The Day of Atonement (37 page)

It was more than the alley. More than this street. All round me, buildings shook upon their foundations, folding in upon themselves and crumbling as though made of sand. I had run uphill, away from the Rossio, so I could not see how the great church and the hospital and the Palace fared, but I watched as house after house fell forward or inward, Lisbon’s structures unmaking themselves. Statues toppled like toy soldiers. Crosses spun from church roofs, becoming deadly, spiraling missiles. The worshippers packing the streets dropped their effigies and candles and ran, but where could they go? The entire city was ripping itself apart. I looked up at a distant hillside and watched as houses—dozens of them—buckled and slid into the sea. How many died in that one instant? Already the injured and the dead lay in the street, struck by debris and trampled by the crowd. There was blood everywhere. Shrieks of terror and cries of pain echoed through the broken city, which had only minutes—seconds!—before been a glittering jewel, the pride of Portugal and the envy of Europe. Now it was a landscape of hell.

Then, all at once, it was over. The ground ceased to shake and the buildings no longer trembled. From every direction came snapping as
stone and brick settled. Distant crashes sounded as structures weakened by the quake gave out, but these were sporadic, like the popping of wood in fire. The massive church I stood near remained standing, though fissures marked the walls.

An eerie quiet began to spread across the city. Everyone held themselves still, stopping where they were. That a city could collapse had, minutes ago, surely seemed impossible. Now the fact that it could stop seemed equally unlikely, and the survivors gaped in wonder and respite.

Then came a new chorus of cries of pain and loss, and the screams of the injured and the dying. Horses and donkeys brayed. Dogs barked and howled. Broken bells clanged. Women called for their children, those from whom they were separated and those who lay dead on the ground or in their arms.

From across the expanse of these many hills rose a collective wailing. It swept across the city like a wave as tens of thousands of people fell to their knees and cried toward the heavens.

“You have been punished!” called out a priest. “You have tasted God’s wrath, and he has punished you. Repent! Repent lest you anger God further.”

I took quick stock. What mattered? What was important? There were wounded who needed tending and the trapped who needed rescuing, but anyone could do such things. What needed doing that only I could do? The priest? I looked back toward the Rossio, but that course was futile. The priest was buried under rubble or had fled to safety. There was nothing to be done there.

Gabriela? She was in the Palace, and even a casual glance around the city told me that the largest buildings had survived the quake. Smaller structures lay in rubble, but the palaces and great churches, the mansions and fine houses, though scarred and cracked and beaten, yet stood. Gabriela would be as safe as anyone, ironically enough, inside the Inquisition dungeon.

But what of Roberta, in her house upon the Bario Alto? She might
be alive but buried under rubble. She might need my help. I had destroyed her life, but perhaps I could now save it.

I ran uphill and to the west. As I rose higher, I could see that the Palace of the Inquisition indeed still stood. Everywhere else lay the injured and the dead, stood the weeping and praying. Houses were but stews of stone and tile and wood, as though crushed by giants. In places it was hard to find the streets, so covered was the ground with the splayed remains of homes. The air smelled heavy with dust from the broken brick and ceramics, and smoke from the fires that were burning everywhere. They were small fires now, but they would grow. With all the candles lit for the holiday, there could have been no more dangerous time for a disaster of this sort.

A man lay upon the rubble, his left arm crushed to pulp, his eyes wide and unreasoning. I sped past him. A woman tried to recruit me in the search for a missing priest. I ran past her. It was not that I did not care. I wanted to help them all, but I could not. Until I had seen to the people I cared for, the strangers would have to fend for themselves.

The Carvers had rented a fine detached house on a street of sturdy buildings, and here the city seemed strangely untouched. Roberta’s house was comparatively sound. Part of the roof had fallen into the street, the windows were all broken, and the door was open and askew, but the house remained. I ran inside and stopped in my tracks. There was a body on the floor, a woman of middle years, a Portuguese servant by her dress. Her throat had been cut. There were footprints and streaks in the pool of congealed blood. There had been a struggle.

I rushed ahead, calling Roberta’s name. I could smell no fire burning, but the air was full of shit and piss and vomit. Other people had died here. Paintings had fallen from the walls, which were cracked and smashed, but still stood. The ceilings had fallen in places, coating
the furnishings with dust and knocking chairs and statues onto their sides.

Then I heard the weeping. I ran to the stairs, but they too had collapsed. Then I realized that the weeping did not come from above, but from the parlor. There, amid the debris and chunks of plaster and brick, sat Roberta upon the floor. Her face was bruised, black where she had been struck, and her lip and nose were bloody. She wore a nightgown that had been torn down the middle, and clutched the ragged sides to hold them together. A blanket rested over her shoulders.

I knelt beside her. “Roberta, what happened? Where is your husband?”

“Dead,” she said. She did not look up. Her body heaved with crying, but no tears fell down her cheeks. She had none left.

“What happened to you was before the tremors. What was it?”

“Tremors?” she asked vacantly.

“What happened to Rutherford?”

“He was murdered,” she said. “He was killed.”

I felt my pulse quickening. I scanned the room as though whoever had hurt Rutherford might still be present. “Who killed him?”

For the first time, she met my eyes. Her gaze was dark and terrible. “You did,” she said.

That was when I noticed what was in her hand. It was a dagger with a familiar silver handle, laced with gold, encrusted with jewels.

She told me about it, her voice flat and empty. She awoke the night before to find her husband in her bedroom. Another man stood behind him, pressing a blade to Rutherford’s throat. The stranger was large, with a scarred face. He had a shaved head and long mustaches. He grinned with unrestrained pleasure.

Rutherford’s eyes were wide with horror and disbelief. He wore no wig, and his close-cut hair was damp with sweat.

“My name is Inácio Arouca,” the man with the jeweled blade said. “I do not care if you know it, because you will not survive to see the morning.”

Rutherford whimpered when he heard this. Frightened though she was, Roberta did not allow herself to make a sound. She sat up. A single candle burned in a wall sconce—lit by this beast of a man, perhaps—and from her bed she searched for something she could use against him.

It did not have to be a deadly weapon. She did not have to kill him. She just had to stagger him long enough that she could escape—she could elude him. She was sure of it. She was swift and he was large. She knew this house and he did not. She only needed a moment, a weapon, an opportunity, and if she could make it to her neighbor’s house, she would be safe.

“What do you want?” Roberta asked, trying to keep the terror out of her voice. It was foolish, she knew. A man like this would expect her, want her, to be frightened, and defiance and pride would only make him angry. But defiance and pride were all the power she had right now.

“I want to discuss your friend, Mr. Foxx,” the man said.

“Foxx,” snapped Rutherford. “What of him? He’s no one to us.”

The man laughed. “Is that what you think? He is not no one to your wife, I promise you.”

Roberta blinked away her tears. She was shaking her head without realizing it. Rutherford could die, they could both die, and the last thing her husband would hear was that she had nearly betrayed him with another man.

Inácio shook Rutherford a little, as if to wake him. “You are not seeing things as they are, Englishman. Your wife was bedding Foxx. But that is not the worst of it. It is not the worst of it that he is a liar and a scoundrel, a Jew who escaped the justice of the Inquisition and has now returned to stir up trouble. No, for you the worst of it is that
he stole your money. Yes, it was he who broke open your vault and took your gold. He schemed with another Englishman called Settwell, and then carried away all your wealth. You have nothing now because of him. I am doing you a favor by killing you.”

Could it be true, Roberta wondered, but even as she thought the words, she knew the answer. Of course. Everything made sense now. They had thought they were cultivating Foxx, but he had been cultivating them. She had shown him their vault, and he had noted every lock and door. She had thrown herself at him, and he had pushed her away because he did not care for her … and because he was a Jew, as she would have quickly discovered. Too late, she understood.

“I never betrayed my husband with him,” Roberta said, looking away from Rutherford, not wanting to see his eyes. “You are mistaken.”

He grinned. “Maybe yes, maybe no. Perhaps you did not care that he was a Jew. Perhaps he could not have you, for his secret nature would have been revealed. But you wanted to, I’ll wager. Perhaps you threw yourself at him, and he scorned you. Ah, I can see by your face it is true. What lies, I wonder, did he tell you to make you believe a man would choose not to take such a beauty? They must have been convincing.”

She hated herself for being so transparent. She made her face a mask. She would reveal nothing else. She would give up not an inch of ground. No matter what happened, he would have no more easy victories.

She had to think. They had been ruined and betrayed and now they were going to be murdered, and it was all Sebastian Foxx’s fault. But there must be a way out.

“He is clearly your enemy,” Roberta said. “He is our enemy as well, so why have you come here?”

“Because I want to hurt him,” the man said, “and if he knows he caused your deaths, that will bring him much pain. This is what must
happen, because he needs to see that everything he touches will come to ruin. I am the hand of God in all this. I am here for justice. Do you understand me?”

Roberta nodded, wanting only to placate him.

“Good,” he said. “Now, remove your gown and fuck me. If you make certain I enjoy it, I will let you and your husband live. If you resist, I will kill him and continue, giving you one more chance to convince me.”

“Please,” she said. “I don’t want this.”

The man pressed the blade to Rutherford’s neck.

“Just do what he says,” Rutherford said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Your husband is a sensible man,” Inácio told her. “I suggest you be sensible too.”

This could not be happening, she thought. She would not let it happen. She needed some way to change this, to undo it, to remake it.

“Please,” she said. “If you let us be, I will pay you. We have money—gold our creditors don’t know about. It is yours if you simply go.”

“What gold?” His eyes widened. “How much?”

“One hundred and twenty reaís,” she said. “In a bag. You can take it and run.”

She could see that Inácio was interested. Likely he would want both the money and to hurt Foxx, but she was distracting him, changing things.

“Very well,” he said, not even trying to keep the deception from his voice. “I accept your bargain. Get me this money, and I’ll enjoy a Portuguese whore instead of an English one.”

She nodded quickly, but she wasn’t ready. Not yet. The Portuguese were religious and superstitious. Even the depraved ones, perhaps especially the depraved ones, took their oaths seriously. He wanted the money, so Roberta was determined to make him earn it. “Swear
upon Christ and all the saints that you will let us go if I give you the money.”

Inácio appeared to struggle with this demand for a moment, and then, at last, he nodded.

Roberta slowly drew back her covers and crossed the room, feeling Inácio’s eyes upon her as he hunted for her shape in her formless gown. She trembled from cold and fear. She came to a dresser, and with a shaking hand began to pull open a drawer. This was her moment.

With a comb in hand she lunged. There was a flash of silver in the dim light and Inácio’s eyes went wide as she plunged the sharp teeth into his forearm, the one holding the dagger. Inácio dropped the blade and staggered backward. The comb had gone deep into his flesh, maybe two inches, and he was howling with pain.

Rutherford dropped to the floor, and was probing his skin for signs that his throat had been cut—as if he would have any doubt about it.

“Get up!” she screamed. She should have fled, she knew, but Rutherford wasn’t moving, and she was still waiting for him, even as Inácio pulled the comb out of his arm and strode forward, his face a skeletal icon of fury.

“Are you mad?” Rutherford barked at her. “You have to do as he says!”

She saw now that he wasn’t going to escape. He had put his faith in this man rather than her, rather than himself. He didn’t rise even as Inácio picked up his fallen dagger. He didn’t resist even as Inácio pulled back Rutherford’s neck and raised the blade.

That was when Roberta ran to the stairs and hurled herself down. The house was dark. That was her advantage. That was what would save her. She would not think about what would happen if she failed. She would not think about the wet sound she’d heard, the noise of metal on flesh, the horrible, horrible gurgling. Rutherford was dead, but all she would think about was the door, getting there first. Finding
it first. She would increase the gap between herself and Inácio because the house was dark and he could not see her, and she knew where she was going.

But it was the darkness that undid her. Inácio had already killed Isabela, their one remaining servant. Roberta knew it was her when one foot caught something heavy and soft just as the other slipped in a hot, sticky liquid. Even as she began to fall, Roberta knew she could not recover. She would go down, and he would be on top of her, and she would not get up.