The Devil on Her Tongue (22 page)

Senhor Rivaldo’s eyes widened as I walked across the empty square to meet him in the dim morning light. Was it the cage of birds, or my purple eyelids, or the ill-fitting shoes? Was it the protruding handle of my gutting knife or my tangle of necklaces and crown of shells?

“There’s smoke down the beach,” he said by way of greeting, perhaps as uncomfortable as I on our wedding day. “Is someone burning something this early in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“Father da Chagos is ready for us.”

I nodded and turned towards the back door of the church.

“This way,” Senhor Rivaldo called, waving at the front door.

“I’d like to speak to Sister Amélia first.”

“Father da Chagos has told me the Sister is to be the witness. You’ll see her inside. Come here.”

“I need to speak to her for a minute,” I repeated, ignoring him. I found Sister Amélia on her knees in her tiny cell, and waited in her doorway until she lifted her head.

“Oh,” she said as she saw me, pressing one hand to her chest as she got to her feet. “I was just coming to the church for your wedding, Diamantina.” She smiled at me. “I was so very, very pleased to hear this news.” She studied me and her smile grew. “My heart is full for you: you are baptized, and now you will be married and start a new life. Everything has worked out for you, as I have prayed for daily. And you look so beautiful, like a siren from the sea.” Her voice was sincere. I loved her so much at that moment my eyes stung.

I blinked away my tears, holding out the cage. “I’d like you to have them,” I said. “The male is Zarco—he has the darker beak. And the female—her head is a little less vibrant—is Blanca. They eat seeds of any sort, and bits of vegetable and fruit. Fig is their favourite. If they remain healthy, they will live for many years. Will Father da Chagos allow you to keep them?”

She smiled at the birds, putting her index finger between the bars. “He won’t know, he doesn’t come beyond the kitchen doorway,” she said, wiggling her finger. “I’ll hang them near the window—there’s often a cooling breeze.”

Blanca tipped her head and stepped sideways down the perch on her small grey feet to take a curious peck at Sister Amélia’s finger. The nun laughed with a surprisingly girlish sound, and her joy pleased me so that I no longer felt like weeping. She took the cage and set it on the floor.

I wanted to tell her that I loved her, but my throat was still thick. “Could I write to you?”

“You know I wouldn’t be allowed to receive a letter.” And then she put her arms out, and I went to her, and we held each other tightly for a long moment. Without looking at me, she moved away, and I followed her down the hall towards the chapel.

I had never attended a wedding, and didn’t know if ours followed the usual ritual. Before Father da Chagos started the ceremony, he put the bar across the church door as he had when he baptized me, so an over-eager parishioner arriving for Mass early wouldn’t come across this strange spectacle.

I heard a whisper of cloth from the side door, and knew Sister Amélia had hidden herself behind a pillar. Senhor Rivaldo and I stood side by side facing Father da Chagos. In the warmth of the apse I was aware of the odour of woodsmoke rising from my clothes. Father da Chagos lit the censer and swung it in front of us, and its familiar sweet odour comforted me. He began with a great deal of droning in Latin, with Senhor Rivaldo answering in a
practised manner. The first time Senhor Rivaldo knelt, I hesitantly knelt beside him. Nobody corrected me, and I assumed it was the right thing to do, and so I knelt and rose along with Senhor Rivaldo. He performed these functions—kneeling and rising—in supple movements, as if lowered and pulled up by invisible strings.

I felt ungainly. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar shoes, which hurt the ends of my toes when I went down on my knees, and made me lose my balance as I pushed myself up again. Once I stumbled as I tried to stand, and Senhor Rivaldo caught my elbow.

Finally, Father da Chagos murmured a final sentence, lifted his cross and kissed it. He held it out to Senhor Rivaldo, who also kissed it. He didn’t extend it to me. He nodded at Senhor Rivaldo, who took a thin gold band from his jacket pocket and put it on my finger. I don’t know where he got it. It felt a little tight, but perhaps it was because I had never worn a ring. Watching him push the circle of gold over my knuckle, I saw that my fingertips were smeared with ash from lighting the driftwood, and newly noticed the criss-cross of scabbed scratches from brambles on the backs of my hands. I saw the deep white scar, like a miniature crescent moon, on the fleshy pad on the back of my thumb, a slip with the gutting knife years ago. I thought of my mother.

Senhor Rivaldo took my hands. His were damp, the palms square, only slightly bigger than mine. Father da Chagos intoned another sentence, and Senhor Rivaldo let go of my hands.

“Will you perform a Mass for us, Father?” my husband asked, and Father da Chagos shook his head.

“You expect too much, my son.”

Senhor Rivaldo glanced at me. “I understand.”

“Please give my regards to Father Monteiro when you reach Curral das Freiras,” Father da Chagos said then, and my husband said, “I will.”

Curral das Freiras. I hadn’t heard of it, but it must be an area of Funchal. I had one last request of the priest. “If a letter comes from my father, will you have it sent on to Kipling’s?”

Father da Chagos nodded.

Even though the sun had risen as we left the church, no one was in the square. There was no ringing of the church bells or cheers of congratulations or thrown flower petals. There was just the empty street leading down to the wharf, and the anchored fishing boats bobbing on the water, the gulls shrieking and spiralling over them, the shearwaters and storm petrels silently gliding above. As Senhor Rivaldo, carrying a leather case in one hand, took my bulky shawl from me, I looked back at the gate to the church kitchen. There was a shift and flutter in the shadow, and then a rhythmic movement of paler shadow. Sister Amélia had broken the rules again, leaving the kitchen to wave a cloth at me through the gate. I waved back, tightening my lips so they wouldn’t tremble.

And there was Rooi, standing in the doorway of his inn. He had risen so early to watch me leave, and now I couldn’t stop the tears as he took his pipe from his mouth and lifted it in a salute.

I held up my hand, the gold band catching the first rays of the sun, and waved goodbye.

We were rowed out to the packet. I climbed up a rope ladder, and a sailor gripped my hand to help me over the side.

I was relieved that there were no other passengers to Madeira this morning, no one from Vila Baleira to stare at me with this well-dressed gentleman and start the flow of gossip. None of the townspeople would question Father da Chagos about my disappearance; to mention my name might bring ill luck. If anyone ventured as far down the beach as Ponta da Calheta, there would be nothing left to signify I had ever been there. The next few rains would work the burned remains of my home back into the earth from where it had come.

I sat on the wooden bench beside Senhor Rivaldo, my bulky shawl with all my worldly belongings between us. At one end of the deck was a pile of dusty sacks of limestone, a huge open basket of
the ugly black scabbardfish, their dead, fishy eyes bulging, and three goats tethered together, bleating and restless.

I was weary from lack of sleep and all that had happened in the last few days. My throat was dry and my head pounded.

“I will address you as Diamantina now. And you will call me Bonifacio,” my husband said, rubbing a small silver icon between his thumb and index finger. “Saint Christopher,” he explained, lifting the icon. “Let’s hope he will protect us as we journey across the water. The
travessia
can be rough and dangerous, although it appears we will be blessed today. The sea is calm.”

I watched as four sailors gathered in a circle. “O Holy Lady of Navigators, Mother of God,” they prayed. “Creator of Heaven, earth, rivers, lakes and the seas, with thy protection and the blessing of thy Son, the ship of my life will anchor securely and tranquilly in the port of eternity. Our Lady of Navigators, Pray for me. Amen.”

Bonifacio murmured amen as well.

The sailors broke apart, and in the next moment there was a shout, and the sails were unfurled with a great whooshing and snapping, and it was as if the sound awakened me from my stupor. I sat straighter, my physical discomforts gone. As the wind took the sails, I kicked off the uncomfortable shoes and knelt on the bench, leaning out as far as I could. I closed my eyes and turned my face into the wind, feeling the spray as I held my crown of shells in place with one hand.

I was a seabird wheeling over the water, the wind caught under my wings. I remembered Rooi’s story, and understood my father’s longing.

Jumping from the bench, I ran to the side of the ship facing the island. As we sailed past Ponta da Calheta, with the towering shape of Ilhéu de Baixo across the channel, all I could see was a tiny grey spot on the sand, and some faint tendrils of smoke.

It hit me then: I was leaving my home. I thought of the light on the water when I first woke. Of the smell of rain approaching over the waves. The whole world of stars above me at night, birdsong at dawn. The sand: wet, dry, shifting beneath my bare feet. The seagrass that held tenuously to the earth with its tough roots. The fragrant
harshness of the damp basalt cliffs. Would I ever know these things again?

“There’s a decent following wind today. It shouldn’t take us more than five or six hours to arrive in Funchal if all goes well,” Bonifacio said, his voice in my ear. I turned to him, annoyed that he had come to stand beside me. I wanted to be alone to experience this leaving. This loss.

I knew now what had given me the unnamed dread in the night. It wasn’t Bonifacio Rivaldo himself but what I was losing. Why could I see the beauty in my life only as I was sailing away from it?

“Come and sit down. You’re getting wet,” he said, taking my arm firmly, leading me away. He took bananas and figs and a round of bread from his bag. I recognized the loaf as one of Sister Amélia’s, with its cross cut into the top. “And put on your shoes.”

I sat beside him and ate a few figs and a banana, but did not put on my shoes. And after a while I went back to the side of the boat. Just beneath the cool water was a school of silver porpoise, swimming alongside us. High above in the blue sky was a long, ragged line of birds, thin as a scratch from a quill, and far in the distance sat the golden mound of Porto Santo, with its smaller islets on either side.

My husband and I said nothing more on the journey. I was lost in my thoughts of what was to come. I didn’t care or wonder what his thoughts might be.