Black Peter stood motionless in the doorway. He held the ax loosely in front of him. A tremor ran through his body. When it passed, he moved to the bed, gripping the shaft of the ax with both hands and raising it. But instead of striking the sleeping man, he punched Vanderley’s ribs with the top of the shaft.
The director’s eyes burst open.
“Black Peter, senhor,” he calmly announced.
The director was half asleep and befuddled.
“Father of Jovita.” He poked Vanderley again. “Father of the child Vera.”
Hoarse, phlegm-filled words formed deep in Vanderley’s throat: “Jee-susss . . .salva—”
Black Peter was silent.
Paralyzed with terror, Vanderley made a weak attempt to raise his huge body.
Black Peter drove the blade into Vanderley’s short, fleshy neck, severing the jugular and releasing a torrent of blood. Two more blows silenced the ghastly noises. The rage within Black Peter was not stilled. Again and again he swung the ax.
“Pedro! ”
Black Peter cursed with pain as he twisted around.
“Tobias,” the man in the doorway identified himself.
“Dead!” Black Peter said. “To hell — where he belongs!”
“Not alone,” Tobias said.
“No, Pedro Prêto! Here’s company for the senhor director!” Young João stepped forward, holding in his right hand the genitals of Little George.
Even before Black Peter had seen his daughters, Tobias and his son had spoken of avenging the rape of the girls. The moment Black Peter left the house, João, who had been awake, roused his father. Together they went to a hut where Little George lived with a native woman, and killed them both in their sleep.
The three men took muskets, powder and lead, and a bag of silver from the director’s house. They led their horses from Rosário, without a word to their families and little hope of seeing them again.
A mile from the vila, Black Peter rode leaning forward against his horse’s neck, trying to steady himself to lessen the pain of his scourged back. “Tobias!”
Tobias reined in his horse to ride beside Black Peter.
“The Portuguese will ride after us.”
“Yes.”
“They will hunt the valleys and climb the hills for three black dogs.”
“Yes, Pedro. The soldiers will come.”
“They will not find dogs, Tobias.” His voice rose. “Men, Tobias! Men of men, like those who stood with the great lord Ganga Zumba!”
For three weeks after the slaughter of Elias Souza Vanderley and Little George, militia patrols hunted for the fugitives, extending their searches west and south toward the sertão but finding no trace of them.
In the fourth week, five slaves of a lavrador in the second valley controlled by the Cavalcantis deserted. The next night, a planter’s house was attacked, three Portuguese butchered, buildings and fields torched, and four more slaves joined the renegades.
The governor at Recife promised a detachment of troops, but they were not sent immediately. The district patrols continued, and for two weeks there were no incidents, and also no leads to the killers and runaways.
Then there were two more attacks in mid-September, ten miles to the north of the Cavalcantis’ valleys. Two settlers, a mulatto, and four slaves who had fought alongside their owners were murdered.
A connection between the fugitives from Rosário and the raiders had been suspected since the first attack in the Cavalcantis’ valley, and a slave who had been forced to join their ranks and had fled from them now confirmed this. Their leader was Black Peter, the carpenter, the slave told the militiamen who interrogated him.
At Santo Tomás, the cane harvest had commenced early in September, and Paulo Cavalcanti had ordered that normal routines be followed to maintain calm among the 164 slaves. But he also warned the eleven overseers to be vigilant. The overseers’ zeal was encouraged by a report that at one of the plantations, a mulatto had been immersed in a copper cauldron of boiling syrup.
At the beginning of October 1766, for the third time in nine weeks, Paulo Cavalcanti was ready to set out from Santo Tomás with a militia. The twenty-two horsemen were assembled in front of the Casa Grande; some were mounted, others were making final checks of their equipment when Paulo stepped out onto the veranda with Bartolomeu Rodrigues holding onto his arm. The seventy-eight-year-old senhor de engenho retained his post as colonel of the district force and insisted on witnessing its departure. Beyond the chapel were three rows of tents for the sixty regular line troops from Recife. The soldiers were on a four-day sweep north of Santo Tomás.
After prayers, Paulo embraced Bartolomeu Rodrigues. A slave brought his horse to him and he mounted. The patrol moved smartly down the hill toward the senzala and the road beyond, when suddenly a figure darted out from the slave quarters and ran toward Paulo. A rider behind him came up, reaching for a machete in a sheath attached to his saddle.
“No!” Paulo shouted. “No!”
It was the nursemaid, ama Rachel.
Paulo reined in his horse as the old Yoruba ran to him, and he indicated for the militia to go on ahead.
“What is it, ama Rachel?”
“Senhor Paulo” — she paused to catch her breath — “you must not ride with these men!”
Paulo laughed. “I’m in command, ama Rachel. I lead them.”
The small eyes were filled with concern. “Oh, Senhor Paulo—”
“What’s wrong, ama Rachel? Has there been talk of Black Peter?”
She spat contemptuously on the ground beside her. “I will spit on his grave.”
“Have you heard something?” Paulo asked again.
“Do not ride from Santo Tomás today, senhor. Please, believe ama Rachel: It will not be a good journey.”
“Why?” he asked. “Why not?”
“The saints warn of danger and evil.”
“True, ama Rachel. And with the help of God and the saints, there’ll be an end to the savagery.” He started to move forward. “God bless you, ama Rachel. Go now and care for Carlos Maria, my son.”
“Do not leave the engenho.” Her voice was weak.
Paulo spurred his horse forward to catch up with the patrol.
And ama Rachel, mother of the saints, stood alone and emitted a low, repetitive wail. When the gods had come down to her in the deep of the night, she had seen great sorrow and the eye of the devil, Exú, gleaming brightly in the dark.
The militia rode through the two valleys and over the pass to Rosário, where a sergeant and six soldiers were in control until a new director was appointed. From Rosário, they patrolled to the southeast, and on the fourth day, at a small engenho, an agitated planter reported the theft of two oxen. He added that he had questioned his twenty slaves and was convinced of their innocence.
Paulo divided the patrol into four groups, one of which he led himself. Using the engenho as base, for two days they roamed the district, and on the third morning, one group found the remains of the oxen at a creek seven miles south of the engenho.
It was late afternoon when Paulo received this report, and two of the search parties had not yet returned, but he ordered that the men with him ride south immediately. The others were to follow as soon as they got to the planter’s house. At nightfall the advance group reached the creek, which lay below hilly uplands, but as it soon grew dark, they resolved to wait until daybreak. Two hours after they had reached the creek, the rest of the militia rode in.
The proximity of the forested hills beyond the creek encouraged the militia, for it was this kind of terrain where runaways established quilombos, as the hideaways were known. So far, Black Peter had kept his band constantly on the move; but ultimately, it was thought, he’d be forced to seek a safe hideaway, and tonight, Paulo’s militia was convinced that Black Peter was in these hills.
At daybreak, they were relieved to see that the first line of hills was not precipitous; even so, the thick undergrowth and trees on the slo
pes required that they go on foot, leaving two men to guard the horses. The militia was divided into three patrols to cover as much ground as possible, and by midmorning they were deep in the hills. Paulo’s group was in the center, moving through a marshy depression, when a man from the section to the left hurried through the trees to them:
“Capitão, come quickly!”
“Black Peter?”
“A settlement, Capitão,” the man said breathlessly. “Deep in the trees.”
Paulo sent a man to fetch the group searching to the right of his party, and led the rest of the men swiftly through the trees. But when they reached the patrol that had sighted the clearing, there was a disappointing report from one who had scouted ahead:
“Gypsies, Capitão! Thirty, forty, perhaps more. Caboclos. Tupi. A white man. A few blacks. I see no gang of peças.” There were Gypsies from the great Romany tribes in the captaincy. A few prospered as slave merchants; many were horse dealers in the sertão, and not infrequently horse thieves.
When the third patrol joined them, Paulo ordered the militia to spread out and approach the settlement from several directions. They advanced unchallenged, until they could hear the voices of people in the clearing. With three men beside him and a cocked pistol in each hand, Paulo walked into the open.
A native screamed a warning. Women ran for cover into their huts, dragging their children with them.
“Stay!” Paulo demanded. “We won’t harm you!”
A Portuguese came running toward Paulo, crying, “Senhor! Capitão! Lower your pistols. We won’t fight.” A man in his thirties, dark olive complexion, sharp features, keen black eyes, he carried no weapons.
“We’re looking for runaway peças,” Paulo said, keeping a steady grip on his pistols.
“Not here, Capitão.”
“Gypsies?”
The Portuguese shook his head. “Not Gypsies, either, Capitão.” He looked at a group of natives and mixed breeds. Two blacks stood with them. “Free men, Capitão, not runaways. We live peacefully. We disturb no one.”
A militiaman growled, “Vagabonds! Renegades, Capitão.”
“We seek a gang of peças led by a free black. A murderer of Portuguese. They camped at the creek.” He indicated with a pistol in the direction from which they had come. “They must have passed this way.”
“No, Capitão, they did not.”
But Paulo gave the order: “Search the huts.”
“I swear to you, Capitão, no peças hide here.”
“Search every place!” Paulo repeated. He stuck one pistol into his belt and held the other loosely.
The Portuguese called out to the natives and caboclos telling them to cooperate, then turned back to Paulo: “I beg you not to alarm them, Capitão.”
“How many people live here?”
“Sixty. More, with the children.”
“Other whites?”
The man shook his head.
“Where do these people come from?”
The Portuguese shrugged. “Here. There. It’s a safe place.”
“To hide? From what?”
“We’ve committed no crimes, Capitão. As God is our witness, we disturb no one beyond these hills.”
Paulo asked no further questions but walked toward three huts clustered together. Just beyond them, he saw a long, low structure with a small Cross above the entrance and a larger one on the open ground in front of it.
The Portuguese was a few feet behind him. “I’ve told you, Capitão, we’re not criminals. This is our church. Simple, yes, but adequate.”
Several of Paulo’s men called out to him, saying there were no peças at the huts they had inspected. Women, children, and the most terrible squalor and poverty, yes, but no runaways.
“Where is your house?” Paulo asked the Portuguese.
As the man gestured toward a palm-frond hut near the church, two militiamen emerged, indicating to Paulo they had found nothing.
“Let us go to your house,” Paulo said.
“Your men have searched it, Capitão.”
But Paulo started toward the hut. “Where are you from, Portuguese?”
“The south, Capitão. The Algarve.”
“Why do you live like this?”
When the man did not answer, Paulo did not press him for a response. He put his second pistol away as he stepped into the small hut. He saw a hammock, a table and two chairs, a chest, two saints’ images on a shelf near the hammock.
The Portuguese stood just inside the entrance, with his arms folded, his expression strained as he watched Paulo.
“My name is Paulo Benevides Cavalcanti of Engenho Santo Tomás. What is yours . . . Padre?”
The Portuguese nodded. “You didn’t come for peças, did you?”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Four, five years. My name is Antunes Machado.”
“I seek a black murderer and those with him, Padre Antunes. Not Jesuits.”
“But you’ll take me away? A fine catch to throw at the governor’s feet!”
“No, Padre, I won’t.”
“O merciful God!”
The priest had been at an aldeia seventy miles south of these hills and was one of a handful of renegade Jesuits in Brazil and the regions of the Rio das Amazonas who were hiding in the sertão with their native converts. He told Paulo that the hills extended only a mile to the south with the settlement’s fields in that direction; they had seen no runaways in that area.
Satisfied that Machado was telling the truth, Paulo left his hut, called the militia together, and led them back toward the creek. By one o’clock they were on the hill overlooking the small stream, with two trackers moving ahead of the force. The trackers were halfway down the hill when they stopped, motioning for those behind them to do likewise. Paulo made his way forward.
“The horses, Capitão! Where are our horses?”
The militia worked their way down to the edge of the trees, and for ten minutes they remained under cover observing the bivouac. There was no sign of the horses or of the two men left behind to guard them.
Paulo ordered three men across the creek, and others to be ready to give them covering fire. The men went a quarter of a mile upstream to where the creek narrowed; they crossed and worked their way back to a stony depression to the right of the camp. Minutes passed before one began to move forward, first crouching low, then slowly standing and walking toward the trees where they had left their supplies.
Those watching from across the creek saw the man grow wildly agitated. Muskets and pistols were raised ready to fire. The man started back toward the creek with an unsteady gait, holding a hand to his head as if in pain. The others who had gone to the camp stood up and waved to indicate that it was safe to cross.
As Paulo splashed through the shallow water, he called to the man, asking what was wrong. In response, the man gestured frantically toward the trees. Paulo hurried past him, but after fifty feet, a sight in the gloomy forest ahead brought him to an abrupt halt. “O Mother of God!”
The men left behind were suspended upside down, naked, between two slender trees, their hands and feet spread-eagled and tied to the trunks. Their torsos had been slit open from abdomen to neck, disemboweling them and leaving pools of blood beneath each corpse.
“Cut them down!” Paulo screamed. “For God’s sake, take them down!”
The attack at the creek left the militia without mounts and supplies, and with no doubt that Black Peter was responsible for the slaying of their comrades. Paulo decided that, while the rest of the militia marched to Rosário, he would take three men to the engenho that had served as their base for two days and secure mounts to dash ahead to the vila. There, riders could be sent on to Santo Tomás to summon the regular troops and immediate steps taken to reequip the militia.
To accompany him, Paulo chose two mixed breeds, one an expert tracker, and the fifteen-year-old son of a senhor de engenho, a boy riding with the militia for the first time. Paulo had promi
sed the boy’s father that he would keep an eye on the lad. They left the creek within an hour of finding the victims, moving with extreme caution through the trees until they reached an area of open scrub and grass. They sighted the engenho’s cane fields before five o’clock. The cane fields were laid out in four great blocks, and the planter’s house was at the end of a deeply rutted road that ran for eight hundred yards between two of them. When Paulo and those with him turned into the road, they saw slaves cutting canes at the far end of the opening.
As they drew level with the slaves, some called out with greetings for the senhor capitão. A thin plume of smoke rose from a clay oven to the right of the one-storied building.
“Senhor Mariano is at the engenho?” Paulo asked a slave near him.
“Yes, Senhor Capitão!” The slave gestured toward the house with his machete.
There was an open area, 120 feet wide, between the canes and the house. Entering this, Paulo called out, “Senhor Mariano!” Again, twenty feet farther on: “Senhor Mariano!”
“Ca-pi-tão,” one of the mixed breeds began uncertainly, “there is—” He stopped in mid-sentence. “Aah! Jesus!”
The front door was flung open. Black Peter stood there, tall, thin, in breeches and ragged shirt, a bright blue kerchief tied round his head, a musket in his hands. “Halt, Portuguese! Halt!”
Paulo’s pistols were loaded and ready to fire. He reached for them but stopped when, in every direction, blacks stepped out from behind cover and trained their guns on the small party.
One of the mixed breeds went for his machete. Two musket shots cracked and he fell, mortally wounded. The other mixed breed stood rigidly next to Paulo, a foul odor rising from his soiled breeches, a string of incoherent appeals falling from his lips.
There was a soul-wrenching scream. Paulo turned his head and saw behind him the fifteen-year-old boy he’d promised to keep an eye on: The blacks at the canes were not Senhor Mariano’s slaves but part of Black Peter’s band and had seized the boy when he tried to flee.
“For love of God!” Paulo shouted, swinging his head toward Black Peter. “Have pity on the boy!”
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