The Devil on Her Tongue

by Linda Holeman

  I tried the two blends Espirito had worked on, and we agreed on which one matched the Anglican blend the best. When Henry Duncan arrived, he didn’t seem surprised to find me in the blending room.

  “Well, Espirito?” he asked. “What news have you for me?”

  “I’d like you to try this first. I think you’ll be happy with it.” Espirito offered Mr. Duncan samples from the original bottle and from the new blend. “Of course, it will alter upon maturing and further fermenting, but it’s as close as possible for now.”

  Mr. Duncan swirled a mouthful of the sample bottle first, then spat it into a little pitcher. He next took Espirito’s blend, gave it a brief sniff, then repeated the process. He sat for a moment. “Yes. It will be a good match in another year,” he said, smiling broadly.

  “Diamantina agreed on the blend. My sister-in-law has a fine palate.”

  “I know. Even when I met her in that dingy inn in Vila Baleira,” Mr. Duncan responded, “it was obvious that her knowledge of the grapes and their varietals surpassed many already initiated in the wine business. I take it you have the mosto to sell me, and you will do the blending?”

  “Yes. There’s just the cost to decide on.”

  “You set the price, Espirito. I’ve made it clear I need you. I don’t see us having to bargain over this.”

  Espirito extended his hand. Mr. Duncan shook it firmly. “How I wish you’d decided to make your future with me. Even though Perez has ruined the hopes of Kipling’s and Duncan’s merging, maybe one day I’ll find a way to buy him out, and you’ll be my blender again.” He smiled. “For now, we have cause for celebration.” He looked around at the bottles on the shelves. “What can you offer me of my competitor’s wines?” he asked with a laugh.

  Espirito poured us each a large glass of a rich old Malvasia. And then another. I should have left then, but maybe because I was pleased to be part of this friendly exchange, I stayed. By the time I’d emptied the third glass, I felt light and happy, smiling as I watched Espirito’s lips on the rim of his own glass.

  “Diamantina? Do you ever go back to Porto Santo?”

  I turned from Espirito to meet Mr. Duncan’s gaze. Without warning, the last mouthful of wine rose back up my throat, and I felt horribly ill.

  “No. Excuse me, please,” I said to them both, standing. I had to steady myself for a moment with my fingertips on the tabletop. I went out into the courtyard, concentrating on walking slowly and deliberately. I took deep breaths, then drank two cupfuls of water from the cistern. I splashed my face and drank another cup of water. I had to sit on a step and close my eyes, willing the nausea to lessen.

  At the sound of voices, I patted my damp forehead with my sleeve and stood. “I’ll say goodbye for now, Diamantina,” Mr. Duncan said, coming towards me. “I spend more of my time in Lisbon than I do in Funchal these days, but I’m sure our paths will cross again before too long.”

  I tried to swallow my queasiness. “The barrels you bring us should be of newer wood,” I told him, and again he smiled.

  Once he’d left the courtyard, Espirito asked, “Are you all right, Diamantina?”

  “I didn’t eat much today, and shouldn’t have accepted the third glass. My own fault,” I said, and had to sit down again.

  “I’ll get a cart to take you home,” he said. “Wait here.”

  I had made a fool of myself. By the time Espirito came back, I was walking in the courtyard, attempting to appear as though all was well. He helped me into the cart.

  “Thank you again. I hope you feel all right. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Oh no. It’s entirely my fault,” I repeated. “I’ll be fine once I get home.”

  He nodded, and the cart jolted forward. I concentrated on staring straight ahead, over the plodding ox, as the driver took me back up the hill to Quinta Isabella.

  In the cottage, my bedroom walls were white, the curtain fluttering over the open window also white. I had never slept in a room so filled with light. The morning sun shone through the window in slashes of buttery yellow. From my bed, I could see the blue, cloudless sky, and hear the soft cry of a mourning dove. There was the scent of heliotrope and juniper. From outside my door, in the sitting room, came the muted sound of wood hitting wood. Cristiano was playing with a set of blocks Tiago had lent him.

  I imagined Cristiano building up the blocks, one on top of the other, his movements cautious as he added the final pieces to his tower, and then his smile when they tumbled to the floor. I should have risen long ago and taken him to the kitchen for his breakfast. He wouldn’t come and bother me for it; he had uncanny patience for a child.

  Bonifacio would have left, as usual, with the rising of the sun, to be at his desk in the Counting House before the lodge opened. He liked to be there early, to set up his quills and ink and run his fingers over the smooth ledger pages. It had been two weeks since I had gone to help Espirito, two weeks since that first warning in the adega.

  I could no longer fool myself. It was time to do what must be done. I rose and went out to Cristiano, running my hand over his soft hair. I told him to go by himself to the kitchen for breakfast, then stay and play with Tiago for the morning.

  When he had gone, I concocted a tea from the bitter leaves of rue and mixed it with tansy. I carefully added only the tiniest pinch of the ground seed from the lethal yew. I would have to drink the infusion throughout this day, and the next and the next. I was careful with my measurements, knowing the danger of the combination of herbs. I thought of poor Martyn Kipling, and his rapid, painful death. It would take three to four days of nausea and cramping before the actual bleeding began. The sponge and vinegar weren’t infallible. I had always known that.

  For the next few days, I spent much of my time on my bed with a bucket on the floor beside me, watching the curtains lift and sway.

  I told Bonifacio I had influenza, and asked that he tell Binta to let Cristiano stay with her. Binta and Nini were quiet and helpful; one of them brought me a tray a few times a day, although I was unable to eat anything.

  On the fourth day, more severe cramping gripped me, and I waited hopefully for the blood and tissue to pass from my body. Nothing appeared. By the sixth day, I couldn’t bear the illness without the hoped-for results, knowing it was a danger to my own life to continue to take the herbs. The child was as tenacious and stubborn as its father. It would not be shifted from its hold on me.

  I’d conceived from the rape in the chapel at the beginning of May.

  I walked through the small, tidy graveyard with its three headstones. I ran my fingers over the names of Beatriz’s family—her father Martyn, her mother Isabella and her sister Inêz—and wished the forming child gone. Birds sang quietly, and a breeze blew up. I was faint suddenly, and put my hand onto the headstone of Beatriz’s mother. The stone was cool, somehow comforting. I thought of my own mother, refusing to perform the act with the hook. She would help with herbal infusions, but not the hook. Too many women bled to death that way, she had said, or suffered agonies from the damage for years after.

  And yet it was my only recourse now: the long, cruel hook, scraping out what grew inside me.

  I slowly walked back to the cottage and sat on the veranda. Cristiano came home with Tiago, and I watched them play with little round stones, rolling them into small depressions they’d hollowed in the dirt.

  Tomorrow. I would do it tomorrow.

  I prepared the hook and took it into the latrina of the cottage.

  I lifted my skirt and began to insert it. As I slowly pushed it higher, I felt the first nudge of pain. I pushed further. Now my legs trembled, and although I was not afraid of pain, I stopped. I thought of myself dying here, on the floor, in my own blood.

  Who would find me but Cristiano, when he came in with Tiago in a few hours, chattering and laughing? Would seeing me in that state bring back his terrible visions? He only rarely had the nightmare now.

  I imagined what it would do to him should I not withstand
this assault. What would happen to him, left alone with Bonifacio?

  Holding my breath, I carefully withdrew the hook. I sank to the floor, my face in my hands.

  After a long while, I rose and washed my hands and face and put away the hook. I had no interest in this child; it was Abílio’s bastard. But if I was forced to carry and give birth to it, the only way I could continue my life at the quinta while waiting to leave was by persuading Bonifacio that the child was his. It seemed an insurmountable task. And yet I had to make it work. If I couldn’t, he would turn me out. I would be disgraced and destitute.

  That evening, when Bonifacio returned from Funchal, I had a plate of cabra and a pitcher of wine, covered with a cloth to keep away the flies, sitting in the middle of the table.

  “Why are we not eating in the kitchen?” Bonifacio asked, lifting the cloth and leaning forward to smell the contents of the pitcher. “It smells like Kipling’s finest Boal.”

  “It is. I took it from the big house. Dona Beatriz gave me permission to occasionally help myself to a bottle of wine.” It wasn’t true, but there were dozens of bottles in a wine cupboard in the dining room. I had gone in while Binta and Nini were dusting, and felt no guilt in taking it. “And it’s just this once, for a special occasion.”

  “What occasion is that?”

  “We have never properly celebrated our new lives,” I said. “So I thought we could toast to the good luck that has come to us.”

  “Life is not about luck. It is God’s will, coupled with hard work.”

  “Yes,” I said pleasantly. “You’re right. But I had Nini make cabra. I know it’s your favourite.”

  He still stood, looking unconvinced. “Where’s Cristiano?”

  “He asked to stay with Tiago tonight.” It was I who had asked Binta to keep Cristiano. “Come, Bonifacio. Think of how God’s grace has shone upon you. You no longer have to carry the burden of the fallen priest as you did every time you went to church in Curral das Freiras. You can use the quinta’s chapel whenever you like, and go to any cathedral you choose in Funchal. You have a fine new position in Kipling’s Counting House, and we have this beautiful home. If ever there was a time to be a little carefree, it’s now, Bonifacio. It’s a cause for celebration, this new life God has blessed us with.”

  I hated myself, but it was all of our futures at stake: Bonifacio’s, mine, Cristiano’s. And that of the tiny child unfolding inside me.

  “I suppose so,” he said at last, and sat down.

  I served him the tender goat in tomatoes and herbs, pouring him a glass of the Boal. “You’re not having any?” he said, looking at my empty glass.

  “I will, after I’ve eaten a bit,” I said, watching him taste the wine. “Since I was ill, my stomach isn’t back to normal.”

  He swallowed another mouthful. “Full flavoured and sweet, but it’s got an odd aftertaste.”

  I smiled, raising a forkful of the cabra to my lips.

  By the time he’d finished his second glass, Bonifacio set down his fork and ran his hand over his eyes. “Are you all right, Bonifacio?”

  He didn’t answer, frowning down at his plate. When he looked up, his pupils were large. I’d made an infusion of valerian oil and mixed in the ground seed of the poppy, creating a heavy sleeping potion that I’d stirred into the Boal.

  “I’m suddenly so weary,” he said, rising, putting one hand on the table to steady himself.

  “Maybe you’re sickening with what I had,” I said. “You should go to bed.”

  He stood there a moment longer, as if slightly dazed, then went to his room.

  I waited as long as I could. Dusk was turning to darkness. When I heard him snoring, I went into his bedroom and looked down at him. He was sprawled across the bed on his back, still fully dressed. “Bonifacio?” I whispered, and then said loudly, “Bonifacio!” His snores continued.

  I went to my own room and put on my nightdress. I fetched the tiny container of blood I had collected after killing a chicken behind the kitchen that morning. Back in Bonifacio’s room, I sat beside him on the bed and started to undress him. His snores had stopped, and he was breathing slowly and deeply. I hoped the drugs would keep him asleep through most of the night, but I couldn’t be totally certain of the effects, as I’d never made this particular concoction. I could only believe that when he woke up next to me in bed, the spot of chicken blood on the sheet evidence of my lost virginity, he would accept what I eventually told him about the child.

  He worked in the Counting House; he would not be fooled easily by a too-early baby. I would eat lightly, try to keep the baby small, so that it appeared premature when I gave birth.

  I fully knew it was a flimsy plan, but it was the only one left to me.

  I unlaced the top of his shirt and worked his arms out of it, pulling it over his head. He was in such a deep slumber that his limbs were deadened, and hard to manoeuvre. His shoulders were narrow, his chest a little concave. I took off his boots and his stockings, and then unlaced the leather thongs of his breeches and carefully, slowly, worked them down over his hips. For that first instant all appeared normal, but suddenly, when I realized what I was seeing, my own breath trembled in my ears.

  He had been castrated.

  I sat back, my hands over my mouth.

  The jagged scar was still an angry pink, crossed with rough, clumsy stitching lines.

  I remembered his return to Curral das Freiras after Lent, so ghostly and emaciated. I remembered Espirito bringing him to the house on Rua São Batista our first night in Funchal, and the English physician attending to him.

  The few bites of cabra I had eaten came back up my throat, and I had to close my eyes and keep swallowing. The castration had been his punishment for wanting me. This was what he felt was necessary to ensure he was not lured into sin by me.

  Such was my horror and pity that I dropped down beside him, my head on his shoulder, my arm across his chest. I softly wept for him then.

  After a while, I sat up and slowly dressed him again. Holding the vial of chicken blood, I stood looking down at him, filled with deep sorrow for what this man thought he had to do to remain true to his God. For the first time, I felt something almost like tenderness for him. I stoked his hair, and then leaned down and kissed his forehead.

  He stirred, blinking and opening his eyes. They were unfocused, and I knew he was in a strange dream. “Sleep now, Bonifacio,” I whispered. “Sleep.”

  When he came out of his bedroom the next morning, he rubbed his face with his hands. “I feel unwell.”

  I had tossed through the night, terribly disturbed by Bonifacio’s self-inflicted mutilation and that it had killed my final, desperate hope. This baby would destroy my future, and leave me homeless and destitute. Bonifacio would send me away, back to Porto Santo, for where else could I go? I would never again see Cristiano. I would not receive the expected letter from my father—it would not be forwarded to me after I had been cast out in shame.

  I would have to write to my father again from Porto Santo. It would be another year of waiting, with a child and no charity from anyone. Would I be forced to live in a cave, as my mother had once spoken of?

  “You drank the whole pitcher of wine,” I said, turning so he wouldn’t see my face as I wound the clock. How quickly I had started to rely on it for the rhythm of my days. A strange thing, I often thought now, that I’d lived without need of a clock for more than eighteen years, and now glanced at it frequently throughout the day. “Usually you just enjoy a glass or two. Then again, that blend of Boal was of a particularly high quality.”

  “I do remember drinking one glass, but …” He stopped.

  I turned back to him, running my hands down my skirt. “Or, as I said last night, you may be sickening with what I had last week. Are you well enough to go to work?”

  He took his jacket off the peg by the door. “The walk down to Funchal should clear my head.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  I tried twice again
to rid myself of the child, but both times came to consciousness on the floor of the latrina, the wadded cotton still in my mouth, the hook still in me. But not deep enough. I could not drive that sharp end far enough to dislodge what grew there without fainting from the pain. As unflinching as I was in my decision, my body betrayed me.

  I spent many afternoons in the summer house, looking at the sea, knowing my days were numbered and there was nothing I could do but wait.

  By the middle of my fourth month, Binta and Nini guessed at my condition, but assumed it was a happy occasion. Why wouldn’t they? Wasn’t I playing the part of a respectable married woman?

  I did not venture into Funchal, not wanting to see Espirito. No invitations came from the house on Rua São Batista, and I was relieved.

  As I began my fifth month, and felt the quickening of the child as I ran my hands over my newly rounded belly, hidden from Bonifacio beneath loose blouses and voluminous aprons, I tried to think of how I would survive when he cast me out.

  The day I knew I could hide no longer was a Friday, dark and rainy. Although it was only early September, a sudden cool rain had blown in from the sea. Leaving Cristiano in the sitting room with his playthings, I had wrapped a shawl over my head and walked into the field behind our cottage. On my way back, I stopped on a slight rise and looked down upon the quinta. Although the summer house was hidden by high trees, the rest of the buildings—the big estate house, the stables and pressing house and kitchen and wash house, the chapel, and my home—were all visible in the mist. I gazed at their outlines in the rain and knew that after today I might never see them again. I felt this world I had never imagined to be mine now slipping from my grasp.

  The thought of telling Bonifacio made me so sick that I sat down in the tall, drenched grass and took deep breaths, my face wet with both rain and tears.