The History of the Siege of Lisbon

Virgin Mary accompany and protect you, he said, and help you to erect this tower the likes of which has never been seen before in these parts, you will be working with ship's carpenters, the only suitable men we could find for the job, but if they should prove to be as good apprentices as you are reputed to be a master, then any further sieges I undertake with assault towers will only be carried out by native craftsmen without hiring any foreign labour, Your Majesty, many reports have reached my country praising the humility, frugality and spirit of abnegation of the Portuguese, ever ready and willing to serve family and fatherland, now if to so many rare qualities they were to add some intelligence and much greater strength of character and willpower, then I can assure Your Royal Highness that no tower will be beyond their capabilities, whether it is built tomorrow or at any other time. These reassuring sentiments made a deep impression on the king, especially coming from whom they came, and such was his satisfaction, that taking knight Heinrich on one side, he confided his private concern, You must have noticed that some of my chiefs of staff are unhappy with this idea of using assault towers, they're traditionalists who cling to old-fashioned methods of warfare, so if any of them try to put up obstacles or delay the work on some defeatist pretext or other, tell me at once, for as I take pride in being a modern king, I am determined to proceed with this enterprise without further delay, all the more so because this war has drained my finances and the last thing I want is to find myself obliged to pay the soldiers their wages at the end of August when the three months expire, for although our troops earn little, all told it comes to a tidy sum, it would indeed be fortunate if we were to succeed in capturing the city in the meantime, so you can imagine how much I'm relying on these towers, therefore you have all my support and encouragement to forge ahead with this plan, and have no fears about being generously rewarded, for you have all those possessions of the Moors with which to pay yourselves ten times as much. Knight Heinrich assured the king that he could put his mind at rest, with God's help he would secure victory, he would reveal nothing about the treasury's difficulties, and under no circumstances should he worry about rewarding him for his services, For the best reward, Your Majesty, is in heaven above, and to gain the citadel of paradise other towers are needed, those erected by good works, such as this pledge of ours not to leave a single Moor alive if they stubbornly go on refusing to surrender. The king took his leave of the knight, thinking to himself that he must bear him in mind, for such a man would make as good a bishop as a general, and if this business of the towers should succeed he will suggest that he should become naturalised and be rewarded with lands and a title to start a new life.

It soon became clear that knight Heinrich had no intention of wasting time for no sooner had he arrived at the Porta de Ferro than he was discussing with Mem Ramires the number of men he needed for this ambitious project, starting at once with the felling of the trees in those parts, some produced by nature, others planted by the Moors themselves, who could not have foreseen that they were literally providing wood for their own sacrifice, these are, let us repeat once more, the ironies of destiny. But we must go no further with these descriptions, without first mentioning the excitement caused by the arrival of the knight and his retinue, and little wonder, for here was a foreign technician, a German, if you please, which is to be a technician twice over, some, sceptical by nature or persuaded by others, were cautious about the enterprise and its outcome, others felt it was wrong to condemn something that had not yet had time to prove its worth, finally the practical and impartially-minded prevailed by acknowledging from the evidence that it was preferable to fight the Moors in direct confrontation and at the same height rather than have them up there throwing down stones and taking advantage of the laws of gravity, with us down below suffering the effects. Detached from these polemical matters relating to the military-cum-industrial enterprise that was under way, and with eyes only for the woman arriving on a litter, Mogueime could scarcely believe his good fortune. Never more would he need to go prowling around the encampment of Graca, in constant danger of running into a military police patrol, wanting to know, What are you doing here so far away from your own camp, now the mountain truly came to the Prophet, not because the Prophet did not want to go to the mountain, we are all reliable witnesses of how hard he tried, but because above the Prophet as we know there is the sergeant-major, the second lieutenant, the captain, and, this being a time of war, there are even fewer passes for leave than opportunities, even when assisted by invention. This Ouroana who is arriving, if she does not spend all her time shut away in her tent waiting for knight Heinrich to interrupt his carpentry in order to relieve inside her the anxieties which can so easily pass from a soul that wants to be mystical with God to the flesh that only longs to be mystical with flesh, this Ouroana, taking into account the reduced space in this theatre of operations, will be much more often and more readily in sight, when strolling and daydreaming through the encampment or when standing on the river-bank to watch the porpoises leap, during those tranquil hours we associate with evening, when the troops go off to try and recover from their exertions during the fierce heat of the day and the even fiercer heat of battle, It is to be hoped, meanwhile, that all efforts will now be concentrated on building those towers, because given the shortage of able-bodied men it would be tantamount to suicide to disperse them in activities with little chance of success, except for the odd diversion intended to keep the enemy occupied, so that the carpenters can get on in peace with their risky task. In his annotations to Osbern's letter, Fray Rogeiro provided, though he would make no mention of it in the definitive version, a detailed description of knight Heinrich's arrival at the encampment at the Porta de Ferro, including a certain reference, clearly irresistible, to the woman accompanying him, Ouroana in name, as lovely as the dawn, as mysterious as moonrise, to cite the words of the friar, which his own chastening prudence, on the one hand, and the delicate modesty of the person to whom these words were being addressed, on the other, advised him to erase. Now it is quite possible that this and other repressed stirrings of the soul might have been the cause, by means of sublimation, of the care with which Fray Rogeiro began to follow the sayings and doings of the German knight until this point, but above all after his unfortunate, but in no sense ignominious death, as will become clear in time. Putting it more clearly, we would say that because he was unable to satisfy his lust for Ouroana, Fray Rogeiro could find no better excuse, beside one he kept to himself, than to praise to the skies the man who enjoyed her favours. When it comes to human nature, you can expect anything.

Senhora Maria came at the usual time after lunch, and no sooner had she arrived than she began muttering in a manner at once discreet and obvious, a difficult feat to achieve, because it has the dual aim of trying to disguise the fact that you know something, while showing at the same time that you are not prepared to allow the other person to play the innocent. It is a diplomatic art par excellence, yet guided by intuition, if not by instinct, and which, generally speaking, has achieved its main objective, namely to give the proof-reader a vague feeling of panic, as if his most intimate secrets were about to be revealed in public. Senhora Maria is a sadist without knowing it. She greeted him from the bedroom door, muttered twice to warn Raimundo Silva that she might only be a poor cleaner but she still had enough sense of smell to pick up any remaining traces of perfume in the air. Raimundo Silva returned her greeting and went on writing after giving a rapid glance in her direction, determined to pretend that he did not know what was going on, Senhora Maria, taken aback to begin with, and then with that peculiar expression on her face, as much as to say, Just as I thought, eyeing the bed, which, instead of the quick tidying-up at which Raimundo Silva was adept lest it be mistaken for a migrant's bunk, was irreproachable and showed every sign of a woman's touch. She coughed to attract attention, but Raimundo Silva pretended to be distracted, although his heart was in a state of foolish turmoil, I don't have to account for my life, he thought, annoyed with himself for seeking cowardly excuses, he who had just embarked on such a serious love affair, so he raised his head and asked, Did you want something, in a dry, brusque tone of voice which disarmed the woman's impertinence, No, Sir, nothing, I was simply looking. Raimundo Silva could have satisfied himself with this embarrassed reply, but he preferred to taunt her, Looking at what, Nothing, the bed, What's wrong with the bed, Nothing, it's been made, So what, Nothing, nothing, Senhora Maria turned away, too intimidated to ask the question that was on the tip of her tongue, Who made it, and so would never know what answer Raimundo Silva might have given, not that he knew himself. From then on, Senhora Maria stayed away from the bedroom, as if letting Raimundo Silva know that she considered that part of the house outside her jurisdiction, however, she was either unable or unwilling to repress her ill-tempered frustration, and making no attempt to go silently about her chores, she did her utmost to make as much noise as possible. Raimundo Silva decided to shrug this off with a smile, but the din was so loud that he was obliged to step into the corridor and plead, Could you make less noise, please, I'm trying to work, Senhora Maria could have retorted that she, too, was trying to get on with her work and that she did not have the luck of certain people who can earn a living seated in peace and quiet, but necessity, even when as conflictive as this, is stronger than willpower, and she said nothing. What annoys Senhora Maria most of all is that these dramatic changes are taking place without her knowledge, were she not the astute person she is, and one of these days she will unexpectedly find the other woman in the apartment, without being able to ask him the itching question, Who is this woman, who asked her to come here, men are such insensitive fools, what would it have cost Raimundo Silva to have taken her into his confidence, for however much it might hurt it would always be something of a palliative, for such bitter jealousy, for this is the evil afflicting Senhora Maria although she does not know it.