Yawning and adjusting his baggy silk trousers to stop them slipping down, Gonçalo — afflicted by a slight ache in the small of his back and having spent the whole day lounging on the blue damask sofa — slouched languidly across the room to peer out at the Chinese lacquer clock in the corridor. Half past five! He considered going for a walk along the shady road to Bravais, just to clear his head. Or perhaps he should pay a visit (as he had been intending to do since Easter!) to old Sanches Lucena, who, in the General Election in April, had once again been elected deputy in the constituency of Vila Clara. The journey to Feitosa, Sanches Lucena’s estate, would mean an hour’s ride though, and that could prove uncomfortable with that nagging pain in his lower back, which had come on the previous evening, after he had taken tea at the club in town. Undecided about what to do, he was walking slowly along the corridor in order to call Bento or Rosa and ask them to bring him some lemonade, when, in through the open verandah windows, came a loud, metallic voice, which grew louder the more jocular the tone, filling the whole courtyard with the hollow regular rhythm of a hammer hammering:
‘Oh Senhor Gonçalo! Oh Senhor Gonçalo! Oh Senhor Gonçalíssimo Mendes Ramires!’
He instantly recognised the voice of Titó, or António Vilalobos, his distant relative and old friend from Vila Clara, where that excellent, stout fellow of old Alentejo stock had moved for no other reason than his bucolic fondness for the town.
For eleven years now he had filled the place with his imposing limbs, the slow thunder of his booming voice, and with his idleness, which overflowed onto benches, street corners, the doorways of shops and taverns, sacristies where he would sit arguing with the priests, and even into the cemetery where he would spend time philosophising with the gravedigger. His brother — eldest son and heir of the Cidadelhe family (the aforementioned genealogist) — who had provided Titó with an allowance of eight moedas just to keep him away from Cidadelhe, from his own grubby harem of country lasses and (it was hoped) from the somewhat perverse task on which he had now embarked, namely, The Real Inquisition, an enquiry into the bastard lines, sundry sins and illegitimate titles of the noble families of Portugal. And Gonçalo had loved Titó, that kindly Hercules, ever since his student days in Coimbra, seduced by his prodigious strength, his incomparable ability to drink a whole barrel of beer and devour a whole lamb, and, most of all, by his supreme independence of mind, backed up by the very large cane he carried and by that allowance, those eight moedas safe in his pocket, which meant that he feared nothing and wanted nothing either on Earth or in Heaven. Gonçalo leaned over the balcony and shouted:
‘Come up, Titó! Come upstairs while I get dressed. You can have a glass of gin and then we can walk to Bravais together.’ Seated on the edge of the round, waterless pool in the centre of the courtyard and looking up at the great house, Titó — his broad, frank, sunburned face framed by a thick, reddish beard — was slowly fanning himself with an old straw hat:
‘No, I can’t, I’m afraid. But listen, do you want to come and have supper at Gago’s with me and João Gouveia? Videirinha’s coming too and bringing his guitar. We’ve got ourselves a huge mullet, an enormous one, that I bought this morning for five tostões from a woman on the coast. Cooked by Gago himself! What do you think? Gago’s going to open a new barrel of wine from the Abbot of Chandim. It’s a local wine and very good stuff indeed.’
And Titó very delicately tweaked his own ear to indicate that he knew what he was talking about. Gonçalo, still pulling on his trousers, was unsure.
‘My stomach’s been a bit delicate lately. And ever since last night I’ve had a pain in my kidneys or my liver or my spleen or one of those organs! I was planning to have nothing for supper but some chicken broth and a bit of broiled chicken. Oh, but what the hell — tell Gago to prepare me just a small piece of roast chicken . . . Where shall we meet? At the club?’
Titó stood up and positioning his straw hat on the back of his head, said:
‘No, I’m not going to the club tonight. I have a lady to see. Meet me by the fountain between ten and half past. Videirinha will be there with his guitar. Between ten and half past. Don’t forget! And I’ll order a little roast chicken for the gentleman with the bad back!’
And with that he walked with bovine slowness back across the courtyard, pausing by the bush growing next to the door to pick a rose, which he then stuck in the buttonhole of his olive-green velvet jacket.
Gonçalo had immediately decided not to bother with supper at home, convinced of the benefits of fasting until ten o’clock, after a brisk walk to Bravais and along the Riosa valley. And before going back into his room to get dressed, he called for Rosa the cook, but neither she nor Bento responded — for he had bellowed out Bento’s name too — in the heavy silence of those shadowy paved depths, under the great vaulted ceilings, which were all that remained of the old palace, restored by Vicente Ramires after his campaign in Castile, but later put to the torch by King José I. Then Gonçalo went down two of the worn stone steps and thundered out another cry that echoed round the Tower — now that the bells no longer worked. And he was just about to continue on into the kitchen, when Rosa appeared. She had gone out into the garden with Crispola’s daughter and hadn’t heard him.
‘I’ve been calling for about an hour! But you and Bento are nowhere to be found! It’s simply to say that I won’t need any dinner tonight. I’m going to eat in Vila Clara with friends.’
Standing in the echoing depths of the corridor, Rosa looked most alarmed. ‘But, Senhor Doutor, aren’t you going to eat anything at all until late in the night?’ The daughter of a former gardener at the Tower, she had grown up there and was already the cook when Gonçalo was born, and she had always addressed him as ‘young master’ or even ‘my dear’ until he left for Coimbra and became, for her and for Bento, Senhor Doutor. And the Senhor Doutor should, at the very least, have a little chicken broth, which she had been slowly cooking since noon and which smelled positively divine!
Gonçalo consented — for he never disagreed with any decision made by Rosa or Bento — and was already going back up the steps, when he demanded to know about Crispola, a poor widow who, with a whole troupe of starving children to feed, had fallen ill with a terrible fever at Easter time.
‘She’s much better, Senhor Doutor. She’s out of bed now, that’s what her daughter told me. But she’s still very weak.’
Gonçalo came down another step, leaning on the banister so as to immerse himself more deeply in that sorry tale.
‘Listen, Rosa, if the little one’s still there, poor thing, why doesn’t she take home the chicken I was going to have for dinner. And the broth too. Yes, let her take the whole panful! I can just have some tea and biscuits. Oh, and send Crispola ten tostões as well. No, make that two mil-réis! But don’t just send her the chicken and the money without a word. Say that I hope she continues to make a steady recovery and that I’ll drop in soon to see how she is. And tell Bento to bring me up some hot water!’
Standing in his bedroom in his shirtsleeves before a vast mirror supported by two gilded columns, he studied, first, his tongue, which, he thought, seemed somewhat furred, then, fearing some sign of a bilious attack, the whites of his eyes. He ended up contemplating his ‘new look’, for he had shaved off his beard in Lisbon, preserving only a light, curly brown moustache and a small goatee that made his slender, aquiline, still creamy-white face seem even longer. He despaired, however, of his hair, which, although attractively wavy, was very thin, and, despite all the pomades and treatments he used, his parting was growing ever higher and now began almost in the middle of his clear brow.
‘It’s so unfair. I’ll be bald by the time I’m thirty . . .’
He remained standing at the mirror, otherwise pleased with what he saw and recalling what his Aunt Louredo had said in Lisbon, ‘Dear boy, a bright, handsome lad like you shouldn’t go off and bury himself in the provinces! There are no nice young men in Lisbon. We need a good Ramires here!’ No, he wouldn’t bury himself in the provinces, beneath the ivy and the melancholy dust of inert objects, like his Tower! But how could he possibly afford an elegant life in Lisbon, among his historic relatives, with his remaining income of only one thousand eight hundred mil-réis, which was all that was left once he had paid off his father’s debts! And he was really only interested in living in Lisbon if he had some political position — a seat in Parliament, influence in his Party, a slow, certain climb to Power. And what he had so sweetly dreamed of in Coimbra during conversations with friends at the Hotel Mondego now seemed so remote as to be almost unattainable, hidden behind a high, harsh, impenetrable wall, in which there was not a single door. Besides, how could he become a deputy? There would be no General Election for a while, now that the ghastly Baron de São Fulgêncio and the Historicals were firmly entrenched in power for another three whole years. And even if there were a by-election, what chance would he have, given that, ever since his student days in Coimbra — albeit lightheartedly and merely because it was the elegant thing to do — he had always been a Regenerationist, whether in the club at Couraça, in his letters to the Gazeta do Porto, or in his passionate diatribes against the governor, the hateful Cavaleiro? Now all he could do was wait. Wait and work, trying to gain some social substance, wisely building a modest political reputation on the strength of his vast, historic name; and weaving a precious web of ever-wider political alliances from Santa Irenéia to Terreiro do Paço in Lisbon. Yes, the theory was splendid, but how did one go about acquiring real substance, reputation and political allies? ‘Work as a lawyer, write for the newspapers!’ had been the friendly, throw-away advice from his party leader, Brás Vitorino. Work as a lawyer in Oliveira or even in Lisbon itself? No, he couldn’t, not with his innate, almost psychological horror of legal proceedings and paperwork. Set up a newspaper in Lisbon as his fellow resident at Coimbra’s Hotel Mondego, Ernesto Rangel, had done? That was an easy enough task for the adored grandson of Senhora Dona Joaquina Rangel, who had ten thousand barrels of wine stored away in cellars in Vila Nova da Gaia. Battle away as a journalist on a newspaper in Lisbon? During the weeks he had spent in the capital, with all his time taken up by the Mortgage Bank and his cousins, he hadn’t managed to establish any kind of lasting, useful relationship with the big Regenerationist papers, A Manhã and A Verdade. The truth was that, in the wall separating him from wealth and success, he had found only one small chink, tiny but hopeful — the Annals of Literature and History, with its team of professors, politicians, even a minister, and even an admiral, that dreadful bore Guerreiro Araújo. Yes, he would appear along with his Tower in the Annals, revealing his rich imagination and broad knowledge. Then, climbing up from Invention to the more respectable terrain of Erudition, he would write an article (the idea had come to him on the train back from Lisbon!) on the Visigothic Origins of Public Law in Portugal. Naturally he knew nothing about the Visigoths or those Origins, but he could simply cobble together an elegant summary from the wonderful A History of Public Administration in Portugal lent to him by Castanheiro. Then leaping from Erudition to the Social and Pedagogical Sciences, why shouldn’t he compile an excellent, statesmanlike Reform of the Legal Education System in Portugal, in two sizeable instalments? Thus he would advance, building and shaping his literary pedestal, keeping close to the Regenerationists, until they got back into power, and then the triumphal arch he was hoping for would open up in that wall. Standing in the middle of his room in his long johns, his hands on his hips, Gonçalo Mendes Ramires concluded that he really must make haste and write his Novella.
‘But how am I going to finish it? It’s so bogged down, stuck fast, its liver completely shot?’
Bento — an old man with a dark, clean-shaven face and beautiful, curly white hair, and always looking clean and fresh in his cotton jacket — entered slowly, carrying a jug of hot water.
‘Bento, did you find a glass bottle containing some white powder in the suitcase I brought back from Lisbon or in the trunk? It’s an English remedy given to me by Dr Matos . . . the label is in English, with an English name, “fruit salts” or something . . .’
Bento bowed his head, closed his eyes and thought deeply. Yes, in the bathroom, on top of the red trunk, there was a bottle containing some powder. It was wrapped in an ancient sheet of parchment, like the paper in the archives.
‘That’s it!’ cried Gonçalo. ‘When I went to Lisbon, I needed to take certain documents with me because of that wretched business in Praga, and in all the confusion, I took from the archives that perfectly useless piece of parchment. Fetch it for me will you, but be careful with the bottle!’
First, though, Bento painstakingly fastened his master’s agate cufflinks and laid out on the bed a jacket and a pair of neatly pressed trousers made of light cheviot wool. Still gripped by the idea of the articles he would write for the Annals, Gonçalo was standing at the window, leafing through A History of Public Administration in Portugal, when Bento returned with the roll of parchment, from which dangled a lead seal on a tattered bit of ribbon.
‘The very thing!’ exclaimed Gonçalo, throwing the book down on the windowsill. ‘I wrapped the bottle in that roll of parchment so that it wouldn’t get broken. Unwrap it and put it on the chest of drawers. Dr Matos recommended that I take it with warm water on an empty stomach. It fizzes as if it were boiling, but it cleans the blood and clears the head. And I am in great need of a clear head! You have some too, Bento. And tell Rosa to try it as well. Everyone takes fruit salts now, even the Pope!’
Bento had very delicately unwrapped the bottle, spreading out on the marble top of the chest of drawers the stiff parchment on which someone’s sixteenth-century writing lay wrinkled and yellow and dead. Buttoning on his collar, Gonçalo said:
‘And to think I took it with me to sort out that business in Praga! A parchment dating back to the time of King Sebastião . . . All I can make out is the date, fourteen hundred, no, fifteen hundred and seventy-seven. On the eve of the voyage to Africa. Oh well, it kept the bottle safe.’
Bento, who had now taken out a white waistcoat from the drawer, cast a sideways glance at the venerable piece of parchment.
‘It must have been a letter from the King to one of your ancestors . . .’
‘Of course,’ murmured Gonçalo, looking at himself in the mirror. ‘Probably promising him something good, something big. Having a king used to mean having an income too. Now though . . . Ouch, don’t pull the buckle so tight! My stomach’s been terribly distended these last few days. Now, of course, the whole institution of the monarchy is wearing rather thin, Bento.’
‘So it would seem, sir,’ Bento remarked gravely. ‘Even O Século is saying that kings are on the way out, and it could happen any day. That’s what it was saying just yesterday. And O Século is usually pretty well-informed. I don’t know if you read it or not, but in today’s paper there’s an account of Senhor Sanches Lucena’s birthday party, and the fireworks and the banquet they held at Feitosa.’
Lying on the damask sofa, Gonçalo held out his feet so that Bento could lace up his white boots.
‘Sanches Lucena is a complete idiot! What is the point of that man — who’s sixty if he’s a day — what is the point of him being a deputy, spending months at a time in Lisbon, or in Frankfurt, and thereby neglecting his lands and that lovely estate of his. And all for what? So that he can occasionally grunt a “Hear, hear” in Parliament. He should give up his seat to me. I’m brighter than he is, I have no vast estate to keep up, and I enjoy living in the Hotel Bragança in Lisbon. I really should visit him though. Tell Joaquim to have my horse ready at around this time tomorrow, so that I can go to Feitosa and visit the wretched creature. And I’ll wear the new riding outfit I brought from Lisbon, with the long gaiters. I haven’t seen Dona Ana Lucena for more than two years now, and she’s a very pretty woman!’
‘While you were in Lisbon, they rode past in a carriage. They even stopped, and Senhor Sanches Lucena pointed up at the Tower, showing it to his lady wife. She’s very beautiful! She was carrying a gold lorgnette on a long handle and a long gold chain too . . .’
‘Bravo! Soak that handkerchief in eau de Cologne, will you? My head feels so heavy today. Dona Ana was a farm labourer, wasn’t she? A country girl from Corinde?’
Holding the bottle of eau de Cologne suspended in mid-air, Bento stared in astonishment at his master:
‘No, sir! Senhora Dona Ana Lucena is of very low birth indeed. She’s the daughter of a butcher in Ovar. And her brother went on the run because he killed the blacksmith in Ílhavo.’
‘So, to sum up,’ said Gonçalo, ‘a butcher’s daughter with a brother on the run and a beautiful woman with a gold lorgnette. Yes, she definitely deserves my new riding outfit!’
In Vila Clara, at ten o’clock, on one of the stone benches around the fountain, beneath the Judas trees, Titó sat waiting with his friend João Gouveia, the local administrator. They were both silently fanning themselves with their hats, enjoying the cool and the dark and the slow murmur of the water. The town hall clock was striking half past ten when Gonçalo — who had been delayed at the club over a longer than usual game of voltarete — finally arrived, announcing that he was famished, in the grip of ‘the famous Ramires hunger’, and hustling them off to Gago’s, not even allowing Titó to visit the tobacconist’s to buy a bottle of ‘very old and very good’ Madeira brandy.
‘There’s no time for that! To Gago’s — now! If not, in my wild Ramiresian hunger, I’ll gobble one of you up!’
However, no sooner had they set off than he stopped, folded his arms and, looking vastly amused, asked the administrator about his Government’s latest astonishing feat, for his Government, his Historical friends, his honourable friend São Fulgêncio had named — as Governor of Monforte — none other than António Moreno! António Moreno, always so rightly known in Coimbra as Miss Antónia Morena! Truly, the country couldn’t sink much lower than that! To complete the whole harmonious picture, they really should, and with all urgency, appoint Joana Salgadeira as procurator general to the Crown!
João Gouveia, wearing a smart frockcoat and a bowler hat set at a jaunty angle, was a small, very dark, very scrawny man, with a moustache as stiff as a brush, and he did not disagree in the least. As an impartial civil servant, serving the Historicals just as he had the Regenerationists, he always greeted with impartial irony the appointment to the juiciest government posts of any young graduate, Historical or Regenerationist. However, when he heard about this appointment, he had almost thrown up! António Moreno, civil Governor of Monforte! The same man he had so often come across in his room in Coimbra dressed as a woman in a peignoir open at the front and with his pretty little face caked in rice powder! Taking Gonçalo’s arm, he recalled the night when a very drunk José Gorjão, in a top hat and carrying a pistol, had demanded the equally drunk Father Justino to marry him and Antoninho before an image of Our Lady of a Good Death! But Titó, who was impatiently waiting, twirling his cane, declared that if they had time to linger in the street talking about politics and other such indecencies, then he would go to Brito’s and buy that bottle of brandy. Gonçalo, ever the joker, detached himself from João Gouveia’s arm and galloped off down the street, his hands together as if he were holding the reins of a particularly high-spirited horse.
And in Gago’s upper room, at the top of the tavern’s steep, narrow stairs, they enjoyed a very jolly, very tasty supper at the end of a long table lit by a couple of oil lamps. Gonçalo — who declared himself miraculously cured after his walk to Bravais and the excitement of the card game, where he had won nineteen tostões off Manuel Duarte — began with a plate of fried eggs and sausages, devoured half the mullet, laid waste to his invalid’s portion of roast chicken, cleared a whole plate of cucumber salad, and finished off with a couple of blocks of quince jelly; and throughout these noble labours, and with no visible change to his creamy-white complexion, he downed an entire pitcher of Alvaralhão wine, because, much to Titó’s displeasure, he had dismissed the Abbot’s new wine after just one sip. Videirinha appeared just as they were finishing. He was an assistant pharmacist and a poet, famous in Vila Clara as a guitarist and for his love poems and patriotic verses, which had been published in the local paper in Oliveira. Having already dined that evening, along with his guitar, in the house of Comendador Barros — who was celebrating the anniversary of his knighthood — he would accept only one glass of Alvaralhão, in which he dissolved a cube of quince jelly, ‘to help it slide down more easily’. At midnight, Gonçalo insisted that Gago put more wood on the fire and boil them up some coffee, ‘as strong and fierce as you can make it, Gago, a coffee capable of awakening talent even in Comendador Barros’. This was the divine hour of guitar music and fado. Videirinha had already withdrawn to the shadows, clearing his throat, tuning his guitar, and perching in an appropriately melancholy pose on the edge of a tall bench.
‘Sing, Soledad, Videirinha,’ Titó said, thoughtfully rolling himself a plump cigarette.
Videirinha gave a deliciously mournful rendition of Soledad:
When you go to the graveyard,
Soledad, ay, Soledad . . .
He finished the song to loud applause, and while he was again tuning his guitar, Gonçalo and João Gouveia, elbows on the table and smoking their cigars, discussed the sale of Lourenço Marques to the English, a deal done surreptitiously by the present government (at least according to the Opposition press, who, naturally, were atremble with outrage). Gonçalo was equally outraged! Not by the sale of the colony, but by the sheer impudence of São Fulgêncio! That this fat, bald man — the sacrilegious son of a priest who later became a grocer in Cabecelhos — should exchange for filthy lucre — and simply so that he could stay in power for another two years — a piece of Portugal, a piece of their own august land, land trodden by such heroes as da Gama, Ataíde, and Castro, and by his own ancestors, this was an abomination that called for a violent response, even a revolution, and for the House of Bragança to be buried in the mud of the Tejo! Munching his way through some toasted almonds, João Gouveia remarked:
‘Now be fair, Gonçalo, you know perfectly well that the Regenerationists would . . .’
Gonçalo gave a superior smile. Ah, if the Regenerationists were ever involved in such a grandiose undertaking, that would be quite different. Firstly, they would never commit the indecency of selling Portuguese land to the English! They would negotiate with the French, the Italians, with other Latin races, our brothers, then all those round, ringing millions would be used to improve Portugal — intelligently, honestly, wisely, but that ghastly bald man, São Fulgêncio . . .! Having talked himself dry, he called for some gin, because Gago’s brandy was positively poisonous!
Titó shrugged:
‘Look, you wouldn’t let me buy that bottle of Madeira brandy, so you’ll have to put up with it. And the gin here is even more poisonous. Not even good enough for the blacks in Lourenço Marques that you’re so keen to sell off. Call yourself Portuguese, and yet you’re happy to sell your own country. You should ban such conversations, Mr Administrator.’
Mr Administrator, however, declared that he would allow them and unreservedly too, because he, like the Government, would sell off Lourenço Marques, Mozambique and the whole of the East Coast of Africa! He’d auction them off in big chunks! Yes, he’d have the whole of Africa put up for sale and going under the hammer in Terreiro do Paço! And did his friends know why? Based on the sound principle of strong management (he half-stood up at this point, one arm aloft, as if he were addressing Parliament), based on the sound principle that any owner of distant lands, which he can’t fully develop because he lacks either money or workers, should sell them off so that he can mend his own roof, till his own land, buy in new stock, and enrich the good earth beneath his feet. Besides, Portugal had a whole fertile province to cultivate, irrigate, work and sow — the Alentejo!
Titó boomed out his disdain for the Alentejo, as being a place of thin, bad-quality soil, where, apart from a few leagues of land around Beja and Serpa, you’d never be rewarded however hard you worked, why, you only had to scratch the surface to find granite beneath.
‘My brother João has an enormous estate there, which brings him in, what, a mere three hundred mil-réis.’
João Gouveia, who had worked as a lawyer in Mértola, protested angrily that the Alentejo had indeed been abandoned, thanks to centuries of neglect by imbecilic governments, but it was good, rich land, as fertile as you could possibly want!
‘You only have to look at the Moors, but why go that far back? Only days ago, Freitas Galvão was telling me . . .’
Then Gonçalo Mendes, who had spat out the gin, pulling a face, also weighed in, sweepingly dismissing the whole of the Alentejo as an unfortunate illusion!
Leaning over the table, João Gouveia was shouting:
‘Have you ever been to the Alentejo?’
‘I’ve never been to China either, but . . .’
‘Well, then you have no right to talk. There’s the wonderful vineyard that João Maria planted . . .’
‘And that yields him about a hundred barrels of vinegar, not wine. But elsewhere, it’s just leagues and leagues with not a . . .’
‘It’s the breadbasket of Portugal!’
‘More like a barren wilderness!’
Above this tumult, Videirinha continued to pluck away at his guitar in solitary ardour, carried along by the sorrowful words of a fado from Ariosa, weeping over a pair of dark eyes, the twin mistresses of his heart:
Ah, those dark eyes of yours
Will be the ruin of me . . .
The oil in the lamps was burning down, and Gago, when ordered to bring some candles, appeared in his shirtsleeves from behind a cotton curtain, his sly, humble features wreathed in smiles, to remind the gentlemen that it was past one o’clock in the morning. João Gouveia, who hated late nights, which were bad for his throat (his tonsils were highly flammable), pulled out his watch in great alarm. Quickly buttoning up his frockcoat, getting his bowler hat on slightly askew, he tried to chivvy along slow Titó, because they both lived at the other end of the town — Gouveia opposite the Post Office, and Titó in a narrow street nearby, in a house that had once been home to Oporto’s executioner, a man who had been found there, knifed to death.
Titó, however, would not be moved. With his walking stick under his arm, he beckoned Gago over to the shadowy far end of the narrow room, to discuss in whispers the tricky business of buying a rifle, a superb Winchester rifle, which had been pawned by the son of Guedes, the notary public from Oliveira. And when Titó finally got downstairs, he found the Nobleman of the Tower and João Gouveia were standing at the door of the tavern, in the sleeping, moonlit street, and grappling as ever with the thorny topic of the Governor of Oliveira — André Cavaleiro!
It was always the same argument, very personal and very intense, but at the same time vague, with Gonçalo demanding that, please, for the love of God, they should not, in his presence, even mention the name of that Senhor Cavaleiro, the Horseman or, rather, the Horse, that ridiculous despot wreaking havoc in the district! And with João Gouveia, very stiff and starchy, his bowler hat still more askew, speaking up for his friend Cavaleiro’s superior intelligence, declaring that he had brought cleanliness and order to the area, a Hercules cleansing the Augean stables of Oliveira! The Nobleman began positively bellowing with rage. And Videirinha, his guitar on his back, was pleading with his friends to go back into the tavern so as not to disturb the peace.
‘Especially since Dr Venâncio’s mother-in-law, poor thing, lives just opposite, and has been in bed since yesterday with a bad pain in her side.’
‘Well, people shouldn’t go spouting such vile rubbish! How can you, Gouveia, say that Oliveira has never had a governor like Cavaleiro? I’m not just saying that because of my father. He’s been gone for nearly three years now sadly — and I agree he wasn’t good at the job. He was too weak and ill by then, but we’ve had the Viscount de Freixomil. We’ve had Bernardino. You’ve worked with them both. They were proper men. But that Horseman of yours . . . The first condition for a governor is not to be ridiculous. And Cavaleiro is like something out of a comedy! That long troubadour hairstyle of his, that hideous black moustache, and the languid look in his eyes, like some lovesick lover, and his great protruding belly and his bla-dee-bla-bla-bla! Pure farce! He’s stupid — and his stupidity begins in his hooves and rises steadily upwards. The man’s an animal. And a scoundrel to boot.’
Standing rigid in the shadow of the vast Titó, like a stake planted in the ground next to a tower, Gouvéia was biting into his cigar. Then, wagging his finger, he said in cool, cutting tones:
‘Have you quite finished? Well, you listen to me now, Gonçalinho. In the whole of the Oliveira district, and I mean the whole district, there is no one, absolutely no one, who can even remotely rival Cavaleiro in intelligence, character, manners, knowledge and political nous!’
The Nobleman of the Tower fell silent, stunned. Then shaking his fist in unruly, arrogant scorn, he said:
‘Those are the views of a mere subaltern.’
‘And those are the words of a rude lout,’ roared the other man, drawing himself up, his small, prominent eyes ablaze.
Between them appeared Titó’s arm, thicker than a plank and casting a shadow on the pavement:
‘Now, boys, what is all this nonsense? Are you drunk? And you, Gonçalo . . .’
But in one of his typically generous, lovable, infinitely seductive impulses, Gonçalo was already apologising, admitting he had been a brute:
‘Forgive me, João Gouveia, I know perfectly well that you’re defending Cavaleiro out of friendship, not because you’re dependent on him, but what do you expect? Whenever people mention that Horse, I don’t know, maybe it’s by some kind of contagion, but I start neighing and kicking.’
With absolutely no rancour — because he was full of fond admiration for the Nobleman of the Tower — Gouveia immediately forgave his friend, tugged hard at his frockcoat and merely remarked that ‘Gonçalinho is a dear boy, but sometimes there’s a sting in his tail.’ Then, taking advantage of Gonçalo’s submissive mood, he began glorifying Cavaleiro again, albeit in more sober tones. He recognised certain weaknesses, yes, that rather prim manner of his, but what a heart the man had! Gonçalinho really should consider . . .
The Nobleman again rebelled and, drawing back and holding up his hands, said:
‘No, you listen, João Gouveia! Why is it that, upstairs at supper, you didn’t eat any of the cucumber salad? It was delicious, even Videirinha had some. I myself had seconds and finished the lot. Why didn’t you? Because you have a physiological, visceral horror of cucumber. You and cucumber are incompatible. There would be no reasoning you out of that, no subtle arguments could persuade you to eat cucumbers. You can’t doubt that cucumbers are an excellent thing, since so many good people love them, but you can’t touch the stuff. Well, Cavaleiro is to me what cucumber is to you. I simply can’t stand the man. No amount of dressing and no amount of reasoning could disguise him. I find him loathsome. I can’t stomach him. He makes me want to throw up. So listen . . .’
Then, yawning, Titó again intervened:
‘All right, I think we’ve had more than enough of Cavaleiro! We’re all basically decent people and what we need now is to go our separate ways. I’ve enjoyed both a lady and some excellent mullet tonight, and now I’m exhausted. It’ll be morning before we know it!’
Gouveia was horrified. Oh dear God, he had a nine o’clock meeting of the census committee tomorrow! To dispel any lingering ill feeling, he embraced Gonçalo. And as the Nobleman walked down to the fountain with Videirinha (who on these late nights in Vila Clara always accompanied him home along the road to the Tower), João Gouveia, hanging on to Titó’s arm, turned to quote a wise saying ‘by some philosopher or other’:
‘ “It isn’t worth letting bad politics spoil a good supper.” Was it Aristotle who said that?’
And even Videirinha, who was once again tuning his guitar and preparing to sing a solo descant to the moon, murmured respectfully between muted chords:
‘It really isn’t worth it, Senhor Doutor, it really isn’t, because politics is white today and black tomorrow, and then, puff, it’s nothing at all!’
The Nobleman shrugged. Politics! When he slandered Senhor André Cavaleiro of Corinde, it wasn’t the Governor of Oliveira, that figure of authority, he was deriding, no, what he loathed was the man himself, that fake with the languorous eyes! Between them existed one of those deep grudges that once, in the days of Tructesindo, would have had them at each other’s throats, spears at the ready, backed up by their two respective bands of men. As he walked, with the moon high above the hills of Valverde, and while Videirinha’s guitar strummed out the slow, sad fado of Vimioso, Gonçalo was piecing together the story that had rushed in to fill his unoccupied soul. The Ramires and the Cavaleiros were neighbours, one owned the old Tower in Santa Ireneia, older than the Kingdom of Portugal itself, the other owned a well-kept, profitable estate in Corinde. And when, as a lad of eighteen, he was still at school immersed in his tedious pre-university studies, André Cavaleiro (who was, by then, in his third year as an undergraduate) already treated him like a real friend and, in the holidays, he would ride over to the Tower every afternoon on the horse his mother had bought him; and often, beneath the trees in the garden or out walking near Bravais and Valverde, he would confide in Gonçalo — as if Gonçalo were the older man — telling him of his political ambitions, his plans for his life, which he envisaged as being utterly devoted to the State. Gracinha Ramires was in the flower of her sixteen years and, even in Oliveira, people would refer to her as ‘The Rose of the Tower’. At the time, Gracinha’s English governess, kindly Miss Rhodes, was still alive, and she, like everyone else at the Tower, was an enthusiastic admirer of André Cavaleiro, charmed by his friendly manner, his long, wavy, romantic hair, his large, gentle, languid eyes, and the ardent way in which he would quote from Victor Hugo and João de Deus. The same weakness softened both her heart and her principles, which bowed down before sovereign Love, and she allowed André to hold long conversations with Gracinha beneath the Judas trees on the mirador and even for them to exchange letters at the fountain as it grew dark. Cavaleiro would dine at the Tower every Sunday; indeed, the old steward Rebelo had with great effort and much muttering saved up a thousand reis for the young mistress’ trousseau. Gonçalo’s father, then civil governor of Oliveira, was always so busy — as deep in politics as he was deep in debt — that he only appeared at the Tower on Sunday mornings, and he heartily approved of the match, because in his already complicated life, sweet, romantic Gracinha, with no mother to watch over her, was simply another problem, another thing to worry about. André Cavaleiro was not, like him, from a family with a long, long history, pre-dating the Kingdom, nor did he have the rich blood of the Visigoth kings flowing in his veins, but he was from a good family, the son of a general, the grandson of a judge, with a perfectly legitimate coat of arms on his palatial house in Corinde, and the heir to plenty of fertile land, all of it unmortgaged . . . And, as the nephew of Reis Gomes, one of leaders of the Historicals, and a member of the Historical Party since his second year at university, Cavaleiro was clearly heading for a brilliant career in politics and government. And, besides, Gracinha was madly in love with his glossy moustaches, his broad shoulders — like those of a well-brought-up Hercules — and the proud, impressive way he puffed out his chest. She, by contrast, was tiny and fragile, with shy, green eyes that grew moist and languid when she smiled, with clear, porcelain skin, magnificent hair, darker and more lustrous than the tail of any warhorse, hair that came down to her feet, and in which, sweet and tiny as she was, she could wrap her whole body. Whenever she saw the couple strolling together along the paths in the garden, Miss Rhodes (whose mind had been stuffed with mythology by her father, a professor of Greek Literature in Manchester) could not help but think of ‘powerful Mars in love with graceful Psyche’. Even the servants at the Tower marvelled at the lovely couple they made. Only the young man’s fat, bad-tempered mother, Senhora Dona Joaquina Cavaleiro, disapproved of her son’s frequent, courtly visits to the Tower, for no sounder reason than that she ‘didn’t like the look of the girl and wanted a homelier daughter-in-law’. Fortunately, when André Cavaleiro enrolled for his fifth year at university, the disagreeable old woman died of dropsy. Gonçalo’s father received the key to the vault and Gracinha went into mourning; meanwhile, as Cavaleiro’s housemate in Rua de São João in Coimbra, Gonçalo wore a black armband on the sleeve of his gown. In Santa Ireneia, it was assumed that the splendid André, set free from his Mama’s stubborn opposition to the match, would ask Gracinha for her hand as soon as he graduated. However, the moment the graduation ceremony was over, Cavaleiro shot off to Lisbon, because there were to be Elections in October, and his uncle, Reis Gomes, the Minister of Justice, had promised to get him elected deputy of Bragança.
And so André spent all that summer in Lisbon, before moving on to Sintra, where his dark, languorous eyes set many a heart fluttering, and finally, to Bragança, where his almost triumphal arrival was greeted with fireworks and cries of ‘Long live Minister Reis Gomes’s nephew!’ In October, Bragança ‘bestowed on Dr André Cavaleiro (as the local newspaper put it) the right to represent it in Parliament, a man of such vast literary knowledge and magnificent oratorical powers . . .’ He returned then to Corinde, but on his visits to the Tower, where Gonçalo’s father, Vicente Ramires, was recovering from gastric fever, which had only exacerbated his longstanding diabetes, André would no longer, as he used to, eagerly lead Gracinha off into the silent shade of the garden, but chose to stay in the blue living room, talking politics with her father, who was confined now to his armchair, a blanket over his knees. And in her letters to Gonçalo in Coimbra, Gracinha was already bemoaning the fact that André’s visits to the Tower were no longer so sweet or so intimate, ‘preoccupied as he always is now with becoming a deputy’. After Christmas, André returned to Lisbon for the opening of Parliament, fully prepared for his new job, accompanied by his servant Mateus, by a beautiful mare he had bought in Vila Clara from Manuel Duarte, and two boxes of books. Miss Rhodes declared that, as befitted a hero, Mars would only return to claim his Psyche once he had performed some noble feat, his maiden speech in the House, for example, ‘some beautiful, flowery speech’. When Gonçalo returned to the Tower in the Easter holidays, he found Gracinha looking pale and troubled. The letters from André, who had long since made that beautiful, flowery maiden speech, grew shorter and less passionate by the week. And the latest one (which she showed to Gonçalo in secret), written in the Chamber itself, had consisted of a few hastily scrawled lines, saying that he had a lot of committee work to do, that the weather was lovely, that there was to be a ball that night held by the Count and Countess de Vilaverde, and concluding by sending her much love and signing himself ‘your ever-faithful André’. That same evening, Gonçalo unburdened himself to his father, who, still in his armchair, was growing steadily weaker.
‘I think André is behaving appallingly towards Gracinha, don’t you agree?’
Vicente Ramires barely moved, managing only a gesture of sad defeat with a hand grown so thin that his signet ring kept slipping off.
The parliamentary session closed in May, the moment for which Gracinha had been waiting, eager for those politicians ‘to stop talking and have a holiday’. Yet, almost immediately — when Gracinha was in Santa Ireneia and Gonçalo in Coimbra — they read in the newspapers that ‘the talented deputy André Cavaleiro has set off for Italy and France, on a long journey that is to be part holiday and part study’. Just like that, without a word to his chosen one, to his almost-fiancée! This was an outrage, a vile outrage, which once, in the twelfth century, would have brought all the Ramires men, accompanied by horsemen and foot soldiers, thundering down upon the Cavaleiro estate, leaving every roof beam scorched black by flames, and every serf hanged. Mortally ill and wasting away, Vicente Ramires simply murmured, ‘The cad!’ In Coimbra, Gonçalo bellowed with rage, swearing that, one day, he would slap the scoundel’s face! Miss Rhodes consoled herself by dusting off her old harp and filling Santa Ireneia with mournful arpeggios. And it all ended with Gracinha — so griefstricken that, for weeks, she didn’t even bother to comb her hair — shedding secret tears while she sat alone beneath the Judas trees on the mirador.
And even after all these years, whenever he remembered his sister’s tears, Gonçalo was once again filled with such keenly renewed rancour that he struck out with his stick at the bushes growing in the ditches, as if he were beating Cavaleiro’s back! He and Videirinha walked on then by the Portela bridge, with the fields spreading out on either side, and from there they could see Vila Clara, white in the moonlight, all the way from the Convent of Santa Teresa, next to the fountain, to the new wall around the cemetery on the hill with its slender cypresses. In the valley, equally bright in the moonlight, stood the small church of Craquede, Santa Maria de Craquede, the remains of the old monastery in which there still lay, in their rough granite tombs, the mighty bones of the Ramires. Beneath the arch of the bridge, the slow stream flowed gently on over the pebbles, whispering in the darkness. And beguiled by that sweet, nostalgic sound, Videirinha quietly strummed his guitar and sang:
Why these complaints?
Why these sighs?
As if I were dead,
And you would ne’er see me again!
And Gonçalo plunged back into his memories and the sad events that ensued. Vicente Ramires had died one August afternoon, painlessly, sitting in his armchair out on the balcony, his eyes fixed on the old Tower, murmuring to Father Soeiro, ‘How many more Ramires will that Tower see living in this house and in its shadow?’ Gonçalo had spent all of what remained of that summer in the dark office, with no one to help him (for the steward, good old Rebelo, had also been summoned by God), reading document after document, and discovering just what dire straits the household was in, reduced to a revenue of only two thousand three hundred mil-réis brought in by rents from Craquede, the land in Praga, and the two oldest estates, Treixedo and Santa Ireneia. When he returned to Coimbra, he left Gracinha in Oliveira, in the house of a cousin, Dona Arminda Nunes Viegas, a very kindly, very wealthy lady, who lived in Terreiro da Louça in a vast mansion full of intricate family trees and portraits of her ancestors, where she, dressed in black velvet, sat on a damask-upholstered sofa, surrounded by her paid companions, who busied themselves with their spinning as she read and reread her beloved chivalric novels, Amadis of Gaul, Leandro el Bel, Tristan and Blanchefleur, and the Chronicle of Emperor Clarimundo. It was there that José Barrolo (who owned one of the finest houses in Amarante) met Gracinha Ramires and instantly fell in love, conceiving for her a profound, almost religious passion, quite unexpected in that plump, indolent, apple-cheeked young man, so lacking in intellect that his friends called him ‘José Bacoco’ — ‘José the Dimwit’. Barrolo had always lived in Amarante with his mother and knew nothing of Gracinha’s failed romance, which had never been spoken of outside the wooded confines of the Solar de Santa Ireneia. And under the tender, romantic aegis of Dona Arminda, engagement and marriage sweetly and swiftly followed just three months later, after a letter from Barrolo to Gonçalo, in which he declared that so great was his affection for his cousin Graça, for her many virtues and other fine qualities, that there were not words enough in the dictionary to describe it. The wedding was a lavish affair, and after a brief filial visit to Amarante, the newlyweds (at Gracinha’s request, for she did not want to live far from her beloved Tower) ‘built their nest’ in Oliveira, on the corner of Largo d’El-Rei and Rua das Tecedeiras, in a mansion that Barrolo had inherited, along with a great deal of land, from his uncle Melchior, Dean of the Cathedral. Two years passed gently and uneventfully, and it was at the end of Gonçalo’s Easter holidays, spent in Oliveira, that André Cavaleiro was appointed governor, and ostentatiously took up his post with a display of fireworks and a band playing, with the governor’s residence and the Bishop’s Palace all lit up, and the arms of the Cavaleiro family traced on coloured transparencies illuminating the Café da Arcada and the treasury! Barrolo was quite a close friend of Cavaleiro and admired his talent, his elegance and his political success. However, Gonçalo Mendes Ramires, who held absolute sway over Barrolo, soon persuaded him not to visit the new governor, not even to greet him in the street, and, out of familial duty, to share the rancour that existed between the Cavaleiros and the Ramires! An astonished, uncomprehending José Barrolo submissively agreed. Then one night, in their bedroom, as he was putting on his slippers, he mentioned Gonçalo’s ‘eccentric behaviour’ to Gracinha:
‘And for no reason either, when Cavaleiro has caused no offence at all, over something as trivial as politics! I mean, a delightful fellow like André! And we could have had such fun together!’
Another peaceful year passed. Then that spring, in Oliveira, where he had stayed on for Barrolo’s birthday celebrations, Gonçalo began to suspect, to sense, to discover an unspeakable infamy! That arrogant man with the blackest of moustaches, Senhor André Cavaleiro, had, with proud impudence, begun courting Gracinha Ramires again, silently and from afar, with long, languorous, yearning looks, with the intention of having as his mistress that great noblewoman, that Ramires, whom he had spurned as a wife!
Gonçalo was so absorbed in these bitter ruminations as he walked along the white road, that he strode straight past the door of the Tower, and did not even notice the small green door at the corner of the house, with its three steps. He was about to continue along by the garden wall, when Videirinha, who had stopped, his fingers resting silently on the strings of his guitar, called to him, laughing:
‘Surely you’re not going to walk to Bravais at this hour, are you, Senhor Doutor?’
Gonçalo turned, abruptly awakened from his thoughts, and feeling for the key among the small change in his pocket, said:
‘I didn’t even notice. But how beautifully you played tonight, Videirinha! In the moonlight, after supper, I couldn’t hope for a more poetic companion. You really are the last of the Portuguese troubadours!’
The pharmacist’s assistant — the son of a baker from Oliveira — felt the friendly, natural way in which that Nobleman treated him — shaking his hand in the pharmacy in front of his boss, Pires, and in front of the bigwigs in Oliveira — as a real honour, almost a coronation, one that was always new, always a delight. Moved, he struck a loud chord:
‘To finish then, Senhor Doutor, here is the greatest of ballads!’
This was his most famous song, the Fado of the Ramires, a sequence of heroic verses celebrating the legends of that illustrious House, verses he had spent months polishing, assisted in this happy task by old Father Soeiro, the Tower’s chaplain, archivist and font of knowledge.
Gonçalo pushed open the green door. In the corridor, next to the silver candlestick, a dim lamp was sputtering out, its oil exhausted. And stepping back into the middle of the road and giving a last ardent ‘diddle-om’ on his guitar, Videirinha gazed up at the Tower, which, high above the vast roof, thrust its battlements and its dark turret into the luminous silence of the summer sky. Then to the mournful, sighing melody of a Coimbra fado, he addressed the final, glorifying verses to the Tower and to the moon:
Who can look on you and not tremble,
Tower of Santa Ireneia,
So silent and so dark,
Ah, so silent and so dark,
Tower of Santa Ireneia!
He paused to thank the Nobleman, who was inviting him to come up and join him in a reviving glass of gin, but then immediately resumed his song, happily ignoring the offer, caught up, as ever, in the pleasure of his own verses, in the magic of those legends, while Gonçalo disappeared, playfully bowing to the troubadour and apologising for ‘closing the castle door’:
Ah, there you stand, so strong and proud,
A story in every stone,
Tower, older than Portugal herself,
Tower of Santa Ireneia!
And he had just launched into the verse about Múncio Ramires, otherwise known as The Wolf, when, up above, a light came on in a window open to the cool of the night, and the Nobleman appeared on the balcony, smoking a cigar, to enjoy the serenade. Videirinha waxed more ardent still, his voice almost breaking with emotion. Now it was the verse about Gutierres Ramires, in Palestine, on the Mount of Olives, standing outside his tent before the cheering barons, who saluted him with their unsheathed swords, as he refused the dukedom of Galilee and ownership of the lands of Israel. He really could not accept those lands, however Holy, even those of Galilee . . .
For he had land already in Portugal,
The lands of Santa Ireneia!
‘Very droll!’ muttered Gonçalo.
Waxing still more enthusiastically, Videirinha sang another verse, one he had composed that very week, about the funeral of Aldonça Ramires, St Aldonça, who was carried on the pallet bed on which she had died from the convent of Arouca to the estate of Treixedo, borne on the shoulders of four kings!
‘Bravo!’cried the Nobleman, leaning out over the balustrade. ‘Wonderful! But four kings are too many, Videirinha!’
Elated and holding his guitar aloft, Videirinha launched into another, older verse, about the terrible Lopo Ramires, who, though dead, had risen from his tomb in the monastery of Craquede, mounted a dead horse and galloped all night across Spain in order to fight in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa! He cleared his throat and, more tearfully still, attacked the tale of the Headless Man:
There he goes, the dark silhouette . . .
Gonçalo, however, hated that particular legend, the silent headless figure wandering on winter nights along the battlements, his head in his hands. He drew back and stopped that endless chronicle:
‘Time for bed, Videirinha. It’s dreadfully late, past three o’clock! But, listen. Titó and Gouveia are dining here on Sunday. Why don’t you come along too, and bring your guitar and a new song, something a little less grim, all right? Buona sera! Goodness, what a beautiful night!’
He threw down his cigar, closed the window of the ‘old room’, lined with those sad, blackened portraits of the Ramires, which he, when he was little, used to call his ‘ugly granddads’. And as he walked down the corridor, he could still hear in the distance, ringing out across the silence of those moonlit fields, the exploits of his ancestors set to music:
Ah, there in the midst of battle,
Beside our royal Sebastião,
The youngest of the Ramires
Standard-bearer to the King . . .
Once he had undressed, blown out his candle and hurriedly made the sign of the cross, the Nobleman of the Tower fell asleep. But his room filled up with shadows, and there began a terrible, troubled night. André Cavaleiro and João Gouveia, dressed in chain mail, burst through the wall, mounted on vast, hideous, oven-roasted mullets! And slowly, winking one evil eye, they attacked his poor stomach with their lances, making him moan and writhe about on his mahogany bedstead. Then, in the middle of Vila Clara, it was the terrifying figure of that same dead Ramires, his bones rattling inside his armour, and King Afonso II, both baring their wolfish teeth and dragging him furiously off to fight in the Battle of Las Navas. He resisted, digging in his heels, calling out for Rosa, for Gracinha, for Titó! But King Afonso dealt him such a blow in the kidneys with his iron glove that he hurled him from Gago’s tavern all the way to the Sierra Morena onto the battlefield itself, which glittered and trembled with pennants and lances. Then his Spanish cousin, Gomes Ramires, the Master of Calatrava, leaned down from his black horse and plucked out the last few hairs from his head, to loud guffaws from the whole Saracen host and to the wailing of his Aunt Louredo, who had been carried there on a float borne on the shoulders of four kings! Finally, exhausted, unable to find rest, with dawn creeping in through the chinks in the shutters, and the swallows cheeping away in the eaves, the Nobleman of the Tower finally threw off the sheets, leapt out of bed, opened the windows and took a deep delicious breath of the silence, the coolness, the greenness, the peace and quiet of the garden. But he had such a thirst on him, a desperate thirst that left his lips dry and cracked. He remembered then the famous fruit salts recommended by Dr Matos. He snatched up the bottle, ran to the dining room in his nightshirt and, gasping, put two heaped spoonfuls of the stuff into a glass of Bica Velha water and downed the fizzing brew in one.
‘Oh, what a relief, what a blessed relief!
He finally went back to bed, where he instantly fell asleep again, only this time, he found himself far off, among the tall savannah grasses of Africa, beneath whispering palm trees, surrounded by the spicy aroma of brilliant flowers springing up amidst golden pebbles. At midday, Bento, concerned at the lateness of the hour, wrenched him from this state of perfect bliss.
‘I’ve had the most dreadful night, Bento! Nightmares, terrors, noises, skeletons . . . I blame the sausage and eggs, and the cucumber, especially the cucumber! It was that fool Titó’s idea! Anyway, in the early hours, I drank some of those fruit salts, and now I feel absolutely fine, have never felt better! I almost feel capable of doing some work. Bring a cup of strong green tea up to me in the library. Oh, and some toast.’ And moments later, in the library, wearing a flannel dressing gown over his nightshirt and taking slow sips of tea, Gonçalo sat by the balcony, rereading the last, feeble, scribbled line of his Novella, the one about the broad rays of moonlight pouring into the broad, high-ceilinged room. In a sudden flash of insight, his mind filled with all kinds of interesting descriptive details of the castle on that summer night — the points of the sentinels’ spears glinting silently on the walkway behind the battlements, the sad croaking of the frogs on the muddy banks of the moat . . .
‘Excellent!’
He slowly drew his chair up to the desk, again consulted his uncle’s poem, and with a wonderfully clear head, and with images and words bubbling up like water suddenly bursting from a dam, he launched into that section of the first chapter set in the salle d’armes of Santa Ireneia, where old Tructesindo Ramires was talking to his son Lourenço and his cousin Dom Garcia Viegas the Wise, about preparations for war . . . War! Why? Were Moorish horsemen riding lightly through the wooded hills on the frontier? No! Alas, ‘in that free and Christian land, noble Portuguese spears would soon clash one against the other!’
God be praised! His pen was once more flowing freely! And, paying close attention to the pages he had marked in a volume of Herculano’s History of Portugal, he confidently set about painting a picture of the period in which his Novella was set, during the disputes between Afonso II and his siblings over the will left by their father, King Sancho I. At the beginning of the chapter, the Princes Dom Pedro and Dom Fernando, stripped of their inheritance, are wandering France and León. With them is the Ramires’ powerful cousin, Gonçalo Mendes de Sousa, the magnificent head of the Sousa family. And now, in their respective castles in Montemor and Esgueira, the Princesses, Dona Teresa and Dona Sancha, were denying Afonso’s sovereignty over the towns, castles, lands and monasteries so generously bestowed on them by their father King Sancho I. Before his death in Coimbra, Sancho had begged Tructesindo Mendes Ramires, his milk-sibling and standard-bearer, whom he himself had dubbed a knight in Lorvão, to defend to the death his best-beloved daughter, the Princess Dona Sancha, mistress of Aveiras. And he had sworn this at the King’s deathbed, where that victor of the Battle of Silves, now dressed in sackcloth like a penitent, lay expiring in the arms of the Bishop of Coimbra as the hospital prior held the lamp. Then came the bitter quarrel between Afonso II — fiercely jealous of his authority as King — and the proud Princesses, egged on in their resistance by the monks of the Temple and by the prelates to whom King Sancho had bequeathed vast swathes of the Kingdom. And so the royal troops returning from the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa laid waste to Alenquer and the areas around other castles. Then Dona Sancha and Dona Teresa appealed for help to the King of León, who, with his son, Don Fernando, marched into Portuguese lands to bring succour to ‘the suffering maidens’. At this point, with proud elegance, Uncle Duarte, in The Castle of Santa Ireneia, asked Sancho I’s standard-bearer:
So, old man, what will you do?
If you join your flag to that of León
You betray your promise to the living King
And if you leave the Princesses undefended
You betray your oath to the dead King!
However, as stoutly portrayed by the Nobleman of the Tower, this problem did not trouble the heart of the loyal, doughty Tructesindo. That night, the moment he received Dona Sancha’s call for help from the brother of the alcalde of Aveiras (who came to him disguised as a mendicant friar) he ordered his son, Lourenço, to be at Montemor at first light and to bring fifteen lancers, fifty of his own foot soldiers, and forty crossbowmen. He, meanwhile, would give the alarm, and in two days, would enter the field with all his kith and kin, as well as a stronger force of liegemen and archers, to join his cousin, the great Sousa, who was currently in the vanguard of the Leonese troops coming down from Alva do Douro.
At break of day, the Ramires standard — the black goshawk on a scarlet ground — stood outside the bolted gates and, beside it, on the ground, tied to the flagstaff with a strip of leather, glittered the old family emblem — the large, deep, highly polished cooking pot. The whole castle was filled with servants rushing frantically about, taking down helmets from walls and dragging clanking chain-mail vests over the flagstones. In the courtyards, the armourers were sharpening spears and padding greaves and cuisses with oakum. In the pantry, the provisioner was mustering enough food to last for the two hot days of marching that lay ahead. And all around Santa Ireneia, in the sweet afternoon air, Moorish drums — their drumming muffled in the woods, ba-da-dam, ba-da-dam, or louder on the hilltops, ra-ta-ta, ra-ta-ta — were summoning all the mercenaries and foot soldiers who owed allegiance to the Ramires.
Meanwhile, the alcalde’s brother, still disguised as a mendicant friar, had returned to the castle of Aveiras and lightly crossed the drawbridge, bearing the good news that help would soon be at hand. And here, to brighten this gloomy scene of imminent war, Uncle Duarte, in his little poem, had introduced a rather gallant touch:
From the girl filling her pitcher at the well,
The friar stole a kiss, and cried Amen!
But Gonçalo was unsure whether he should sully the description of that magnificent armed offensive with a priestly kiss, and he was still pensively chewing on his quill when the door to the library creaked open.
‘The post, sir.’
It was Bento with the newspapers and two letters. The Nobleman only opened one, which bore the wax seal of the elaborate Barrolo arms, pushing aside the other on which he recognised the hateful hand of his tailor in Lisbon. Then bringing his fist down hard on the desk, he cried:
‘Oh no, what date is it today? The fourteenth?’
Bento was waiting with one hand resting on the door handle.
‘It won’t be long before it’s my sister Graça’s birthday. I completely forgot. I always do. And I haven’t even bought her a present. What’s to be done?’
However, the previous evening, Manuel Duarte, playing cards at the club, had announced he was escaping to Lisbon for three days to sort out a job for his nephew in the Public Works department. Gonçalo still had time to rush to Vila Clara and ask Manuel Duarte to buy him a pretty white silk parasol with lace trimmings.
‘Senhor Manuel Duarte has really excellent taste! Tell Joaquim not to saddle the mare. I won’t be going to visit Sanches Lucena after all. But then, when will I make that wretched visit? I’ve been meaning to go for three whole months. Oh well, the lovely Dona Ana won’t age much in two days, and old Lucena won’t die either.’
And the Nobleman of the Tower, who had decided to risk the playful kiss, took up his pen again and rounded off the chapter with an elegantly harmonious sentence:
‘The furious girl shouted, “Be off with you, you villain!” And, whistling, the mendicant friar left her, striding nimbly along the path in his sandalled feet, in the shade of the tall beeches, while throughout the cool valley, as far as Santa Maria de Craquede, the Moorish drums beat on in the sweet afternoon air, ba-da-bam, ra-ta-ta, summoning the Ramires troops . . .’