The Devil on Her Tongue

by Linda Holeman

  All around us, people cried and coughed and prayed. The night breeze brought the smell of charred flesh, and I inhaled the ash of those who only that morning had lived and breathed, who knew desires and dreams. The dog lay at my feet, and at one point I sat up and held on to his stinking, matted fur, as though he anchored me to the tilting earth.

  And I did finally sleep, and dreamed of strangers whispering to me, their voices rising and falling in the heavy, death-filled air.

  I opened my eyes to light streaming down, another bright, sunny day, as yesterday had begun. Candelária and Cristiano slept on, and I touched their faces, their hair, marvelling that we had all survived.

  And then I stood and looked towards Lisboa. It still burned, its fires fanned by a strong northeast wind.

  The dog had gone.

  I was relieved to see that the buildings of Santa Maria de Belém were still standing. Some showed cracks, and glass littered the ground from broken windows, but on the whole the parish had survived the earthquake.

  Unlike the frenzied chaos of Lisboa, here there was still order. We went slowly through the wide streets, Candelária beside me, clinging to my skirt. Cristiano leaned on a gnarled stick, and I remembered how he had once held my skirt in Curral das Freiras as my daughter did today. With the help of strangers, I found Dona Beatriz’s home.

  Samuel opened the door when I pulled on the cord. Before I could speak, his eyes widened and he tried to shut the door. I struck my palms against it and pushed back. “Wait,” I said. “Samuel, wait. It’s me, Senhora Rivaldo. Diamantina, and Cristiano. And Candelária,” I said. “Look, it’s Candelária.”

  The elderly man stood back, nervous and uncertain. “I’m sorry, Senhora Rivaldo. I’m not to allow anyone in.”

  “Please get Dona Beatriz,” I demanded.

  “She’s at the chapel of Santa Ana, handing out bread to those in need.”

  “Is Senhor Perez here?”

  He shook his head.

  I gripped Candelária’s hand tighter. “Samuel,” I said, “please. Look at us. We’ve come all the way from Lisboa. You know I’m a friend.”

  He looked at Candelária for a moment longer, then stood aside to let us pass.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Cristiano had been shown to one bedroom, and Candelária and I to another. Warm water was brought for us to bathe. I dressed Candelária in her pale blue gown, and she held her rag doll as I brushed her clean, wet hair.

  “Make sure you put on your boots,” I told her. “You can’t run about in bare feet. This is not the quinta—it’s a fancy house.” I turned her to face me. “Do you understand? You must always wear your boots while we’re here.”

  Dona Beatriz got back in the early evening, dirty and tired. She greeted me with cries of happiness. “I was so, so afraid for you, Diamantina,” she said, tears in her eyes, “for you and Cristiano. And Candelária? You got her back,” she said, dropping to her knees in front of her.

  I stood very still as she picked up Candelária’s hands. “Hello, Candelária,” she said. “You once played with Leandro, but you were too small to remember. Have you seen him today?”

  Candelária nodded.

  Both she and Leandro were tall and slender, but that was all they appeared to share. Would anyone suspect them of being brother and sister?

  “Would you like to go to the nursery and play with him now?” Dona Beatriz asked.

  Candelária shook her head. “I want to stay with Mama.”

  “I should put her to bed,” I said. “She’s been through so much.”

  “Of course,” Dona Beatriz answered.

  A short time later, as Candelária was falling asleep in the big bed I would share with her, Dona Beatriz came to the doorway. “Can I speak to you for a moment, Diamantina? I know you must need sleep terribly, but …”

  I went to her, and we stepped into the hall. “The stories I’ve heard coming from Lisboa, Diamantina. Is it truly as terrible as they say?”

  “It is more terrible than anyone can imagine. I can’t speak of the things I saw.” I wondered how long it would be before the images of the maimed and mutilated, the dying and the dead faded, or if they ever would. If the screams would ever stop ringing in my ears.

  “The people who have come to the churches here looking for help … it’s so awful. Every one of them has lost someone they love. We must never stop praying our thanks that our children were spared.” She squeezed my hand. “Tomorrow I’ll go back to the church to help. I plan to do what I can for as long as necessary.” She let go of my hand. “Now I must let you go to bed. I mustn’t keep you up with questions I have, about … about the rest of our lives. There will be time for that when the world is once again a familiar place.”

  The next morning, I went with Beatriz to the church. I left Candelária with Leandro and Neves, Samuel’s wife. She was dark-skinned, like Samuel. She had blue markings on her face—a series of fine vertical stripes from under her bottom lip to the end of her chin—and I knew she had come from North Africa, like my mother.

  Cristiano, limping only slightly now, came as well, and was immediately put to work building shelters and digging latrines.

  Beatriz handed out food and prepared rolls of bandages. I sought out the rough canvas tent where surgeons moved between the rows of injured. I went to the nearest surgeon, his clothing soaked in blood and his face beaded in sweat.

  “I can help however you need me,” I told him. “I’m a curandeira, and also have worked as a midwife.”

  “Good, good,” he said, hardly glancing at me. “Go and see to him,” he said, pointing at a man lying on a bed of straw, moaning.

  I spent the rest of the day with needle and thread and rolls of lint and linen. I also delivered two babies. By the time Beatriz and Cristiano and I returned to the house, I was so weary I fell into bed without dinner.

  We worked in this way for the next four days. Many of the severely injured died, and others with limbs showing signs of rot had them cut off by the surgeons. At first they tossed the darkening feet, legs, hands and arms into piles, but it was quickly determined that the body parts must be deeply buried and covered with stones after they attracted roving bands of hungry dogs. Word came that the unidentified dead in Lisboa were being taken out to sea on barges and deposited into the water to stop the spread of disease.

  After five days, the fires of Lisboa were finally out, and a few days after that, the roads cleared enough for the passage of carriages. The people who had come to Santa Maria de Belém for refuge began to make their slow journey back to the city, to move through the rubble of what they had once called home.

  Dona Beatriz and I had not yet spoken of Abílio.

  I thought of going home too.

  “Soon I’ll have to try and get us passage back to Madeira,” I said to Cristiano in the salon that evening. I was bent over his palm with a needle, trying to dig out a long sliver of wood that had become deeply embedded under his skin as he had built the temporary shelters.

  “A boat, Diamantina?” He sounded slightly incredulous. “Do you really suppose boats will be coming to or leaving Lisboa yet? Do you not remember what we saw at the harbour?”

  He was right, of course, but all I could think about, now that I had Candelária, was getting away from here, and Abílio. What might he disclose about Candelária should he have survived and come back to Santa Maria de Belém to find me here with her?

  “I’ve asked a lot of people about Funchal, but nobody knows,” Cristiano said. “Do you think the earthquake destroyed it as well? Will we still have a home?”

  I sat back on my heels and took a healing salve from the small medicine case I had brought with me. “I don’t know,” I said, thinking of Plácido Lajes, and the woman Abílio had pose as Dona Beatriz to sign the papers. I also thought of Bonifacio, on his way to Brazil, and of Espirito, also making his way across the sea, a month or more ahead of Bonifacio. “I don’t know.”

  Cristiano had left t
he salon, and I was straightening the contents of my medicine case when the door slammed.

  I went to Dona Beatriz, alarmed. Her face was the colour of chalk, the skin around her eyes blotchy. Abílio, I thought. Abílio has died in the earthquake.

  “I’m surprised you had the nerve to come back here with her,” she said, and I reached towards her.

  “Dona Beatriz,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. “What is it?”

  “Remove your hand,” she said with icy calm and control. “Well? When were you going to tell me? Did you really think I would never find out?” She stepped back from me and adjusted her lace collar.

  I waited, my heart thudding, because I knew what had happened. Dona Beatriz pulled on her skirt to straighten it, then lightly brushed her hands together as if they were dusty.

  “When was it?” she asked. “Was it when I lay in childbed? When you comforted me when my father died? When I left you in charge of my home because I trusted you?” She crossed her arms. “I just went to say good night to Leandro. On a whim, I stopped at your room, to say good night to Candelária as well. She was asleep on top of the coverlet. As I started to pull a blanket over her, I saw her foot.” She nodded. “So? When exactly was it that you were fornicating with my husband?”

  “Dona Beatriz,” I said. “You don’t understand how it happened.”

  She stared at me. “I don’t care. There is no reason good enough. What kind of woman are you?”

  I did know that my reason wasn’t good enough. I did know what kind of woman I was—had always been.

  “Do you think I care whom he beds? He hasn’t come near me in years, and I’m glad, because his touch repulses me. He’s always made a fool of me with other women, but I long ago stopped caring. I abide him because is my husband. But you, Diamantina? You made a fool of me?”

  I stayed very still.

  “Well? Are you going to deny it?”

  “No,” I said, without taking my eyes from hers.

  “You slept with my husband, and conceived a child with him,” she stated, as if to be completely certain.

  “Yes. It wasn’t … you need to understand, Dona Beatriz, it wasn’t what I wanted. I … I felt I had no choice.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You felt you had no choice? Do you mean you had no choice? Are you saying he violated you, against your will? Tell me this, and I will believe you, for I know my husband for the animal he is. I’ve seen him too many times with the servant girls, in spite of his women in Lisboa and Oporto. But you are a friend. You wouldn’t betray me. Would you?”

  I could tell her Abílio had raped me, I could tell her this right now, and she would believe me.

  There was a quiet knock on the door, and Dona Beatriz looked towards it, her face hard, and then went and opened it.

  “Both children are asleep, Dona Beatriz,” Neves said. “May I retire for the night, or am I needed?”

  “There’s nothing else, Neves. Thank you.” Dona Beatriz closed the door and came back and stood in front of me. “Well?” Her voice was harsh.

  If I was to tell the truth, it must be now. I straightened my shoulders. Abílio had forced himself on me in the chapel when Candelária was conceived. That was true. As for the other times … “No,” I said quietly. “I didn’t wish it, but it was not entirely against my will.”

  She reached out and slapped me, the force making me stumble backwards. As I held my stinging cheek, shocked at the blow, Dona Beatriz looked unsteady, as if she were the one who had been struck. She gripped the back of a chair. “For all these years I was happy you were at Quinta Isabella. It actually pleased me that you could enjoy that life. Well, no longer. I don’t know what has happened on Madeira now, but Quinta Isabella is no longer your home. You are not allowed on the property, and I will enforce that with the servants still there. And I want you out of here. Take whatever you brought with you, take Cristiano and your daughter, Abílio’s daughter, and get out. Not tomorrow. Go now, tonight, into the darkness. Go and stay in one of the shelters at the church, and tomorrow walk back into Lisboa. Or walk into the sea. I no longer care where you go, or what you do.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  As I passed Dona Beatriz to leave the salon, she caught my wrist.

  “Just tell me one thing. The day you came here looking for your daughter, you knew about Abílio’s plan to take Kipling’s from me. You know about the deed. Are you involved in this in any way? Are you helping Abílio?”

  “Helping him? Helping Abílio?” Her grip on my wrist was iron. “How could you think that? No. He sent a letter to Espirito about the sale. It was Espirito who told me.”

  She dropped my wrist. “Does your husband know Abílio is her father? Is that why he took Candelária away from you?”

  “No. He doesn’t suspect she’s Abílio’s.”

  “And you’ve had no contact with Abílio over these last years? When he went back to Funchal two years ago—did you continue your relationship with him then?”

  I shook my head. “He tried, Dona Beatriz. I threatened him. The scar on his neck?”

  She nodded.

  “I did that. I cut his neck with a knife and told him that if he ever tried to manipulate me again, the way he had manipulated me before, I would end his life.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “He would have overpowered you.”

  “He didn’t. Can you deny the fresh injury he had when he returned from Madeira?”

  She didn’t answer for a moment. “No.”

  “Then believe me. Abílio is as much my enemy as he is yours. You, more than anyone, know how he uses everyone to get what he wants. How he used you,” I said, expecting she might slap me again.

  A look of resignation came over her face. “I do know what he’s capable of,” she said. “Of course I know Abílio’s true nature, and …” She sat down. “I so often thought that if I hadn’t married Abílio, my father might be alive today.”

  I sat across from her and leaned close. “You suspected Abílio, Dona Beatriz?”

  She frowned. “Suspected what? I knew I caused my father distress marrying Abílio against his wishes. Not only because my father knew Abílio wouldn’t be a good husband to me, but because he didn’t want to take him into the business. I put so much strain on him so soon after the deaths of my mother and sister. Surely that contributed to his untimely death.”

  “Ah,” I said, sitting back.

  “What do you mean about suspecting Abílio?”

  I hesitated, deliberating whether to tell her the secret I’d carried, and then said, for what harm could it do now, “He poisoned your father with fleabane oil, the fleabane I used to help you after Leandro’s birth.”

  She sat straighter. “What? Are you certain?”

  “Yes. As soon as I heard of your father’s symptoms, I accused Abílio. He didn’t deny it, except to say he didn’t wish to kill your father, only incapacitate him so that he had more control of the business.”

  “But … why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you speak of this before? I’ve known you for over five years. Why haven’t you told me?” She was wringing her hands.

  “Dona Beatriz, I had no real proof. It was only my word against Abílio’s. I was a stranger to the quinta and all those on it—including you—at that time. I thought if I spoke of my suspicions, it might only bring you more pain, and … and then what? You might have completely disbelieved me, but I would have planted a seed of doubt in your mind that caused you consternation every time you looked at your husband, and thought of—”

  “Enough!” she said loudly, and stared at me, her hands still now. “I want to hate you, Diamantina, but I can’t.” Her voice lowered. “We have both suffered because of Abílio’s twisted desires.” After a moment of silence she said, “All right. This plan of his to sell my business: tell me what you know.”

  “The buyer is the wine merchant Plácido Fernandez Lajes. I found him, through Henry, in Lisboa the night before the earthquake. He think
s he’s bought the business and the quinta and this house. I believe it’s done. He said the papers were signed, so he surely paid Abílio.”

  “What papers?”

  “I don’t know. Abílio must have created false documents, something that made it appear he was outright owner of all your father’s holdings.” I paused. “You still have the original deed?”

  “Of course.”

  “There’s something else. Senhor Lajes told me that a woman was present at the signing of the papers, putting her signature to them. Your signature. He called her Dona Beatriz, and thought she was Abílio’s wife.”

  “Ah—Sofia.” A sound, perhaps an attempt at a laugh, came from Dona Beatriz’s throat. “Abílio will do anything to have his way, as we have discussed. Sofia is the other life in Lisboa. He bought her a house, and he lives with her when he’s there. I’ve known about her for the last few years.”

  “I’m sorry, Dona Beatriz.”

  “At least they have no children. That would further complicate the already sordid situation. What will happen now, Diamantina?”

  We sat in silence for a long moment. I took her hand and held it. “I will do whatever I can to help you, Dona Beatriz. Please accept my apology for what happened with Abílio.” She didn’t speak, but also didn’t pull her hand from mine. “At first, when I knew I carried Abílio’s child, I wanted rid of … of her.” Loving Candelária from my soul, it was difficult to speak of that bleak time. “And yet you can see that she’s what I live for, as Leandro is for you.”

  She shivered suddenly, as though a spirit had passed by, and took her hand from mine.

  “It could be that neither Abílio nor Senhor Lajes survived the earthquake,” I said. “All of Abílio’s planning and scheming may not matter at all. You may not need my help with anything.”

  “And if Lajes lives?”

  “If he meets you and sees you are Abílio’s lawful wife, and you show him the deed, he could have it confirmed. I’m sure officials studying it would attest to its truth, and could also determine that the papers Abílio created—and the other woman’s signature—were forgeries.”