Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  VII

  March - July 1550

  There were no witnesses, this damp March morning in 1550, to the divine passion of Padre Inácio Cavalcanti. Those who could have observed the priest bent upon his knees — the men guiding him to Engenho Santo Tomás — were still asleep. This was not the first time Padre Inácio had been in the forest, but he was with strangers, far from those who had shared his first year in Brazil. He experienced a lone communion with this great wilderness such as he had not known before.

  His spirit soared with the promise he beheld in everything around him. With fervent whispers, he recited the Paternoster, the Avé, the Credo.

  Between prayers, his eyes moved slowly along the trunk of a monumental mahogany tree, up to where it branched out beneath the forest canopy, then returned to the mosaic of plants near him, and he reached toward a broad leaf, moving his long, slender fingers across its dewy surface. He watched a hump-backed beetle laboring up an exposed root of a jacaranda, before he was distracted by a pattern of small yellow butterflies dancing between the leaves of a spiky plant. He had a tremendous desire to rise and walk deep into the forest, to stride fearlessly between the trees and be at one with the fowl and beast and all things in this riotous garden of the Lord.

  He closed his eyes, and envisioned himself passing into an enchanted glade. Here, shafts of brilliant light burst through the roof of the forest to lay a golden path for a host of His faithful martyrs. He saw himself crossing a dark barrier into that glade, a choir of angels offering triumphant welcome from the green boughs above.

  There were tears on his cheeks. “O sweet saints,” he begged, “open these eyes, this heart, this soul in this rich vineyard. Let this miserable body suffer every agony our Savior knew with those five terrible wounds.”

  Inácio Cavalcanti was now a man of thirty. He was tall, with a spare, bony frame and small, rounded shoulders. His features were delicate, a thin, pale face with soft, searching blue eyes beneath short, curly dark hair. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he was beardless. What he lacked in robustness, he made up for in spirituality and enthusiasm.

  It was fifteen years since he had stood before his uncle Nicolau, telling him about his teacher Padre Miguel. Through all that time Inácio had continued to meet the expectations of his family, who accepted that the delicate, studious child in their midst was filled with awe and love for the Almighty.

  Padre Miguel had inspired the youthful Inácio with his tales of savage souls in perdition, but it was not to him that Inácio owed his summons to Terra de Santa Cruz.

  For Inácio, the journey had begun with his introduction to a man whom he’d come to regard with no less veneration than he accorded the saints.

  In June 1540 Padre Francis Xavier had arrived in Lisbon with a fellow priest, Simon Rodrigues de Azevedo. They were both members of a new order marshaled to do battle for Christ and His Church: the Company of Jesus, as yet a small body of men formed by a warrior/apostle named Ignatius Loyola. Loyola, wounded in battle against the French at the little town of Najera, had laid down his sword to engage in the greater struggle for men’s souls.

  Francis Xavier and Rodrigues had been designated as missioners to the Indies. In Lisbon, they had learned that they would have to wait eight months for the next fleet sailing to Goa. Rodrigues, once a page to a cardinal at Lisbon’s court, was well received by Dom João III. The king, entering middle age, was becoming increasingly concerned with the special duty demanded of a Most Catholic Majesty — the saving of his subject’s souls. He was distressed when the two Jesuits informed him that his opulent and worldly Lisbon was as wicked and profane a locality as any they expected to encounter in some heathen land. While they waited for a ship, they announced, they would devote themselves to purging the capital.

  At that time, Inácio had gone as far as he could in his religious studies in Lisbon and was planning to enter Sainte-Barbe in Paris, the same college Loyola, Xavier, and the other founders of the Company of Jesus had attended. But, before he’d set out on this course, he found himself in Lisbon’s great Rossio Square, listening to Francis Xavier and Rodrigues.

  The two priests stood at the top of the plaza, before the austere building that housed the Inquisition, reviling the vices and venality of Lisbon’s citizens.

  Francis Xavier’s exhortations about the need for renewal, for simplicity and goodwill, touched Inácio Cavalcanti and hundreds more and sent them shuffling through the hot, narrow streets of Lisbon begging others to join their penitent processions.

  Inácio had been at the forefront of a great throng, praying and singing aloud as they moved across Rossio. Days of self-inflicted punishment and fasting had left him weak and fatigued, and he stumbled and fell, striking his head on the stony ground. When he opened his eyes, he saw Francis Xavier on his knees next to him.

  “Such sweet agony brings us closer to His side,” the Jesuit had said. “But, brother in Christ, save your strength — for the great battles ahead!”

  Here now in the forest, as he knelt and offered himself once more to Christ, Inácio felt again the power of Xavier’s rallying cry: the great battles ahead! How eager he was to raise the sword of faith in the conflict between God and the devil. How he longed to embrace these savage souls with Christ’s love and salvation!

  A year had passed since his landing in Terra de Santa Cruz, and thus far the harvest was small. But he was patient: The great time of reaping lay ahead, when these erring children, so long denied their Father, would be led from the darkness they had endured since Creation.

  In Lisbon, Inácio had never strayed far from Xavier’s side. When the time came for Xavier’s departure — Simon Rodrigues, sickly and hesitant, was urged by João III to remain in Lisbon — Inácio had wept openly. “Follow Simon,” Xavier had consoled him. “Obey his instructions and the Lord will surely indicate His will for you.”

  Inácio had entered the old monastery of São Antonio, given to Rodrigues by João III for the first Jesuit house in Portugal. Perceiving the young man’s grace and devotion, Rodrigues had ordered him to Coimbra University — which João III had also donated to the Jesuits — to commence the studies he would have followed at Paris. “Arm yourself, Inácio,” Rodrigues had said, “to win the minds and hearts of others.”

  Shortly before his departure for Coimbra, Inácio had visited Padre Miguel, who lay dying with consumption in a wretched airless hovel in the hilly Alfama, Lisbon’s oldest district. He had spoken of his enthusiasm for the mission of Francis Xavier and the new Company of Jesus and, above all, of his intense yearning for that brightest of all crowns: martyrdom in His service.

  And Padre Miguel had shuddered when he heard this. “Inácio! Inácio!” he cried. “May you be saved my failures!”

  “Failures?”

  “Twice I was called to labor in His wild vineyards,” Padre Miguel said, “and twice I denied Him.” He stirred beneath the fetid, vermin-infested rags. “Once in Santa Cruz and once in Africa.”

  Padre Miguel had died a month after Inácio’s visit. Inácio had already left for Coimbra, where he was to share a small dormitory with nine others, all seeking the Jesuit bonds of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

  One day soon after his arrival, Inácio had been alone in the dormitory, his back to the door, when he heard someone enter. He turned to see a young man, of medium height but slender like himself, standing in the doorway.

  “M-Manoel da Nó-Nóbrega,” the newcomer volunteered, flinching with the effort it took to utter the words.

  Inácio introduced himself and indicated a vacant cot. Nóbrega nodded his thanks but said no more as he placed a small bundle of belongings on the bed. Then, ignoring Inácio, he fell to his knees and began to pray.

  “The Stammerer,” others called this son of a chief magistrate; but Inácio found that, miraculously, when Nóbrega was in full communion with the Lord, his impediment disappeared.

  That first night, while others in the dormitory were asleep, Nóbrega had gone
across to Inácio. “Why do we rest?” he’d asked, “when there is a world of sinners beyond?”

  And the two of them had crept out of the college into the streets of Coimbra. It was past 2:00 A.M. and the city slept soundly, but this did not deter Nóbrega from furiously ringing the bell he carried with him, nor the two young men from yelling at the top of their voices, “Hell awaits those in mortal sin!”

  Through the next four years, during which they were both admitted to the Company of Jesus and became priests, Inácio and Nóbrega had labored unceasingly, roaming the countryside for months, fighting for people possessed by spirits, seeking out fallen women, begging those at the gallows to confess.

  Late in 1548 Simon Rodrigues, who had become head of the Jesuit province of Portugal, summoned them to Lisbon. Inácio was elated: Never, during the seven years since Francis Xavier’s departure, had he lost hope of joining the mission in the East. News about Xavier had come irregularly in letters to Lisbon and Rome. Goa, Ceylon, Cochin, Malacca — one after the other, those “Infidel” shores had been touched by this warrior of God.

  From Rodrigues, now a powerful figure at court, Inácio learned that Xavier was planning to enter the kingdom of Cipangu to raise His holy banner among the warlords of the Rising Sun. But Inácio wouldn’t be joining that mission, as he’d hoped. “You are not needed in the East, Inácio,” Rodrigues said. “Instead, you will go with Father Nóbrega and four others to convert the pagans in our king’s province of Santa Cruz.”

  With the exception of Pernambuco and São Vicente, João III’s captaincies had failed; the French were again threatening Portugal’s possessions and, worse, those planning the new incursions were Protestants. Dom João was sending Tomé de Sousa with one thousand settlers and soldiers, four hundred degredados included, to replant his colony of Brazil. Sousa would be the colony’s first governor general.

  Inácio, Nóbrega, and the four other Jesuits had sailed in February 1549 with Sousa’s fleet. After a voyage of two months, they’d landed at Bahia de Todos os Santos, the Bay of All Saints, four hundred miles south of Pernambuco. Sousa had immediately set about building a town, which he named São Salvador. Within this past year, Nóbrega and his fellow Jesuits had completed a dormitory and chapel and begun work among the docile Tupinambá, who lived just beyond the walls rising around the new town. Already the brightest little savages were taking lessons in reading and writing alongside the colonists’ children. Nóbrega had started to look further afield: He knew of Inácio’s uncle in Pernambuco and ordered Inácio to travel there. “Report to us, Father Inácio, on the souls that wait to be saved in Nova Lusitania,” were his parting words.

  Inácio had landed at Olinda and immediately set out for Engenho Santo Tomás.

  “Lord,” he now prayed, just before rising from his knees in the forest, “we have come to bring the yoke of faith to these people. May they wear it joyously!”

  Then he stood up and walked over to where his guides, two half-breeds and two Tobajara, lay dozing.

  “Awake! Awake, my sons!” he cried happily. “Let us be on our way!”

  “There’s no hurry, Padre,” one of the half-breeds said. “We’re in the Cavalcantis’ valley.”

  “My son, we must hurry. There is so little time.”

  The half-breed, offspring of a Portuguese logger and a Potiguara woman, proceeded to stretch.

  “Do you know our Lord?” Inácio suddenly asked.

  “Yes, Padre.”

  Inácio looked from this guide to the others. The two Tobajara were not unlike the Tupinambá he’d encountered at São Salvador: smallish, bronze-skinned men, with broad, hairless faces, dark eyes, and flattened noses. These guides did not paint their bodies with dye in the accepted fashion, and had become accustomed to concealing their nakedness with breeches, which they wore uncomfortably.

  What fascinated Inácio about these and other savages was the way they wore their hair.

  That narrow band from temple to temple, with the crown so clean-shaven: Could this be the tonsure, that sign of monkish dedication? And if so, how had these simple heathen come to learn about this symbol of His crown of thorns?

  The fathers had considered the journeys of all the Apostles and concluded that if one of them had come here, it must have been St. Thomas. He had reached India, where he had ended his life. Was it not possible that his roving mission had led him first to these shores?

  The guide who said he knew the Lord stood up and stepped close to Inácio. Smiling, he said, “Oh, yes, Padre, we know the Lord, and we know His padres at Olinda.” He laughed, then added: “Almost as well as our mothers and sisters know them.”

  “God be praised!” Inácio said.

  “Oh, no, Padre, this is as far as we go,” the guide said. As if to underline the words, he moved to a toppled tree trunk and sat upon it. “There is Senhor Cavalcanti’s engenho,” he said, gesturing in its direction with his head. “You can reach it without us.”

  They were at the bottom of the long, low hill upon which Nicolau Cavalcanti had built his first stockade, within sight of the stout timbers of a newer defense raised to replace the one destroyed by the Caeté, who had burned Engenho Santo Tomás four years before.

  Sickly gray patches scarred the terrain. Clusters of poor plants burst from the ash-covered earth. Isolated palms with untidy crowns appeared to have resisted the devastation and clung dismally to the slope.

  “But surely there can be no harm in coming up with me to Senhor Cavalcanti’s door?” Inácio asked.

  “The senhor, Padre, is an angry man. He is much feared - it’s better to wait for the padre to call.” He made no attempt to explain himself, but added, “We have friends at the malocas, Padre” — he broke into a wide grin — “and all the comforts men need!”

  Inácio did not press him further but bade farewell to the four of them and trudged up the slope. His sandaled feet quickly were covered with ash and dust that puffed up as he walked.

  The sun beat down on Inácio’s back, leaving him hot and uncomfortable beneath his thick black cassock, and when finally he stood opposite the entrance to Engenho Santo Tomás, he was out of breath and soaked with perspiration. He paused just beyond the opening in the timbered wall and said a brief prayer.

  He had seen some of the plantations closer to Olinda but had not gone beyond their stockades, and he did not know quite what to expect within the enclosure: some houses, perhaps, a barn, a sugar press, other necessities for so remote and harsh a life. The first thing he noticed about his uncle’s engenho was the filth that littered the area. The stench of feces was overpowering. A variety of animals — sheep, pigs, goats, calves — paraded across the plaza unchecked. Dogs, too, bestirred themselves at Inácio’s approach and came skulking out of the shade to yap at his heels. Swarms of noisy black flies hung in the air before him, and any attempt to wave them away was futile.

  There were, as he’d expected, several buildings within the stockade. A sugar press stood beneath a palm-thatched roof at one side of the plaza, oxen straining against the great arms that turned the rollers into which men fed the cane stalks. Near these workers, other blacks and natives of Santa Cruz labored at the molasses cauldrons.

  The main house was a squarish two-story building set back from the entrance, its rough gray walls of stone and clay with small, unequal-sized windows, shutterless and resembling gunports. This grim building and the enclosing stockade, along which Inácio observed platforms with falconet guns, were stark evidence of a perilous existence in these backlands. Inácio was not frightened — his spirit and enthusiasm were too great for that — but he felt a certain sensible wariness, heightened by the knowledge that this place was the scene of his cousin Pedro’s savage murder.

  He was almost at the doorway of the big house when there emerged from the dark interior a figure he recognized with difficulty as Nicolau Cavalcanti. The man who stood before him was not the man he remembered from Sintra. The features, of course, were essentially the same — the
dark, weathered face more furrowed and the hair and beard silver — but gone was the intelligent, thoughtful visage and the sad, brooding expression of one who lived with a burden of memories.

  Nicolau’s face now was hard and cruel; there was a fierce look in his eyes that prompted Inácio to recall the half-breed’s words. His uncle stood without boots or slippers, his bare feet grimy, his toenails long and filthy. He was dressed more like a beggar than a plantation lord. He wore thin, dusty cotton breeches held in place with a length of frayed rope, and a roughly cut leather jerkin that hung loosely from his shoulders, unlaced, so that his hairy chest was exposed. But, his wild and neglected appearance aside, Nicolau looked remarkably fit for a man in his sixties.

  “So, Padre, what is it this time? What does the church seek now from Senhor Cavalcanti?”

  “It is me, Inácio — Inácio Cavalcanti — your nephew!” he blurted out.

  Nicolau leaned forward to peer at him. “Felipe’s son,” he said to himself as he searched Inácio’s face, “A boy given to God,” he said. Then: “Little mother! Little mother! Come look! Come see what we have here!” He grinned now, revealing a mouth of stained, broken teeth. “Here in Brazil, in Nova Lusitania — Felipe’s son!” And in a gruff voice, he asked Inácio, “What in the name of God sent you to this place?”

  A small, bent woman in black slowly crept out of the doorway, narrowing her eyes against the sun. “Padre,” she murmured. “Padre.”

  “It’s Inácio, little mother,” Nicolau said. “Felipe’s son, Inácio.”

  She nodded as if she knew, but nothing in her expression indicated she recognized her brother-in-law’s child.

  “Aunt Helena,” Inácio greeted her, but couldn’t go on. Holy Mother, he thought, what pain I see in every line of this lined, weary face.

  “You’ve come from Olinda?” Nicolau asked.

  “Directly,” Inácio said. “I landed there from São Salvador, where we’ve been this past year, with Governor Tomé de Sousa — myself and five others of His Company.”