The Day of Atonement (21 page)

It was enough, and the fight was won, but I did not want that it should be over. Here was a man who would have mutilated a woman out of spite. He would have raped her and allowed his friends to do the same. Perhaps I’d been wrong to provoke him, but Dordia e Zilhão
had turned from an equal to prey on an innocent—like all men of power in Lisbon.

With my left hand I grabbed the thief by his long locks, and with my right I struck him in the jaw. I did it again, and then again and then again. I felt nothing, not the pain in my hand or the pounding in my head. I was only dimly aware of Mrs. Carver calling my name. Only the touch of gloved fingers on my forearm—so cool and gentle and tentative—broke through in the way no shouting or pain could have.

“Please,” she said. “You need do no more.”

I looked at Dordia e Zilhão, whose head I still held up by his hair. His nose was smashed once more, now flattened and utterly destroyed, and blood bubbled from his nostrils and mouth. Several teeth were missing and he struggled to breathe.

I let go and the Gypsy dropped to the cobblestones. Mrs. Carver, her hands still on my arm, straightened me up.

“I am sorry.” I panted heavily, and sweat rolled down my back and off my face. My stink was pungent in my nose. I lowered my eyes because I could not stand to look at her. Beauty was the last thing I wanted to see. I forced myself to speak, though the words came out with great difficulty. “He tried to hurt you, and I was angry.”

“Do not say you are sorry,” she answered, raising my chin so I had to look into her brilliantly blue eyes. Already she had regained composure. The order in her world was restored. I had restored it, and I could not help but wonder if, because she had brought me into her world, she told herself that she had played a part in her own rescue.

“You saved me,” she said, the relief in her voice unmistakable, “and I shall not forget it.”

Around us, people began to peer out windows and step into the thresholds of their doorways. An Englishman and Englishwoman stood among the bloodied forms of defeated thieves. One was badly hurt. Perhaps he would die. Perhaps not. In London I would have run
before constables arrived to restore order and apprehend anyone who looked troublesome and unimportant. Here, there was no need to hurry. Mrs. Carver must have been thinking much the same thing, because she looked at me and managed a sad smile. “
A vida em Lisboa
,” she said in a raspy whisper.

“A vida em Lisboa,”
I agreed.

She took my arm, and as though departing a country dance, we walked from the men I had bested. Already the memory of the blind rage began to fade, pushed away by certainty. Mrs. Carver was a manipulative woman and extremely dangerous, but the gratitude she felt now was real. Things were different between us. The power was mine.

Back at the Duke’s Arms, I sat in my armchair, my head buzzing with a thousand incoherent thoughts. I tried to ignore the throbbing in my knuckles as I used my uninjured left hand to lift a cup of wine to my lips. I was content to sit there, to be still, to do nothing and think of less, for hours.

I had nearly lost control of events, but I had not the energy to condemn myself. Nor did I wish to think of Roberta Carver, how I had seen vulnerability in her today, and how it made me think differently of her. It was much easier, I realized, to see her as nothing but a cruel villainess, but it seemed she was, like all people, more complex than surfaces suggested. Perhaps even more complex than most I’ve known.

This was, I knew, a dangerous turn of thought, and I chastised myself at once. I could ill afford to think kindly of her. She had behaved with ill intent, and now she must pay for her actions. It was what I knew to be true, and yet I did not quite believe it.

After some time, I drifted off into an uneasy slumber, but I do not believe it was long after that I was awakened by a soft knock at the door, and I groaned, thinking it must be the intolerable Kingsley
Franklin. Perhaps he had seen me slip up the stairs, noticed my swollen hands, and now wished to make endless conversation about it. I waved at Enéas to get the door, and closed my eyes.

Then they snapped open. I smelled a now-familiar perfume. Roberta Carver entered the room, closing the door behind her, leaving Enéas on the other side. Her hand trembled as it left the doorknob.

“What do you do here?” I asked her. It was a genuine question. I could not fathom her purpose. She toyed with me, did she not? So why take this step? Did she believe I was not yet sufficiently ensnared?

“You do not wish to see me?” Her voice was low and hoarse. Her blue eyes were rimmed with red, as if she had been crying. Her hair was disordered, with curls coming free. For all that, she was still striking beyond words.

“You deliberately mistake my meaning. Why do you risk coming here, observed by all? People will talk.”

She took a step close. “People already talk. What will they say—that you and I are behaving scandalously? They say that about me and every man with whom we do business. And although I do not like it, my husband encourages these rumors. He will not know the truth when he hears it.”

She had taken the time to follow her actions through all possible outcomes. This, I realized, was what she did. She took not a step whose consequences she had not calculated.

I took her hands. This woman was beautiful, yes, and her boldness was alluring. She was also a predator, one whose cunning and care made her especially dangerous. She was, I reminded myself, a woman who had chosen to wound Settwell, a guiltless man with a vulnerable child. I did not want to care for her or become closer to her than I already was. I did not wish to be the sort of man who saw goodness and worth where there was only beauty. And in truth I still mourned Gabriela.

But then again Gabriela—who had been good, who had been worthy—was gone, and this woman stood before me. Perhaps it did
not matter if she was cruel and greedy. She was beautiful and she wanted to be with me, and perhaps that ought to be enough.

“Roberta,” I said, using her Christian name for the first time, “I cannot allow you to place yourself in danger.”

“I was in danger today,” she said, “and you did not hesitate. I care for Rutherford. I truly do, but he is not like you. He does what I tell him. You are …” She swallowed hard. “You are unafraid.”

I turned away from her, for this was, perhaps, the thing about myself I liked least. I wanted to be afraid, but she wanted me fearless. I knew it was true, and I knew that she had now moved beyond manipulating me. What I had done for her today had altered her sense of me, and I supposed it altered my sense of her as well. I did not want it to, but I could not deny it.

She put a hand on my shoulder and turned me to face her. “How little you understand people,” she said. “You think I insult you?”

“I know you do not,” I said.

“Then what is wrong?”

I drew her toward me. I believed, to the core of my being, that doing so was a mistake, but I did it all the same. A man could only fight his nature on so many fronts before something gave way. I kissed her and she returned the kiss, hot and hungry and greedy. Her breath was sweet, and her hands clutched me tightly. I could feel how much she wanted me, and if there was anything false in it, I could not detect it.

Then I pushed her away—I realized suddenly and horribly that I had no choice. It was something that could never be. Not here. Not in Lisbon. Not while I pretended to be something I was not.

I had undergone the ritual of circumcision after converting to Judaism, under the rites and regulations of Judaic law. This was perhaps a year after my arrival in London, and as this is an ordeal normally experienced by newborn infants, the less said of my recollections of this observance, the better. Setting aside the awkward and painful
nature of the experience, it had left its unmistakable mark, and if Roberta were to see me unclothed or to touch me, she would know me for a Jew.

My mind raced. Was there some lie I could tell? Some deception to explain everything away? Of course there wasn’t. Roberta, like me, was a schemer. She might pretend to be satisfied by some explanation of sickness that required surgery, but she would eventually see through the lies. A whisper to an Inquisitor would be enough to destroy me at any moment. I could not let that happen, for it was not only my life in the balance. I could not endanger myself if it meant imperiling Settwell’s cause.

I cursed under my breath. “I will not commit adultery,” I said. I hated how weak it sounded. How foolish.

Roberta grinned at me, and I believed it was because she already had an answer prepared for this objection. “
You
would not be committing adultery. That sin would be mine alone, and I think I can endure the guilt.” Her eyes were moist and her cheeks flushed.

I almost forgot my resolve as I looked at her. But my desire for her was only a feeling, an urge, and I could tame it. “No, I won’t do this to you.”

“It is for me to decide what I will do,” Roberta said, but I could see that already irritation and anger were replacing longing. She felt rejected, and that could be very dangerous.

I was now upon the thinnest of ice. I could not let her believe I had sent her away or that she had embarrassed herself. I took her hands once more and kissed them. I dropped to my knees and looked up at her. “Were you unmarried, or even estranged from your husband, no power in the world could keep me from you.”

“What do you care for my marriage?” she asked, yanking her hands free. “Forgive me for saying so, but I don’t think there is an Englishman in Lisbon who hasn’t attempted to bed me, yet you refuse when I offer myself.” Suddenly her eyes went wide. “There is
someone else, isn’t there? No man of spirit refuses to cuckold a rival, and I have seen that you are no coward. Who is she? Who is the woman you love?”

There was only one thing I could say. “
You
are the woman I love. I loved you from the moment I first saw you, from the moment we first met. I have not been able to stop thinking about you. I have lain awake nights in agony for the want of you. And today, when those Gypsies attacked us, I would have died gladly to save you. There is no danger I would not face for you, Roberta, but I will not share you with another man.”

“That is foolish,” she said, but she sounded unsure of herself.

“Do not tell me it is foolish to love you. If you leave your husband, I will be yours, but not before.”

She was struck silent as she stared at me in disbelief. I had refused her and flattered her vanity all at once. I had to hope it would be enough.

She took a step back. “I cannot leave Rutherford. There are matters of business …”

“Business?” I demanded. “I talk to you of love, and you speak of business?”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “My life back in England was … not easy. My father was cruel to me, and Rutherford took me away from that.”

“All English fathers are cruel,” I said. I didn’t believe this, but I wanted her to tell me more about herself. I wanted to better know her—that I might more easily outwit her, I told myself, but even as I made these claims, I knew I was lying to myself.

“Not like mine,” she told me. She met my eye. She would not look away as she spoke of this, and I knew it to be a matter of pride for her. “He was not merely cold or neglectful or stern, but he delighted in causing pain to others, and to me in particular. There were four of us, two boys and another girl, and I was singled out as the one on
whom anger and frustration and the desire to hurt might be safely vented. My father not only tolerated this, he encouraged it.”

“Your mother?” I asked.

“My mother would have cut off her own arm to please my father. It was what he wished, and that was the end of the matter.”

“Roberta, I’m sorry—”

“I don’t want sorry,” she told me. “Sorry is nothing to me. I care nothing for words. Words are false, by their very nature. I care only for actions, and I know who you are, for I have seen your mettle when it most counted. I cannot believe you will turn me away now.”

“But your husband—” I began feebly.

“My husband is my concern,” she said, more softly now. “I value him in ways you cannot imagine. He was kind to me when I needed someone to be kind.”

“You need only have waited half an hour to find someone else who would be kind to one such as you,” I said.

“But it was him!” she snapped. “You are a man. You can’t know what it is to have no power of your own. You might look at Rutherford and see someone weak and unimposing, but he was my rescuer.”

That, it seemed, was what she valued most.

“To leave him now would be to ruin him,” she said more quietly. “There are too many matters of business unresolved.”

“And there always will be,” I said, sounding bitter. “There will always be a reason not to leave him. You may be grateful to him for rescuing you from an unkind parent, but you were a prize beyond anything he might have hoped for.”

“I am a person, not a prize,” she said.

“Can you not see that I am saying the same thing?” I said. “I want the person, not a fleeting association. Until I can be with you, we may be business associates and we may be friends, but I will not be your amusing little lover.”

Roberta nodded stiffly, her manner supremely controlled. “I see.”

“I hope you do,” I answered.

She wiped a tear from her eye with her index finger, sniffed in a breath, and left the room.

I was breathing hard. I walked over to my cup of wine, and when I picked it up I realized my hand was trembling. Had I salvaged things with Roberta? I could not be sure, but if she had left wishing to sever ties with me, so much of what I had done in Lisbon had been for nothing. I drank until the cup was empty and then poured myself another glass, and when it in turn was done, there would be more.