The Devil on Her Tongue (67 page)

“You have me here. You have me,” I repeated.

“I don’t have you, Diamantina. Not in the right way.”

“There’s nothing I can say that will convince you to stay?” My voice was little more than a whisper.

“Please. Try to see it from my point of view. Can you not understand?”

I could. Of course I could. But I couldn’t move, or speak.

“I have to go back, in case Bonifacio returns and sees us both gone.” He finally came to me, and I stood. He brushed my hair from my face, wiping my cheeks with his thumbs. I wanted him to hold me so badly that I pulled on his arms, trying to wrap them around me.

But he gently removed my hands, and went down the steps. He stopped at the bottom, turning to me. “I’ll always remember you here, in the summer house. I’ll think of you like this, with the breeze in your hair, and your scent— What is your scent, Diamantina?”

“Rosemary.” My voice was strangled.

“Rosemary,” he repeated, and then was gone.

I was numb, in shock, trying to imagine a life without him. All that time, he’d known Abílio was my daughter’s father.

I wanted to go to the cottage and lie down and close my eyes and sleep and not think about any of it. But Candelária was in the yard; I couldn’t leave her.

I slowly walked back to the celebrations and sat at the table. The young people were on the grass, and Candelária ran around them, trying to get their attention. Espirito and Bonifacio were walking from the pressing house together. As they drew nearer, I saw that Bonifacio held the letter Espirito had shown me.

Bonifacio sat beside me and Espirito across from me. Bonifacio looked at the drying stain on my skirt. “Senhor Perez writes that he’s selling Kipling’s, and it will change hands in another month. It appears doubtful I will retain my position. Even if he does allow me to continue working for him, Senhor Perez states, the new owner will object to us living here.” I just looked at him, and let him think my silence was surprise, or dismay. “That arrangement was through Dona Beatriz, and there will be no further obligation to us.” He handed the letter back to Espirito. “And what will you do?”

“I’ll work for Duncan in Rio de Janeiro.”

“You’ll leave Madeira,” Bonifacio stated. Did I hear anything in his voice? Satisfaction, relief? Or was it my imagination?

Cristiano’s laughter echoed across the yard.

“Yes. I sail on the
Padre Eterno
next week.”

“Next week?” My voice was sharp, and both men looked at me. “It’s just … so soon.”

“I’ve bought my passage. There’s no point in lingering,” Espirito said, and then he got up and walked over to the group of young people. Candelária was tugging on Cristiano’s shirt sleeve. Espirito picked her up and put her on his shoulders, and she laughed, and put her hands into his thick hair so she wouldn’t fall.

I
n spite of Espirito telling me he wouldn’t see me alone again, I couldn’t take it as truth. I waited to receive word from him. Three days after I’d last seen him, I went to the
adega
. He wasn’t there, nor was he in the blending room.

The next day, I went again, carrying a note I’d written and sealed and addressed to him, asking that he contact me. I left it on the table of the blending room. I went to the summer house every afternoon, on the chance that he was waiting for me.

I couldn’t sleep or think properly. Tears were always close to the surface. On the fifth day, I snapped at Candelária, making her cry, and then held her, soothing her as Cristiano watched. That evening he came to my bedroom when Candelária was asleep. I was sitting on my bed, a closed book in my lap. “I know something’s wrong,” he said. “Is it … you’re not having another baby, are you?”

I made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. “No, Cristiano. It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

“Espirito is going to Brazil. He’s never coming back.”

“I know.”

“He told you?”

“On the night of the
festa
. I’m spending tomorrow with him.”

“What are you doing?” I asked, too eagerly.

“I don’t know. He just asked me to spend his last day with him.”

I nodded. It was as it should be. Espirito should be spending time with Cristiano, and certainly Eduardo and Luzia, and his friends. We had had our last time together at the summer house. I understood. And yet it hurt.

Espirito came to the cottage with Cristiano the next evening.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” I said, feeling heat in my neck and face, thinking, for one absurd moment, that he’d come to say he’d changed his mind, and wasn’t going.

“Did you think I wouldn’t say goodbye to all of you?”

I stared at him, so stricken that he was actually leaving that it was difficult to breathe.

“Where is Candelária?” he asked.

“I just put her to bed. She’s not asleep yet.”

“May I go in and see her?” he asked, gesturing towards my bedroom, and I nodded.

When he came out, he said to Cristiano, “You have the address in Rio de Janeiro where I will be staying. I expect to hear from you.”

Cristiano nodded solemnly.

“I think we should shake hands to say goodbye,” Espirito said. “You are a young man now.”

Cristiano held out his hand, his chin quivering. “
Adeus
, Espirito,” he said, and then Espirito hugged him. I saw how tall Cristiano had become.

“Maybe in a few years you’ll sail to Brazil to work with me,” he said.

A few years. I couldn’t even think of the next hours.

Espirito went next to Bonifacio, who hadn’t risen from the settee. There was a heavy, awkward moment as Espirito stood in front of his brother and held out his hand.

Bonifacio reached up and shook it. “Goodbye, Espirito.”

“This reminds me of another parting, so long ago. Except it was you going off to Brazil for the rest of your life,” Espirito said. “Or so we all thought. This time it’s me.”

“We can never know the ways of the Lord.” Bonifacio spoke slowly, as if emphasizing the phrase he used too often.

At the door, Espirito said, looking at me, “I’ll write, once I’m safely there.”

I went to him and put my hands on his shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks, so aware of Bonifacio watching. “Safe journey,” I said, my voice thick, then followed him out to the step and watched him walk away from the cottage. When he disappeared, I stood for another moment, thinking I still saw his white shirt in the falling dusk.

“Diamantina,” Bonifacio said, suddenly behind me.

I turned and stared at him.

“Come inside.” He held the door open and, when I didn’t move, repeated, firmly, “I said to come inside.”

I was tilting, rising and falling with the rhythm of the ocean, although I was firmly rooted on land. I watched the sea, a silver plate, and on it the
Padre Eterno
, its tall sails billowing, full of the morning’s wind. I stood on the top step of the summer house and watched Espirito sail away. I thought of my father sailing away, although I had never witnessed it. I had always thought I’d see him again.

That was back when I knew so much less than I knew now.

Over the next days, I pictured Espirito far out on the water, and wondered if he thought of me as I of him. I imagined a life with him, all of us together, he and I and Cristiano and Candelária.

I had my six diamonds. If my life became unbearable here, if Bonifacio made it intolerable to raise my daughter in his presence, I would use some of them to buy three passages to Brazil. I would go to Espirito, even if he hadn’t asked me to come. More than once I took out the little diamonds and was comforted by their coolness
in my hand. I arranged them in different patterns on the blue velvet as I pictured the happiness they could bring.

I knew I should go to visit Luzia, as she would be missing Espirito as well. I knew I should go to Catarina of the Cross and speak to the Madre Superiora about Sister Amélia. I knew I should write to Dona Beatriz and ask her what had happened, how Abílio had coerced her into selling Kipling’s. And yet I seemed unable to accomplish anything. I hoped for the local women to come to me so that I might talk to them and dispense healing remedies, and I longed to stand in the
adega
and breathe in the richness emanating from the barrels. But no one came to the quinta, and I had no excuse to go to Kipling’s. When the new owner took over, I might never again go into the heat of the
adega
, piled high with barrels of fermenting wine.

On the afternoon that marked two weeks since Espirito’s departure, I told myself that I could not continue to wallow any longer. I took Candelária and went into Funchal. At the Convent of Catarina of the Cross, I was admitted to the office of the Madre Superiora.

She silently indicated a row of chairs. I sat on one of them, and patted the one beside it, telling Candelária to sit.

“I trust you remember our conversation about Sister Amélia.” I said to her, opening my bag and setting one of the diamonds on the desk between us.

The diamond caught the light from the window behind the Madre, and cast a dancing prism on her hands, folded in front of her.

She looked at the gem, and smiled gently at me. “I’m afraid this isn’t sufficient.”

I cleared my throat and put another beside the first. When the woman made no comment, I added a third. At that, she stood. “I’m afraid that reversing an order is not so easily amended,” she said.

“But you told us, Senhora da Silva and me, that—”

“It requires a great deal, senhora,” she said. “A great deal.”

I licked my lips. Then I took out the blue velvet and tipped the last three diamonds onto the desk. “It’s all I have.”

She looked at the six diamonds, then at me, and finally sat down again. She took a sheet of vellum from a drawer, and pulled the ink bottle towards her. She picked up a quill. Each of her movements
was slow and methodical. She wrote, leaning back from the desk, her eyes narrowed so she could focus. Eventually she laid down the quill and sprinkled the page with pounce. When the ink had dried, she shook the paper to dispel any of the fine powder still left. She rolled the vellum, then melted wax and dripped it onto the seam to seal it. She touched a stamp to the warm wax, leaving the imprint of a tiny cross. I clenched my fists and concentrated on patience throughout this lengthy and painstaking process.

Candelária sat beside me without moving, watching intently.

“Sister Amélia has completed her penance on Porto Santo,” the Madre said, “and will be welcomed home.” She handed me the sealed scroll.

“Thank you, Madre,” I said, and she bowed her head. Neither of us had looked at the diamonds again.

I put the scroll in my bag and took Candelária’s hand, and we went out into the sunshine and walked to Francisco Square. I bought her a cup of sweet citron. As we sat at the table under the shade of a high palm, she talked about Raimundo’s little granddaughter, Sabela, who sometimes came to the quinta to see her grandfather. Candelária liked to play with her.

“Sabela was sad yesterday, because she had to go home before she got to see the new kittens.”