1636, page 12
He turned to Celia. She had heard everything, but still her face, her accusing eyes, did not relent. Despite everything, she still did not want him to go, or for her and the children to be taken to the Jesuits. But she came to him anyway and hugged him one final time, letting the curves of her body join his, letting her warmth press deep into his chest.
He did not want to let go, but finally pushed her away, refusing to look her in the eye, fearing what might happen if he did, fearing that he would give in, stay with them, go to the Jesuits as well. But that would be death…for all of them.
One by one, he hugged and kissed his children, gave them little tickles around their necks, promised each with simple words that they would be together again, soon, and everything would be all right. God would see to it, he said. He knelt and together, they prayed. Then he stood, shook Luiz’s hand once more, bid them all goodbye, and passed through the door.
He emerged in the humid darkness and was ambushed by the recollections it prompted. Creeping toward Bom Jesus, sneaking up on Matias’ assassins, meeting Pedro Álvares: always in the same suffocating darkness. Would his life ever be different from what it had now become: always skulking in heat-thick shadows, dripping as he waited for—or led—men bent on death, destruction, or possibly betrayal? If there was a spark that some saw in his eye, he found it hard to believe it was put there by divinity.
Fixing his hat upon his head and pulling its brim low, he stalked toward the blackest alley that would take him to the outskirts of Recife.
Chapter 11
Olinda, Brazil
It was near midnight when Calabar and a handful of tribesmen slipped onto shore from four small boats that they had rowed up the harbor in full darkness. Crewmen from Moses’ ship had accompanied them to man the boats and then guard them while Calabar and local allies waded through the fens south of Olinda, up a small bank, over a hillock, and then into the town proper. Luckily, the Jewish families were clustered on the marshy side of the town, near the wall which protected Olinda from sea bombardment and invasion. It would have been best if they could have rowed up the harbor and landed on the north side, but the shoreline there was too rocky, too treacherous underfoot. There were at least eight children that would have to be removed, along with their mothers, fathers, and grandparents. Would the boats hold them all? They had to. There was no alternative.
He and the tribesmen waded through the marsh without torches or lanterns. The darkness was essential if they were to infiltrate the town, but it would then pose a problem once they were within and had to face the families. How would these town dwellers react to dark-skinned natives suddenly emerging from the gloom, breaking down their doors and pulling their children from beds? Calabar tapped the letters in his pocket to ensure they were still there.
“I will personally deliver a letter to each family,” he reiterated to the leader of the tribesmen who lay beside him in the tall grass of the hillock just outside town. He hoped his words were correct. I wish Luiz were here, he thought as he slowly repeated the words in his broken Tupi. “And they will, I hope, understand what we are doing. It will be difficult, but we must get them all out of the town and back to the boats. Do you understand?”
The tribe’s leader nodded.
“You and your men must get them back. I will not be helping you. You must do this on your own. Do you understand?”
The leader nodded again. “I understand. And what will you be doing?”
Calabar ignored the question. “Let’s go.”
Together, they rose out of the grass and moved down the hill, following Calabar into Olinda. They stopped behind the first line of homes. Calabar peered around a corner. There were a few faint lights scattered around the town, but not enough to reveal them. He spotted a Portuguese soldier, then another, and another, walking the empty streets, muskets in their hands. He waited until the closest turned a corner and disappeared. He then motioned and led the tribesmen stealthily across the street and behind a line of shops, all lightless and empty. They waited again until another soldier passed out of view. They crossed another street, and finally they were behind the first Jewish home.
The house was dark, but the back door was easily pried open. Calabar closed his eyes, said a small prayer, then put his shoulder into the door. It fell open and the people in the house jumped up. A woman tried to scream. A tribesman was on her, his hand over her mouth, a knife at her throat. Calabar grabbed the lantern on the table. With one hand, he advanced the wick so that the almost invisible flame grew; with the other he pressed his index finger to his mouth. “Shhhh!”
He pulled a letter from his pocket and motioned the father to come and read by the lantern light. The man, terrified, did so, read it twice, looked up as if he could not believe the words there. Calabar nodded and then instructed him quietly to gather a few things and follow his men out. The man’s wife and their two sons did as they were told. They slipped through the back door and toward the boats.
The next house and the next followed similar patterns. The fourth house, however, had an elderly matriarch who could not walk on her own, and the Portuguese had done nothing to help her condition, or that of her family. But Calabar kept his frustration in check, helped the woman to a stretcher that the family had constructed when they needed to move her, and directed two tribesmen to carry her back to the boats.
As they were slipping out the back door, the woman’s granddaughter dropped her doll. She tried to turn back to get it, but Calabar blocked her path. She could not be allowed to delay the family’s departure. She had to go, now. Calabar did not like the movement of Portuguese troops in the streets. As careful and quiet as they had been, Olinda was beginning to rouse. More soldiers began to drift into the area, attracted and curious about the faint but uncommon noises and disruptions coming from there.
“No, sweet one,” Calabar whispered to the little girl. “Go with mama!”
The girl pouted but allowed herself to be drawn away.
The next house was not so easy. The man had a pistol which he pulled from beneath a broken slat in the floor. He aimed it at Calabar, tried cocking the hammer. Calabar swung with his own pistol swiftly. Struck in the jaw, the man stretched his length upon the ground.
His wife screamed, running at Calabar with her small fists curled up and ready to strike, but a tribesman pulled her away. They dragged the man out behind her. There would be no reading a letter to them.
But the commotion brought the Portuguese soldiers directly to the house. A soldier began to beat on the door. Calabar motioned a tribesman over, then opened the door abruptly: the tribesman put a spear through his chest. The soldier fell forward, tried to scream, but a knife across his throat silenced him.
Another soldier appeared behind his dead companion, raised his gun and fired. The tribesman with the knife fell, a gaping wound in his own chest. Calabar shot the soldier, who fell limply before he could charge the door.
Secrecy was no longer important or possible. Olinda was coming alive, and one family still remained. “Go get them,” he told the tribe’s leader. “I’ll hold off the Portuguese as long as I can.”
When they were gone, Calabar reloaded his pistol, used the muzzle to push open an unlatched shutter, discovered another Portuguese soldier creeping toward the house. Calabar waited until he was within ten feet, then fired: the pistol ball tore through his shoulder, dropped him writhing to the ground. Other soldiers fired back a mere moment after Calabar fell to the floor, reloading and considering his options. It was not possible to hold them off forever, but he only had to slow them down long enough for that last family to be secured.
He scuttled to the back door, found an unlit lantern, smashed it against the floor: oil spread across the weak slats. From his pocket, he fished out pieces of flint. He struck them together once, twice, three times until a spark hit the oil. The faint blue flames raced across the floor, yellow flickers starting up where the wood was already starting to catch.
He went to the next house and did the same. As the flames leaped up, the tribe’s leader brought the last family behind the smoky cover of the burning houses. Calabar slapped him on the shoulder. “Get them to the boats. Now!”
“Are you coming with us?”
“No. I will hold them off. Go, get the families out of here. Once they are on the boats, leave. Do not wait for me.”
The leader seemed confused, tried to argue. Calabar shoved his pistol into the man’s chest. “Go, or you die!”
The man, shocked and wide-eyed, nodded and led the family away. Calabar watched them leave, then turned his attention back to reloading and scanning the massing Portuguese soldiers.
Fortunately, the fire had brought out a confusing rush of civilians as well, who were trying to organize a bucket brigade to keep the fire from spreading to other homes and businesses. Calabar ducked as a lone musket discharged; the ball blasted a jet of dirt out of the mud brick wall of the house against which he was leaning. He finished reloading, then stepped out into the open to get a better look. Across the street he saw a Portuguese soldier frantically trying to reload his musket. Calabar raised his weapon, steadied it, squeezed the trigger and watched as the young man staggered and then fell.
That attracted the expected attention. From several different locations, musket fire answered his own. He reacted by falling with a scream, feigning a hit in the meat of his thigh. Gripping his leg in apparent agony, he crawled back into the first house they had entered. Once inside, he kept low and flattened himself against the wall. He waited, waited until a soldier burst through the front door.
Calabar threw himself against the man, yanking the musket out of his hands and forcing the length of the barrel against his throat. The man fell back, slamming Calabar into the chairs and table. A lantern fell, its oil burst against the wooden floor, setting it afire. But Calabar did not let go, despite the flames, despite the terrified strength of the soldier. He held the musket tight and pushed the barrel down into the soldier’s throat, held it there until he heard a brittle crackling sound of a crushed windpipe; after a moment, the thrashing stopped and the man lay dead.
Despite the heat of the growing fire, Calabar turned the young man over and looked into his white face. He wasn’t much more than a boy. “I’m sorry,” he said to the body, turning the musket over in his hand and hefting the stock. “I know you were just following your orders, but it had to be done. Go with God.”
Without remorse, without regret, Calabar slammed the butt of the musket into the boy’s face, again and again, until there was nothing left to recognize. He tossed the bloody musket into the fire, and, as the flames grew higher and hotter, began to undress.
* * *
Pedro Álvares walked carefully through the charred wooden skeletons and cracked adobe rubble of the burned homes, noting the occasional remains of Portuguese soldiers. All told, four homes had been reduced to soot, cinders, and scorched brick: a grim reminder of what had transpired in the streets of Olinda the night before. Matias de Albuquerque followed Pedro, surrounded by his personal guard of five men. Álvares proceeded slowly, looking for survivors.
“God’s grace,” said Matias, his voice dry and raspy, “look at it. The bastard will hang for this, I swear.”
“They are gone, sir,” Álvares said, kneeling down. He pulled aside a superficially blackened board, tossed it aside, and found a small doll, its little cloth dress singed, its wooden face rough and split by the fire’s heat. “All of the Jewish families are gone.”
And so too the Dutch. Most of them, at least. They had apparently slipped away from Recife in the night, on board Tromp’s fleet. Some Dutch had remained behind: mostly merchants, a few farmers, and those with more Portuguese blood than Dutch. But where were Calabar and his family? Matias had ordered a house-to-house search in Recife for the traidor. He would be found and executed for all of his crimes.
Álvares shook his head, stood, and looked toward the protective wall of the town. He could not see the harbor from where he stood, but somewhere out there, far up the coast, Maarten Tromp’s fleet was headed north, probably toward the islands of the Caribbean. Maybe Curaçao, maybe one of the Antilles. Where exactly, he could not say. That was the only part of the plan that he had not been able to figure out, and Calabar would not tell him.
Perhaps the Spanish would get lucky and catch the Dutch before they arrived at their destination. Álvares smiled and shook his head again. No reason to imagine the impossible: it would take an act of God for a sufficient number of Spanish galleons to stumble into the Dutch, who they had no reason to expect to be fleeing Recife at all, let alone in such force. Besides, there were too many good captains and cunning seamen in the Dutch fleet, and no matter what had happened in Europe to bring Tromp to Brazil in the first place, one thing seemed certain: the Dutch always survived to fight another day.
Matias, who had insisted on inspecting Recife before Olinda, was pleased that the Dutch were gone. When they had walked across the long bridge connecting Recife to Antonio Vaz, Álvares could tell that the man was elated. The long-standing goal of Portugal’s captains in the Pernambuco had been to free Brazil from the West India Company and now it had finally been accomplished.
But there was a haunted look just behind the seeming satisfaction in Matias’ eyes, a furtive hint of humiliation, anger, and embarrassment that he would not, could not, admit. Not even to himself. Because even though Matias de Albuquerque could stand proudly in the main square of Recife and say that Brazil was once again fully under Portuguese control, one traitor—a man that he had once respected and admired in spite of his mixed blood—had apparently escaped.
Álvares turned that fact over and over in his mind as he continued walking through the ruin that had been the small Jewish quarter of Olinda. Had he told Matias of his suspicions of what the Dutch had been doing, the entire matter would have played out differently. The Dutch would likely have been surrounded in port and eventually destroyed. All it would have taken was just one word.
Álvares pondered the power, the decisiveness, and the risk of that one unspoken word as he picked his way forward, fiddling with a silver ring on his right hand. It was an unspoken word that could become a de facto death sentence, if his decision not to utter it ever became known to Matias. Logically, it made little sense: risking everything for one small, intangible reason. He flinched his fingers away from the ring. But his focus upon it, and the fateful reason for his silence remained: I did it for Calabar. For your—our—family. And for all mixed-blood peoples here in Brazil. All us mamelucos, both secret and known.
There was a commotion ahead. Several Olindans had come to a halt around the last pile of rubble, pointing at something buried beneath it. Álvares went there and began helping the men push away the soot-blackened beams and stones.
Underneath lay a body, dressed in Dutch clothing. A man, his face smashed in, apparently, from fallen stone. Beyond that his clothes were nearly burned off. What remained of them clung, tattered and black, on his roasted, husk-like corpse. Álvares gently picked a few remaining locks of wet, gory hair away from the dead man’s forehead, but the face was too damaged to recognize.
Nearby, rumpled and flat, lay a hat. Álvares leaned over the corpse to grab it. He unfolded it in his hands. Black felt. Excellent quality and still wonderfully smooth, despite the heat of the fire.
Calabar’s hat.
“Who is it?”
Álvares ignored Matias’ question. In the tight, balled-up hand of the corpse lay a small scrap of paper. Álvares carefully, with subtle motion, pulled the note from the stiff fingers, opened it quietly and read it to himself. Two simple Portuguese words were scrawled in the center of the paper. Two hateful, derogatory words. Álvares could not help but smile. He looked to the wall again, toward the harbor.
O Calabar, you clever bastard!
“Is it him?”
Matias’ question could not be ignored again. Álvares stood, turned, and offered up the hat. He nodded. “Yes, sir, it is him. Domingos Fernandes Calabar is dead.”
Up the Wild Coast
On the deck of Amelia, Admiral Tromp stood beside Calabar who was dressed in a poorly fitting Portuguese uniform and wrapped in a quilt. He had developed a small cold, shivering despite the unrelenting humidity of the Wild Coast. Through the early morning haze, the coast itself could not be seen. But Brazil was still there, far beyond those brightening mists, and it would always be there for Calabar.
“Excellent work in Olinda,” Tromp said.
Calabar sniffled. “Thank you, sir. All the families have been placed on ships. No losses, praise God.”
Tromp nodded, glanced toward the mist-wreathed shore. “I hate to leave it behind. Brazil, I mean. I’m not sure that the Company will ever find a paradise as rich and plentiful ever again. As many of the colonists bitterly continue to point out. But imagine what would have happened had we tried to stay.”
Calabar could not imagine it. All he could think about, all he could see, were the four faces he had left behind.
Tromp turned toward him, a small inquisitive smile on his face. “What did Álvares want for his silence?”
Calabar shrugged off the quilt and let it fall to the deck. He leaned against the portside railing. “A silver ring. It was my mother’s. She had gotten it from his father.”
“He knew you had it?”
“No, but he hoped, and when he mentioned it in von Schoppe’s cabin, I knew immediately what he meant. Minha mae gave it to me when I was a boy. ‘Keep this in remembrance of me,’ she had said, ‘and someday it will bring you good luck.’ She was right.”
“Do you think he’ll keep silent? Keep the truth from Matias?”
Calabar nodded. “He will. He’s family. As far as the Portuguese are concerned, I am dead.”
