I am told that I fell back to sleep immediately, my last sip dribbling down my cheek to my pillow. When I woke again, I recalled having been in the forest, but the reason escaped me. Mama, who kept vigil in my room, explained that Violeta’s uncle had walloped me on the back of my head. I had fallen and lost consciousness. All this had happened the day before. My previous awakening had been twelve hours earlier.
She had little faith in men of medicine, but Mama had allowed Dr. Silva to bleed me twice at my temples with leeches to prevent the accumulation of toxic fluids on my brain.
“And Violeta?” I asked.
“She’s safe, John. Do not worry.”
Mama took my hand. She held it to her lips and kissed it, then folded it into a fist and gave it back to me, saying, “Keep that with you always.”
Father stepped into the room and smiled down at me. “How is my wee man?”
“My head feels all broken.”
He sat down on my bed, leaned over, and kissed me on the lips. Then he took an amethyst stone he had brought back for me from upriver the week before and placed it on my chest.
“You are a brave tyke. A
“Violeta made me promise not to tell anyone‚” I explained.
He touched his fingers to my lips to quiet me and said, “I am not cross with you, but this might have ended tragically for all concerned. We have been very lucky.”
“What happened to her uncle?”
Papa said that the loud noise I had heard was a gunshot. The same hunter Daniel and I spoke to on the day Violeta was first attacked had heard Fanny’s barks and come running. When Tomas grabbed me and hit me, the hunter fired a shot above our heads. Then, while Tomas looked around to find the source of the gunfire, Fanny leapt at him. Her teeth ripped clean through his breeches and tore a chunk of flesh from his thigh.
The hunter was still a long way off. He fired another shot aimed to do permanent damage this time, which came within inches of Tomas’s head. In fear for his life, he cursed Violeta and lumbered off.
“The hunter carried you home,” Papa told me. “We are greatly indebted to him.”
He added that if it had not been for the good stranger, I might have been awaiting burial at this moment. I could not comprehend that. I tried to imagine being dead. I stopped breathing and made my face go blank.
“What are you doing, John?” Papa asked.
“Just thinking about things. Where’s Violeta now?”
“She is with her mother, resting.”
“And does Daniel know what happened?”
“Indeed he does. I went to his house to tell him.”
“And where is Tomas Goncalves?”
“He is no longer a problem,” Papa replied, and would say no more.
Violeta visited me the next afternoon, her wan face framed by a hideous black bonnet, which she refused to remove despite my entreaties. Mama gasped on seeing her, then fell into a disquieting silence, clearly afraid of all that might spill from her if she were to begin to express her feelings. She served us tea and sat with us, gripping Violeta’s hand. After a time, Mama got up, kissed the lass on the cheek, and left us to ourselves. When I asked Violeta what punishment had been given her uncle Tomas, she informed me that she did not know. He had vanished from their home. Her mother refused to talk of him.
Daniel must have been hiding on our street, waiting for Violeta to visit, for he knocked on our front door a few minutes later and was led to my room by Mama. It was the first time he had seen the lass since the day of her attack. His eyes were red with sleeplessness, his voice brittle. Lacking a vocabulary equal to his emotions, he grew impatient with himself and short-tempered with Violeta. Too troubled and fragile to understand that his harshness was only the result of frustration, she in turn withdrew into her own sadness. Mama joined us after a while, and her presence prevented them from attempting to voice their feelings.
While serving Violeta tea, Mama asked if she might try to cut her hair in a pleasing shape. “I have been my husband’s barber since our wedding,” she said, smiling.
Violeta unfastened her bonnet. Her hair had been shorn down to her scalp, which was covered with scabs, making her eyes appear to bulge. “Not even the most skillful barber would be of help to me now,” she said sorrowfully.
I was so overwhelmed that I could not speak, and I looked at Mama to make things right. She had set her teacup on our table and reached a trembling hand to her chest. Fighting for breath, she said, “I shall still be able to help you, dear child.”
Daniel, unable to restrain himself, demanded to know who had done this to her. In a clipped monotone, the lass explained that her mother refused to believe that her uncle had attacked her. She had ordered her eldest sons to bind Violeta’s arms behind her back and hold her down on her bed while she herself did the cutting.
“I kicked and fought, but it was of no use. It never is.” Gazing down, she whispered that if her mother caught her in one additional “lie,” then her head would be shaved every week and she would be denied a bonnet. Everyone in Porto would see that she was an incurable liar. “My mother said next time she would cut off something that would never grow back.”
“I’d like to kill your mother!” Daniel shouted.
“What would she cut off?” I asked.
“Hush, John!” Mama snapped. “Not another word from you.” There was fire in her eyes. “Listen to me, Violeta, you must never think for one moment they are right. You must remember that you are innocent.” She crouched by the lass and kissed her brow. “And you are still beautiful. They can never take that from you. Never!”
“I am coming home with you today,” Daniel declared. “And I shall sleep at the foot of your bed.”
“We shall leave for America as soon as we can!” I exclaimed.
“Hush, both of you!” Mama ordered. “If your mother is not of a mind to believe you, Violeta, then how, in God’s name, does she think you were hurt on these two occasions?”
“She says I am always falling because I’m so clumsy — that my evil disposition has left me unbalanced. And that my uncle would marry me were I not so awkward.”
“You would marry a villain who has … who has done these things to you?” Daniel snarled. He took a step toward her and shook his fist. “Listen to me, you will marry no one!”
“There is a great deal you do not understand,” said Violeta imploringly.
“Dearest child …” said Mama, caressing her cheek.
Violeta stilled her hand. “I must go. I’ve already stayed too long.” She stood up.
“You cannot go!” I shouted. “I shall not let you go back to your home. Mama, tell her she can stay here with us. Tell her! Tell her now.”
My mother did her best to calm me, saying that she would discuss these matters with Papa that very night, but it was all too much for me. I shouted like a banshee and cursed her as she led my friends away. Then I stumbled to the window and threw my shutters open, mortified by my powerlessness. I called after Violeta and Daniel, but that only made her race off, leaving the lad far behind.
Later that day my father told me what he had done to Violeta’s uncle Tomas. Two evenings previous, after I had been carried home by the good hunter, he commissioned two petty criminals to destroy each and every clock in Tomas’s shop. The next night, Papa hunted him down to the Willow Tavern, a foul establishment behind the San Francisco Church. He discovered the villain seated at a table fashioned from a barrel, trying to drink away his ruin with a half-empty bottle of gin and gabbling with two cronies guffawing like mules.
Father marched up to the group and introduced himself as a Mr. Burns. “Sir, I have learned of your misfortune and I should like to interest you in a proposition,” he said.
He explained to the men that he had acquired a watchmaking shop in Lisbon and was hoping to find a man of proper training to take charge. He suggested that a stroll outside might allow Goncalves and himself to carry on their conversation in a more private manner. As there was no point in letting a bottle of gin go half empty, he purchased it for them.
