The Day of Atonement (2 page)

The thief had been tripped. My friend Inácio had apparently witnessed my pursuit from a doorstep, and thrust his foot out just in time. Now Inácio sauntered over to the thief, who remained immobile. He reached down, placing his massive hand over the thief’s slender fist. He forced the fingers apart and took the necklace.

He held it up as I approached. His grin was equal measure pleasure in his conquest and for the opportunity to tease me. “For me?”

I held out my hand. “Of course not. It’s pretty, but not nearly pretty enough for you.”

Inácio hesitated, not because he wanted to take the necklace, I knew, but because it was his nature. He did not need to know whom the silver belonged to, only that it was an object of power, fought over by two people, and that made it interesting. He was from an Old Christian laboring family. His father did work for mine, and while we were an unlikely pair, we rarely passed a day without seeing each other. He was a dangerous boy, though never dangerous to me, and I trusted him completely.

“It’s a gift,” I told him, meeting his gaze, showing him no embarrassment.

A grin erupted under his large, hawkish nose. “Ah,” he said, and dropped the necklace into my hand. “She will like it, I think.”

The two of us now looked down at the thief, who had not yet risen. A few curious passersby had gathered to watch, but most people merely glanced at us as they continued on their way. A thief in Lisbon was hardly remarkable.

I had known the thief was small, certainly not older than me, but only now did I see that he was a Moorish child, eight or nine years old, wearing a tattered robe that had perhaps once been blue. He was hollow-eyed and shockingly thin, with sharp bones pressing out from
beneath his skin. He looked up at us with his huge, sunken eyes and managed to raise his arms to protect his face. “Don’t hurt me.”

Inácio kicked him in the stomach. It was more to assert his authority than cause him pain or keep him on the ground. Boys on their own in Lisbon had to know how to protect themselves, and I liked to think I was good with my fists, but Inácio was another matter entirely. I’d seen him make a boy vomit blood after a single kick.

“Stop,” I told him.

Inácio shrugged. “Just letting him know what we think of thieves.”

“Why did you take it?” I asked.

“Because he’s a thieving Gypsy,” Inácio said. “What other reason did you imagine?”

“I was hungry.” The boy pressed his bloody hands to the stones and managed, slowly, to get to his feet. “I thought I could sell it. Please don’t call the soldiers. They will hang me.”

“Hanging’s what you deserve,” Inácio told him. To me, he said, “You can’t let his sad story sway you, Sebastião. Of course he claims to be hungry, but he’ll deliver the silver to his father or his master and they’ll feast tonight. They all claim to be starving.”

They all claim it, but often enough it was true. In this case, I believed it was. I’d seen starving children all my life. I had never seen a rich thief.

“I won’t call the soldiers,” I told him. I then reached into my pocket to retrieve my purse, but remembered it was empty. I had spent the whole of my money on the necklace. It had seemed so important, and yet I knew that if I brought it back to Gabriela now it would feel tainted. It would feel selfish and greedy, and I did not want to associate her with anything shameful.

I held out the necklace to the Moor. “Take it, and may Christ bless you.”

Inácio stepped between me and the young boy. “No,” he said. “You bought that for Gabriela. You can’t just give it away to a thief because he wants it.”

“It’s what I choose to do,” I said.

Inácio put a hand on my shoulder, not unkindly. It was more as though he wished to give me counsel—make me the beneficiary of his hard-won wisdom. “Where is your anger?”

I laughed and shoved him out of the way. “I don’t like being angry.”

The Moor took the necklace and dropped to his knees. He bowed low, touching his head to the street. Then he sprang up and ran, casting a wary look back not at me but at Inácio.

Inácio shook his head. “If I steal from you, do you promise to let me keep what I take?”

“Only if you tell me a very sad story.”

Gabriela was still sitting on the wall when I went back for her. She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head at me. “So. Where is my necklace?”

“The thief took it. I wasn’t fast enough.” I sat next to her, slumping down, performing frustration.

“That’s bad news.” She shook her head at the unpleasant turn of events. “I can’t kiss you unless there is an exchange of gifts.”

I tried to say something, but I had no idea what it would have been if I had been able to make my throat work.

“Although,” Gabriela said, looking upward thoughtfully, “I suppose if I gave you something instead, that would answer.” She unpinned the blue scarf that encircled her bonnet, and pressed it into my hand. “It was a pretty necklace, and I should have liked to wear it,” her voice now much lower.

“I’m sorry,” I managed.

“I liked it so much that I followed you,” she said. “I wish I could wear it, but there are things I like better than jewelry. I am very fond of kindness.”

She leaned in to kiss me, and relief and love and dizziness swam about my head in equal measures. This, I decided, is what happiness
feels like, pure and unalloyed, and I wished the moment could last forever.

But our lips never touched. As I moved toward her, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I started and turned to see my mother. Her face was pale, and lined, as though she wore the mask of a much older woman. Her eyes were red from weeping.

“We must go,” she said. “The Inquisition has taken your father.”

My mother gripped my wrist and twisted until my skin burned, and she pulled me down the hill toward the quays. She had been crying, but now she was calm and controlled, her face as sharp and unmoving as stone. I had seen her like this before. When terrible things befell her, she could easily be consumed by her grief, but if there were responsibilities that required attention, she locked her sadness away. She had business, and she was tending to it.

“Tell me what happened,” I said. “I need to know.”

“It was the Jesuit who has been asking questions. Pedro Azinheiro,” she said, her voice flat and empty, as though reading a letter written in a language she did not understand. “He came with the Inquisition soldiers. If I had not been outside, talking to Senhora Paquda, they would have taken me as well.”

Pedro Azinheiro. I had
waved
at him like a fool. Better I should have killed him. I wished I could go back and make it all unfold differently. I could have wrapped that silver chain around his neck and choked the life out of him. Instead, my father was gone, arrested. He would be put to the question. He would be made to confess a thousand things he had never done. They would make him say he had lit the candles on Friday night, that he shunned pork, that he fasted on Jewish holy days, that he studied forbidden books and spoke in evil languages. Then, when he at last admitted to all these things, he would be made to say which of his neighbors and business associates had done it with him. He would resist all of this at first, but in the
end, everyone said what the Inquisitors wanted them to say. Everyone broke. We all knew it. My father would break too.

There had been no public burnings for many years, but when my father finally emerged, a year or more from now, he would be emaciated and old. He would be impoverished and humiliated. And they had asked about my mother too. They would come for her soon enough. They were coming for all of us.

This was what we had feared, every day, almost every hour. It had happened. Part of me felt like perhaps this should be a relief—we no longer must wait for it. That much was true, but it was no comfort. This was the end of everything I knew.

We would never leave now. We would never escape to another country. All of that was gone. My family, my hopes, my life with Gabriela. It had vanished.

“What are we going to do?” I asked. I was trying not to cry. I wanted to be like my mother. I wanted to be about goals and tasks.

“We are doing what your father wanted,” she said. “What we both wanted. It is what we planned for.”

“Will they arrest us too?” I asked.

“I won’t let them have you,” my mother said. “Your father and I agreed on that.”

“But what about you?” I demanded. I sounded like a whiny child, and I hated it.

Her hazel eyes vanished into slits, and she turned her hard-set, oval face away from me.

She pulled me onto the quays belonging to the Factory. Beyond the swarming chaos of the piers were the great ships moored out on the massive expanse of the Tagus, like floating palaces. Smaller barges moved back and forth, perpetually bringing goods to and from the shore. We stood in the thick of English laborers, English sailors, English factors. They moved around us like ants around a stone. We remained still until one of them approached.

I knew him. He was a handsome and bewigged man, perhaps forty
years of age. Charles Settwell, one of my father’s most important business contacts and his closest friend among the English.

He took off his hat and bowed at my mother. “Senhora Raposa,” he said in reasonable Portuguese, “I cannot express the depths of my sorrow at this terrible news.”

“Thank you, senhor,” she answered, her voice stiff and formal. “There is little time for sentiment, however. When does the packet leave?”

“With the tide. Soon.”

She nodded and swallowed hard. “Then there is some good fortune here, at least.”

“Of a dark kind, yes,” Mr. Settwell agreed.

“What is happening?” I demanded.

My mother lowered herself to look directly in my eyes. She was a tall woman, and I had not yet come into my full height. When she put her hands on my shoulders and crouched down like this, it made me feel like a child. Sometimes I hated it. Now, I craved it.

“They will come for me,” she told me. “They will come for you too. That you are so young will not stop them. You know that. Senhor Settwell has always been willing to help us. He will put you on the English packet, and you will go to England, where they can never harm you.”

“No,” I said. “You must come with me. We must get Papa, and we’ll all go.”

“It is too late for that,” my mother said. “It can only be you. They can smuggle a boy, not a woman. They cannot take the risk of me being caught. They risk enough with you.”

“I can’t go,” I said. “I won’t go without you.”

She began to cry then. I could see she was struggling not to, but the tears began to flow fast and hard. Her eyes were red, and her lips trembled. “Please, Sebastião. You must do what I say. You can’t know how I want to hold on to you, but if you don’t leave they will hurt you. They will make you scream, and they will make us listen to it,
until we give them every name they want. Do you understand? They will use you to destroy us, and nothing you say will stop them. We could tell them everything we know, but they don’t care about what is true. They will hurt you to make us bend to their will. I know you want to help us, but the only thing you can do is be safe and free. That is how you will help me and your father.”

I was crying openly now. Under any other circumstances, I would have been furious with myself for weeping, but now I didn’t care. “But I won’t see you again,” I said. “I won’t even have the chance to say goodbye to Papa.”

“I cannot say what will happen. I pray to the saints we will find each other.” She crossed herself, and then stood and looked at the Englishman. “Take him.”

“No, Mama,” I said, but I knew the words were empty. She had made it so I could not stay. She had made it clear that to do anything but get on the barge would be a betrayal of both her and my father. To be loyal to my family, I must abandon them to the Inquisition.

I threw my arms around my mother and felt hers around me. I took in her familiar scent, and for the briefest of moments I felt safe with her. I forgot, for that second, that the future was fixed and immutable. I allowed myself to believe that things might somehow go back to how they were before.

Then the Englishman put his hand on my shoulder. “If we are to go, we must go now,” he said.

My mother pushed me away, firmly but with such warmth I felt my heart breaking anew. “I love you, my sweet boy,” she said. “We both love you. Be well, and don’t forget us.”

“No,” I whispered. “Not yet.”

She was already turning away, losing herself in the crowd. I moved to run after her, but the Englishman grabbed my arm hard.

“I know you want to,” he said, lowering himself to speak directly to me. “You’d be a wretch if you didn’t want to, but you cannot go after her. You must honor their wishes. Getting you to safety is the
only power they have over the Inquisition. It is all they have left, and it will be all they will have to sustain them in the months ahead. If you love them, you will not take away that shred of comfort.”

I looked up at Mr. Settwell and saw that he too was weeping. Then I reached into my pocket and felt something. It was Gabriela’s blue scarf. I ran my fingers around and over it and I closed my eyes. I would never see her again either.

I could never say what happened in the minutes afterward. Did I later will myself to forget the moment when I chose to abandon my parents? Did I expunge from my memory the decision to escape rather than stay with Gabriela? I don’t know why I can’t recall those moments, but I am grateful that it is so.

London, 1755

It was a cold night in a rainy winter. The streets were full of melting snow and horse shit. The thief had fled through the alley, and I ran after him because that was what I did. I was a thief taker, and I was acting in accordance with my duties.

That was what I told myself: but the man in question was not really a thief. He had, however, tried to take something from me. No, that wasn’t quite true either.

He had flirted with a woman I was courting. Yes. That was certainly correct. He had tried to steal from me the woman I loved.

But again—that wasn’t right. I did
not
love Leonora, however deserving she might be. I had been courting her because my patron, Mr. Weaver, thought it would be good for me to seek a wife. He thought a kind woman would prove a calming influence. It was not turning out to be the case. Mr. Weaver was rarely mistaken, but this time, he had erred significantly.