Ribeiro, who’d consumed great quantities of beer, announced that he was headed for his hammock. “And, you, Master — isn’t it time for rest?” he asked, with mock earnestness, looking in the direction of his daughter. He called to his daughter, in Tupi: “Come swiftly, Jandaia, my child, here to his side. Show him — show Master Cavalcanti what his Lisbon women never can know!”
Jandaia laughed at her father’s remarks, and skipped toward them.
Cavalcanti had known the soft, conquered females in the heat after battle — gentle Hindi maids who’d waited upon him at Goa. But never had a daughter been placed in his hands by the man she called her father.
Ribeiro gave him a great thump on the back and then headed off, still chuckling as he thumped toward his maloca.
Cavalcanti glanced round the clearing, wondering where he could take Jandaia, when he realized she was already moving forward and beckoning that he follow her. She led him beyond the stockade and across the fields to the forest.
She had brought him to a low waterfall on a stream that branched from the main river flowing past the village. Between towering trees, the water broke over a shelf of rock into a pool, where jewel-colored birds darted among the mosses and ferns. He began to remove his armor and weapons, and she tiptoed to the water.
“Maravilhosa,” he breathed.
He leaned against a tree to watch her, but quickly drew away to brush some ugly wormlike insects off his arm. He wanted her to come out of the water; but, ignoring his call, she splashed her breasts and went on playing. After a while, she motioned him to join her.
Never!
Jandaia remained insistent, and swam almost to his feet, her fine body moving easily through the water. “Come, Portuguese,” she called.
He could wait no longer. He threw off the rest of his clothes and plunged into the pool, shouting an oath when the chilly water covered his body.
He chased Jandaia around the pool. He held her to him, cool and wet in his arms, and he felt a fire within himself. They sat together, against the rock shelf that broke the stream, and laughed as the water danced off their bodies.
They made love beside that pool. First he felt a rage, a fury to possess this innocence. Then she’d begun a lingering advance, and he moved with her, slowly, toward a soaring moment when he cried out with pleasure.
The squadron carried two priests, Aloysius Barreto and Miguel da Costa. Padre Aloysius was a jovial, ruddy-faced man in his fifties, who knew his unruly flock and was reasonable in dealing with them. Padre Miguel, hawkish-looking and fiery, a much younger man, was possessed with a knowledge of evil about him, unrelenting in his chastisement of transgressors sailing with the Order of Christ, and, consequently, heartily disliked.
On this second Sunday of their stay at Porto Seguro, the fidalgo ordered that every man attend a Mass and a sermon at the foot of Cabral’s towering cross on the beach. An altar had been set up in front of it, with the little wooden saints each ship carried placed near it, and the men were gathered here as Padre Aloysius intoned the Mass, accompanied by his assistant, whose voice was as grating as his manner.
A distance away, in the shade of some palms, stood Affonso Ribeiro with Aruanã and the Tupiniquin elders.
Aruanã was remembering the day Cabral held the first devotions at this cross: As the pagés of the Long Hairs had gone about their sacred work, the Tupiniquin had followed their actions, kneeling when they knelt, standing with their hands uplifted, and breathing not a word when they were silent. There were no rattles with feathers, no Voice of the Spirits, but the Tupiniquin knew that Monan, who had made First Man, was in the sky with Sun, and it was good to chant to His happiness.
Aruanã’s wife, Juriti, had been the only woman at the cross and was frightened. Her heart raced when one of the brown robes made his way toward her, and trembling, she pressed against Aruanã. “Do not fear,” was his calm response, though the pagé’s behavior startled him, too.
The man had smiled gently and held out a small piece of cloth to Juriti, which she had hesitantly accepted, but, the moment he turned away, dropped to the ground.
When the singing and chanting had stopped, a Long Hair appeared carrying many little tin crosses, and it was he who showed the Tupiniquin, how to kneel and put their lips to the little cross, then raise their hands to the sky.
“It is for Monan,” Tabajara had said, pointing to that part of the sky where the sun slept. “It is the way they talk with spirit of Monan — with all who dwell in Land of the Grandfather.”
Others had agreed with this explanation. But one asked: “What of Naurú and the sacred rattles?”
“We hear our ancestors; they hear those of their people,” Tabajara replied calmly.
“But who hears more words?” the same warrior persisted.
Aruanã had offered an answer: “In our clearing, Voice of the Spirits talks to Tupiniquin. Others hear the same at their malocas. There is no difference.”
But, after the first Long Hairs, other men had come, and again and again they had told him he was wrong: Their Monan, they said, spoke with a voice that had more power.
Padre Miguel would surely have told Aruanã the same were he able to converse in Tupi, but, not knowing the language, he had to content himself with berating the marinheiros and their captains for their ungodliness. “My brothers, my brothers,” he began, “why are you so weak?”
The men sat uncomfortably, the hot morning sun upon their backs, their faces blank.
“You sport before this bestial and barbarous people, without thought of sin. Yet know that these savages are simple and innocent, and we can stamp upon them any belief we should wish them to have. Let us accept them as children, who must be taught obedience to the cross.”
When the service ended, Ribeiro and the Tupiniquin were rowed to São Gabriel to be entertained by the captain general. Gomes de Pina had ordered a banquet of his good ham and rice and delicacies from his private stores.
Wine, too, was passed to the Tupiniquin, and they downed great quantities. In the years since Aruanã first spat the dark liquid onto the deck of Cabral’s ship, his people had become accustomed to it: Stronger than their beer, it was more like the tabak they puffed at their ceremonies, for to take much of this drink was to want to dance, to leap, to sing!
And this is what they did, Tupiniquin and Portuguese, in São Gabriel that sunny afternoon. While Gomes de Pina and his officers remained at the table observing with dignified amusement, the Tupiniquin danced beside members of the crew.
Cavalcanti, therefore, found it puzzling that amid such jollity Affonso Ribeiro should be miserable.
It was not until the celebration was over that the master of São Gabriel could be alone with Ribeiro and learn what was bothering him. Eager to see Jandaia, Cavalcanti had arranged to return to their village.
When they were put ashore, Aruanã stumbled along the beach He did not get far before he called a halt and sought the shade of the palms with the elders.
The other two continued on, Ribeiro taking a shortcut that led up the steep slope of a red-earth rise behind the beach. They climbed to the top of the hill, and there, amid a tangle of growth, stood the ruin of a small church. Ribeiro wanted to go on, but Cavalcanti stopped. He’d seen another church, also ruined, away from this place, where two Franciscans had settled a decade before: One had been drowned in a stream the Tupiniquin still called River of Brown Robe; the other, Ribeiro told him, had returned to Portugal. But this ruin was clearly much older, and could have no connection with the other.
“Who built this church?” he asked.
“Franciscans,” Ribeiro said.
Cavalcanti turned his back to the mud walls and faced out to sea. The great bay with São Gabriel and the caravels lay directly below; to the north was another inlet, and a little to the south, the river that led to the Tupiniquin village.
“How can that be?” Cavalcanti asked. “Their buildings are near the place where the Normans camped.”
&nbs
p; “Those were different Franciscans and came years ago,” Ribeiro said.
“You forgot them?”
“I did not forget.”
“But you said nothing when you showed the other church.”
“What was there to say? Another pile of ruins, same as the first.”
“Those earlier friars,” Cavalcanti asked, “when were they here?”
“They came in Noronha’s ships,” Ribeiro said. Fernando de Noronha had been first to get a contract from Dom Manuel to collect brazilwood, in 1502. “They built this church,” he added. “Their mission — it wasn’t a success.”
Cavalcanti detected flatness in Affonso Ribeiro’s tone.
“Why did they fail?”
Ribeiro gazed into the ruin, then back at Cavalcanti. “They were good men, but they didn’t understand the Tupiniquin.” He laughed weakly. “They loved every creature but the one they loved most was the one who truly hated them.
“ ‘Brother Naurú,’ they called him. ‘Brother Naurú’ they said, ‘we are all God’s creatures. Open your heart and you will find the paradise we speak of.’ ”
“Naurú?” Cavalcanti said. “Who was Naurú?”
“The devil himself,” he spat. “Voice of the Spirits, with control over life and death. Men like the elder Aruanã controlled the village, in peace and war, but Naurú was the true ruler — a prince of fear.”
“You feared him?”
“Yes, Master, I feared Naurú,” Ribeiro said. “These two sodomites who share the sacred hut today — they awe the Tupiniquin with their rattles and ceremonies, but men still speak of Naurú as if he were alive.”
“The Franciscans,” Cavalcanti said. “What about them?”
“How Naurú raged against them. Since Cabral’s day, he had wanted to turn the Tupiniquin against those they call Long Hairs, because in the ten days Cabral was here, Naurú was ignored. Warriors paid no attention to the rattle of a mad priest who saw only darkness in men who’d come out of the sunrise.
“When the Franciscans came, his fury reached new heights. He dragged his wasted body from maloca to maloca preaching against the brown robes, warning of miseries they would bring to the Tupiniquin, and when his awful prediction was shown correct, he rejoiced at the suffering of his own people.”
“But you, Ribeiro, you’re Portuguese,” Cavalcanti said. “How was it that this Naurú’s hatred didn’t fall upon you? Today you live as a prince among these savages. What made it so, Ribeiro?”
“Naurú was a clever and cunning scoundrel. Didn’t he know a miserable degredado when he saw one — a man without a people or a country? What could such a man do that would interfere with the work of Naurú?” The sun had just slipped behind some trees in the distance. “It’s late. Let us go, Master,” he said. “Let us take you to my Jandaia.”
But Cavalcanti had a feeling Ribeiro’s tale was far from finished. “What were these ‘miseries’ the Franciscans brought?” he asked.
Ribeiro let out a deep sigh, as of resignation. “Father Gaspar had a cough, and he gave his sickness to the Tupiniquin. When people lay groaning with fever in the malocas, Voice of the Spirits called from the clearing. Here was evil, Naurú announced, concealed in the bodies of the brown robes. Brothers of the dark, they had worked their beads to cast a spell over the Tupiniquin.”
“The clan accepted this?”
“It did.”
“And the Franciscans, Friar Gaspar and the other — what did they do?”
“Nothing,” he replied, shrugging. “The savages heard Naurú, and the cries of their children, and they forbade the priests entry to the stockade.”
“So they went away, like the one from the other church?”
Ribeiro did not reply.
It was quiet: that brief, uncertain time between day and the sudden onrush of night in the tropics, the open sky ablaze with the color of a sun no longer seen, the forest behind, darkening and still.
Now there came from deep within Affonso Ribeiro a howl of anguish, a piteous and terrible cry:
“Meu Deus!”
The thick shoulders trembled and shook; the big hands flew to the side of his head.
“Oh, Master,” Ribeiro cried, “I was only a boy. How could a boy fight all the evil in Naurú?
“They were killed. The friars were killed — struck down, there in the clearing.”
“You were with them?”
“What was there for a boy to do?” was Ribeiro’s reply.
Cavalcanti had no desire to probe further into the martyrdom of the two friars. But Ribeiro continued with his confession: “They made me come here, Master, and fetch the friars to take them where the Tupiniquin were calling for them.” Cavalcanti stared hard at the degredado. “And they went to their deaths?”
“Yes.”
Now Cavalcanti understood why Ribeiro was so bound to these Tupiniquin: By leading the friars to their execution, he had shown the Tupiniquin that he was as ready to serve as those who waited to tear the limbs from the Franciscans. He had proved no love for his own and was honored for this treachery. After this, what choice did he have but to live with them, with no thought for the clean, pure soil of his homeland?
Momentarily, Cavalcanti felt an urge to go for his sword and mete out justice, right where Ribeiro stood with his back to the church he’d helped destroy, but he contained his rage. “Let’s leave this place,” he said gruffly, and they moved off, taking the same route along which Ribeiro had once led the friars.
Cavalcanti’s assumption was essentially correct: Ribeiro’s complicity in the murder of the friars had made him a brother of the Tupiniquin.
But there remained unspoken the darkest part of the degredado’s confession.
Affonso Ribeiro could not summon the courage to tell a fellow Portuguese that it had been he, Ticuanga of the Tupiniquin, who had raised Yware-pemme above the scraped skulls. And that his chest still bore the marks of one who had slain his enemy.
V
June - September 1526
His men called him, simply, Le Tigre (The Tiger) and that was enough. Before he got his own ship, he’d sailed with Jean Fleury, prowling the coasts of Africa and Brazil, standing away to the far reaches of the Atlantic, watching, waiting for the fat, laden vessels of Lisbon and Cadiz. He was with Fleury when they seized the first treasure sent by Cortes from Mexico — gold, silver, emeralds the size of a man’s fist; he’d come within a raven’s cry off the great cliffs of Cape St. Vincent, there to take the galleons of d’Avila; he’d watched without emotion when — her dyewood and parrots carried over to Fleury’s ship — the Portuguese merchantman Bom Jesus, sails ripped, castles blown away, sank with all hands.
Le Tigre — Gautier de Saint Julien — was now half-owner of the carrack Croissant; the other share was held by Jean d’Ango, Dieppe’s merchant marauder, always happy to invest in an enterprise to reduce the wealth of his Portuguese or Spanish competitors.
That the Portuguese regarded men like Fleury and himself as robbers, a pestilence sweeping the high seas, Le Tigre knew. This delighted him enormously, but not for one moment did he believe it: He sailed not as a pirate but as a good Norman, out for no more than a fair share of the spoils from America and the East.
“This small people,” he said contemptuously of his Portuguese rivals, “the world is not large enough to satisfy their greed. They set foot on a piece of land and it is a ‘conquest.’”
If, however, they insisted on keeping their possessions, then let them do so, he’d told Jean d’Ango. Only they must be prepared to pay a tax — the booty extracted by the men from Dieppe!
To collect his first dues, Le Tigre had sailed Croissant to Brazil in January 1526, moving down the coast to beyond the high headland of Cabo Frio and to Guanabara Bay, with its peaks and towers and pinnacles of aged rock standing sentinel behind the most serene haven on earth.
Le Tigre had avoided the Portuguese brazilwood factories and stood out to sea, waiting to pick up a homebound logger. But
he’d had no success, and finally sought to cut his own trees. He knew that there were no Portuguese at Porto Seguro save a rascal abandoned there by Cabral. He’d taken Croissant to the bay where this man and his Tupiniquin were waiting on the beach.
While his men and the Tupiniquin readied the brazilwood, Le Tigre would sail as far north as Pernambuco, continuing his search for a Portuguese prize. He didn’t know how long he’d be away, maybe two months, perhaps longer, and two of Croissant’s guns were placed ashore for defense.
Leaving Porto Seguro, they’d made a stormy passage to Bahia de Todos os Santos (Bay of All Saints), which Le Tigre — his patience exhausted — had dared enter. They crossed the bar at night, hugging the shore of an island opposite the mainland, and rode deeper into the bay: Dawn came, and off to starboard, near the brazilwood factory, they espied two caravels.
The wind was right, every man in Croissant ready, and Le Tigre in his most dangerous mood: Their guns blasted three great shots through the side of the first ship, starting a fire that raced through her.
Le Tigre closed with the second ship, and his men swarmed over her bulwarks and into her rigging, making short work of the feeble resistance they encountered. Before the small shore battery could do serious damage, they were beyond range, the captured caravel under sail with them, survivors of her crew tossed overboard.
Le Tigre was satisfied: Months of patient cruising had been handsomely rewarded. Croissant, newest ship out of Dieppe, had been bloodied; before long, every Portuguese in these waters must hear her name with dread — a name they’d remember for its mocking reminder of the crescent of the enemy Turk.
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