Amador had watched the 120 men from his father’s lands, free laborers and slaves, march off to São Paulo, thirty miles away, to join the bandeira of Captain-Major Antônio Raposo Tavares, whom his father served as a lieutenant. The bandeiras of medieval Portugal had been small raiding parties sniping at the Moors; at São Paulo, a bandeira was an organized force that, regardless of size, set out for an expedition into the backlands. The army to which Bernardo da Silva had contributed his private militia consisted of three thousand men.
Shortly after the departure of the bandeira, Amador’s mother had sent him to the Pinheiro house for salt. Ishmael’s father, Nuno Fernandes, belonged to a small community of New Christians — Jews compelled to accept Catholicism. The Inquisition had not been established in Brazil, but occasionally Visitors were sent to examine the faith of the colonists and to investigate reports that Brazil was a haven for Jewish exiles and lax New Christians. The belief that there were significant numbers of crypto Jews was exaggerated, but Portugal had always been more tolerant of Jews than had Spain, and groups had come to the colony, particularly those with expertise in the sugar industry. At São Paulo, Nuno Fernandes observed his Catholic vows while secretly meeting with others to celebrate the old religion. He was a prosperous trader and an armador, a supplier to the bandeiras. He had departed with the army, as had all but twenty-five of those men of São Paulo capable of bearing arms, and left fat Ishmael to guard his velvets and satins, spices and salt.
Ishmael was also fourteen, an unlikely warrior in appearance, but he could read and had been greatly influenced by a book about the Crusaders he’d found at the colégio of the Jesuits, to which his father dutifully had sent him. When Amador had gone to fetch the salt, Ishmael had spoken to him of the brave knights of Christendom.
He’d listened to Ishmael until he could no longer contain his enthusiasm. “Let’s join our fathers on their expedition — for Christ and Dom Sebastião!”
To mention a king of Portugal who died over three decades before either of them had been born was perfectly natural. The memory of Sebastião, who had fallen with the flower of Portugal’s knighthood in battle against the Moor at Alcacer-Quibir in 1578, was kept alive even at São Paulo, one of the farthest outposts of the empire. “Our king died that day, and with him the pride of Portugal, mother of us all,” Amador had heard from his father. “Our birthright and independence passed to the Spaniard, who has always coveted our conquests.”
Amador had grown up with the knowledge of two special enemies: the untamed savage of the forest, and the Spanish masters of Brazil, toward whom his father and a man such as Captain-Major Raposo Tavares showed a passionate loathing. Hatred of the wild and bloodthirsty savage was easily understood, but the enmity toward the Spanish had been more difficult for Amador to comprehend. One in five of those who lived at São Paulo was Spanish, and there seemed no difference between them and the Portuguese.
But his father had explained that mainly the São Paulo Spanish came to the highlands to escape the authorities at the coast, as others had been doing even since before São Paulo had been established. No, the Spaniards to be despised were not these refugees and renegades but the power-hungry in Madrid. They had seized control of Portugal and all her possessions after the death of Dom Sebastião.
Philip II of Spain, son of the emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, had taken the Portuguese crown in 1581. His son, the pious and pompous Philip III, had succeeded him, and now there was Philip IV, horseman, hunter, lover of art and letters, who, when not engaged in these pastimes, involved his country — and Portugal — in a vicious and exhausting conflict with England, France, and Holland.
Just four years ago São Paulo had been readied for defense against a Dutch invasion. Bernardo da Silva and others had scoffed at the idea of an army scaling the pinnacles and crags to the heights of Piratininga, on which their town stood, but they’d been vigilant all the same, for the Dutch had triumphed elsewhere in Brazil, seizing the capital, São Salvador, in May 1624. But, in April 1625, Madrid, already angered by Dutch attacks at sea on her treasure ships from the New World, had sent the greatest fleet ever to cross the equator — 52 ships with 12,500 men and 1,185 guns — and expelled the heretics from the Bahia.
Holland still actively sought a way to seize control of Brazil and the three hundred sugar mills now operating from Pernambuco to the south. Before the invasion of the Bahia, the Dutch West India Company had been established to achieve this conquest, and its nineteen directors — the Heeren XIX — continued to assure the stockholders that they would yet win a handsome profit from the Portuguese sugarcane plantations in the region of Olinda and São Salvador.
Now, in the forest, the leader of the patrol that had surprised the boys announced that they were to resume their march to the main body of soldiers. “Come, my little captains, ready yourselves,” he said, and gave a tremendous guffaw.
The Paulista force to which the fathers of Amador and Ishmael were attached consisted of sixty-nine Portuguese and Spaniards, nine hundred mamelucos and the rest natives from pacified clans, some free, some enslaved. All delighted that their conquerors and masters were employing them as warriors and not sending them to grovel in the fields. This three-thousand-man army, making its way through forest and swamp, over mountains and along deep valleys southwest of São Paulo, went forward beneath both the silken banners of the cross and the colorful devices of its own commanders. Its ranks, with half-naked savages and mamelucos clad in rags, gave the impression of a rabble horde storming through the countryside, but this was a well-organized military expedition headed by experienced commanders and officers who maintained severe discipline.
The army was penetrating deep into Paraguay, a province of the Spanish viceroyalty of Peru, west of the Tordesilhas Line. With one monarch now ruling both nations, the journeys of the Paulistas beyond the territory of Brazil could go relatively unchallenged.
Ostensibly, the army was marching with permission to pacify wild Carijó, long considered a threat to São Paulo. But the real objective was to find natives for sale to the coastal plantations, conquest and disease having decimated the tribes near settlements such as Olinda and those at the Bahia.
The Paulistas had been slave-raiding in these lands since long before Amador’s birth, leading thousands of Carijó back to São Paulo. Eighteen years ago, however, Jesuits from Asunción had moved into this “province of Guairá,” which they named for a famous chief of the area. Finding the “Guarani,” as they called the Carijó, a people who already accepted the notion of a single Father/God and were willing converts to Christianity, they established twelve villages, or “reductions,” which the Guarani clans were encouraged to inhabit. The earliest reductions now had a population of six thousand, and the ones that followed, too, had prospered beyond anything the Jesuits had accomplished at their aldeias in Brazil.
Year after year the black robes extended their sanctuaries, and as they prospered, the reductions, with their fabulous horde of natives, had become a temptation to the Paulistas. There was also the added incentive of striking a blow at the domain of the Spaniard.
Amador had often seen his father march off with raiding parties, sometimes staying away from the da Silva settlement for a year and almost always returning with a valuable share of captives. Though they kept a herd of cattle and grew fields of food crops, the da Silvas had been slavers since the days of Marcos. Amador had known neither his grandfather Marcos nor his grandmother Unauá.
Amador was the youngest of sixteen surviving sons and daughters of Bernardo, who’d fathered twenty-two children by Maria and Josefa, who were Portuguese and whom he’d outlived, and Rosa Flôres, Amador’s mother — Spanish Rosa, brought from beyond the Rio Plata and Bernardo’s bride these past sixteen years. Four of the sixteen, the issue not of these wives but of native women, Bernardo had freely acknowledged, counting them along with his church-blessed progeny.
Of Bernardo da Silva’s children — the oldest a grandfathe
r of fifty-four — most remained at or near the settlement of São Paulo.
Sixty-one years separated Amador and his father; but age had not diminished Bernardo’s vigor. During the arduous journeys with the bandeiras, he kept up with the captains and officers, who accepted the old campaigner as a comrade.
Bernardo held the Jesuit fathers in contempt and had passed on to all his children, this rancorous disdain. Amador came to see, too, that the da Silvas were not alone in their animosity toward the Company of Jesus. Even the good priest Anselmo, a frequent visitor to their house, who’d taught him his prayers and catechism, despaired of the black robes: “They are wrong in their protests to Madrid and their accusations of slavery against God-fearing men,” he had told Amador. “Our people bring the savages to the markets of São Paulo and elsewhere, where they may be taken into service with Christian families, who raise them to civilization.”
Padre Anselmo was always ready to serve as chaplain and confessor to the men of the bandeiras, and was this day with the army ahead of the patrol taking Amador and Ishmael Pinheiro to their fathers.
The main body of the army was camped for the night on open ground rising beyond a broad, shallow river. This was the site of a Guarani village destroyed by a bandeira earlier. From every direction, the forest was reclaiming the clearing, but this secondary growth had not hidden the evidence of ruin.
Amador saw his father even before crossing the shallow river. The officers of the bandeira were gathered on a broad sandbank that sloped gently toward the water’s edge. Several turned in the direction of the patrol as it emerged from the forest, and Amador recognized the short, stumpy figure in their midst.
“He would be greeting me as a hero had you not slept,” Amador said to Ishmael Pinheiro. “Now look how I’m to be received — wet and wretched at his feet!”
“My father is there, too,” Ishmael said. The elder Pinheiro, though no officer, stood with the group of commanders. As an armador, he would usually not accompany the force but would wait at São Paulo to receive his “profit” — the slaves who would be sold to cover his outlay and bring a reward for the risk he took in financing the expedition. But this raid was so promising that Pinheiro had been eager to join the bandeira.
The patrol leader encouraged the runaways into the water: “Come, come, my little captains — make the crossing.”
The river was sixty paces wide at this point, slow-moving and seemingly easy to ford; stepping into it, Amador found himself in water up to his knees, and the farther he progressed, the stronger the current. Ishmael walked just ahead of him, upstream, stepping warily along the sandy bottom. Suddenly the sand beneath their feet gave way, and both lost their balance as the river bottom shelved. Ishmael gave a cry as he plunged into the depression, the water swirling up to his neck. Amador pumped his short legs furiously, trying to stay afloat, as Ishmael, panicking, clutched him violently. Both shouted unintelligibly as the swift current swept them along the deep channel.
Then, abruptly, they were freed from the current. Amador struggled to his feet. Fifteen paces of dark, slimy mud lay between them and the edge of the sandbank. Amador started through this quagmire, and just as he was about to reach the group of officers, his foot caught on a hidden branch and he was flung back into the mud.
“Amador Flôres da Silva!” a young officer shouted. “Is this how you greet your officers? On your belly before us, as the peças of Africa honor their kings? Or have you no strength to face Tenente Bernardo?”
Amador remained sprawled out before them, but he raised his head as he looked for his father. Lieutenant Bernardo da Silva was standing at the side of Captain-Major Raposo Tavares.
Bernardo da Silva’s upper body was encased in a sleeveless leather jacket quilted and padded with cotton twill thick enough to withstand an arrow. Below the waist he wore coarse cotton breeches and boots that extended above the knee. On his head was a well-worn hat of French design with a broad brim turned up at both sides and a plume of feathers attached. On the belt that secured the quilted carapace was a good-sized pouch, a powder horn and ramrod for his musket, and a sword, knives, and small battle-ax.
Amador looked away, searching for Padre Anselmo, but there was no sign of the priest.
“Pray God he meets the enemy before he does himself harm,” a voice nearby suddenly roared.
“Forgive me, Father,” Amador cried. “I was wrong to leave the cows — and Dona Rosa.” Hastily he clambered to his feet, ignoring a stinging, grazed knee but clasping a muddy hand to his buttocks. He stood silently, grimly awaiting the next word from his father or another of these men, who were even more formidable than he’d imagined in his dreams of fighting alongside them.
“Where are my cows, Amador Flôres?”
“The peças’ sons have my orders,” Amador replied earnestly.
“He gives the little peças his orders,” Bernardo da Silva said, and laughed loudly. “My command he disobeys.”
“Oh, Father, how could I stay with the cows and pigs — and the women — while other young men marched to this great war?”
At this moment, Ishmael Pinheiro, who’d been dragged from the mud by two of his father’s native slaves, began to howl. The older Pinheiro was caning him as he tried to crawl away.
Amador looked fearfully at his father. “We would have joined the bandeira at the first battle,” he said. “We wanted to raid the Carijó with you.”
“What must I do with you, Amador Flôres?”
“Anything, senhor — Dom Bernardo — whatever you wish. I was thinking only of the honor there would be in fighting for the force of my father.”
Before, Amador had addressed his father in this exalted manner, as “Dom
Bernardo,” and seen how it appeased the patriarch. Although a mameluco, Bernardo, unlike his brothers, had always wanted to be counted with the homens bons, the “good men” of São Paulo, who were mostly Portuguese.
“Captain-Major Raposo Tavares!” Bernardo now called out. “It would seem we have one more man for our ranks.”
“Yes, Bernardo! Let him march with us, but one thing . . .”
“What is it, Captain-Major?”
“Your little soldier, Tenente, will have a brief war . . . if he shows his buttocks to the greedy savage.”
Amador straightened his back and thrust out his chest. “I will ready myself — to serve Dom Bernardo and the captain-major.”
Bernardo da Silva raised a hand as if to strike his son. “Be off with you, before you howl as loudly as your fat friend!” But there was a twinkle in his eye as he said to the captain-major: “It’s time he did the work of men, this last-born pup of Bernardo da Silva.”
The late winter’s night was settling over the camp, sudden and chill, when Amador was ready to report back to his father. He’d washed at the river, and a slave woman, one of a dozen blacks accompanying the army, had stitched his breeches. Blacks were rare at São Paulo, since there were no great plantations requiring their labor; but the da Silvas had kept four slaves from Loanda, which had replaced Mpinda as the main port for slaves from the decaying kingdom of the Kongo and the lands of ‘Ngola south of it.
The woman who’d sewn Amador’s breeches had been brought along to serve Bernardo, and was with the 120 people, mamelucos and natives, who belonged to Bernardo’s private militia. The Paulista army was led by a field master, Manuel Preto, a veteran of these slave raids, and was divided into four companies, each with its captain-major. Bernardo was lieutenant of an advance group, consisting mostly of his own force. Three-quarters of his natives were Tupiniquin from the São Paulo region, some who served him as slaves, others attached to his party because their malocas were on lands claimed by da Silva or adjacent to his holdings.
Amador was making his way back to the sands at the river, passing the fires of natives and mamelucos, when he heard his name called. He stopped walking and waited until the cry came again; then he crossed to a clump of ferns.
Ishmael Pinheiro was lurking
there, and he appeared miserable and defeated. “My father says I’m to be an armador and must learn to profit by war, not to fight. He’s ordering three slaves to carry me back.”
Amador looked closely at his friend. “Pray they’re strong, Ishmael Pinheiro. The journey’s long.”
“You’ll stay?” Ishmael asked
“Oh, yes, I’m welcome. These great men see how foolish it was to leave me with the cows.”
“Go, Amador — before you see me cry a second time today.”
Amador left Ishmael and went to report to Bernardo da Silva, whom he found sitting at a fire with the captain-major and other officers of the bandeira. The captain-major was telling of a recent entry into an unknown part of the backlands. Helping himself to food, Amador took a seat near the fire. He saw his father heap a tin plate with meat and manioc and then begin a ceremony that accompanied every meal:
Bernardo da Silva set his plate on the ground in front of him and removed an item secured to his belt — a large silver spoon.
Bernardo had evidence enough — his lands and the slaves he owned and the fine wives he’d wed — to prove himself a “good man,” but this spoon was important to him, and he never went without it on campaign. Many of the honorable men in his midst were content to eat with their fingers and toss lumps of manioc into their mouths as the savages did at their malocas. Bernardo would not say a word against their manners, but he would sit in their presence using his silver spoon with great pleasure and dignity, as he did now, listening to the captain-major.
Antônio Raposo Tavares was thirty years old. He had come to São Paulo ten years ago from the plains of Alemtejo, in central Portugal, where he spent his youth among the wheat fields and olive groves. Raposo Tavares was a tall, handsome, bearded man, powerfully built, decisive and confident. A born leader who devoutly believed he was destined to make great discoveries in Brazil, he was passionately eager for adventure.
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