The following months were long and quiet. Every week, I went to the cemetery in Funchal to place flowers from the quinta on Olívia’s grave.
The da Silvas, seeming to have grown older overnight, invited Espirito to live with them. He did, saying the home over the Counting House was now too big for him. It was, I knew, also filled with memories of Olívia’s life and death. Luzia still wished to see Candelária, and I took her to visit, but the air felt thick with grief.
Through the emptiness of those first few months after Olívia’s death, with little to take me to the adega between harvests, I worked in my herb garden and still welcomed the local women, dispensing potions and salves and tisanes. I read both the Portuguese and the English books in the Kiplings’ library, and enjoyed my daughter.
I tried to keep her away from Bonifacio. Too often he would take Candelária onto his lap and look into her face, as if searching for something. Was he hoping to find evidence of Espirito in her features, or was it something darker he wanted to see, some imagined malevolence?
The first few times I observed this, Candelária obviously expected him to speak, and smiled at him. But after a few episodes she came to understand it was something else, something that made her uncomfortable. She would turn her head, pulling away, sometimes saying, “Don’t, Papa,” and then jump from his lap and come to me.
As I watched Candelária busily play on her own, chattering to herself in both Portuguese and English, I too studied her, but I looked for anything that reminded me of Abílio. I saw nothing of him in her physical features or in her mannerisms, and for this I was thankful. She didn’t resemble me outwardly either. Her hair was black and shiny as a swallow’s wing, and her eyes were also black, long and slightly tilting up at the outer corners.
She reminded me more and more of my mother in the way she lowered her head and looked up at me from under her little brows. I noticed that she sometimes abruptly stopped what she was doing and fixed her gaze on something I couldn’t see.
Did she have the gift of sight, as my mother had? She was mature and somehow solemn, although easily coaxed into a bubbly laugh. Even now I saw her fearlessness and spirit. I thought of her as only my child, through and through, as though she had grown within me without Abílio’s seed. I almost let myself believe this.
And although I would never forget my old sins, they grew less troublesome as time passed. Apart from Bonifacio’s strange behaviours, I could gaze at my daughter and think that the past was forever finished, and held no threat.
But the past is indelible. It isn’t like the unwritten future. The past may grow shadowy, but it never leaves.
Summer arrived, and I was filled with anticipation about the coming harvest and my second season of work in the adega.
One hot evening, Cristiano was at the stables and I sat sewing in the light of the candle on the table. Candelária was on the floor nearby, playing with her rag dollies.
Bonifacio came from his bedroom and stood in front of me. I looked up at him, the needle poised above the cotton. Something in his expression gave me a whispering sense of approaching upheaval.
“The sham of our marriage cannot continue,” he said with no preamble.
The needle was suddenly cold in my fingers, in spite of the steamy air. “What do you mean?”
“Marriage is a sacrament, a contract with God. In God’s eyes we are joined forevermore. But the deception … You brought a bastard child into our home. Every day it’s a burden difficult for me to bear.”
I glanced at Candelária and tried to swallow, but I had no saliva. As if I had called her, she left her dollies and came to me. She put her hand on my knee, watching my face.
“The ordination of a priest is permanent,” Bonifacio said. “It is not a sin to leave the priesthood, but it is a sin to break vows. I have struggled with keeping my vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. I am no longer living in poverty. I strive to be obedient. As for the third …” He stopped. “As for chastity, I fell into temptation, and this led me to take irreversible action. When alone and denying myself food, my powers of perception were sharpened. I had visions. I relied on 1 Corinthians 10:13: No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
I steeled myself for his confession, thinking of the self-inflicted disfigurement he lived with now. Not like this, Bonifacio, in front of the child. I picked up Candelária’s hand.
But he said nothing more of that horror. “When I took my vows, I received a spiritual mark that cannot be erased. I have decided that I will begin the process to be reinstated into the priesthood.”
I opened my mouth then closed it, still holding Candelária’s hand.
“I am going to apply for dispensation from the Superior of the Order of the Diocese of Rio de Janeiro. I will put my faith in God’s understanding to allow me to return to my life’s work of bringing God to the indigenous people of Brazil.”
My mind was spinning. I was an employee of Kipling’s now. Dona Beatriz liked me living on the quinta. Even if Bonifacio left the Counting House, surely she would allow me to stay here.
I had my diamonds.
“It will take a full year or more for all of this to be resolved. But I am confident of God’s plan for me. And when I leave, I will take Cristiano back to his home.” At this I stood, dropping Candelária’s hand, my sewing falling to the floor. “Perhaps I’ll find him a position at the mission. In this way he has a better chance at growing up to live by God’s holy rules.”
“No. No, you can’t take Cristiano, Bonifacio,” I said.
He looked at the floor. “This is another of my sorrows. I have not been able to help him as I hoped.”
“This is his home now,” I said firmly, waving my hand towards the walls of the cottage.
“It will never be my home.” As his voice rose, Candelária moved closer against me. “It’s a place of evil.”
I clicked my tongue impatiently. “What do you mean, evil? It’s a beautiful place.”
“Evil lives here,” he said, and looked at Candelária.
I drew a deep breath and put my hand on Candelária’s hair. “Run into the bedroom and play with your dollies there,” I told her. She looked up at me, unblinking. She understood so much. “Go, darling,” I urged, attempting a smile, and she slowly left me, picking up her dolls and going into the bedroom.
Bonifacio had waited to continue. “I need to take Cristiano back to Brazil before too much more time passes. He’s becoming too soft, too much a carefree Portuguese, instead of what he really is.”
“A slave?” I said very quietly.
“No. As I just said, he could work in a mission, assisting his own people.”
“Do you really care about his future, Bonifacio? You don’t care about her, and I can accept that,” I said, just above a whisper, glancing at the bedroom. “But Cristiano cannot help you find your way. This is his life now. You can’t take him back there.”
Bonifacio’s face was worn and troubled.
“He can have a good life in Funchal,” I said. “He speaks English well. With all the English here, it’s beneficial to him—and to Candelária—to know the language.”
“Beneficial? What is beneficial for the girl is to know my influence. She came into this world at a disadvantage, born of sin. As I just said, of evil. I have to make sure she’s on the right path.”
“She’s two and a half years old. Stop talking about evil.”
“It’s never too early for one to start knowing God. I must make things right. Keeping Candelária on the path of righteousness is the start. Going back to Brazil with Cristiano will come next.”
He looked at me with sudden hope on his face. I knew it was the hope of escaping the muddle of our lives to restart his own, clean and forgiven. “But things can never be as they were, Bonifacio. Time has changed them. Cristiano is not the boy he was when you took him away. And you are not the man you were.”
He turned from me and went down the hall, and I heard the sound of his door closing. I didn’t know how he’d interpreted my words.
At a creak in the floorboards, I looked towards the open doorway. Cristiano stood on the verandah there. I went to him. There was an odd pallor to his skin. “Cristiano,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, but he jerked away from my touch, and ran across the sitting room and into his own room, slamming the door.
I got Candelária into her nightdress, and once she was settled in her small bed near mine, I knocked softly on Cristiano’s door.
“Go away,” he called, and so I left him.
In the middle of the night, I was still awake. I went to Cristiano’s room and silently opened the door and crossed to his bed. He slept, but his breath came quickly, his lips pursing, uttering tiny threads of sound, a dream-whisper. Although he hadn’t had even one nightmare for well over a year, I wondered if his hearing Bonifacio’s words had allowed the demons to begin their haunting again.
I stayed there for the rest of the night, watching over him should the nightmare come. I thought of his bright smile and his straight white teeth, the dimple in his left cheek. Only yesterday I had seen his patience and gentleness as he sat on the floor across from Candelária and tried to teach her to catch a ball he rolled to her, and how to roll it back to him. I hated thinking of him frightened and confused by what he’d overheard.
As the first light of morning came, he stirred and sat up, blinking at me in surprise. And then his face cleared, and I knew he was remembering what had happened the evening before. “I’m not going with him,” he said, his voice foggy with sleep. “I’ll run away. I hate him,” he said, his voice clear now. “I hate him, sister.”
I sat on the edge of his bed and picked up his hand. I had never spoken to Cristiano of what Bonifacio had told me had happened in Tejuco. Now I felt I must. “I’m so, so sorry for what you have suffered. Bonifacio suffers also, because he knows he did the wrong thing, and should not have allowed that to happen to your mother. It’s part of what makes him … how he is. But he thought it was the right thing to take you away from there.”
“But why does he want to take me back?”
I took a deep breath. “I think he’s confused about right and wrong. He wants to fix mistakes, but he doesn’t know how.”
“It won’t fix anything to take me away from here. From you, and Candelária, and … and everyone. I’m not going,” he said more loudly, his voice suddenly a shade deeper, his face so grave. At that moment I knew what he would look like when he was a man.
“I know,” I said, leaning closer and speaking softly. “You’re not going. I will never let him take you.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise, Cristiano. You will stay with me, no matter what.”
“Will he try to take Candelária?”
I put my hand on my throat, shocked at the thought. “No! Oh no. He’ll never take her. She’s mine,” I said, and then put my arms around him and spoke against his head. “As you are mine, my own little brother.” His curls were soft, and smelled of the sun and dust and growing boy.