The Devil on Her Tongue (14 page)

My eyes burning, I stood and untied my apron and hung it on its hook. I took her hand, and she allowed it for a moment. Then she gently pulled away, picking up her veil and wimple. Her bare feet gliding unseen under her long robe in their usual way, she went to her room. The swirl of her robe as she softly shut the door was the last I saw of her.

T
he next day, I tried to find other work in Vila Baleira. With no healing to do, no help from Abílio, and now no more réis from the church, our situation would soon be dire. I was willing to take on the lowest job, from emptying and scrubbing the chamber pots of the few wealthier families to swabbing the blood and entrails from the wooden cutting tables of the fishmongers. But I was turned away.

And then I noticed Rooi, sitting on a bench in the sunshine outside his inn. Although I often saw him there, and waved to him, I hadn’t visited him for a long while. With my father gone, it seemed we had little to say to each other.

I stopped now in front of him. “Hello, Rooi.”

“How have you been, Diamantina? How’s your mother?”

“She’s not well, after the rains. And I need a job.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I could clean the inn.”

He shook his head. “The inn isn’t a place for a girl.”

“I’m not a girl. I’m a woman, Rooi, and I can handle myself.”

His shirt was stained and his hair long and unwashed, his pipe stuck behind one ear.

“Your customers will come more willingly if the cups are clean and the tables not so sticky.” I glanced in the open door. “And the floor, Rooi. The floor.” I clicked my tongue, looking at the mess.

He shrugged, taking his pipe and pressing his thumb into the tobacco still there. “My customers are sailors. They’ll come no matter what. There’s no other place in Vila Baleira where they’re welcome to drink as much as they like.”

“Please, Rooi,” I said. “For only a few réis a week I’ll keep it spotless.”

He studied me.

“For my father,” I said, refusing to move. “Help me, Rooi. He would want you to help me.”

He sighed heavily, and then was silent for a long moment. “
Ja
, you’re right. I give you the job for Arie ten Brink.”

After I’d finished the cleaning in the afternoon, I started staying on to pour drinks behind the counter. Rooi soon realized his take was greater when I looked after things. He was often drunk along with his customers, and it was clear to me he lost a great deal of income in this way. I collected the price of each drink before handing over the tankard, and when I presented him with a full purse at the end of the evening, Rooi was happy to give me some of it. I would only leave when the last sailor had staggered back to the wharf to be rowed to his ship for the night.

The money I earned was worth being winked at or treated to a foul joke by the hard-drinking sailors. Occasionally the way one of them smiled at me reminded me of Abílio, and at those moments I would pour myself a cup of wine to wash away the memories. Because Rooi and I spoke Dutch to each other, the sailors assumed I was his daughter. When they wanted me to serve them, they snapped their fingers and called out for the Dutchman’s daughter.

One afternoon as I was washing the floor, Rooi filled a jug with wine from a newly opened cask.

As the fumes wafted towards me, I called, “That one’s got something wrong with it, Rooi.” I leaned back on my heels, dropping the rag into the scummy grey water. “I can smell it from here. Who sold it to you? Was it Henry Duncan?”

“This one and a keg of Sercial.”

English merchants came from Funchal to sell to Rooi, and Mr. Duncan was his main supplier. He was even-featured, his blue eyes bright in a youngish face, his rich brown hair streaked early with grey. He liked me to serve him, always entreating me to sit and talk to him for a few minutes. He patiently let me practise English with him, never making fun of me like some of the English sailors did.

“Nee, mijn meisje,”
Rooi said now. “You can’t tell there’s something wrong with the wine from all the way across the room.” Every time Rooi called me “my girl,” as my father had, I felt a twinge of both pleasure and sadness.

He poured himself a cup and took a swig. As he swallowed, he made a face and shook his head. “Acch. You’re right. Tangy as horse’s piss.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Doesn’t matter. Most of the sailors will drink anything.”

“Maybe the Portuguese or the Spanish or North African sailors. But not the English—they’re fussier.” I got up and came to him, taking the tin cup from his hand. I stuck my nose in it and took a great whiff, then sipped it. “A Boal from the north side of Madeira. Maybe São Vicente. Get me some of our
surdo
, Rooi.” Because of the intense heat of the sun on the island, Porto Santo’s grapes were very sweet, and their juice produced a strong, syrupy liqueur. Rooi brought me that
surdo
, and I poured a bit into the cup of Boal, tried it, then added a bit more, swirling it to mix it and taking another sip. “There,” I said, handing it to him.

He tasted it and nodded. “Much better.” A sudden warm wind blew in through the open door. Rooi took another swallow and smacked his lips appreciatively. “Leave the floor and come make your magic on this keg,” he said.

That evening, Henry Duncan arrived, and asked me for a cup of his own Sercial. Instead, I brought him the wine I’d blended, and watched as he lifted the cup to drink. As he breathed in the wine, he looked at me quizzically. “I said Sercial, Diamantina. This is a Boal.”

“Could you try it, Mr. Duncan? I won’t charge you for it.”

He looked at me with surprise. “For you, of course.” He took a sip, rolling it around in his mouth. “Caramel, coffee, but there’s something different about it.” He took a second mouthful, and when he’d swallowed, he said, “I can’t say I love it, but I will admit it’s interesting. I can identify most of the Funchal blenders by their signature palate. Who’s the merchant?”

I smiled. “You are, Mr. Duncan. It is your Boal, slightly spoiled in the keg. So I added some
surdo
to sweeten it and bring out its fullness.”

“Rooi,” he called with a laugh, “your girl could teach you a lesson or two.” He pressed a few réis into my hand. “Now bring me the Sercial.”

The money Rooi paid me was enough so that my mother and I didn’t want for food, but still there was no extra. Without money, my dream of leaving Porto Santo could never be anything more than a dream. After I was let go from the church, I had still regularly gone to the priest asking if there was a letter from my father. Each time, Father da Chagos just shook his head, closing the front doors where I had stood waiting for him. He appeared angry with me for asking, and this in turn angered me. I wished my father had arranged to send the letters to Rooi, but Rooi was drunk most of the time, and there was no sense of order anywhere in his life. My father wouldn’t have trusted him.

As I passed sixteen, I stopped asking Father da Chagos about a letter. It had been three years since my father left. Why hadn’t he written? Certainly some letters could have gone astray between Brazil and Portugal, floating to the bottom of the ocean in a ship that had sunk, or lost when the ship was pirated. But this couldn’t have happened to every letter, could it? Perhaps my father had been unable to save the money as he had promised, and was too embarrassed to write to tell me this fact.

I thought of Abílio’s brothers, who surely still did not know of their parents’ deaths. I didn’t allow myself to think that my father
was dead, and I didn’t stop dreaming about sailing to Brazil and looking for him in São Paulo.

I knew I had to earn more réis. I watched how the sailors gambled over cards as they drank, tossing their coins recklessly. I reasoned I could take advantage of their willingness to part with their money for sport.

The set of domino tiles my father had left behind had been made from the bones of a dead monk seal he found on the beach after a two-day storm. He had laid the bones in the sun to bleach them, then cut them into small rectangles and smoothed their edges with a piece of coral. To make the pips, he drilled into the bone with the tip of his knife. He stained each tiny indentation with the red blood of the dragon tree, and made a box from the hard wood of the same tree to house them.

He showed me how to play dominoes when I was very young. When I was older, he pointed out the tiny clues he had created on the backs of the bone tiles. The clues, imperceptible to anyone not looking for them, ensured that I knew the number of pips each half of the tile possessed. He also made three extra bones, hidden under a fake lid in the box, to be concealed in a sleeve or pocket while playing. He said he had made a similar set while on the ships, and in this way won extra tobacco on the long voyages.

I told Rooi I wanted to play dominoes with the sailors. If we worked together, I said, we would both profit.

He looked skeptical, and only said, “We’ll see, Diamantina.”

I spent the next few days studying the tiles, memorizing each secret mark. And then I carried my box into Rooi’s and surveyed the room carefully, picking a sailor who looked free with his money.

I bet him a cup of rum and let him win. Then I suggested we play for money, showing him a few coins in my pocket, proof that I would pay up if I lost. But I didn’t. Each time I won, the sailor had to pay me the bet, as well as buy me a cup of wine. Rooi brought me water with a drop of wine to colour it, although the sailor paid the full price.

By the end of the evening, I had played with three sailors, and Rooi and I were both surprised at the profit.

I gambled most nights after that. I learned the ways of men, and how easy it was, after they’d had a few drinks, to make them laugh and feel taller and more handsome. I remembered Abílio’s words to me the last time I saw him:
It’s just part of the game. I can’t help it if you’re too naive to see the world as it really is
. I assumed that this was what he meant. I was seeing the world as it was now.

Each night was a new crowd of sailors. I joked with them in their own languages: Dutch and Spanish and French and English. I opened every game with, “Have you ever met a Dutch sailor named Arie ten Brink?” Some kept me guessing, toying with me as I toyed with them, acting as though they might remember him if I bestowed a kiss upon their cheek.