Выбрать главу

The building that looms in the distance is the Royal Palace. The Palace is there but not the King, for he has gone off to hunt at Azeitão with the Infante Dom Francisco and his other brothers, accompanied by the footmen of the royal household and two Jesuit fathers, the Reverend João Seco and the Reverend Luis Gonzaga, who certainly were not in the party simply to eat and to pray, perhaps the King wished to brush up his knowledge of mathematics or Latin and Greek, subjects the good fathers had taught him when he was a young prince. His Majesty also carried a new rifle made for him by João de Lara, master of arms in the royal arsenal, a work of art embellished with gold and silver, which were it to be lost en route, would soon be returned to its rightful owner, for along the barrel of the rifle, in bold lettering and written in Latin, as on the pediment of the Basilica of St Peter's in Rome, are inscribed the words, I BELONG TO THE MONARCH, MAY GOD PROTECT DOM JOÃO v, yet some people continue to insist that rifles can speak only through the mouth of the barrel and solely in the language of gunpowder and lead. That is certainly true of ordinary rifles, such as the one used by Baltasar Mateus, alias Sete-Sóis, who at this very minute is unarmed and standing quite still in the middle of the Palace Square as he watches the world go by, a constant procession of litters and friars, ruffians and merchants, and watching bales and chests being weighed, he feels a sudden nostalgia for the war, and if he did not know that he is not wanted any more, he would return to Alentejo without a moment's hesitation, even if it meant certain death.

Baltasar took the broad avenue leading to the Rossio, after attending Holy Mass in the Church of Our Lady of Oliveira, where he engaged in mild flirtation with an unaccompanied woman who obviously fancied him, a fairly common pastime, for since the women are on one side of the church and the men on the other, they soon start to exchange billets-doux, make signs with their hands and handkerchiefs, twitching their lips and giving knowing winks, but when the woman took a close look at Baltasar, who was worn out after his long journey and had no money to spend on trifles and silk ribbons, she decided not to pursue the flirtation, and leaving the church, she took the broad avenue in the direction of the Rossio. This seemed to be a day for women, he thought, as a dozen or so emerged from a narrow side street, surrounded by black street-urchins who jostled them with sticks, nearly all of the women fair, with eyes that were pale blue, green, or grey, Who are these women, Sete-Sóis inquired, and by the time a man standing nearby told him, Baltasar had already surmised that they were probably the English whores being taken back to the ship from which they had been disembarked by the wily captain, and there was no other solution but to send them to the island of Barbados, rather than allow them to wander this fair land of Portugal, so greatly favoured by foreign whores, for here is a profession that defies the confusion of Babel, and you can enter these workshops as silent as a deaf-mute, so long as your money has spoken first. Yet the ferryman had said that there were some fifty whores in all, but here there were no more than twelve, What happened to the others, and the man explained, Most have already been recaptured, but some found means of hiding, and no doubt have by now discovered the difference between English and Portuguese men. Baltasar continued on his way, promising St Benedict a heart fashioned from wax if he would grant him the favour of being able to sample, at least once in his lifetime, a fair English wench, preferably tall and slender with green eyes, for if on the Feast of St Benedict the faithful knock at the church doors and pray that they might never go without bread, and women who are anxious to find a good husband have Masses celebrated every Friday in the Saint's honour, why should a soldier not pray to St Benedict for the favours of an English whore, just once, before he meets his Maker, rather than die in ignorance.

Baltasar Sete-Sóis wandered around the city's quarters and squares all afternoon. He drank a bowl of soup at the gates of the Convent of St Francis of the City, asked which of the guilds were most generous in distributing alms and made a careful note of three of them for further investigation, the Guild of Our Lady of Oliveira, the patron saint of pastry-cooks, which he had already tried, the Guild of St Eloi, the patron saint of silversmiths, and the Guild of the Lost Child, which aptly described his own situation, although he could scarcely recall ever having been a child, lost yes, if they will ever find him.

Dusk fell, and Sete-Sóis went off to find a place to sleep. He had already struck up a friendship with another former soldier, older and more experienced, João Elvas who now made his living as a pimp, a profession he pursued by night, and now that the weather was warmer, he made good use of some abandoned sheds against the walls of the Convent of Hope, near the olive grove. Occasionally Baltasar visited João Elvas, with whom you could always be certain of meeting a new face or of finding someone to talk to but rather than take any risks, Baltasar, on the pretext that he wanted to give his right hand a rest after carrying his knapsack all day, attached the spike to his stump, anxious not to alarm João Elvas and the other rogues for it is a deadly weapon as we well know. There were six of them huddled under the shed, but no one tried to do him any harm and he had no intention of harming them.

To while away the hours before falling asleep, they reminisced about crimes that had been committed. Not their own, the crimes of their leaders, which nearly always went unpunished, even when the guilty parties could easily be identified, the powerful had no fear of being discovered and brought to justice. But the common thieves, bullies, or petty criminals, since there was no danger of anyone betraying the leaders, soon found themselves in Limoeiro prison, where they could be sure of a bowl of soup, not to mention the excrement and urine fouling the cells. Recently they released a hundred and fifty petty criminals from Limoeiro, who were joined by more than five hundred men, who had been recruited for India and then dismissed because they were no longer required, and there were so many of them, and so much hunger, that a plague broke out, threatening to kill all of us, so that the recruits were disbanded, and I was one of them. Another man said, This country is a hotbed of crime, more people are murdered in this city than are killed in war, as anyone who has ever fought will tell you, What do you say, Sete-Sóis, whereupon Baltasar replied, I can tell you how men die in war, but I don't know how men die in Lisbon, so I can't make any comparison, ask João Elvas, for he knows as much about military strongholds as he does about city slums, but João Elvas, merely shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.

The conversation turned back to the previous topic, and they listened to the story of the gilder who stabbed a widow whom he wanted to marry but she refused to satisfy his desire, so he murdered her and sought sanctuary in the Convent of the Holy Trinity, and then there was the tale of the unfortunate woman who rebuked her philandering husband, whereupon he slashed her from head to foot with his sword, and that of the clergyman who, because of some amorous intrigue, was rewarded with three magnificent scars, all these misadventures occurring during Lent, a season of hot blood and dark passions. But August is not much better, as we saw last year, when the dismembered body of a woman was discovered cut into fourteen or fifteen pieces, the precise number of pieces was never verified, but there was no doubt that she had been flogged with great violence about the vulnerable parts of her body, such as the buttocks and the calves, the flesh had been stripped from the bones and abandoned in Cotovia, one half of her limbs had been scattered near the fortifications of Conde de Tarouca and the rest down in Cardais, but scattered so blatantly that they were soon discovered, no attempt had been made to bury her remains or dump them at sea, so we can only conclude that they were deliberately left exposed to arouse public outrage.