The Widow's War (3 page)

“
Lentamente
,” the nun says softly. “Calm down, go more slowly, and try to stop crying. You say this William Saylor who came to you when your father was dying was your fiancé?”

Carrie attempts to control her tears and only succeeds in sending herself into a choking fit. The nun jerks her upright and whacks her smartly on the back with the palm of her hand. “Breathe!” she commands.

Carrie takes a long, shuddering breath and finds her voice. “I’ve loved William since I was nine years old. We were to be married. He intended to come back to Rio sooner, but his—”

The nun interrupts her. “’Veelhum’” is an English name, is it not?”

“No, American. William and I were both born in the United States less than a hundred miles from each other. I was born in Bloomington, Indiana; he was born in Mitchellville, Kentucky.” The nun stares at her blankly, and Carrie realizes she has switched into English.

“William and I are both Americans,” she repeats in Portuguese. “Do you know where he is? Did he come here with me? When I fell ill, he was already running a high fever, and I’m afraid he may have caught the pox—although perhaps he only had what I’ve had, and like me he’s recovered. Still, I’m afraid he came down with the pox. We spent two weeks nursing the sick together . . . ”

“For which God will reward you,” the nun says. She pauses and fixes her eyes on Carrie in a way that Carrie can’t interpret. It’s not an unfriendly look, but there’s something speculative about it. “I’m sorry to say that there’s been no one named William Saylor here, or at least no man who lived long enough to tell us that was his name. If you like, I can check the book that holds our records of births and deaths, but I’ve read it so many times over the past month that I know it by heart, and I can tell you without looking that you won’t find your fiancé listed there.”

“Of course his name won’t be on your death list! William can’t be dead. God wouldn’t be that cruel.”

“God works in mysterious ways, my child. It’s not for us to question Him.”

Under other circumstances, Carrie might have argued this point with her since her own grandfather had spent his entire life questioning God at every opportunity, but she’s too busy struggling to sit up. “Where are my shoes and clothes? Please bring them to me, Sister. I need to go out and search for William. He may be lying sick and untended. He may need food, water . . .”

The nun puts her hand on Carrie’s chest and pushes her back down. “What you need, Dona Carolyn, is to lie still and rest. You’re in no condition to go out on the streets, and if you insist on trying, you may not live long enough to marry anyone. Rio is still in turmoil. The Emperor and his court have moved to the Summer Palace in Petrópolis. Anyone else rich enough to leave the city fled at the first sign of the plague and only a few have returned. Thieves and looters have taken over the streets. Be sensible. Think of your own safety. If you leave the protection of the
Irmandade
, you may be ravished and murdered if you don’t relapse and fall down dead first.”

“Please let me get up,” Carrie pleads. “Please, Sister. I don’t care what happens to me. I have to find William. If I die looking for him, then I die. If he’s alive and sick with the pox, I want to take care of him, and if he’s dead, I don’t want to live.”

“Calm yourself, Dona Carolyn. This is your illness speaking. Your life is precious. God gives each of us only one. The passion with which you speak of this man is not appropriate for a
senhorita
. It’s hardly appropriate for a married woman. I think this Veelhum Saylor has been more than your fiancé, that you were with him for many days unchaperoned, and that you and he did more than simply tend the sick together.”

“I could never be ashamed of anything I’ve done with William!”

“My dear child, I am not asking you to be ashamed. I am asking you if you are carrying his child.”

Carrie is struck speechless. The thought has not occurred to her. She remembers lying in William’s arms, the look in his eyes that told her better than words could that he loved her, a joy so intense she felt as if she might shatter under the force of it. And then she remembers how afraid they were, how people were dying all around them, how they only had each other for comfort.

“It’s possible,” she admits. “William and I . . .” She looks at the nun and thinks that there’s no use trying to explain this to her.

A smile curls at the corner of the nun’s mouth. “Do you think that because I’ve never been with a man, I don’t know what love is? For twelve years I directed our shelter for fallen women. No doubt you don’t think of yourself as ‘fallen’. The girls never do until the babies come. I always encourage them to trust in the love of Christ. True, they’ve sinned, but I believe of all mortal sins, the sin of love is the most easily forgiven. After all, Veelhum was your fiancé. You were about to marry him.”

“William and I searched everywhere for someone to marry us, but the epidemic kept getting worse, and in the churches they were having funerals, not weddings. The day before William fell ill, they even closed the . . .” A frightening thought suddenly occurs to her. “Sister, I’ve been very sick. If I’m carrying William’s child, will it be normal?”

The nun seizes both of Carrie’s hands and holds them in hers. “There is no way to tell. You must trust in God, my child.”

“God can wait.” Carrie jerks her hands back. “I have to find William.”

“I am sorry, Dona Carolyn, but I can’t let you leave.”

Carrie says nothing. She’s not afraid of going out on the streets of Rio. She just spent two weeks on them in the middle of an epidemic, not to mention that she’s the granddaughter of Decimus Hampton, the most stubborn man who ever lived.

“We have guards at the gate,” the nun says. “If you try to leave, they’ll catch you and bring you back to me, and I’ll have to tie you to your bed. You were tied when you were sick so you wouldn’t fall out and harm yourself or claw at your face, and the cords are still in place. So lie still, Dona Carolyn, and rest until your strength returns. Later I’ll bring you some hot broth.”

The nun drops the mosquito net, turns, and walks out of the room, through the door, and into the courtyard, disappearing behind the orange blossoms of the bougainvillea vine. As soon as she is gone, Carrie again tries to sit up, but she’s so exhausted she can hardly push her body off the mattress. When at last she manages to swing her legs over the edge, she’s wracked by nausea and dizziness. For a few seconds she clings to the cot, trying to steady herself, but the sensation, which is a great deal like seasickness only worse, doesn’t pass. At last she gives up and falls back.

Perhaps she passes out or perhaps she simply falls asleep, because the next time she opens her eyes, it’s dark and raining furiously. An oil lamp sways above her, casting strangely shaped shadows on the walls. On the ceiling, in an ever-shifting circle of lamplight, a gecko is hunting mosquitoes. For a long time she lies awake watching the gecko, listening to the rain drum against the roof tiles, and praying William is somewhere warm and dry.

Early November 1853

 

 

 

M
ae Seja sits in the shade fanning herself with a palm frond. Her name, roughly translated from the Portuguese, means “Mother of Possibilities.” Thin to the point of gauntness, she is so old hardly a hair remains on her head, but her eyes are small, bright, dark, and deeply intelligent. On her back, she bears scars from the lashes an overseer gave her many years ago when she was a slave in the cane fields. Now at eighty-three, she is the most respected woman in the
quilombo
, a spiritual leader who speaks with the
orixás,
those gods her people brought with them from Africa and have hidden from their Brazilian masters for hundreds of years.

Everyone in the
quilombo
believes Mae Seja is a visionary who can see into the future and the past and beyond both into the realms of the dead, which is why Carrie has come to consult her today. They have just drunk bowls of coconut milk and eaten slices of mango to celebrate Carrie’s arrival. Now they are resting against the roots of a tree as tall as the mast of a ship. Its roots are bleached whitish gray, spread out like wings, curved, and large enough to serve as backrests. Through the leaves of this giant, which is only one of thousands that grow in the jungles surrounding Rio, sunlight filters down in small golden pools, and far overhead a flock of parrots takes flight, screeching like window hinges in need of oil.

“Mae Seja,” Carrie says, “I have a favor to ask. I need to find a man who calls himself William Saylor.”

She waits patiently for Mae Seja to speak. She has come to her in desperation after searching in vain for William. Brazilians are famous for keeping accurate records. Since the sixteenth century they have recorded the name of everyone who enters or leaves the country, not to mention every coil of rope and sack of coffee. Brazil has over two thousand miles of coastline, so some people have undoubtedly slipped past, most notably the thousands of slaves who are still being smuggled in from Africa to work on the coffee plantations even though importing slaves into Brazil has been illegal for nearly three years.

William would not have been one of those overlooked by the authorities, yet his name is not on the custom lists. This in itself is not surprising since when he arrived, he swam to shore, but his name is nowhere else to be found either. For a while Carrie kept expecting him to show up at her father’s house, but there’s been no sign of him. She has examined lists of the dead and ill and the passenger lists of every ship that left Rio for another port within the past two months. She’s talked to anyone who might have seen William and even looked at lists of prisoners, although she can’t imagine him committing a crime. On the off chance that he might have gone home, she recently wrote a letter to him in care of his mother, but it takes two months for letters to reach the States from Brazil and another two to receive a reply, and she doesn’t think she can wait four months.

The nun at the Casa de Misericórdia was right. She has missed her menses, and thanks to an unfamiliar feeling in her body that she can’t quite put into words, she strongly suspects she is carrying William’s child.

Mae Seja still hasn’t responded. Finally she reaches out and helps herself to the last slice of mango. “Is the man you’re looking for dead or alive?” she asks.

“I don’t know, Mae. That’s what I need to determine. I thought perhaps you could perform a ceremony to help me find out.”

Sitting back against the tree, Mae Seja closes her eyes, and begins fanning herself again. “To summon the
orixás
, we’ll need drummers. The hunters will have to stop hunting, and the women will have to quit hoeing their manioc patches. The children are going to have to stop gathering wood and help their parents get ready. The elders will be there, so we’ll need to make sure they’re comfortable. The babies and the sick will also be there. Curing the sick will simply be an extra benefit.”

Carrie nods. In other words, Mae Seja is willing to perform the ceremony, but it’s going to be expensive. “I’ll be happy to pay, Mae. I’ve recently come into a great deal of money.”

That, if anything, is an understatement. She has inherited a fortune so large she can hardly comprehend it. Her father made a substantial amount in his own right, plus he was always a soft touch for inventors. After Carrie got out of the hospital, she returned to their house on the Ladeira da Glória and began the sad task of sorting through his papers. She knew he had designated her his sole heir, but since his investments had a habit of failing, she didn’t expect her inheritance to amount to much. To her surprise—among patents for steam-powered earthquake neutralizers and worthless promissory notes from inventors who planned to produce umbrellas guaranteed not to turn inside out—she discovered something of value. Two years ago, her father had bought shares in a silver mine and a telegraph company that was in the process of taking over all the lines west of Buffalo, New York. When she took these stock certificates to the bank, she was astonished to discover that they had appreciated astronomically. She was now one of the wealthiest women in Rio.

Even if she hadn’t been rich, she wouldn’t have begrudged Mae Seja whatever she cared to charge. The
quilombo
is a community of escaped slaves, half a dozen desperately poor white Brazilians, and a few Indians who have not died of European diseases or been killed or worked to death—one of perhaps eight thousand such communities in Brazil. Hidden in a steep jungle valley east of Rio, it has not only been a refuge for slaves fleeing from the coffee plantations where the life expectancy of a worker is less than seven years; it has also been a refuge for Carrie and her family. Carrie first came to this nameless place with her father and mother when she was eight, after her father decided to hunt orchids near a city where his wife and child could live in comfort and safety.

The day they arrived, Mae Seja was there to welcome them. She said she had seen them coming in a dream. For many years, the people of the
quilombo
helped Carrie’s father find rare orchids in the Atlantic jungle, establishing his reputation. He in turn protected them from the
capitães do mato
, those armed bands of professional killers who hunted down escaped slaves. The route to the
quilombo
has always been a secret, involving three days of rugged travel through almost impenetrable terrain, but there is so much hunger for slaves that the
capitães
would have found it sooner or later. So Carrie’s father did what was usually done in Brazil under such circumstances: He bribed the right people. Technically, of course, he bribed no one. He merely rented the land, which was of almost no value whatsoever, but in reality he paid a yearly protection fee to the growers who armed the
capitães.

Thanks to this so-called “rent,” the
quilombo
was left in peace, and Carrie had the unusual experience of growing up in two worlds: One in Rio where she wore white lace dresses, moved in the society of ex-patriots and wealthy Brazilians, and went to school with the children of British diplomats, and another where she ran barefoot in the forest with the children of the
quilombo
, learned the Afro-Brazilian-Indian names of plants, tormented sloths by tossing mango pits at them, gathered firewood, tracked animals, gambled away her allowance with wooden counters, took shots at birds with makeshift blowguns, cooked whole monkeys in iron kettles, and did a hundred other things that were endlessly fascinating and often dangerous—all the time dressed in a knee-length cotton shift or, on some occasions, in nothing at all.