The Pop’s Rhinoceros (75 page)

“Where is he?” he murmured, mostly to himself. His companion did not respond.

He turned away from the ship, looking down the quay on which they stood, downriver, past the clutter of the shipyard to the salt-beds where little conical piles of the crystal seemed to radiate their own painful light. The sunlight on the
water was too strong, throbbing and pulsing. Everything here exceeded its measure. He could not grasp this place or its people.

The man beside him shrugged. “We need another half-fathom to float us. Another hour yet, at least that. For the tide.” He held up a hand and let the wind spill off his palm.

It was a freak at this time of year. It would carry them downriver, over the bar and out into open waters, if it held, and if the Hidalcao’s gunners were caught by surprise. … If Dom Francisco ever remembers that the ship sails today, thought Teixeira.

There was some shouting then and three shots somewhere in the town behind them. Hotheads, he thought. The Hidalcao’s men could not be on the island. Frayed nerves, nothing more than that. These attacks seemed to have no end, nor any purpose save the scraping of their souls, like the heat and the fevers and the vapor-thickened air that sucked the flesh off their bones. He saw a deep hopelessness settle in the men here, either that or an appetite that gorged itself and yet found no sustenance, an unquenchable hunger. Different kinds of hollowness that the Duc would play upon or fill in some way. Without him the men here were nothing more than survivors of a shipwreck with no other thought than clinging on for fear of drowning. With him they were pioneers, vanguards, bearers of Dom Manolo’s crown. … Affonso’s spirit was the current beneath them, the wind behind them, the compass that pointed forward. But he was not Affonso’s man.
You will find yourself alone, but you will not be alone
. The words of Dom Fernão de Peres.
I will be helping from Ayamonte
.

Blow hard, then, Teixeira thought sourly. Another cluster of smoke-balls popped into existence on the far bank, dispersing more slowly this time. It was a fitful wind, a matter of lulls and gusts.

“Will they take your orders, if it comes to that?” he demanded of his companion.

Gonçalo looked down at the planking of the quay. Amongst the Christians, he was the best pilot on the island, or had been. Now he farmed a plot inland from Panjim and lived with a Canarim woman he had taken as his wife. A
casador
then, his allegiances hard to read. Teixeira did not know the pact that Affonso had struck with the man to recruit him to this voyage. He went by the name Gonçalo, though the Duc had hinted that was not the name he had brought with him from Portugal. He shook his head, though whether in answer or refusal he could not tell.

“I will find him myself,” Teixeira said.

The sandy path from the quay broke the stockade at Saint Catherine’s Gate and thereafter broadened into the Rua Direita, the straight spine of the town from which narrower thoroughfares curved away like ribs. A few traders had set up stalls in the bazaar, but most had stayed away today. A band of frightened natives and
mestiços
were being marshaled there by a man called Mota, a
degredado
who had arrived a few months before him. Teixeira’s horse was waiting under an
awning, already sold in anticipation of his departure but still his, in circumstances such as these. He ordered one of the natives to saddle the animal.

“They’re attacking Banguinim,” Mota called to him. “Two troops of them landed by the springs. Come on!”

“On whose authority do you command these men?” he challenged the man, who grinned at him, showing a full set of yellow teeth, but he made no reply. Teixeira pulled the bridle from the hands of the native and finished saddling the beast himself. He swung himself up and shouted to Mota if he had seen Dom Francisco. Mota shrugged, insulted, uninterested. There was no force at Banguinim; Mota knew that as well as himself. And Dom Francisco was three miles away at Benasterim, for he was a
fidalgo
of the old school, and knowing nothing else, he would throw himself where the fighting was thickest. Or so Teixeira’s reasoning went, knowing nothing else.

He rode past the Hidalcao’s old palace and the monastery of Saint Francis, its walls already streaked with the black mold that the monsoon left on every stone in the town. The square of the
pelourinho velho
was almost deserted, the pillory there unoccupied. Soon he passed the last of the buildings and was on a track that led through groves of banana trees. The ground rose and the trees thinned, then disappeared. Two ancient pines marked the halfway point. In the aftermath of the rains, the country here was a lush heath of fibrous grass, a green mattress that hid tussocks and cracks alike. He slowed the horse to a walk, bearing right to avoid the swamp, the Zuari River coming into view as he rounded a last rise in the ground. The stockade and walls of São Paolo were no more than five hundred paces away and the river here no more than waist-high unless the tide was in. One of the men sitting behind the outermost wall spotted his approach and waved him off. He dismounted and led his animal at a half-run, crouching as he hurried toward the cover of the stockade. There was no sign of the Hidalcao’s force, nor of Dom Francisco.

It erupted as he tethered his horse at the back of the fortress, a sudden volley of shots, then three or four heavier explosions, small cannon, smaller than those they would face if the ship were to sail, but sounding fearsome now, unopposable by human flesh and bone.

“Down! Down!” Trujillo screamed at him as he ran for the wall and another volley came in. He dived forward and fell in the dust beside the sergeant. As his head came up he saw one of the men down the line rise like a sleepwalker. Trujillo shouted again, but the man, a young man, only turned stupidly. He looked puzzled. More noise then, and it looked to Teixeira as though the soldier jumped, turning in the air almost like a dance step, except that his jaw exploded in a mess of blood and bone. He fell, then tried to rise again, unaware of the injury until his hand came up and found nothing, the same puzzled expression on what was left of his face as he pulled a large splinter of bone from the cavity. Then he began to scream.

“Dom Francisco,” Teixeira shouted to Trujillo, who shook his head impatiently.

“Try farther down. Mendes’s post.” He shouted something else, but Teixeira was already on his way.

Mendes’s post was a wooden blockhouse. It was deserted. Across the river, thick brushwood and scrubby trees reached almost to the bank. The breeze swung about, this way, that way. It would be stronger on the river, he told himself. There was still time. He looked left, to where the land shelved gently into the water. A swamp.

“Trujillo sent you.”

Teixeira spun about. A man stood there, naked to the waist, gaunt-faced and his eyes bloodshot. A bottle swung from one thin arm. He lowered himself to the ground and grimaced, then raised the bottle to his lips. Teixeira nodded and asked again for Dom Francisco. The man started to laugh, then coughed and spat.

“Are you Mendes?” he demanded.

“I was Mendes,” said the man. He began to shiver violently, then rolled onto his side, his face contorting. Teixeira began to back away.

“That’s it,” hissed the man. “Run, run as fast as you can. The fever’s coming for you, too. Go on, run! Run!” He turned his face to the ground.

Teixeira ran. When he looked back he saw Mendes still lying there but joined by three others as emaciated as he. They stood there watching him until he turned away.

Mota had formed his men up in a palm grove at the back of the town, riding up and down on his nag before them and waving an ornate arquebus. An absurd sight to Teixeira as he cantered past, ignoring the man’s salute. Mota shouted after him, “Dom Jaime! Dom Jaime Teixeira!” but he rode on. “You were seeking Dom Francisco!”

He stopped at that and turned his animal about. Mota pointed through the trees. A building was just visible between the trunks, red walls of local stone already streaked black with the local mold: the Church of Nossa Senhora da Serra had been built after the Due’s return from Malacca. But Dom Francisco praying?

“He’s in the meadow behind there,” shouted Mota, then he laughed at his unguarded puzzlement. “Trying to catch a horse!” More laughter, but Teixeira had his back to the man then. Amongst the trees, and shielded by the town, there was no breeze at all.

It was as promised: a man and a horse. Dom Francisco and his white gelding, the only white horse on the island, as he had never tired of reminding any who would listen since the day of his arrival. The man holding out a handful of withered grass to the beast was a little taller than he, thickset and brawny. He had a heavy face, a peasant’s face, which he tried to carve into something angular and more shapely by cultivating a small beard waxed to a sharp point. He was ruddy and hearty in his manners, except when crossed. Then his close-set eyes would sink deep into his face and explosive rages would follow. He harbored grudge
against many of the other
fidalgos
on the island. He had killed a man in his first week here, and the Duc had snubbed him after that. The third or fourth son of a noble family, he had never explained his presence here in the Indies, on the other side of the world. His trading had been desultory and unprofitable. But he owned the only white horse on the island.

The horse wheezed now. Dom Francisco approached with the grass in his outstretched hand. The horse took a step forward, then, as Dom Francisco reached with his free hand for the bridle, it reared about and cantered a short distance away.

“Damn!” Dom Francisco shouted, casting down the unenticing bait. The horse watched him impassively. Dom Francisco looked up as though the eyes he invoked might offer consolation. Then he saw Teixeira.

“Too much spirit in him!” he shouted, suddenly cheery. He clapped Teixeira on the shoulder. “The two of us’ll have him, though.” He began directing where Teixeira should stand, how he himself would drive the animal to him, then explained a few of the beast’s foibles and tricks. Eventually he noticed the rigid mask that was Teixeira’s face. “What is it?” he asked. “Bad news from Benasterim? Am I needed there?”

“You are needed aboard ship,” said Teixeira. “You were needed there an hour ago.” He saw Dom Francisco’s eyes narrow for a second, but then the cheery manner was back.

“Well, ships don’t run away, do they? Unlike this miserable nag. …” He forced a laugh. The horse bent its head and began to nibble at tufts of grass. “Come on, Don Jaime. We’ll have her aboard in a minute.”

Teixeira swallowed hard, biting back the thick lump of temper that was swelling in his mouth. “There is no time for this”—he almost said “idiocy”—“for this task. Nor hay for your horse on the
Ajuda
. Those bales are for the Ganda. This was decided amongst us a week ago. Have you forgotten?”

The last phrase was his mistake. He realized it as Dom Francisco colored, fought briefly with his rising anger, and lost. He began to spit words at Teixeira, who was a “jumped-up flunky,” a “crawling creature of the Duc’s,” not worth “one hoof of his horse” or even “both of its severed balls,” and his horse would sail with him if it meant waiting till the new year. …

Teixeira turned away from this in a cold fury. Dom Francisco was still shouting as he rounded the church and untied his horse from the rail outside.

“The wind’s swinging.” Gonçalo stood in the shade of the doorway. “I saw your horse here,” he said in explanation of his presence. “And his.” He gestured to the other side of the church. “I think we must take our chance now. And we need him, if the men are not to sit on their hands. They don’t like it. …”

Teixeira nodded curtly. “Wait here.” He rode back through the palm grove to where Mota’s men were now stretched out on the ground, fanning themselves in the heat. Mota had unsaddled his horse and joined them. He raised his head in surprise at Teixeira’s approach, sat up, and finally struggled to his feet.

“Did you find him, Dom Jaime?” The grin seemed to be part of his face: ineradicable, short of violence. Teixeira assented, gathered himself, swallowed hard.

“I have a request to make of you, Dom … Dom …” He realized he did not know Mota’s given name.

“Jaime,” said Mota, grinning more broadly at this suddenly humble
fidalgo
. “I am Dom Jaime, just like you. What is your request?”

Something flashed across Gonçalo’s face when he returned, a quick wariness, perhaps, not quite surprise. Then he was impassive again, a bystander or a recorder for some abstract court and outside whatever might happen next. He said nothing. Dom Francisco was trying once again to approach the horse, which was playing the same game as before, allowing the man to draw near, to reach out, then suddenly retreating.

“Dom Francisco!”

The man turned. Teixeira raised Mota’s arquebus, steadying it with one hand. Dom Francisco’s eyes went from the man to the weapon. For a moment he seemed not to recognize it, then suddenly he pushed his arms forward, palms outstretched as though he might deflect the ball. His mouth opened and it seemed too that he tried to say something, though no sound came out. He took a single pace forward. Teixeira pulled the trigger.

He saw Dom Francisco stumble and almost fall. The noise thudded in his head, then throbbed as though it were trapped in there. His eyes were watering and his nostrils burned from the smoke. Dom Francisco looked down at his chest, amazement on his face. Then bewilderment. Then rage, as he turned in time to see the horse’s legs fold under its belly and the animal itself collapse. The heavy ball had torn away the topmost part of its head and it was dead before it hit the ground.

He watched through stinging eyes as the
fidalgo
turned away from the corpse, then strode toward him, his hand reaching for his sword. Teixeira let his weapon fall and stood his ground, crossing his arms in front of him. Ten fast paces and the man’s face was in his own, red with anger and shock, even disbelief at the enormity of the act, the insult. His eyes shriveled to black olives buried deep in his face; the mouth opened and closed, so close that Teixeira could smell his breath. But he heard nothing. He said, “We leave now,” and the sound boomed strangely in his head. The blast had deafened him.