Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  On January 20, André and Fernandes and the slaves left Registro Velho, known also as the halt of Matias Barbosa, with a wagon carrying the gunpowder concealed in twenty-one vinegar kegs. From the registry to the halt of João Gomes, at the base of the Mantiqueira Mountains, was a journey of thirty-six miles with steep inclines. The road then climbed for four miles to the crest of the range, four thousand feet above sea level, and made a long, winding descent to the edge of the highland plateau, from where it led northwest to the camp of Igreja Nova, New Church. In good weather, a laden wagon could cover the sixty-six miles between Matias Barbosa and Igreja Nova in less than three days, but, as André and the others approached the base of the Mantiqueira range, it started to rain. The downpour lasted an hour and turned the road into a quagmire.

  On the third morning, the party was near the top of the Mantiqueira pass, moving through a gloomy tunnel of overhanging foliage, when the sky again darkened.

  They led the panic-stricken mules forward foot by foot until they reached a small basin on the heights of the Mantiqueira, where they stopped. But gale-force winds and blasting rain made them press on to descend to the highland plateau, where they could find shelter. This was a mistake. They had gone about a mile when the heavy wagon went off the road at a sharp bend and its left wheels became embedded in a clay-filled ditch. Packing stones around the wheels and using tree limbs as levers, they tried, unsuccessfully, for two hours to free the wagon.

  They had not seen another traveler since the storm broke. In late afternoon, with the rain still pelting down, they began to off-load the wagon. Two hours later they finished. The rain had stopped, and they were resting beside a fire, when they heard the approach of horses. The bend where they were stranded was the first of seven along a switchback.

  “Dragoons?” Fernandes Soares queried. “Or bandits?”

  This section of the Mantiqueira road was notorious for highwaymen. The most recent outrages, which André and Fernandes had been told about at Matias Barbosa, were attributed to a gang of mixed breeds and blacks led by a former vaqueiro known as Dançarino de Corda, “Rope Dancer,” for his practice of lassoing victims, stripping them of valuables, and then making them dance at the end of his lariat as he dragged them to the nearest ravine to hurl them to their deaths.

  André and Fernandes both had pistols and knives but had put down their weapons. André was first to get up from beside the fire and move to the wagon for his gun, but before he could reach it, six riders were upon them.

  “Olá! What have we here?” the lead rider cried out, and grinned malevolently. Two of his camaradas leveled blunderbusses at the men on the ground, and two others brandished machetes. A sixth rider, obviously in distress, was hunched over his horse.

  “See for yourself,” André responded.

  The leader surveyed the wagon. “Stuck good and fast, eh?”

  “Who are you?” Fernandes asked shakily.

  The leader did not answer Fernandes but asked his own question: “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Fernandes Soares of Vila Rica.”

  “Doctor?” The man’s laughter rang out as his gaze moved from Fernandes’s mud-splattered boots to his torn shirt.

  Fernandes looked at the man hunched over his horse. “Of medicine,” he added.

  “And you — a doctor too?” he asked André.

  “No. I’m a Vila Rica merchant. Vaz da Silva. These are my goods.”

  The leader looked across at the kegs and boxes and the two slaves standing beside them. “Let me see,” he said, and dismounted. He was a small brute, with round shoulders and bowed legs and a big, drooping mustache. He introduced himself:

  “I’m Rope Dancer.”

  André took a deep breath. Fernandes stared at his feet and muttered under his breath.

  “You! When you’re not taking a mud bath, you’re a doctor?”

  Fernandes looked up fearfully. “Yes.”

  Rope Dancer jerked his head in the direction of his men, two of whom were assisting their moaning comrade. “Attend him!”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He struggled with a tropeiro over a manioc cake. Son of a bitch put a musket ball in his side.”

  “I’ll look at him,” Fernandes said feebly.

  Rope Dancer prodded Fernandes’s chest with his horsewhip. “Much more, Senhor Doctor. Heal him!”

  “Here?” Fernandes shook his head. “I promise nothing.”

  “Heal him!” Rope Dancer repeated. “My brother, ‘Tick,’ has smelled the blood of many men, senhor. Help him and your own may be spared.”

  The two slaves stood close by, observing Rope Dancer with something approximating curiosity. They had heard that the bandit took slaves from their masters and set them loose in the sertão to join other runaways at quilombos in these highlands.

  André ordered the slaves to light oil lanterns. A blanket was spread on the ground for Tick, who had bled profusely. He passed out when they laid him down. André stood beside Fernandes as he cut away the bandit’s bloodstained shirt; he heard Fernandes mumble that only a miracle could save Tick. This remark did not alarm André as much as the sight of Rope Dancer’s men examining the goods off-loaded from the wagon.

  But even as André stared helplessly at two bandits prying open a box with their knives, he heard the approach of other horsemen.

  “Dragoons!” Rope Dancer said. He bawled commands at his men and then looked at Fernandes. “Give them Tick, Senhor Doctor . . . as there’s a God above, you’ll not step off this mountain alive.” Without another word, he followed the bandits leading their horses into the trees.

  “Cover him,” Fernandes said.

  André had already grabbed a blanket to fling over Tick. “It won’t help. They’ll want to see him.”

  “Variola!” Fernandes said. “I’ll tell them he’s got the pox.”

  André took a lantern and moved toward the road.

  Minutes later, eight dragoons rode up. Their officer introduced himself as Alferes Jorge Ferraz. He said they were chasing Rope Dancer and his gang, who had murdered a tropeiro at Igreja Nova.

  “We’ve been stranded all afternoon. No one has ridden past,” André said.

  The alferes swung his head at a noise from the trees.

  “Our mules,” André said, adding quickly, “Alferes, if Rope Dancer had been here — Maria! Mother of God! — myself, my friend, the muleteer there, three corpses lying in the mud.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ferraz asked, glancing at Tick.

  “Fever, Alferes.” He looked at Fernandes. “Variola.”

  The officer showed no alarm and asked to see André’s passport. André went to fetch it. The alferes dismounted and walked toward Fernandes and the bandit.

  “Sick or two days,” Fernandes said. “He may die if we don’t get help.” He motioned toward the wagon.

  The alferes glanced at the wheels embedded in the clay. There was a noise from the trees, and the officer’s glance again shot in that direction.

  “Abilío!” Fernandes shouted at one of the slaves. “The mules!”

  The black hesitated, glancing fearfully toward the dark forest.

  “The mules!” Fernandes ordered.

  André was walking back to the alferes, but stopped to swear at Abilío and kick the slave’s shins: “Move, devil! Quiet the mules!” Abilío stumbled off. André quickly handed the alferes his passport.

  Alferes Ferraz gave the document a cursory examination. “You’re sure there were no riders?”

  “Not one.”

  Ferraz eyed André suspiciously. “Then, they’ve gone up the river valley.” This was the Rio das Mortes, which lay below the northern slopes of the Mantiqueira. Ferraz looked at the wagon. “My men will help you.”

  “No, Alferes. Better that you continue the chase.”

  Ferraz was gazing at the pile of merchandise. “By the time we get below, Rope Dancer will be far away.” He gave orders for the cavalrymen to help free the
wagon.

  The alferes paid no attention to Fernandes, who went to join the dragoons, or to the man he had been told was a muleteer. He asked André for the lantern he was holding and then moved toward the pile of goods.

  “What’s in the boxes?”

  “English goods. Clothing. Shirts —”

  “What else?” The dragoon placed the lantern on a keg of “vinegar.”

  “Ai, Jesus!”

  “Something wrong” — Ferraz looked at Andre’s passport again — “Vaz da Silva?”

  “No . . . no, Alferes. I was just thinking how lucky we are Rope Dancer didn’t come this way.” His eyes never moved from the keg, and now Ferraz showed interest.

  “What’s in the kegs?” the alferes asked.

  “Vinegar,” André said immediately, his heart beating wildly.

  The officer pointed to the box the bandits had started to pry open. “And this?”

  “Let me show you, Alferes.” André saw his opportunity: He grabbed the lantern and set it down beside the box. Then he pulled out his knife and slowly began to loosen the lid. He looked across to the dragoons and saw that they were getting ready to lift the wagon with the tree limbs. Finally, he removed the lid, but only to reveal three boxes within. “See, Alferes” — he laughed — “for the senhor of the city of London.”

  “A hat?”

  “Yes! As grand as you’ll ever set eyes on.” André loosened the strings securing the hatbox and took out an exceptionally tall beaver with a tapering crown. “This is for the man of true fashion, Alferes. Here! Try it on!”

  Ferraz grinned as he swept off his regimental bicorne.

  “Maravilhoso!” André said. “My lord, the gentleman! Take the hat, Alferes. A gift in gratitude for your help.”

  Fernandes and the cavalrymen shouted that the wagon was beginning to inch forward.

  “The hat is yours, Alferes,” André said.

  “Put it in the box,” Ferraz said, handing it back.

  “May I suggest some lace, Alferes?”

  “Show me.”

  “Lace! Ribbons!” André took another box from the stack of merchandise. He removed a roll of lace, ribbons, and three bonnets, then emptied one of the hatboxes and filled it with these items. “My pleasure, Alferes. God knows, for the service you give, there’s small enough reward.”

  “Our pay is miserable,” the officer said. Just as he was going to say something else, the wagon rolled beyond the ditch and the men cheered.

  André shouted his thanks to them and picked up the lantern. “We’ll not detain you, Alferes. It’s a long ride back to your barracks.” He passed one of the hatboxes to Ferraz and, carrying the other, started toward the wagon.

  The cavalrymen looked enviously at the boxes, but Alferes Ferraz ordered them to remount immediately. André helped Ferraz tie the boxes to his saddle straps. When the alferes mounted, he belatedly thanked André for his generosity. Then he led his troop away.

  “Jesus! Mary! Joseph!” Fernandes exclaimed. “Most merciful guardians!”

  André was glancing toward the trees. There was a cracking of branches, but it was the slave Abilío.

  “The bandits?” André asked.

  “They’re not there, Master.”

  Rope Dancer and his men did not reappear. André and Fernandes helped the slaves with the loading of the boxes and kegs, and within an hour and a half, they had the mules hitched up and were ready to leave. Fernandes had bandaged Tick’s wound, but the bandit had not regained consciousness. “He’s dying,” Fernandes said bluntly. “I can do nothing for him here. We have to get him to a fazenda below, but it will probably be too late.”

  With André and the slaves walking up front with lanterns and examining the surface of the road before the mules and the wagon were led over it, they made their way along the switchback and down between two great buttresses of the Mantiqueira. Four hours later, they were approaching a crossing at a feeder stream of the Rio das Mortes. There, sitting aside their horses with drawn pistols, were Rope Dancer and his men.

  Fernandes moved his head nervously toward the wagon and the motionless figure of Tick: An hour ago, when he had examined the man, he had found no signs of life.

  Rope Dancer edged his horse toward the wagon.

  “There was nothing I could do,” Fernandes said. “We were taking him to a fazenda.”

  Rope Dancer came alongside the wagon. He raised the edge of the blanket. “Tick?” He nodded and dropped the blanket. “Bury him,” he said to Fernandes. “That’s all?”

  “What more does he need?”

  “Your brother?”

  Rope Dancer prodded the corpse with his whip. “They’re all my brothers, Senhor Doctor.” Rope Dancer dug into a pouch at his side, took out some coins, and handed them to Fernandes. “Find a priest to pray for the soul of Aniceto the Tick.”

  André walked over to them.

  Rope Dancer still held a few coins in his hand. He tossed them onto the blanket. “Those are for the two of you,” he said.

  “We don’t want payment from you,” Fernandes said.

  “It’s for the priest: Have him say a prayer for your good fortune.”

  “For your mercy, you mean?”

  Rope Dancer let out a hoarse laugh and, with his horsewhip, struck the side of the wagon. “The dragoons were dozing in their saddles; otherwise, they’d have found what you hide.”

  “I’m a merchant — ”

  “And I, Rope Dancer, am no fool. If there was nothing, you’d have squealed like pigs at the feet of the alferes.”

  “Take what you want,” André said with resignation.

  “Nothing,” Rope Dancer said. He backed his pony away from the wagon, calling out to his men to ride off. “A good prayer for the soul of Tick. Nothing more.” Then he swung his horse away from them and rode after his men.

  “Sweet Jesus Savior!” André said, and grabbed hold of Fernandes’s arm. “Who would doubt that the angels themselves favor our cause!”

  The journey north of the Mantiqueira took a week and passed without incident. André and Fernandes returned to Vila Rica on January 31, and the gunpowder was hidden at the da Silva fazenda on the road between Vila Rica and Cachoeira do Campo. Silva Xavier was elated. With two weeks remaining before the imposition of the derrama, the confidence of the inner circle of plotters could not have been higher.

  “How fortunate that His Excellency delights in country airs at Cachoeira do Campo,” Silva Xavier said to André and Fernandes. “Those four leagues from Vila Rica might just as well be four hundred, for the little he gleans from the rumors reaching him. Except, of course, when our own messengers go to Cachoeira to enlighten him!”

  The bards of Vila Rica and other plotters regularly visited the visconde de Barbacena. They would read their poetry for the governor and also offer their ideas on how best to administer Her Majesty’s subjects. Judge Gonzaga, for example, agreed with His Excellency that the Mineiros were incorrigible tax evaders whose rehabilitation could be achieved only with an iron rod: “Don’t threaten them with words, Excellency; use the derrama. Don’t extract one year’s arrears; demand the full debt. Collect every arrôba of gold owing to our sovereign. Tax the Mineiros, Excellency! Tax them till they howl for mercy!”

  Luis Fialho Soares was among the visitors who strolled with the visconde in the gardens at Cachoeira, offering false encouragement for acts of despotism that would arouse the Mineiros. Like Gonzaga and Dr. Cláudio Manuel, Luis Fialho became committed to independence as a result of those meetings in the past. His son Fernandes had also been instrumental in convincing him that a revolution could succeed.

  Luis Fialho found great pleasure in Fernandes’s company. With his other son, Martinho, a professor of Latin at the seminary in Mariana, Luis Fialho had always had a difficult relationship. Martinho was a pedagogue obsessed with cramming young heads with precise Latin, an exercise he accomplished with a leavening of terror.

  Three nights after André and Ferna
ndes had returned from their mission, Martinho joined them for dinner with Luis Fialho. Afterward the four were relaxing in an upstairs parlor of Luis Fialho’s house when Martinho criticized Alferes Silva Xavier, whose name had come up in the conversation. “I don’t doubt the man is besot with the idea of liberty — I’ve heard the fiery words he throws about — but there are forces this blockhead doesn’t grasp.”

  “A blockhead, brother?” Fernandes responded. “If what Silva Xavier says makes him a blockhead, you’d have met many blockheads among the revolutionaries of North America.”

  Martinho merely shrugged. “The alferes expects the citizens of Vila Rica to take the streets in a popular rising. But actually who will stand with Silva Xavier?”

  Fernandes looked at his father and André. “There are three in this room.”

  “Certainly, and others like yourselves, who talk of insurrection. But when the alferes goes his way spreading sedition, who else takes him seriously? The common people? The mulattoes in their tenements? The caboclos? The free blacks? Perhaps I’m wrong and he’s made wider contacts than I suspect. But it seems to me that his message doesn’t reach the ranks of a revolutionary army.”

  “A few must take the initiative,” André said. “With every hour, others will come forward. The detestation of the derrama is universal.”

  “True, the people hate the taxes. But how many are timid men with a fear of Portuguese reprisals that surpasses any other feeling?” He turned to his father: “Senhor Pai, men like yourselves — you and Judge Gonzaga and Dr. Cláudio — you have an honest dedication to this cause. But does Silvério dos Reis, with his immense indebtedness to the treasury? Does he seek anything but freedom from those obligations?” Martinho knew that his father loathed this tax contractor, with whom he had been involved in acrimonious litigation several years ago. “And he’s hardly the only man rallying to your banner for selfish motives. Would Silvério dos Reis be a supporter if Queen Maria forgave him his great trespasses?”

  “Silvério dos Reis’s motives may be questionable,” Fernandes agreed. “But he openly advocates independence and has contributed money toward the cause. This is enough to guarantee his loyalty.”