Exhausted and with his Afonsine ardour beginning to wane, Gonçalo was just putting the final touch to that final insult, when the bell for lunch began ringing. At last! Thank heavens! His eternal Novella was finished! He had been working on that sombre resurrection of his barbarous ancestors for four months, four painful months, ever since June. At the bottom of the page, in large, bold letters, he wrote Finis. And then he added the date and the hour, which was fourteen minutes past noon.
However, leaving the desk where he’d laboured so hard, he did not feel as pleased as he had expected. Indeed, the torture inflicted on the Bastard had left him with a real distaste for that remote, bestial, inhuman, Afonsine world! If only he could at least console himself with the thought that he had brilliantly, truthfully reconstituted the moral being of those savage ancestors of his, but, no! He rather feared that he had merely succeeded in creating a few insubstantial souls with no historical reality, clothed in a lot of ill-fitting and archaeologically inexact armour. He wasn’t even sure that leeches could climb out of a pool to cover a man’s body and bleed him dry from thighs to beard, all the while watched by a crowd of people eating lunch! Then again, Castanheiro had praised the first three chapters. What the crowd loves most in Novellas are titanic rages and lots of blood, and soon, the Annals would have spread throughout Portugal the fame of that illustrious House, which had assembled armies, razed castles to the ground, laid waste to large areas in the name of family honour, and arrogantly insulted kings in the court and on the battlefield. His summer had, in that sense, proved most fruitful. And to crown it, there was the Election, which would free him from the melancholy of his rural hideaway.
Not wishing to delay the visits he still owed to his influential neighbours, and also wanting to clear his head, he got on his horse immediately after lunch, despite the heat which, since the previous day — and in the middle of October too! — had been bearing down on the village with all the blazing weight of an August noontide. At the bend in the Bravais road, he was greeted with an extravagant bow by a fat man wearing grubby white trousers, who was hurrying along, puffing and panting, beneath a red sunshade. It was Godinho, a clerk who worked for Gouveia. He had just delivered an urgent missive to the alderman in Bravais and was now on his way to the Tower with a message from the administrator.
Gonçalo guided his horse into the shade of an oak tree:
‘What is it, friend Godinho?’
Gouveia wanted to let the Nobleman know that Ernesto, the braggart from Nacejas, had been treated in the Oliveira hospital and was making considerable progress. His ear had been sewn back on and his mouth was healing. And since they were now ready to proceed to the court case, the insolent rogue had been transferred to prison.
Gonçalo immediately protested, slapping his saddle:
‘Please be so good as to tell Senhor João Gouveia that I don’t want the man to be arrested. He was, indeed, insolent, but he got a sound whipping for his pains, and so we’re even.’
‘But Senhor Gonçalo Mendes . . .’
‘My friend, that is what I want, so please pass the message on to Senhor João Gouveia. I loathe revenge. It’s simply not what I or my family do. No Ramires has ever gone in for revenge, well, it has been known . . . but, nevertheless, tell Senhor João Gouveia what I’ve told you. I’m sure to see him at the club anyway. It’s quite enough that the man has lost his looks, and I won’t allow him to be humiliated any further. I hate brutality.’
‘But . . .’
‘That is my last word, Godinho.’
‘I’ll be sure to give Senhor Gouveia your message.’
‘Thank you, and off you go now. Isn’t this heat terrible?’
‘Dreadful, sir, dreadful!’
Gonçalo rode on, revolted by the idea that the poor braggart of Nacejas, even before his wounds had properly healed, with his ear only just sewn on, should be sent to a filthy cell in Vila Clara, to sleep on a pallet bed. He even considered galloping straight to Vila Clara to restrain João Gouveia’s legal zeal. However, nearby, beyond the local washing-place, was the house of one of the district’s influential men, João Firmino, a carpenter and a friend of his. So off he trotted, dismounting at the garden gate. Firmino had left early for Arribada, where he was working on Senhor Esteves’ wine press, but Firmino’s wife came bustling out of the kitchen, plump and glowing, with two very grubby children clinging to her skirts. The Nobleman tenderly kissed their sticky cheeks.
‘What a delicious smell of fresh-baked bread, Senhora! Just out of the oven, eh? Well, give my best wishes to Firmino and tell him not to forget: the Election is next Sunday and I’m counting on his vote. And tell him it’s not just a question of a vote, it’s a matter of friendship too.’
The woman bared her magnificent teeth in a large, generous smile:
‘Oh, you needn’t worry about that, sir! Firmino has already sworn, to the alderman no less, that everyone here is going to vote for the Nobleman, and those who don’t vote out of love will be beaten into voting.’
The Nobleman shook her hand, and she, from the garden steps, with her two little ones still clutching her skirts, and with that same rapt smile on her face, followed the trail of dust left by his horse, as if it were the retinue of some beneficent king.
And after other visits, to Cerejeira and Ventura da Chiche, he met with the same fervour, the same delighted smiles. ‘Of course we’ll vote for you, sir. That goes without saying. Even if it meant voting against the Government!’ At Manuel da Adega’s tavern, a group of workers were drinking and talking loudly, their jackets on the benches beside them; the Nobleman drank with them, laughing and genuinely enjoying the cheap wine and the hubbub. The oldest man, a swarthy, toothless grotesque, his face more shrivelled than a prune, enthusiastically thumped the bar, ‘You have here the kind of Nobleman, boys, who when he finds a poor soul on the road with a bad leg, lends him his horse and walks more than a league with him, like he did with Solha. This is a Nobleman we can be proud of!’ And loud cheers echoed round the room. When Gonçalo got back on his horse, they all gathered about him like ardent vassals, who, at a wave of his hand, would rush off to vote — or to kill!
At Tomás Pedra’s house, Grandma Ana Pedra, very old and frail and almost crippled, burst into tears because her Tomás was away in the olive grove when the Nobleman had chosen to visit. ‘It’s like being visited by a saint!’
‘Hardly, Senhora Pedra. I’m a sinner, a great sinner!’
Sitting very bent in a low chair, with strands of straggling white hair escaping from beneath her headscarf and down her gaunt, lined, hairy face, she slapped her bony knee:
‘Certainly not, sir! Anyone who showed such charity to Casco’s son deserves to be placed on an altar!’
The Nobleman went on his way, laughing, planting loud kisses on the small, grimy cheeks of children, clasping hands as coarse and gnarled as roots, lighting his cigarette at open fires, and chatting familiarly about aches and pains and who was in love with whom. Then, in the heat and dust of the road, he thought, ‘It’s odd, these people really seem to like me!’
At four o’clock, by which time he was exhausted, he decided to stop and take the cooler route back to the Tower via Bica Santa. And he had just passed the hamlet of Cerdal, when, on a sharp bend in the road, next to a grove of holm oaks, he almost ran into Dr Júlio, who was also on horseback and also making a tour of the district, wearing an alpaca jacket and bathed in sweat under his green sunshade. They both reined in their horses and greeted each other in friendly terms:
‘Good to see you, Senhor Dr Júlio.’
‘Likewise, Senhor Gonçalo Ramires.’
‘Out electioneering?’
Dr Júlio shrugged and said:
‘What do you expect, sir, since others got me into this. But you know how it will end. It will end with me, on Sunday, voting for you, sir.’
The Nobleman laughed, and both men leaned over to shake hands with genuine pleasure and respect.
‘What do you think of this heat, then, Senhor Dr Júlio?’
‘Horrendous, Senhor Gonçalo Ramires. And such a bore too!’
Thus the Nobleman spent that week visiting his electorate — ‘the great and the small’. And two days before the Election, on a Friday evening, when the weather had turned a little cooler, he set off for Oliveira, where, on the previous day, André Cavaleiro had arrived after his long and much-discussed sojourn in Lisbon.
At the Casa dos Cunhais, as soon as he had jumped down from the caleche, he was infuriated to learn from João the porter that the Lousada sisters were upstairs, visiting Senhora Dona Graça.
‘Have they been here long?’
‘A good half hour, sir.’
Gonçalo crept surreptitiously up to his room, thinking, ‘The shameless hussies! André returns to Oliveira, and immediately they’re on the snoop.’ He had already washed and changed into his grey suit when Barrolo appeared, breathless and beaming, in his frockcoat and top hat, his cheeks even pinker than usual.
‘Well, aren’t you the dandy!’ said Gonçalo.
‘It’s like magic!’ cried Barrolo, after embracing Gonçalo, and then embracing him again with unexpected fervour. ‘I just this minute sent you a telegram, asking you to come.’
‘Why?’
Barrolo stifled a laugh, which lit up his plump face:
‘Why? Oh, nothing. I mean, because of the Election — which is, of course, the day after tomorrow! Cavaleiro arrived yesterday, in fact, I’ve just come back from seeing him. I was at the palace with the bishop, and then I went over to see Cavaleiro. He’s looking wonderful. He’s trimmed his moustache and seems younger somehow. And he brings news, great news!’
Barrolo rubbed his hands so gleefully, his eyes and face shining with such pleasure, that the Nobleman eyed him curiously:
‘Listen, Barrolo, have you got some good news to tell me?’
Barrolo stepped back and roundly denied this, like someone slamming a door shut. Him? No! He knew of no such news, only that the Election was imminent, and the vote on his estate was going to be phenomenal!
‘Ah,’ murmured Gonçalo. ‘And Gracinha?’
‘Gracinha doesn’t know anything either.’
‘What do you mean, man? I simply wanted to know how she is.’
‘Oh, she’s with the Lousada sisters. The vile creatures have been here forever, talking about the bazaar being held at the new poorhouse, another of those wretched bazaars. Anyway, Gonçalo, are you staying until Sunday?’
‘No, I have to go back tomorrow to the Tower.’
‘Oh!’
‘It’s the day of the Election, man, and I need to be at home, in my own parish, with my parishioners.’
‘That’s a shame,’ muttered Barrolo. ‘Because then you’d have found out at the same time as the Election. And I would have put on a tremendous supper.’
‘Found out what?’
Barrolo fell silent, still beaming, his cheeks ablaze. Then, swaying from one foot to the other, he stammered:
‘Found out . . . oh, nothing. The result, the count. And then feasting and fireworks! I’ll be opening a barrel of wine at Murtosa.’
Then Gonçalo put his arm around Barrolo’s shoulder and said cheerfully:
‘Come on, Barrolinho, out with it. You’ve obviously got some good news to tell your brother-in-law.’
Barrolo slipped from his grasp, protesting loudly. What a persistent fellow he was! There was nothing to tell. André hadn’t said a word.
‘Fine,’ concluded the Nobleman, certain that some pleasant mystery was in the air. ‘Let’s go downstairs, then. And if those bloodsuckers are still there, send in the butler to tell Gracinha, loud and clear, that I have arrived and wish to speak to her at once in my room. One shouldn’t be polite to such monsters.’
Barrolo said hesitantly:
‘The bishop seems to like them. And he was very charming to me just now.’
As they were going down the stairs, however, they heard the sound of the piano and Gracinha’s lilting voice. Free of the Lousada sisters, she was singing an old patriotic song from the Vendée, which, when they were children, she and Gonçalo used to sing with great emotion, whenever they felt filled with a noble, romantic love for the Bourbons and the Stuarts:
Monsieur d’Charette a dit à ceux d’Ancenis:
‘Mes amis!’
Monsieur d’Charette a dit à ceux d’Ancenis . . .
Gonçalo slowly pushed aside the door curtain and completed the line, holding one arm aloft like a flag, ‘Mes amis, le roi va ramener la Fleur de Lys!’
Gracinha jumped up from the piano stool in surprise.
‘We weren’t expecting you! I assumed you’d spend the Election at the Tower. Is everything all right there?’
‘Yes, everything’s fine, but I’ve been terribly busy. I had to finish off my Novella, and then there were voters to be visited.’
Barrolo, who kept pacing about the room, interrupted them, wearing the same repressed smile:
‘Do you know, Gracinha, ever since he arrived, he’s been seething with curiosity. He thinks I have some good news, some important news to tell him. But I don’t know anything, apart from the fact that the Election is on Sunday. Isn’t that so, Gracinha?’
Gonçalo very gravely pinched his sister’s chin:
‘Come on, tell me.’
She smiled, blushing. She didn’t know anything . . . only about the Election.
‘Come on, out with it!
‘Really, I don’t know anything. It’s just some nonsense of José’s.’
Then, seeing her wan, wavering smile, which threatened to confess all, Barrolo could contain himself no longer and he exploded like a mortar. All right, yes, there was some big news, but André, who’d brought it with him from Lisbon, hot off the press so to speak, wanted to be the one to surprise Gonçalo.
‘So I really can’t tell you. I promised André. Gracinha knows, because I told her yesterday, but she can’t tell you either, she promised too. Only André can tell you. He’s joining us after supper, and then the bomb will burst, because it is a bomb, and a big one too.’
Despite his intense curiosity, Gonçalo merely shrugged and murmured:
‘I know. It’s an inheritance, isn’t it? Well, here’s fifteen tostões, Barrolo, for being the bearer of good news!’
During supper, though, and afterwards, in the living room, while they were drinking coffee and Gracinha was playing more old patriotic songs, Jacobite ones this time, in praise of the Stuarts, Gonçalo couldn’t wait for Cavaleiro to appear. He wasn’t even concerned that there might be a degree of bitterness and concealed contempt in that meeting. All his rage against Cavaleiro, ignited on that painful afternoon outside the gazebo and ruminated over at the Tower for many a long, tormenting day, had gradually dissipated after his touching conversation with his sister, on the morning of his historic fight at Grainha. Shedding pure, honest tears, Gracinha had sworn to remain reserved and withdrawn. In leaving Oliveira, André had also shown praiseworthy resistance to the emotions or the sheer vanity that had led him astray. Besides, he could not again break with Cavaleiro, since the very public reconciliation that had brought Cavaleiro back into the bosom of the family was still the subject of much gossip and speculation in Oliveira. And what was the point of all that anger and hurt? No amount of bluster on his part would wipe out the evil that had taken place in the gazebo, if, that is, it did take place. Thus all his anger at André had dissolved in his light, gentle soul, where feelings, especially those of the darker, heavier variety, always vanished like clouds in a summer sky.
However, when, at around nine o’clock, Cavaleiro came into the room, looking languid and magnificent, his moustache trimmer but more ornately curled, a strident red cravat puffing out above his puffed-up chest, Gonçalo felt a renewed aversion for all that hollow insolence, and when Cavaleiro folded him in an extravagantly tender embrace, he could only bring himself to pat his old friend rather feebly on the back. While André played with his pale gloves and leaned idly back in the armchair that Barrolo fondly brought over for him, and kept up a constant chatter about Lisbon and Cascais — such fun! — and about games of bridge and the Parade and the King, Gonçalo was reliving that afternoon outside the gazebo, the coarse, pleading words spoken by those bold moustachioed lips, and he fell silent, as if turned to stone, nervously chewing on his burned-out cigar. Gracinha, on the other hand, remained calm and attentive, her cheeks pale and not aflame with blushes, with no tell-tale fumbling over words or gestures, she was merely rather serious, in a rehearsed and practised way. Then André remarked casually that he’d be going back to Lisbon after the Election, because his uncle Reis Gomes, José Ernesto and other cruel friends were loading onto his shoulders all the work involved in the new administrative reforms.
Although he and Gracinha were separated only by a small rug, it was as if, between them, a very deep ditch had been dug, into which their summer romance had plunged to its death, and on their faces there was not a flicker of that past passion. And Gonçalo, quietly content with this appearance, finally managed to get up out of the chair in which he had turned to stone, light his cigar on the candle on the piano, and enquire after mutual Lisbon friends. According to Cavaleiro, they were all longing for him to arrive.
‘Oh, yes, I met up with Castanheiro too. He’s absolutely thrilled with your Novella. It seems that, as an historical reconstruction, nothing can compare, not even the work of Herculano or Rebelo. Castanheiro actually prefers your epic realism to Flaubert’s in Salammbô. Anyway, as I say, he’s thrilled. And we, of course, are burning for that sublime work to be published.’
The Nobleman blushed deeply, murmuring, ‘What nonsense!’ Then he brushed past the armchair in which André was sitting and gently patted André’s broad shoulder:
‘You’ve been much missed, old man. I thought of you when I rode past Corinde the other day.’
Barrolo, scarlet-cheeked and bouncing restlessly about the room with a mute, eager smile ever on his lips, kept looking now at Cavaleiro and now at Gonçalo, until, at last, he could stand it no longer:
‘Right, that’s enough of a prologue, let’s get to the big surprise, André. I’ve been bursting to tell him all evening. I promised to say nothing though, and I kept my word, but I can’t hold it in any longer. So let’s get on with it. And you, Gonçalinho, prepare to give me those fifteen tostões.’
Gonçalo’s curiosity bubbled into life again, but he merely smiled nonchalantly and said:
‘Yes, apparently you have some very good news for me.’
Cavaleiro still didn’t move from his armchair, but merely stretched his arms.
‘It’s a very simple matter, nothing could be more natural really. Senhora Dona Graça knows already, of course. It’s not such a big surprise. As I say, nothing could be more legitimate, more natural!’
Impatient now, Gonçalo cried:
‘Out with it, then. Speak.’
Cavaleiro droned indolently on. The really surprising thing was that no one had thought of doing something so very deserved, so very right, before. Wouldn’t Senhora Dona Graça agree?
Furious, Gonçalo roared:
‘For heaven’s sake, what is it?’
Cavaleiro rose slowly from the armchair, tugged at his shirt cuffs and, standing silently before Gonçalo, puffing out his chest, he began gravely, almost officially:
‘My Uncle Reis Gomes and José Ernesto both came up with this most natural of ideas; they then told the King, and the King approved. Indeed, he approved so heartily that he wanted to claim the idea as his own and wished he had thought of it first. So now it is the King’s idea alone. The King, then, thought, as did we, that one of the foremost Noblemen of Portugal, if not the foremost, should have a title that would confirm the illustrious antiquity of his House, and confirm too, the superior qualities of the person who now represents that House. That is why, my dear Gonçalo, I can today announce, almost on the King’s behalf, that you are to be made Marquis de Treixedo.’
‘Bravo! Bravo!’ thundered Barrolo, applauding wildly. ‘You’d better give me those fifteen tostões now, Marquis!’
Gonçalo’s slender face flushed scarlet. He felt instantly that the title was a gift from Cavaleiro not to the head of the House of Ramires, but to Gracinha’s complaisant, obliging brother. He also felt the inappropriateness of it, that an empty title, published in the Government lists, should be bestowed on the head of a family ten centuries old — the mother of whole dynasties, one of the founders of the Kingdom, more than thirty of whose menfolk had died in armed battle — as if he were a mere nouveau-riche shopkeeper who had bought a few votes. He nodded to Cavaleiro, who was expecting effusive cries of gratitude and embraces. ‘Marquis de Treixedo, hmm. How elegant, how nice!’ Gonçalo said. Then, with a smile that was, at once, amused and amazed, ‘But on what authority does the King make me Marquis de Treixedo?’
Cavaleiro looked up, offended and surprised:
‘On what authority? Well, the authority he has over us all, as King of Portugal, which, praise God, he still is!’
And Gonçalo, very simply, with no show of pomp or pride, and still smiling that faintly amused smile, said:
‘Forgive me, Andrezinho. My ancestors had a house in Treixedo long before there were any kings of Portugal, long before there was a Portugal. I approve of exchanges of noble gifts between great Noblemen, but it is up to the oldest of them to begin. The King has an estate near Beja, I believe, called Roncão. Well, tell the King that I take enormous pleasure in making him Marquis do Roncão.’
Barrolo stood open-mouthed and uncomprehending, his fat cheeks sagging and deflated. From her place on the sofa, Gracinha, blushing furiously, glowed with pleasure at that show of pride which so chimed with her own and brought her still closer to her beloved brother. André Cavaleiro was clearly furious, but he bowed his head in ironic submission, merely murmuring, ‘Fine! To each his own.’
Then the butler came in bearing the tea tray.
And on Sunday, it was the Election.
Still distrustful, still maintaining a superstitious reserve, the Nobleman wanted to spend the day very much alone, almost hidden away, and on the Saturday, while all his friends in Vila Clara, and even those in Oliveira, assumed he would be ensconced at the Casa dos Cunhais, and in constant, frantic communication with the governor, he, instead, got on his horse at dusk and trotted quietly off to Santa Ireneia.
Barrolo (still shaken by Gonçalo’s absurd reaction, so insulting to Cavaleiro and to the King!) had been given the task of sending telegrams to the Tower as the votes came in, as soon as the governor was notified. And with noisy zeal, immediately after mass, a constant stream of tireless servants went to and fro between the Casa dos Cunhais and the former monastery of São Domingos. In the dining room, Gracinha, assisted by Father Soeiro, lovingly copied out in a very round hand all the telegrams sent by Cavaleiro, who occasionally added an affectionate note, ‘Everything going swimmingly!’ ‘Victory is in sight.’ ‘Congratulations all round!’
The telegram boy hobbled incessantly back and forth along the road from Vila Clara to the Tower. And each time, Bento would burst into the library, crying, ‘Another telegram, sir.’ And Gonçalo, seated nervously at his desk with a huge pot of tea before him, the tray already filled with half-smoked cigarettes, would read out the telegram to Bento, who would then run, cheering, down the corridor, to carry the good news to Rosa.
And so it went on until around eight o’clock, when the Nobleman finally agreed to have some supper — knowing that he had scored a magnificent victory. What impressed him, on rereading the telegrams, was the affectionate enthusiasm of those influential people, some of whom he had barely spoken to, and who were transforming the Election process almost into an act of love. The whole parish of Bravais had marched to the church, in closed ranks like an army, with José Casco at their head, bearing an enormous flag, between two clamorous drums. The Viscount de Rio-Manso had ridden into the forecourt of the Ramilde church in his carriage, accompanied by his granddaughter dressed all in white, followed by an imposing line of char-à-bancs crammed with voters shaded from the sun by leafy branches. In Finta, every farm was deserted, with the women decked out in all their gold jewellery, the boys with a flower tucked behind one ear, hurrying to elect the Nobleman, accompanied by strumming guitars, as if on a holy pilgrimage. And outside Pintainho’s tavern, opposite the church, the people of Veleda, Riosa and Cercal had erected an arch made of boxwood, with a sign written in red letters on a piece of cloth, ‘Long live our Ramires, the finest of men!’
Then, while he was having his supper, one of the gardeners returned from Vila Clara in a state of high excitement, describing the joy in the streets, with bands playing, flags flying outside the club, and, above the door at the Town Hall, a picture of Gonçalo being cheered by the crowd.
Gonçalo quickly drank his coffee. Out of shyness and afraid of those celebrating crowds, he hadn’t dared go into Vila Clara to see what was happening. Instead, he lit a cigar and went out onto the balcony to breathe in that sweet, festive night so full of noise and lights, and all in his honour too. When he opened the door, though, he almost drew back in alarm. The Tower was lit up! A glow emanated from inside the deep arrow slits, through the black iron bars, and around the very top, above the old battlements, there was a crown of lights. This was a surprise prepared, with delicious secrecy, by Bento and Rosa and the gardeners, who were all now standing in the darkness beneath the balcony, contemplating their work, which was lighting up the tranquil sky. Hearing muffled footsteps and Rosa clearing her throat, Gonçalo called gaily down from the balcony:
‘Bento! Rosa! Is anyone there?’
There was a small explosion of laughter, then Bento’s white jacket emerged out of the shadows.
‘Did you want something, sir?’
‘No, I just wanted to say thank you. This is your work, isn’t it? The lights look lovely, so beautiful. Thank you, Bento. Thank you, Rosa! Thank you, boys! It must look really superb from far off.’ Bento, however, was not satisfied with those dim lights. To really stand out, the Tower needed gas lights. It was so high, though, and the terrace at the top was vast.
Gonçalo felt a sudden desire to climb up to that vast terrace. He hadn’t been inside the Tower since he was a student, and he had never liked the interior, so dark and entirely built of granite, as bare and silent and cold as a tomb, and on the ground floor, there were those iron trapdoors that led down to the dungeons. Now, though, the lights in the arrow slits were breathing warmth and life into that last remnant of the Castle of Ordonho Mendes. It would, he thought, be interesting to be up there among the battlements, higher than on his dining room balcony, and to absorb that scattering of sympathetic murmurings rolling in from the various parishes and rising up to him through the night like incense. He pulled on a jacket and went down to the kitchen. Greatly amused, Bento and Joaquim the gardener immediately grabbed a couple of large lanterns, and together the three of them went into the orchard, through the low, squat postern door, and began to climb the narrow stone steps, polished and worn smooth by many iron soles.
Any memory of precisely what position that tower had occupied in the complicated fortifications of Honra de Santa Ireneia had been lost centuries ago. It was definitely not (according to Father Soeiro) the barbican or the keep, where any treasure was kept, along with the archives and the precious sacks of spices from the Orient, so perhaps, obscure and nameless, it had merely defended one particular corner of the wall, on the side where the castle looked out over the cultivated fields and the elm trees growing along the banks of the stream. Having outlived the other loftier constructions and been incorporated into the beautiful palace that was later erected on the ruins of the sombre Afonsine castle, and which had dominated Santa Ireneia during the Avis Dynasty, it was still linked by a pale, elegant arcade to the Italianate palace into which Vicente Ramires had transformed the Manueline palace after his successful campaigns in Castile; alone in the orchard, but looming over the mansion that had slowly been built after the palace burned down during the reign of King José, and definitely the last part of the castle to have rung to the clank of weapons and the tread of Ramires soldiers, it connected all those different ages, and its eternal stones somehow maintained the unity of that long lineage. That is why the ordinary people referred to it vaguely as ‘The Tower of Dom Ramires’. And still under the influence of the ancestors and the times he had revived in his Novella, Gonçalo felt a new respect for its vastness, its strength, its steep steps, its thick walls, so thick that, in the dim light of the little oil lamps with which Bento had brought them back to life, the arrow slits resembled corridors. He stopped on each of the three storeys, peering curiously, and yet almost familiarly, into the bare, echoing rooms, with their vast paved floors and dark, vaulted ceilings, their stone benches, the strange hole in the middle of the room, as round as a well, the smoke-stained walls and the rings that had once held the torches. Up above, on the vast terrace illuminated by the lines of lanterns fixed to the battlements, Gonçalo, turning up his collar in the cooler air, had the sudden overwhelming sense that, in a fatherly way, he somehow dominated the whole province, simply because of his Tower’s sovereign height and age, older by far than the province and the Kingdom. He walked slowly round the battlements as far as the lookout point, where an oil lamp placed on a wicker chair placed opposite an arrow slit rather spoiled the feudal atmosphere. In the soft, slightly misty sky, a few dull stars were shining. Down below, the garden, the wide fields and the dense woods merged into the shadows. In the silence and darkness, though, sometimes as far away as Bravais, distant fireworks flickered. A yellowish, smoky glow heading towards Finta was probably a torchlit procession. A faint, tremulous light could be seen on the top of the tall church of Veleda. Other lights filtered through the trees, stippling the old archway of the monastery in Santa Maria de Craquede. Occasionally, the faint sound of drums rose up from the dark earth. And what the lights and torches and muffled drumming signified was that ten parishes were lovingly celebrating the Nobleman of the Tower, who received their love and homage atop his tower, surrounded by silence and darkness.
Bento and Joaquim had gone down to refill the guttering lamps in the arrow slits. Alone and having finished his cigar, Gonçalo resumed his slow patrol of the battlements, unable to shake off the thought that had been dogging him during the whole of that strangely troubling Sunday. He was popular! In all those villages caught in the long shadow of the Tower, the Nobleman of that Tower was popular! And this knowledge did not fill him with joy or pride — rather, in the quiet of the night, it filled him with confusion and regret. Ah, if only he had known, how he would have walked, head held high, arms outstretched, alone and confident and smiling, towards all that affection so freely given. But, no, he had always believed that those villages were utterly indifferent to him, despite his ancient name, that he was just the lad who had returned from Coimbra to live quietly off his rents and go for the occasional rural ride. He had never imagined that what he assumed to be their perfectly natural indifference would provide him with enough votes to enter politics, where he would earn with his intelligence what the old Ramires men had merely inherited — money and power. That’s why he had so eagerly grasped Cavaleiro’s hand, the hand of the governor who, as his good friend, could show him off and promote him as the right man, the Government’s favourite, the best of the best, to whom the parishes should, one Sunday, give him their votes.
And in his impatience to gain that favour, he had smothered the memory of bitter injuries; before the astonished eyes of Oliveira he had embraced the man he had hated for years, whom he had mocked and criticised in public and in the newspapers; he had facilitated the resurrection of feelings that should have been left forever buried and had plunged the person he loved most, his poor, weak little sister, into moral misery and confusion. So many stupid, harmful blunders and to what end? To steal a handful of votes that ten parishes would have rushed joyfully to give him anyway, cheering and letting off fireworks, if he had merely asked them.
That was it. It was that lack of confidence, that craven lack of confidence in himself that had been the bane of his life since he was a schoolboy. It was that same wretched lack of confidence, which, only weeks before, had made him flee — trembling and cursing his own cowardice — from a shadow, a raised stick, a jeering laugh from a tavern window. Finally, one day, at a bend in the road, he had taken a step forward, raised his whip and discovered his own strength! And now he had gone among the people, shyly clasping the governor’s powerful hand, because he thought himself so unpopular, only to find that he was, it seemed, hugely popular. How foolish he had been and how that ignorance had soiled his life!
Bento had still not returned, busily making sure that all the arrow slits were properly illuminated. Gonçalo threw down his cigar end and, hands in his jacket pocket, gazed absentmindedly up at the stars. The mist had thinned and almost vanished, bright lights were shining in that now much deeper sky. From the stars and the skies came the sense of the infinite, of eternity, that so pierces souls unaccustomed to looking at them. The wonder and horror of those eternal vastnesses, beneath which our low, dark human dust vainly struts its hour, fleetingly passed through Gonçalo’s soul. In the distance, a last firework flickered, then was gone in the serene darkness. The little lights on the church in Veleda and the archway of Santa Maria de Craquede were also dying. The remote murmur of music had stopped too, submerged in the deep silence of the sleeping fields. The day of victory was ending, as brief as those lights and fireworks. And standing there motionless, Gonçalo was pondering the value of the victory he had so longed for and for which he had so abased himself. He was a deputy! The deputy for Vila Clara, like Sanches Lucena before him. And given that tiny, trivial result, all his desperate, unscrupulous efforts seemed not so much immoral as risible. A deputy! Whatever for? To have lunch at the Hotel Bragança, to take a cab up the hill to São Bento, and to sit at his desk inside that grubby convent scribbling a letter to his tailor, yawning at the inanity of the men and ideas around him, and, either in silence or else bleating, distractedly following all the other parliamentary sheep, having deserted the identical flock led by Brás Vitorino. Yes, perhaps one day, through low intrigue, by grovelling to some high-up personage or the high-up personage’s wife, by smiling and making promises to newspaper editors, or giving some fiery speech, he might become a minister. And then what? The same cab going up the hill to São Bento, with the post boy behind him on his white nag, the ill-fitting uniform for official occasions, and the toadying smiles of amanuenses in the dark corridors of the ministry, and mud being flung at him from every opposition newspaper. Ah, what a dull, uninteresting life, in comparison with the other full, proud lives pulsating beneath those twinkling stars! While he, the new deputy for Vila Clara, was there in his overcoat, clutching his miserable little triumph, Thinkers were coming up with a complete explanation for the universe; Artists were producing works of eternal beauty; Reformers were perfecting social harmony; Saints were in their saintly fashion improving souls; Physiologists were easing human suffering; Inventors were improving the wealth of nations; magnificent Adventurers were dragging whole worlds out of their sterility and silence . . . Ah, they were real men, who truly and deliciously lived life to the full, tirelessly shaping humanity into fairer, more beautiful shapes. Oh to be like them, those superhumans! Did such supreme actions require Genius, the gift which, like the ancient flame, descends from God onto the chosen one’s head? No! Only a clear understanding of human realities and a strong will.
And the Nobleman of the Tower, stockstill on the top of his Tower, between the brilliantly starry sky and the pitch-black earth, thought long and hard about the Superior Life, until, swept away, as if all the energy of his long lineage were being channelled through the Tower directly into his heart, he imagined himself finally setting off to create a vast, fruitful life, in which he would enjoy the sheer joy of living, a new life that would add new lustre to the old lustre of the family name and gild it with pure gold, and one that would earn him the praise of his whole country, because he had done all he could to serve it.
Bento appeared at the door, carrying a lantern:
‘Are you staying up here much longer, sir?’
‘No, Bento, the party’s over.’
At the beginning of December, The Tower of Dom Ramires appeared in the first issue of Annals. And every newspaper, even those supporting the opposition, praised ‘this masterly study (in the words of A Tarde), which, while revealing the talents of both a scholar and an artist, continues, in a more modern and colourful style, the work of Herculano and Rebelo, namely, the moral and social recreation of our old, heroic Portugal’. After the Christmas celebrations, which he spent happily at the Casa dos Cunhais, helping Gracinha make cod rissoles from a sublime recipe given them by Father José Vicente of Finta, his friends in Oliveira, the lads from the club and the Café da Arcada, held a banquet in honour of the new deputy for Vila Clara in the Town Hall, which they adorned with decorative box-trees and flags; among the guests was Cavaleiro, wearing his Grand Cross; and the Baron das Marges, who presided over the meal, saluted ‘this excellent young man, who soon, from the seat of power, might well lift this valiant country out of the mire with the vigour and courage proper to his noble lineage.’
In the middle of January, on a wild, rainy night, Gonçalo left for Lisbon, and throughout the winter, his name was constantly being mentioned in the gossip columns of Carnet-Mondain and High-Life, in any reports of suppers, social gatherings, pigeon-shoots or hunting trips with the King, down to the smallest detail of his elegant life, so much so that the Barrolos took out a subscription to the Diário Ilustrado hoping to find out when he would next be seen strolling down the Avenue. At the club in Vila Clara, João Gouveia would shrug and mutter, ‘The fellow’s turned out to be nothing but a dandy.’ However, towards the end of April, a piece of news shook Vila Clara, and alarmed the boys in the Café da Arcada in quiet Oliveira, and so shocked Gracinha — who was in Amarante at the time with Barrolo — that they both set off for Lisbon that very night, while at the Tower, it caused Rosa to slump down on the stone bench in the kitchen, her face bathed in uncomprehending tears, sobbing:
‘Ah, my dear boy, my own dear boy — I’ll never see him again!’
Without a word to anyone, almost secretively, Gonçalo Mendes Ramires had leased a huge tract of land in Macheque in Zambia, mortgaged his historic Treixedo estate, and was setting off with Bento for Africa at the beginning of June on the steamship Portugal.