One Wednesday evening, weeks into his courses, shortly after the turn of the new year and the feast of Our Lady, once he had concluded Vespers and tucked in for the night, D’Azevedo awoke to what he thought he perceived as the regular beating of a drumhead, though so low it was almost below the level of audibility. He rose, slipped his doublet over his nightshirt and stepped into his sandals, then made his way through the tunnel of dark, for the monastery was kept lightless until 4, the hour of morning prayers, to where he thought the sound emanated. Perhaps, he considered, the boys had snuck in a jug of any of the many types of liquors that were the fruits of the abundant sugar crops, and were continuing Christmas celebrations, frowned on though they were; but he would only chide them, gently, and remind them of the House’s rules, for though they were guests and youths, they were expected to carry themselves in the manner expected of any who lived between these walls, let alone boys of their station. Tracing his way to them, he opened the door, as quietly as possible, and entered the room. All were soundly asleep. Soft snores rose from their slumbering forms. In the slender ribbon of light the moon cast through the half-closed shutters, the Figueiras boy, curled beneath his sheet, was murmuring the gibberish of dreams. D’Azevedo closed the door, waited for several minutes, then went back in. Not a body had shifted.
As he closed the door he could again hear the drumming, faint but now accompanied, he perceived, by a low wail, like an animal caught in the crevice of a deep shaft, or wire upon wire. He left the boys and tracked his way back, ever so carefully through the blackness, until he reached the main entry hall. The noise was coming, he thought, from the cloister. He passed through the large wooden door, now so familiar to him, out into the cool air, to find not a single soul or sound but those of the summer night, the light of the moon and the stars, the soil and grasses and flowers and stones. Everything lay in its usual place. He stood still and listened but the sound was gone. He strolled the open space, checking in corners, scanning the back wall, examining the wings, with bedrooms, including his own, that extended from the long, low main building. He saw and heard nothing. He sat on the ground and kept vigil for a while, until he felt sleepy and his head nodding. It was as he was opening the door to go back indoors that he again heard drumbeats and, out of the corner of his eye, he spied a shape, a shadow, moving along the rear wall, and he turned to spot something, someone, its hair fanning over its shoulders, gliding over the stone barrier. D’Azevedo ran to the wall and leapt up, seizing its top to wrench himself high enough to peer over it, but there was nothing, neither drum nor cry, only the nearby barns and stables, the slave cabins, the fields, the vast forest with its peculiar soundscape, and enveloping it all, the dense, impermeable silence of the night.
D’Azevedo crept back to bed, but could not sleep. Despite no sounds beyond the usual ones of the house, his entire body, like a sentinel, kept vigil. He went early to the chapel, before the bell, and as soon as he had mouthed the last syllable of the Latin imprecations, he turned to his fellow monks and told them that he would like to meet with them straightaway in his office. They walked there together in silence, and it was not until he closed the door that D’Azevedo noticed the slave João Baptista sweeping his office. He promptly ushered him out. The provost opened the gathering by noting its irregular nature, and apologized for calling his brethren from their appointed duties. He recounted the strange incidents of the prior night, and made clear that he had not merely dreamt them. He had heard drumming, and had observed someone vaulting over the wall. With barely suppressed shock he noted it might even have been a woman, given that none of the monks — and he surveyed them as he spoke — nor the slaves, had long hair.
Had any of them heard anything? Seen any odd characters traipsing about the monastery’s buildings or grounds? All said no, they had heard nothing last night, seen no one. Padre Pero noted that sometimes the blacks consorted with women in the town, without permission, but that in any case, this would occur in their quarters and never within the cloister or main building. He promised to conduct an inquiry and severely punish anyone found to be violating the rules. Padre Barbosa Pires asked whether D’Azevedo was certain it was none of the students he had brought into the house; there were forces at work in the town that the Holy Office might well need to address. D’Azevedo dismissed this comment, noting that the students’ behavior had been unimpeachable, and awaited Dom Gaspar’s thoughts, but he expressed none. With that, D’Azevedo thanked them all and sent them on their way. He wrote out a letter asking you for guidance, and prepared it for posting, though, he noted to himself, he had not heard from you or anyone in or around Olinda for some time. Finished, he felt lightheaded. Before he could call for assistance, João Baptista knocked to enter his office, with an urn of fresh coconut water, and a bowl of cashews, which are said to be good for the nerves, and the remedy set him right for the rest of the day.
Things proceeded without account, until, several weeks later, after a private meeting and dinner at the monastery with several members of the powerful Pimentel family, local plantation owners and brewers who were considering becoming patrons of the future school they hoped their younger sons might someday attend, at which alcoholic spirits from a newly gifted cask had flowed, though the abstemious provost had not drunk more than a cup, D’Azevedo invited Dom Gaspar into his office to record the leader’s thoughts on the event. Once Dom Gaspar had done so, and drafted a letter of thanks to the Pimentels, which D’Azevedo signed, the provost, calmed by the sweet and potent liquor, the fellowship, and the knowledge that they had roughly a half hour or so before evening prayers and bedtime, asked his charge to remained seated, and said, “My dear brother, I am so grateful for your assistance here. I do not know how I would have gotten this house into the shape it is in without you by my side.”
The brother, his lips and mind also loosened by wine, unbuttoned the top of his doublet and replied, “And I am so thankful to you, my Lord, for the changes you have wrought here. How different it was before you arrived! In the absence of a firm tribune of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost this House was approaching the precipice. There was not just a laxity of practice but of the Faith, of spirit. That wickedness, either preached by the devil’s handservant Luther or by Satan and his agents themselves, when they are not one and the same, was rising like a fever through these walls. I shall not call out any names, but I must testify to you, as I have not yet dared even in Holy Confession, that I did not always appear for prayers and on Sundays I did not always rise from my bed before midday. I hoarded food and ate eggs raw rather than let them be cooked. I raised my voice to the Negroes and even once took the Lord’s name in vain. I—”
“My dear brother,” D’Azevedo started, his face crimsoning at Dom Gaspar’s torrent of words, but the charge continued:
“I tell you, my Lord, the slaves themselves often forgot their places; they refused to work, they talked back, some vanished for days on end and cavorted with the Indians, they even dared to order the monks around. The one called Damásio, who was sold off shortly after I was sent here, threatened to murder Padre Pero in his sleep, I heard him say it with these two ears. Padre Pero beat him, then had him bound and sold at the market at the port, and sold off another that same day who planned to murder us all as well and have the other slaves rise up in revolt.”