An eclipse seems to fall over my heart; the demon’s knowledge of the murderers identity must be gone.
Senhora Faiam rushes to the bed. “A dream from the Other Side, dear,” she says, caressing Gemila’s cheek. “You were having a nightmare and I asked Beri to come to see you.”
“Yes,” she says, recalling its fringes inside a faraway look. “A dream.”
Bento presses his lips into his wife’s hands. “It doesn’t matter now.”
She turns to me, confused. “But you…you were in the dream,” she says. “I was being swept away by a river of blood. Like the Nile after Moses touched his… It was cold…so cold.” She speaks carefully, as if stepping back into her nightmare. “And you and your uncle were on the shore calling to me. But you were both birds…ibises. And then you were squawking something fierce. Flapping your wings. I was caught in the current, hitting the rocks. And then I, too, was an ibis. I was flying onto the bank, into your arms.” She stares off into memory. She shrugs, offers me an apologetic smile. “It’s gone. That’s all I remember.”
“The important thing is that it’s over,” I say.
Senhora Faiam kisses my hands. “I’ll never be able to repay you,” she says.
“I have been repaid already,” I say. But my words are false, and are returned to me hollow. The cavern of my uncle’s death has opened before me again. Every step I take from now on will be a descent. Father Carlos takes my arm. “Come, we must talk of Judah now,” he says.
Is he relieved that the girl could not name him as the murderer? “Yes, let us talk,” I answer dryly.
Gemila calls my name as we reach the threshold of her doorway. “Beri, I saw one other thing in my dream,” she says. “A white creature with a human face. Part vulture, perhaps. But with two mouths, the one below closed tight and fringed by blood. Like the demon Maimon, I think. When you were calling to me from the shore, he was ripping at you and your uncle with his talons. And Berekiah, Maimon had come out of your house, out of the entrance to your store. I was not in a river. I was peering over my wall at Temple Street. Its cobbles were flowing with blood, and I was cursing God for having made it so!”
Chapter XIV
Carlos and I stand outside Senhora Faiam’s house. The recent sins of Lisbon lie dormant for now, veiled by the dark grace of the seventh evening of Passover. Craving human warmth but unwilling to unveil my vulnerability to a man who might have helped murder Uncle, I tug on one of the bell sleeves of his long cassock and say, “Tell me about Judah. I need to know everything.”
“He…he was taken. By a group of Old Christians. On Sunday.”
“Is there any chance that he’s safe…that he’s alive?”
“I’d like to think so. But…” The priests brings his palms together into a pose of Christian prayer. “I took him to St. Peter’s when the killing started. We hid together below, in the vault. You’ve been there. Where the relics are. Many New Christians were there. But men came. And they started…” Carlos grimaces, and his voice, having darted between us as if on windblown flame, is extinguished by a gust of horror. He takes my hands, places my fingers over his eyes, inhales as if bathing his soul in the reviving scent of myrtle. He lets my hands drop. “The boy and I slipped out the exit to the courtyard, made our way down to the Tagus,” he continues. “Moses Jagos and his family, they joined us. He had the idea to hire a boat to get across to the other side of the river, to Barreiro. He took out gold sovereigns from the lining of his cap. A boatman agreed. But as we were leaving, more Old Christians came. They…they took Judah and the others. I tried to fight. You must believe me. But they threw me in the river. By the time…” He cringes, hugs himself as if he’s suddenly frigid.
I shake him. “Just tell me now where they took my brother! Was it to the pyres in the Rossio?!”
“I don’t know. Oh God, I…I don’t know. At first, toward the Ribeira Palace. I ran after them. I was going to get Judah back no matter what. That boy…that beautiful boy. Berekiah, your beautiful brother… You know the Boatmen’s Tavern beyond the Misericordia Church? I found them outside there. Judah saw me. He smiled and stuck his tongue out like he was expecting a present. Can you believe it? What must he have been thinking? I ran up to the Dominican in charge. ‘You’ve taken an Old Christian by mistake,’ I told him. I pointed to Judah. ‘That boy. He’s my ward. He’s not a Jew’
“‘God makes no mistakes,’ the friar said. He was like Herod, this Old Christian. Swathed in a kind of lunatic power. He ordered Judah stripped. The men laughed at the boy’s circumcised sex. But he wasn’t crying. He looked like your uncle. Staring at me from behind a kind of sworn silence, as if to say that everything was going as planned. Master Abraham and Judah… I don’t understand.” Carlos gasps, turns away toward a memory which clenches his breathing.
“Then you know about Uncle. How?!”
“Cinfa told me, of course. Before I joined you in Senhora Faiam’s house. She told me about Master Abraham, mentioned what you were doing.” He draws near to me, whispers conspiratorially: “They violated me, Berekiah. They were drunk. I was held down to the rocks at the river’s edge while they… It was their laughter I couldn’t take. When I was able to stand, I rushed to the Rossio. But Judah, he was nowhere to be found.”
“Why didn’t you come sooner to tell us?”
“I was frightened. I was hurt. My bones ached with the wine smell of them…the smoke. I ran for sanctuary in the Carmelite monastery. Berekiah, I’m not a courageous man. Look at these robes, these idols…” He lifts from his chest his crucifix, rips at it till the clasp breaks. “Look at this traitorous wood that burns into me!” His straining, clawed hands separate the Nazarene from the cross with a snap. Jesus, contorted and stiff, drops as a crippled Jew to the cobbles. Animal grunts rise from Carlos’ gut, and he hurls the denuded cross against the whitewashed wall of my house. Becalmed, panting, he surveys the roofs above us, the black mirror of river below. “On Monday,” he whispers, “I tried to find him. I even slipped into the lion’s den of Sao Domingos. Berekiah, for the first time in nine years, I wasn’t afraid of Christians. Maybe that’s what Judah felt. But how? A little boy can’t feel such things. I even thought that perhaps he’d simply walk right back here. That somehow…”
Hope is strange; it defies all odds. As Carlos continued speaking, I began thinking:
“What are you talking about?” he asks.
“Have you proof of where you were these past days?”
“You mean you suspect me?!”
“I suspect everyone until the Messiah comes,” I say.
He sighs as if ceding to a truth he had long refused to admit. “You can ask the Carmelite nuns.”
I decide to test him by pointing the blame toward Simon. I say, “A silk thread was found under Uncle’s thumbnail. Black silk…like a filament from one of Simon’s gloves.”
“Simon? You mean…?”
“Yes. Why not him?”
“Dear Berekiah, I think so much death has got you reading from left to right. Simon loved your uncle. He would never have raised a hand against him.”
“But they might have had a bitter argument in the threshing group,” I observe.
The priest waves my suggestion away. “An argument over Talmud and Torah may carry one along a path of burning words but will never lead to blood. You should know that by now.”
Carlos has passed this little test. But what if he suspects that I know the thread was planted, wouldn’t he then react in just this way? “And have you told my mother about Judah?” I ask.
“Yes. She’s quiet for now. Cinfa’s with her. When the girl whispered to me that you were battling an
An absurd laugh comes from me. “Carlos, you never cease to amaze me. Who
“Dom Joao Mascarenhas,” he says.
I nod. “Yes, of course.” Dom Joao ran the port and customs house for the King, was the Court Jew who ransomed Reza from Limoeiro Prison with gold the previous Sunday. The Old Christians always resented the idea of
