The Devil on Her Tongue (35 page)

“Sister!” Cristiano said. “Sister, what happened?”

“I hurt my ankle,” I said, furious with myself. Driven by my anger, I had rushed ahead carelessly, forgetting the weakness in my once-injured ankle. “Find me a stick,” I said. “Something I can lean on.”

Cristiano looked around, then reached into the brambles at the side of the path. He pulled out a short, sturdy stick.

“No, it’s too short. Something longer,” I said, and he went into the bushes. After a few minutes he emerged with a gnarled, longer stick. “Help me up.”

I leaned on his shoulder as I stood on my uninjured foot, holding the other a few inches above the ground. Cristiano picked up my bundled shawl and hugged it; he could barely see over. I propped the stick into the mud and held it with both hands and tried to hop, but after a few steps I slid to the ground again. I looked up at Cristiano. We were both soaked and covered in mud.

“What will we do?” he asked, shivering. I looked away, not wanting him to see my tears of pain and exasperation.

“Let me think,” I said, realizing how foolish I’d been. I’d started on the long, arduous journey in the cold rain with no food or water. Had I really thought Cristiano could walk all the way to Funchal?

Once more I tried to rise, but sucked in my breath at the pain of just lifting my foot. I cautiously pulled off my boot, wincing. My ankle and the top of my foot were swollen, the skin darkening. It hurt too much to get the boot on again.

And then Bonifacio stood below us on the path.

Cristiano faced him, his hands clenched. “Go away! Go away from us.”

“Go home, Cristiano,” Bonifacio said evenly, and Cristiano looked back at me.

I took a deep breath, and looked from him to Bonifacio, and then back at Cristiano. We had no choice. “Do as he says,” I told him.

Still carrying my shawl, he edged cautiously past Bonifacio. I saw the back of his long, slender neck, the set of his small, straight spine.

Bonifacio held out his hand, and I took it. He pulled me up and, with me leaning on his arm and my stick, slowly we descended into the valley.

“Where did you think you were going?” he asked me later. I had managed to change into dry clothes, and now lay on my bed with my foot propped on a stack of blankets. Cristiano, also in dry clothes, sat cross-legged on his pallet.

“To Funchal. To Espirito and Olívia.”

“What are you talking about? Do you really think Espirito would allow you to leave me, and stay with him?”

“Him and Olívia,” I said.

He stared at me, then clicked his tongue. “He’s my brother. He would support me, not you.” He paced beside my bed, looking down at me. “Don’t you ever,
ever
do something like this again. Do you understand?”

As I pushed myself up on the bed, trying to ease my discomfort, my skirt fell back over my knees. He stared at my bare legs.

“Cover yourself.” He shoved the draped sheets aside and knelt beside his bed, reaching under it to pull out the sack with his cat-o’-nine tails. I was instantly alert, fearful he might beat me.

But he put the sack under his arm. “You’re not leaving. I am,” he said. “I don’t want to be around you during Lent. I’m going into the mountains. Like Christ, I’ll retreat from temptation for forty days. I’ll fast and put you out of my mind.” He stomped out. The front door slammed behind him.

I closed my eyes. After a while I grew aware of Cristiano pressed against me, quivering. I covered us with the blanket and put my arms around him. After some time his trembling slowed, and then stopped, and he slept.

I
must have slept too, for when I opened my eyes, Papa was standing in the doorway. He had been sitting at the table when I hobbled in with Bonifacio, muddy and soaked. I didn’t know what he thought of all that had happened.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“No,” I said, struggling to sit up, and Cristiano stirred and sat up as well. “Go to the kitchen and bring bread and cheese for you and Papa,” I told the boy, and he left.

“What happened?” Papa asked, looking at my bulging shawl beside the bed.

“I … I fell. It was muddy,” I said, not wanting to tell him I had been running away, in spite of the obviousness of the shawl. “I hurt my ankle.”

“Where did Bonifacio go?”

“Into the mountains. He said he’ll stay there, fasting for Lent.”

Papa frowned. “He did this his first year in the seminary. None of the others acted in such a drastic way, Father Monteiro told me. But Bonifacio was always like this. When he gets an idea in his head, he cannot let it go.” He shook his own head. “I will make you a crutch.”

Cristiano got into my bed every night after that, and allowed me to put my arms around him as he fell asleep. With Bonifacio gone, the nightmares were fewer, and lesser in intensity. The bedwetting had
stopped long ago. His small, warm body was a comfort, but in spite of it, sleep was difficult. I was always listening, conscious that Bonifacio might return in the dark even though he had said he would stay away until the end of Lent.

Using the sturdy crutch Papa had made for me, my armpit first bruising and then toughening, I slowly made my way around the house and yard. Cristiano helped me in every way he could, running and fetching. Twice a day I wrapped my ankle in a poultice. Within a week the worst of the swelling was down, but I still couldn’t put my weight on my foot without discomfort.

We didn’t go to church. Papa stayed in his bed most days. After the second week, Father Monteiro came to call.

“I haven’t seen Bonifacio at morning Mass for a while,” he said, “and when none of you attended Mass last Sunday or this, I grew concerned.”

“Bonifacio went to the mountains to fast for Lent. I hurt my ankle,” I said, “and Papa isn’t well at all.”

“Bonifacio is going to fast the whole forty days again?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Are you all right here?” He looked at Papa’s closed door. “Shall I ask Rafaela to come and look at Vitorino?”

I shook my head. “She knows I’m doing what I can for him,” I told him. “But thank you.”

“I can hear your confessions here,” he said. “You don’t have to come to me.”

“I’ll ask Papa,” I said, and went into his bedroom. He nodded when I told him about Father Monteiro’s offer.

When Father Monteiro finished with Papa, he sat at the table with Cristiano and me and ate the food I had set out for him. “Will you make confession, Diamantina?”

I shook my head.

Before he left, he made the sign of the cross and patted Cristiano’s head.

With the passing of each day, I dreaded Bonifacio’s return.

As Papa grew more ill, Cristiano was growing taller and stronger. He sometimes hummed as he helped me plant in the garden. The full warm weather of March was upon us, and new shoots rose in the neat rows. One sunny day Cristiano and I helped Papa walk to the garden, and he sat on the chair Cristiano brought for him, looking at the new greenery and nodding his approval.

A few days later, Cristiano asked if he could go and play with Rafaela’s granddaughter, and I took him. Rafaela and I ground seeds as the children laughed and scampered about.

Papa’s door was shut when we got back. I opened it, calling, “Papa? How are—”

He was curled on his side on the floor near the door, his knees drawn to his chest. The chamber pot was overturned, its contents spilled on the floor.

“Papa,” I said, kneeling beside him. I called Cristiano, and between us we were able to get him back to his bed. His body was now like that of a strange, twisted boy, his head too large for his frame.

He attempted to smile, patting my hand. “I’m sorry for the mess,” he whispered.

“Papa,” I said. “Oh, Papa.”

He opened his mouth, and I leaned closer.

“Bury me next to my Telma. I will lie beside my Telma in death, as I did in life.”

“Shhh. Don’t think about that.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” I told him, and he closed his eyes.

I brought him warm broth and helped him drink. I ground the seeds of the poppy and put some of the tiny balls I formed into bits of soft bread, which he was able to swallow with a mouthful of warm broth. I sat beside him all night, bathing his face and hands with cool water made sweet with mint leaves.

The next morning, I gave him more of the poppy, and when he was asleep, I left Cristiano to watch over him. I went to Father Monteiro and asked if he could send someone to Kipling’s Wine Merchants in Funchal to tell Espirito that his father was gravely ill.

Father Monteiro clasped his hands, his face sorrowful. “I’ll send one of the village boys. You’ll tell me when last rites are needed,” he said, and I nodded.

I hoped Espirito would arrive before Papa died, so one of his sons could be with him for his last days. I stayed beside him, continually giving him the poppy and gently rubbing his hands and feet. “I’m sure Espirito and Bonifacio will be here soon,” I said loudly, a few times each day. I didn’t believe my own words about Bonifacio.

Papa did not speak, but when he was awake, he always looked at me with a tender expression.

Early on the morning of the third day, before the sun had fully risen, I held his hand and knew, by the thin, dry texture of his skin, that he would die that day. I went to the church to tell Father Monteiro it was time.

“I don’t know why Espirito hasn’t come,” I said, as we walked back to the house together. “You sent the boy?”

“Yes. He’s returned. He left word at Kipling’s as you requested.”

After he had completed last rites, Father Monteiro sat with me as Papa’s breaths grew so far apart that occasionally I touched his wrist or neck to make sure his heart still beat.

And then he was gone.

Father Monteiro anointed Papa’s body and covered him, and we went into the sitting room. “Shall I prepare for the viewing and funeral Mass even though neither of Vitorino’s sons is here? If Bonifacio is staying away until the end of Lent, we can’t wait for him.”

“I don’t understand why Espirito hasn’t come yet. Can we wait just a while longer?”

“The weather is warming, and …” He stopped, then continued. “You see the importance of not waiting too long, Diamantina.”