of the quake, roof and ceiling came hurtling down upon the packed multitude below. The air was filled with screams—but among the screams there was one who laughed.

  God had been good to him—he would not have to take his own life after all. And perhaps in some merciful heaven he would find her once again—someday.

  It was the last thought Don Carlos was ever to have, as the heavy roof caved in, crushing the faithful below.

  For Clive, Lord Houghton, who had gone down into the town, the situation was different. He had been standing near the Cays Depreda, the new stone quay that had been erected on the riverfront, when the first tremor struck. It had not even occurred to him to go back into the town to look for Lady Farrington or her daughter. He had cowered back onto the quay, joined by thousands of others who had sought its safety as well, and watched in fear as the ruined city now became a raging inferno, its hundreds of fires whipped into one vast conflagration by the high winds that fanned it. It was a fearful sight indeed, the new-made ruins evilly lit up by licking wind-driven flames beneath an overhanging blackness made up of smoke and dust and laced by lightning bolts. To the frightened thousands who jostled each other upon the stone quay, that was a far more electrifying spectacle than the view upon their other side, where the waters of the Tagus River seemed to be draining fast away.

  They never learned what that would mean.

  Just as the second great earthquake struck, the foundations were jolted from beneath the Cays Depreda and the entire stone quay plunged into the river, carrying Clive and screaming thousands of men, women, and children with it. What happened in those dark churning waters, no one ever knew, but none of them were ever found.

  Not all who died in Lisbon that day were on land. Some were on the river, some upon the sea.

  And one of the many tall ships caught irresistibly in the holocaust was the Storm Castle—the white-sailed merchantman that carried Phoebe.

  Beneath the blue Atlantic over which the Storm Castle had sailed so placidly, the great continental plates bearing Africa and Europe were locked in titanic struggle. Unseen, that mighty undersea escarpment southwest of Lisbon that would come to be known as the Gorringe Bank, racked and stretched by unbearable strains that reached down and down to depths unimaginable, was reaching the breaking point as the Storm Castle sailed over it.

  Many ships were unlucky that day, but none unluckier than the Storm Castle. She was just in position to feel the main force of the catastrophic shift below as the fault broke open beneath the strain and Africa lurched against Europe, sending a violent shudder through the planet Earth.

  At sea they had heard a sound like a distant rumbling thunder coming from the east. The passengers, crowded on deck with their possessions, for they were soon to disembark, had looked at each other uneasily. A heavy storm, no doubt.

  Phoebe, watching that distant dark cloud rising from the earth, had been, like the others, unaware of the water’s first imperceptible rising. She watched that low dark cloud raptly, for beneath it was where she had been told she would have her first glimpse of Lisbon’s distant skyline. She leaned upon the rail at the prow, uncaring that the salt spray might mar the lustrous dark green velvet of her gown, which—like everything else in her life now—had not been paid for.

  Phoebe had never looked better. Her high cheekbones were flushed beneath the rouge she always wore these days to heighten her own slightly sallow color. Her dark hair shone in its fashionable coiffure beneath a three-cornered hat of dark green felt that became her rather witchlike features enormously.

  Oh, it would be so good to find Clive again! His love was worth all the humiliation, all the bailiffs. In her desperation to join him, Phoebe had sunk lower than ever before. In Liverpool she had wangled a job as chambermaid to a wealthy family, and on her first night there she had passed all the family plate out the window to an accomplice—and used her share of the money they got from the fence to purchase her passage on board the Storm Castle. But she had been suspected, and now it would be chancy for her to return to England. No matter, she and Clive could wander about Europe as expatriates, making new debts!

  Her dreaming face broke into a sudden frown and she leaned forward, peering ahead. Something was wrong up there! That sullen dark cloud laced by lightning seemed to lie on glowing coals—no, it was flames, the city was ablaze!

  Even as that fact was borne in on her, a terrible torrent of sound engulfed her, a deep growling roar that seemed to her in her fright to come out of that distant burning city—an enormous and terrifying blast of sound that roared in her ears with no beginning and no end.

  Her green-gloved hands seized the rail.

  To Phoebe it was as if the ship were being lifted by giant hands, up and up, and being flung forward.

  The wind blew her hair, and her hat was gone. Phoebe clung to the rail with all her strength, suddenly aware of being caught up by mighty forces beyond her understanding.

  Around her men shouted and women screamed, their voices lost in the general tumult.

  It was not the sail-billowing wind that carried them forward now. It was a force from below that swept them inexorably up the mouth of the Tagus, rising higher and higher as millions of tons of raging water bursting in from the ocean flooded up a narrowing river that had now become a bottleneck. The Storm Castle—and Phoebe with it—was riding the crest of a giant wave that would break over Lisbon.

  Before that wave, helpless and doomed, the city waited.

  Those flung ashore by that first great wave that broke over Lisbon would never live to tell it. But for Phoebe t
he mighty "tidal wave" had done something else—it had saved her from being dishonored one more time.

  Indeed fate dealt out a strange kind of mercy that day—at least to Phoebe. She died never knowing that the man she loved so desperately had intended to kill her.

  Wend had waited in Charlotte s bedroom at the Royal Cockerel for Charlotte to return from the reception. Exhausted from the excitement of the day, she had fallen asleep and had not waked until morning. Although it seemed logical that Charlotte had returned and slept the night, then dressed without waking her and gone off with Don Carlos, who had already left for church, the sight of that unslept-in bed disturbed Wend and she went outside and wandered about, hoping to catch sight of Charlotte.

  And so it was that that terrible first shock that reduced the Royal Cockerel to a rubbish heap, killed everyone inside, and shuddered through the entire street, showering stones and roof tiles and debris onto the cobbles in a deadly downpour, found Wend in the center of the street staring into the distance at a well-dressed woman she hoped might be Charlotte. The shock was so great that it knocked her feet out from under her and sent her, feeling nauseated and dizzy, onto the cobbles in a choking cloud of dust.

  Coughing and battered from—luckily—small stones rather than the huge ones piled all about, Wend scrambled to her feet in terror and stumbled through that dusty smokescreen in she knew not what direction. But when, choking, she broke through the dust enough to see ahead, she realized that she was heading for the high ground and forthwith broke into a run, with the frowning castle on the heights as a beckoning lodestar.

  Her instinct to seek the high ground was correct, and as she stumbled over fallen debris, she was calling out, moaning actually, that none of them should ever have left England—nothing like this ever happened there!

  Annette had only just been able to crawl out of the ruins of her millinery shop when that first great wave, approaching at incredible speed, roared up the Tagus. She had heard the distant roar of it and had with difficulty struggled to her feet from a welter of fallen masonry that had left her bruised and bleeding.