the arrowhead buried in its hide.
“Run, John!” he called to me, gesturing me over.
I raced to him and we took off after the deer, Midnight loping at a moderate pace to allow me to remain within sight of him at all times.
We pursued the creature for nigh on a mile. It died at the base of a pine tree, its eyes open but no longer staring at anything in our world. I had never been so close to a deer. I would have preferred it to be alive, it is true, but even dead it was beautiful.
“Hello,” I said to it.
I was panting and confused by all I had experienced. The African was covered in sweat, the muscular contours of his bronze skin glistening. He patted my head and said that we would make our apologies to the deer later.
As he pulled the arrowhead from the creature, he explained to me that he fashioned his arrows so that the head bore a poison he had concocted from nightshade, monkshood, and other dangerous plants he grew behind a wire fence in our garden. He also told me he fixed a tiny part of himself at the tip, so that he entered into the death of his prey.
From this experience, I understood that preventing Midnight from hunting — as Mr. Reynolds had done in Africa — was tantamount to exiling him from meaning. His need to reenact the central story of our existence as mortal creatures may even have been the most important reason why he chose to escape from servitude. He could not go on without remembering — in his feet, hands, bow, and heart — the root of his being.
Midnight slung the handsome deer over his shoulder and carried it back through the forest toward the city. I was given responsibility for the three hares he had also killed.
On the way home, we stopped at a great granite boulder, nearly as high as our house, where he had drawn the animals he’d hunted on his last excursion. This was what he had meant by apologizing.
Using reddish stones that he gathered at the base of the boulder, the African sketched the deer he had felled, using deftly executed lines to capture its swift nature. I did my best to design our three hares, with less success.
Before leaving the forest that day, Midnight took me to gather honey, a skill I was never able to learn from him, though he tried on several occasions to teach me. He told me that day that it was easier in Africa, where there lived a clever bird called the Honeyguide, who led people to beehives. I didn’t know whether he was teasing me or not, but he promised me he would take me to his homeland one day to see this bird myself.
XVI
Very shortly after our day of hunting, Midnight and my family settled into a pleasant daily routine. It generally ensured that he and I were alone from two until five in the afternoon, the one exception being on Friday, when, from three to five, I had my art lessons with the Olive Tree Sisters.
My friend and I filled our afternoons as we pleased — with reading lessons, weeding, or lazy walks in the countryside. And so it was that we reached the afternoon of St. John’s Eve of 1804. I had just turned thirteen and was now four feet nine inches in height, still — unfortunately — a few inches shorter than Mama and Midnight. But growing …
Our African visitor had now lived with us for nearly two years. I knew little about his work with Senhor Benjamin, but he seemed generally pleased with his progress in learning European herbal medicine.
By then we’d discovered that Violeta had disappeared without a trace. It was Mama who confirmed this rumor by secretly questioning the girl’s younger brother late one night. Distraught, she had come directly home and awakened me. “I hope to God that poor sweet lass is safe,” she whispered, choking back tears.
In the darkness behind her I pictured Violeta’s jade eyes flashing defiantly, as they had on the day we’d met. “Safe and hidden on a ship bound for America,” I’d replied.
The event on everyone’s lips was Napoleon’s proclamation as Emperor of France on May the Eighteenth. The political tension in Europe set Portugal coursing through a sea of apprehension about its own independent future, for it was clear that the Emperor had designs on our quaint little outpost at the edge of Europe, particularly as our paramount trading partner was England, his great enemy. There was no city in Iberia whose fate was more bound to Britain’s than Porto, since ninety percent of our exports — including a thousand man-size barrels of wine per week — headed toward London.
For this reason it was believed by many, including my father, that Napoleon might soon launch an all-out attack on our city. Lacking even storehouses for bread, which arrived in Porto each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from neighboring towns, a French blockade and siege would reduce us to starvation in a matter of days.
Midnight and I were taking tea in the home of the Olive Tree Sisters when the trouble began. At just past three on their mantelpiece clock, we heard a crowd coming down our street. A sharp cry soon pierced the air: ‘“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I come not to send peace, but rather a sword!’ All foreigners must be excised from the Portuguese nation. If we are to have a City of God, then the heads of the Protestants, heathens, and Jews must all tumble down our streets.”
I recognized the speaker and rushed to the window.
“No!” Graca shouted at me.
But it was too late, for I had already peeled back the curtain and peered outside.
The necromancer who had threatened me years earlier, Lourenco Reis, was standing outside Senhor Benjamin’s shop, only thirty paces away. Thankfully, he didn’t see me.
Undoubtedly, he had chosen today for his return to Porto because St. John’s Eve was, at its heart, a pagan celebration of the summer solstice.
“If you added up all the Jews in Portugal, what would you have?” he demanded of his followers.
A man shouted “ten thousand beasts”; another, “a herd of swine.”
“John, step away from there or I’ll flatten you!” Luna ordered.
I was so entranced that I refused to move.
“If you added up all the Jews,” replied the necromancer, “you would have lumber enough for a fire reaching all the way to God!”
Midnight touched my shoulder. “What does he say?” he asked.
“John, you wicked boy! Get away from there now!” Luna pleaded.
She and her sister were staring at me in fury. I let the curtain fall but remained by the window. “He once threatened me,” I whispered to Midnight. “He does not like foreigners, especially — ”
I was about to say “Jews,” but the necromancer gave a great wail, as though he had been stabbed in the gut. “I call upon Benjamin Seixas — ”
I pulled back the curtain again.
“ — the Jewish demon residing in this accursed house, to come to me and confess. I accuse him of treason against the Portuguese nation, of trafficking with the devil. And his sentence is death!”
Luna dragged me away from the window. “You do as I say, John!”
I turned to Graca, the less excitable of the two, who had started to cry. She rushed to Luna and hugged her. After a hushed exchange between them, Luna took my hand gently. “This is very serious,” she whispered. “Now, do as I say — we are all in danger. Be very quiet,” she told me, and she had me repeat this order to Midnight.
When the noise outside died down, we thought the necromancer was leading the mob away. What fools we were!
“Graca and Luna Oliveira,” he shrieked, “I call upon you to come to me and confess your sins! I accuse you of treason. You must die so that Christ may live….”
Graca clasped her hand over her mouth so as not to let loose a cry of terror.
“I call upon the Jewish whores to come out and confess their sins. I call upon them to open their wombs to Christ and allow Him to enter before they die. I call upon them to stand ready for the burning stake….”
