The Devil on Her Tongue (53 page)

Two weeks later, Bonifacio came in from work and said, “Senhor Perez arrived from Lisboa today. He’s staying in the estate house for a few days.”

I stood, a book in my hand.

“He asked about you, and said he hoped he would have a chance to speak to you about the quinta.”

I turned, pressing the book against my chest. “I can’t see anyone like this, so close to my confinement. Tell him it’s impossible.”

“All right,” he said, and went down to the kitchen for dinner.

I went to my wardrobe and took out my travel bag. At the bottom, under my old shawl and my mother’s jewellery, lay the unsealed scroll I had taken from Dona Beatriz’s bedroom. I understood Dona Beatriz’s concern that it be kept safe. Now I read it again. It was the deed for all of Martyn Kipling’s holdings, in which he willed everything to Beatriz. It was dated ten years earlier. Inêz was named as second successor, should anything befall Beatriz. After their deaths, the dynasty would pass on to the offspring of Beatriz, or, should she not produce any, to those of Inêz. It could thus never be owned by a man marrying into the Kipling empire. Should both daughters die without progeny, the company and quinta were to be sold, and the profits donated to the Sé cathedral.

After I rolled up the scroll and put it back into the travel bag, I went to bed, thinking about Abílio. Surely he wasn’t aware of this deed.

That night, I woke with a gasp, thinking I heard him calling my name, remembering how he had drunkenly shouted for me down the beach on Porto Santo.

I sat up in bed, my face and chest damp, and listened. But the night was quiet.

For the next few days, I stayed in the cottage, telling Cristiano to ask Binta to bring me my meals from the kitchen, fearful of running into Abílio.

A few days after Christmas, Raimundo knocked on the cottage door.

“This was just brought up from Funchal for you,” he said, stepping inside and handing me a lumpy square of parchment, sealed with blue wax and tied with twine. “The messenger said it was sent by Espirito.”

Cristiano came to stand beside me.

Senhora Diamantina Rivaldo
, was written in unfamiliar copperplate.
Kipling’s Wine Merchants, Funchal, Madeira
. The return address was São Paulo, Brazil. The letter was edged in black.

“Cristiano,” Raimundo said, still looking at me, “do you want to come to the stable and take Chico for a slow walk around the yard? He needs some exercise.”

“Can I go, Sister?”

I looked down at him without seeing him.

“Come, Cristiano,” Raimundo said, and as soon as the door shut behind them, I put one hand over my mouth, feeling behind me for the settee. I lowered myself onto it and slowly untied the twine and opened the seal. A small packet fell from the folds onto my lap. I ignored it and unfolded the page.

I cried out, and fell from the settee to my knees, the letter pressed against my face.

I keened then, wailing in the empty room. On my knees I rocked, heavily, weeping for so long that when I finally pulled myself to my
feet, needing one hand on the settee to support myself, my head throbbed and my throat ached, my eyes swollen and tender. I reached forward to pick up the package that had fallen from my lap.

I lowered myself back onto the settee, the terrible weight of my father’s death pushing on my chest as if a load of stones sat on it. It was not only the grief of losing him forever, but the death of my dream. For the last five years it was all I had gone towards—my father, and his love.

Now it was over. What did this mean? That I would stay forever trapped with Bonifacio, with a child I couldn’t even envision, sired by a man I hated?

I dully tore open the paper, tightly sealed with wax all around, and looked down at the six small, sparkling diamonds on a square of dark blue velvet: the stars in the night sky. What good would they do me now?

I went to my bedroom and lay on my bed, holding the letter and the folded velvet with its spray of diamonds. In my other hand I clutched the talisman I never removed from around my neck. These things were all I had to remember my father by.

When the first pains came, a few weeks earlier than expected, I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t been able to prepare myself for the day I knew would come. Since receiving my father’s letter, I hadn’t left my bed, spending most of my time sleeping or staring at the sky through the window.

Cristiano had been my constant companion, running up and down from the kitchen to bring me meals, although I had little interest in food. He was taller now, his adult teeth grown in. He read fluently, and a few months earlier, when both he and I were tired of the sentences I wrote for him to read and then copy, I had gone into the library in the estate house and chosen books I knew he would be able to comprehend. As Cristiano read each, I returned it. I too was reading books from the library. Now, as I lay so still, he sometimes sprawled at the foot of my bed, reading. Once, just once,
he looked up from his book and said, “I don’t want you to die when the baby comes out.”

I took a deep breath. “Why do you think I might die?”

He looked down again. “I just don’t want you to die.”

“I won’t die, Cristiano.” I said it with as much conviction as I could. Some days I thought that he was my only reason for waking up, my only reason for putting food I couldn’t taste into my mouth and chewing and swallowing. Who else would care if I lived or died? I knew my grief had dragged me into a mire of self-pity, and yet I felt powerless to rise from it.

After lying awake since early morning as the mild pains gripped and then released, I waited until Bonifacio had gone to work and then called Cristiano into my room.

“I want you to go and ask Binta to come. The baby is going to be born today, Cristiano. You stay with Tiago and Nini and Raimundo until Binta tells you to come home.”

He stood beside me, then reached out and wiped my face with his palms. “Don’t cry, Sister,” he whispered.

I didn’t realize I was crying. It wasn’t the pain; it was still the early stages. I caught his hands and held them in mine for a moment. “Get Binta,” I repeated, and he left.

A
fter all the children I had helped into the world, I didn’t expect that my lying-in would prove difficult. I rose, slowly, and made myself a herbal remedy to relax and open the mouth of my womb.

Binta was a comfort, but as the day progressed, I spent too many hours in heavy labouring, and knew the child was not coming with the ease I had envisioned. I had Binta send Raimundo for Gracinha. She was beside me within the hour.

“Something’s wrong,” I told her, surprised at how relieved I was to see her. “It feels as though the baby has dropped, but hasn’t moved far enough to push.”

Gracinha walked around and around the cottage with me. I kept drinking my potion, and to relieve the pain went to all fours and swayed as the beasts do. Every hour Gracinha felt inside me for the baby’s head.

“Ahhh,” she said finally, and I knew that her tone indicated some danger. “Diamantina, I feel the feet. The feet,” she repeated, wiping her hands on her apron. “The child is coming out the wrong way. I wouldn’t usually tell a woman this, but you know about these things. What do you want me to do? You could go on all night like this, Diamantina. It’s not good for you, or the child.”

Now it appeared my wish might come true. The baby might die. And I might die too, after another day of exhausting labour, if it couldn’t be extracted. I kept the flat stick wrapped in cotton between my teeth at all times, not only to bite on during the rise and peak of
the pain, but also so that I would not utter something Gracinha was not meant to hear. In my head, I cursed Abílio Perez. If I died, it would be because of him.

“Diamantina,” Gracinha said again an hour later, “what do you want me to do?”

When the last pain subsided, I spat out the wood. “Cut me to make more room for the baby to come out.”

“No. No, I’ve never cut.”

“I don’t care. Cut me open as much as you have to, and reach in. Reach in and pull down on the feet, carefully. See if you can feel the cord. Hopefully it isn’t around the neck. And then when the legs are out, wrap a cloth around them and work out the rest of the body. The head should follow. Get it out, Gracinha,” I cried, my voice rising as the next wave came so soon upon the heels of the last.

“I’ve never done it,” she said again, when the rise of the pain had ended. “My other mothers do not ask me to cut them. They rely on God to make the decision as to whether they and the child will live or die.”

“Do it,” I panted. “I am making the decision.” I lifted my head to stare at her.

Gracinha was pale as she bent over me with a knife she’d first held to a flame. The agony of the trapped child was so severe that the pain of the blade blended with it. I screamed as Gracinha worked on me, screamed until everything behind my eyes was red, and suddenly I was back on the beach on my belly, blood in my eye, the sailor forcing his way into me, and I was screaming,
No, stop, no more, no more
.

And then all was quiet save soft whimpering. I thought it was the baby, but as I opened my eyes I realized the sounds came from my own lips. I fell silent. The pain was different now, huge and almost unbearable, but not the same pain as the labour. Gracinha had turned away and set the baby on a sheet on the low cupboard. I watched her arms working rhythmically, and heard light slapping sounds.