God's Fires Read online

  To Evelyn Anthony, a career woman who read to her daughter.

  See where it got us, Mom?

  DAY 1

  Fornication. It was not a sin he expected her to confess. Not her. Not She of the Three Hairy Moles. Father Manoel Pessoa’s gasp tasted of Dona Inez: a reek of stale goat cheese and decomposing sardines. The resulting cough saved him from laughter, or from shattering the silence of the church by blurting, “Holy Jesus! With whom?”

  He longed to know, of course. And then he ached to share this amusing news with Father Soares. He was tempted to look up to see if some miracle had caused the moley trinity to disappear from her nose, mouth, and chin.

  He stared at St. John’s painted toe, instead. To be sure, this was no ordinary confession—his rear propped against a cold stone shelf, the statue an intercessor between them. Yet Dona Inez had uttered the words which ensured her anonymity and his silence: “It has been five days since my last confession.” He searched furiously for a way around that.

  “Are you all right, Father Inquisitor?” she asked. “Your trip has not exhausted you into a gripe? Or made you spend too long in the sun?”

  “No, no. Please. Tell me more.” A name, he prayed.

  “They come at night,” she told him. “And wake me from sleep. They put their hands on me, and lay me on an altar where they lift my skirts.”

  Doubtful. Simply imagining Dona Inez with her skirts up made Pessoa’s eyes water. “An impure dream. Make a good Act of—”

  “Not a dream!”

  The interruption shocked Pessoa mute.

  “A man,” she said, “who is maybe an angel, comes in to where I am lying. He is tall. Taller than the others, and he is so bright that it hurts to look. He asks me questions which are hard to answer, and which make me fear for my soul. He has a long pan, and he sticks it in me. Would an angel do that, father? Does a dream have the power to give you pain? I beg him to stop, but he refuses. He puts his hand over my eyes, and he kisses me, and tells me to sleep. When I awaken in the morning I find blood between my legs.”

  As a Jesuit, Father Pessoa had been taught to question. What Dona Inez confessed caused him to ponder the paus of angels. Surely if God set angels higher than man, their pans would be huge. Ah. Now there was a deadly thought.

  She said, “I have seen the little Castanheda girl with the angels, too. She lies on an altar of silk. Her skirt and her blouse are gone, her shift pulled up. The angel lies on top of her, and makes her groan.”

  “Are you talking about Marta Teresa da Penha Castanheda?”

  “Yes, Father Inquisitor. She has led this angel into temptation, and has caused him to fall from grace. Conversion never took with that family, you know, and Moors capture their men with love potions. Now the angel is crazed with lust and cannot help himself. He sticks his pau wherever, whenever. May we have an auto-da-fé, please? I think a girl who seduces an angel needs burning.”

  Father Pessoa had watched the Castanheda girl grow. Just this summer, she had become ripe for plucking. Were he an angel, he would fall for her. He imagined himself, skin aglow, his pau huge, Marta groaning beneath him.

  He huffed, irritated by his own lust, by Dona Inez’s dream, and of deciding whether or not to shrive her. “I shall question the girl, of course. Is that all?”

  Dona Inez propped an elbow on St. John’s sandaled foot and leaned over, breathing onion-and-rot effluvium into Pessoa’s face. “She swears it is the Virgin Mary. But I have seen with my own eyes and I tell you, saying a creature with a pau like that is the Blessed Mother can only be heresy.”

  Abruptly Dona Inez was up and gone, leaving a doppelganger of her odor. Father Pessoa eased a kink out of his back and genuflected.

  His self-imposed circuit ride, which began six years earlier as dull pain, was now a toothache of sameness: the small heresies, the interchangeable towns, the litany of edicts. Once he yearned for absolute knowledge; now a comfortable bed and a roast chicken would do.

  Through the narrow Romanesque windows of the church, he saw that the sun was setting. Already vespers. By the time he got to the rectory, Father Soares, who had not been informed of his arrival, would have eaten every scrap of dinner.

  He picked up his cloak and his wide-brimmed hat, and walked out through the front doors. The late-summer air was sweet. Sheep moved like dingy clouds across a firmament of gray-green hills. A cork tree gathered the westering sun in its dense branches. His donkey, Felicidade, stood in the yard below, head down, tail swishing. Pessoa’s buttocks still chafed from Felicidade’s spine. No remedy for it; and no hope of salvation. When his horse died, the Holy Office hadn’t the money to send him a replacement.

  Somebody needed to bugger someone soon in his district. Have congress with a cow. He wouldn’t mind sending a sodomizer to the provincial tribunal at Mafra. Wouldn’t mind confiscating the man’s horse and a little money. Inquisitors before him had become rich. Now the Holy Office lacked even the means to send him a secretary and an armed guard. Ha! They would see. One day he would be set upon in the hills and be assassinated.

  He jammed his hat on and limped, sore-legged, down the steps. The secret to life, Pessoa had discovered, was timing; and he was habitually late—late for dinner, late for the Inquisition, birthed thirty minutes slow. His twin, João, received the title and the estate. Manoel inherited eight year’s study of the law and an ass misnamed “Happiness.”

  The loud, heartfelt “Praise God, stranger!” sent him fumbling for his dagger.

  It was Magalhães, the tailor. The bald man moved closer, squinting. “Ah! But it’s only you, father. Time to read the Edicts already? You see the signs in the sky?”

  “Sorry?”

  “In the sky!” The tailor pointed upward, as if Pessoa might have difficulty locating it. “At night. Burning crosses.”

  “Um.”

  “I take it for a good sign, although maybe not. God doesn’t translate, does He, at least to an ignorant man such as myself. The Castanheda girl talks to the Virgin, though, and the Virgin explains things, but women are known to gossip, verdadel When you figure out the signs, perhaps you will tell us, because the women keep the Virgin’s talk a secret.” The tailor wandered off, pulling on his ear.

  Troubled, Father Pessoa watched him go. Not here. Not this. Better a sodomite, Domine.

  Clucking to Felicidade, Pessoa led her down the hill, around the corner, and down a row of whitewashed houses. At the richest house, he stopped.

  Senhor Castanheda himself opened the door to Pessoa’s knock. His swarthy face fell. “Ah,” he said. “I thought you would come.” The lamps in the entranceway were lit. Over Castanheda’s broad shoulder, Pessoa could see a mahogany-and-gold crucifix and a garish painting of El Cid. A war trophy? For surely Castanheda dared not champion the Spanish—not after killing so many for Portugal’s independence. And why the Cid? Did he admire him for fighting for Muslims, or for being the consummate Christian warrior? It was elegant, this choice of art, one that the Holy Office would always suspect, but could never fault.

  Castanheda opened the door wider. “Please.”

  Pessoa, imagining a curved Moorish dagger between his ribs, smiled, thanked him, and waved the offer away.

  “If you have come to arrest my daughter—”

  “O, no! No! Nothing so official, really. I simply want to talk to the child.”

  Castanheda called, “Marta! Father Inquisitor is here!”

  Little Marta came, doe eyes downcast, hands together as if in earnest prayer. Senhor Castanheda propped his arm against the doorframe, a brawny barrier.

  Pessoa bent and tried to peer into her face. “Hello, Martinha! Hello! How are you? Good to see you again. You remember me? Father Pessoa? Of course you do. I come into town four times a ye
ar just so the old men can fall asleep during my reading. Well. Imagine this!” He clapped his hands softly. “It seems that I came into town today, and people are saying that you have seen the Blessed Mother.”

  She stood, meek and silent.

  “Ah. I see. It’s a difficult thing to talk about, miracles. You know, Martinha, I’d like to see the Blessed Mother. I’ve always wondered if she’s pretty.”

  Marta raised her head and Pessoa’s heart stopped. The girl was ethereal. Her huge eyes were aglow, as if angels had touched secret places in her. She said, “Would you like to see?”

  A growl: “Marta—”

  “No, papai. It’s all right. He can’t hurt me.” She ducked under her father’s sheltering arm, and ran lightly down the short steps into the street.

  Not won’t hurt me. Can’t hurt me. He can’t hurt me. Apprehensive, Pessoa looked at Castanheda. The man was regarding his daughter, tears trembling on his lower lids.

  “Hurry! Hurry!” Marta called, and her voice echoed along the narrow road. “Come see before the light fails!”

  Pessoa left Felicidade at the steps and followed. Marta ran, skirts billowing, dark hair loose, gilded by dying sun. Stiff from his journey, he limped after, from cobblestones to clay, from glimmering village to brassy meadow. And at a lone olive tree beyond the edge of town, she stopped.

  “See?” she cried in triumph. “Her power is too much for living things.”

  The top of the olive tree was blighted. Marta grasped Pessoa’s hand and pulled him, stumbling, to a circle of dead grass.

  “Here is where she appears to me,” Marta said, her eyes alight. “Feel the power? Like a tingle up and down your arms and in your stomach? Hear the buzzing in your head? She speaks to me, and her voice is like water over rocks, like a wind through branches. O, she is so beautiful. Come. Kneel, father. Kneel with me and pray.”

  He tried unobtrusively to get away, but she pulled him down beside her and turned. “Here in this place of glory…”

  He froze. Those eyes, huge and dark. He closed his own and felt the whisper of her breath against his cheek.

  “…confess your sins,” she said.

  King Afonso carried his Italian spyglass with him everywhere. Three days ago he had peered through it to see people on a balcony making love. The day before, a woman beating a child. The day before that, a man beating a woman. Because kings should make everything right, Afonso had called for his soldiers. By the time the guards arrived, the beatings were over, and try as he might, Afonso couldn’t remember which house, which woman, which man.

  Sunset turned the Tejo’s pewter to flame, and a caravelle, perhaps back from India, perhaps from Brazil, tacked its calm burning waters. Afonso liked ships. They brought him things: African slaves who sang and danced and grinned; leopardskin drums; banana and papaya trees which bloomed for a while, and died of homesickness.

  He adjusted the focus to bring the quay into view. With much hand waving and officiousness, the caravelle docked. Behind it, weary fishing boats bobbed home. He lowered the glass, shivering as summer sun abdicated the castle. He saw daylight retreat from the crowded homes of the Alfama below, and watched Lisbon’s blue chill return.

  “Lights!” the king cried, and a servant sprang to the candles. The dark frightened him. The dancing shadows the candles threw made him anxious.

  Tucking his spyglass into his belt, he left the room, shuffling down corridors, through smells of damp and mildew, past iron-banded oak doors.

  He ran, boots slapping an uneven rhythm on stone. He counted rooms on his fingers. “…four. Five.” Reaching the limit of his numbers, he returned to “one,” then started on the other hand. “…two. Three!” With a whoop, he pushed the latch. The second-third door swung open.

  The room was bright with candles. Dom da Fonte started, and drew his sword. Pedro leaped to his feet. Bishop Dias clutched his pectoral cross.

  “Ha!” Afonso laughed. “I am King Sebastião, and you are my prisoners!” Fumble-fingered, he drew his own sword, his new one. “Fall down on your knees and beg for my mercy!”

  Dom da Fonte sheathed his weapon and retreated behind the desk. “Get that away from him.”

  “Afonso…” Pedro warned.

  Afonso cried, “Death to the coward who dares not fight!” He swung his sword. Without meaning to, he struck a gold chalice, and it fell, chiming, to the floor.

  The bishop ducked farther into the cushions. Da Fonte backed another step and ran a hand through his graying hair. “Who in God’s name gave him that blade?”

  Afonso pointed the tip downward and struck a wobbly, although heroic pose, one such as he had seen on a tile mural at Estoril. “The Flemish ambassador. And it is a fine one, with words writ on it. And its edge is very sharp.”

  From his hiding place in the cushions, the bishop laughed. “A plot. Didn’t I tell you the Flemish hate us?”

  “Put the sword away,” Pedro said.

  “But I am King Sebastião, Pedro. And you are Muslims.”

  No one in the kingdom had a voice as gentle as Pedro’s. “It is time to put the sword up. Come here. You’ve been eating chocolate again.”

  After four tries, Afonso slid the blade into its sheath. He went to his brother, standing before him toe-to-toe, a measuring distance. Just this winter, Pedro had grown until he was almost as tall as himself. His voice was beginning to deepen in fits and starts, as Afonso’s had two years before. Each day, Pedro looked more and more like their dead father.

  Pedro hummed a fado as he dipped the edge of a linen napkin into a goblet. He sang softly as he scrubbed Afonso’s lips. Afonso tried to escape, but Pedro held him fast. “No one will give you presents if you’re dirty. Stop squirming! I wetted the napkin with Oporto wine, just the kind you like.”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Am not.”

  Afonso liked the way Pedro spoke, the way he always sounded sure of himself. “Do you want to see my spyglass? It’s from Italy!” He took it from his belt.

  Pedro ran his hands over the silver scrollwork.

  “Silly Pedrinho,” Afonso said. “You aren’t using it right. Put your eye to the tiny end, and things look close. Put your eye to the larger end, and they look far away. Bring it to the window. You can see the people in the Alfama just like God can!”

  Pedro looked at the bishop, who smiled a funny smile and shook his head.

  “You don’t have to ask the bishop’s permission, Pedro. Castelo Melhor says he’s just a Jesuit whoremonger, and you’re the brother of a king, after all.”

  They laughed: the bishop and Pedro and Dom da Fonte. The bishop laughed so hard he choked, and spilled his wine.

  Afonso’s insides went jittery when people laughed and he didn’t understand. To make the sick feeling stop, he bounced up and down on his toes. “Come, Pedro. Please? The view is finer from the battlements, but the window will do. You can look down on people, and no one knows you are seeing them! I have watched men piss in the streets. I have seen women lift their skirts for money.”

  He pulled Pedro to the window. Da Fonte followed, grumbling. “So he likes to watch whores, does he. I was wondering when he would discover what his cock is for. Ask him if he has managed yet to stick it into that French bitch of his, or if he needs someone to show him which end is for what.”

  Pedro pulled free. “Stop, Afonso! Stop tugging!” Afraid and hurt, Afonso backed up.

  Then Pedro turned to da Fonte. “Damn you,” he said between clenched teeth. “Stop.”

  “If he gets that French whore with child—”

  “Get out,” Pedro said.

  “How can I get out of this? I’m pledged. Will you let that renegade count remove our heads in the square?”

  “I said, get out!”

  With a sigh, the bishop gained his feet. “I believe it’s time…”

  Da Fonte came up until he was toe-to-toe with Pedro—not measuring, not playing. Da Fonte was so much older, taller, stronger. The two gla
red at each other like a pair of dogs. They were silent for so long that Afonso grew frightened. Then abruptly da Fonte turned and stalked out, the bishop at his heels.

  Pedro looked so sad that it made Afonso sad, too. A king should make everything right.

  “I know!” He clapped his hands. “Jandira has been reading me Don Quixote’. I will go on a quest. And you will go with me.”

  At last a smile. Pedro reached up and brushed the hair away from his brother’s face. “No one goes on quests anymore.”

  “Castelo Melhor said it was a wonderful idea.”

  “I imagine he did.”

  “We will tilt at windmills. There are windmills in the Alentejo, and Jandira says they whistle!”

  Pedro stroked his brother’s cheek. Afonso closed his eyes. Whenever the word safety was uttered, it was Pedro’s warm hand that he thought of.

  “You go,” his brother said.

  Afonso whispered, “I can’t enjoy windmills without you.”

  “Castelo Melhor has ordered me to leave.”

  Panic thrust Afonso through, belly to spine. “No!”

  “Only to Mafra. Only for a while.”

  “No!” Afonso dropped the spy scope. The lens shattered in a spray of thin glass. “You can’t go!”

  A guard rushed in from the hall. Pedro motioned him out.

  Afonso wanted to run away, but he knew that the word leave would follow him through the door, down the hall, to the courtyard, and out into the night.

  “Believe me, it is not my choice—”

  “No! I am the king. And I say no.” He held his cock tight and danced up and down, the way he did at court when there was no chamber pot and he had to piss. Pedro would go away like Catarina had gone away. He would disappear to the place his father and mother had gone. “Catarina went away and she never came back!” he wailed.

  “Hush. Don’t cry,” Pedro said, but he was crying, too. “She is all right. Our sister is all right. She’s just—”

  “No!” Mucus ran from Afonso’s nose. He sobbed so hard, he drooled. Kings should make things better, but planning was hard, and the world went by too fast. “She went away, and Castelo Melhor says she’s dead!”