Dos Santos followed his markers back to where the Colonel and the regiment had begun to bivouac. He reported to his commander what he had seen; immediately the men, though thirsty and exhausted, were ordered to decamp. When the scout inquired about the Colonel’s plans, he was thrown to the soil. The regiment beat such a quick path using his guideposts that it took dos Santos several minutes to catch up.
As a child, the Colonel had witnessed the Africans’ failed attempt to raze his father’s plantation, and more than once he had been told that their plans had included slaughtering every Londônia or Figueiras they found. So he tended to regard all blacks not in bondage or under the protection of the cloth as renegades. In any case, a mocambo might provide an ideal haven for any enemies of the Crown. Did the Dutch, who were heathens anyways, even sanction slavery? Who could be sure? At the hill, the Colonel told his men to slow their advance and follow the direction of the lilting music. He paused, all the men paused. He ordered them to draw their weapons. Dos Santos noted, this time aloud, there was no sign or seal of Dutch influence. This was evidently a free colony, he was willing to bear a message of conciliation, if so ordered. The Colonel told the scout not to mock him again; not only canestalks should fear the scythe.
As they crouched in the bushes, a phalanx of a half-dozen males, ranging from adolescents to adults, emerged from the trees. Maroons, they wore simple shifts; except for the one at the very head of the line, carrying what appeared to be a sacramental spear, they were unarmed. At their rear strode a tall, gray-haired African, of influential bearing. He carried a large shield made of braided and colored palms, a cross within a circle woven into its face, and a carved mahogany pike. A bright ochre sash fell across his bare, scarred but still muscled chest, at the center of which hung a small, leather amulet.
The train of black men began to mount the hill. As they approached the summit, Dos Santos, the regiment’s assigned emissary, rose reflexively from his haunches to approach the group. But the Colonel also sprang from his lee into the clearing. The group of free men halted, the shield-bearing leader extending his hand palm upwards, fingers spread, in a gesture of friendship. One of the other maroons announced in broken Portuguese that they were not subjects of the crown, and that they sought no hostilities. Perhaps they assumed the mulatto scout and the commander with his nappy mane, though clad in military gear, certainly would not harm them.
What the Colonel saw, however, was Cesarão. The big man, though he did not recognize his enemy, did realize immediately the danger he was facing. The Colonel yelled out a forward charge, in successive lines, and his men began dropping their adversaries by sword and pike as rapidly as they could reach them. The man the Colonel sought fled back down the hill into the compound; his cries, in a language unintelligible even to dos Santos, sent women, children and animals scattering in all directions. The Portuguese company hurried down to the perimeter of the settlement, where the first wave met poisoned arrows, knives, a long, spear-lined pit, which opened suddenly, like a lamprey’s mouth. A few men toppled over each other into death: Souza, Madeira. The others dropped whomever they could.
The Colonel, from a position in behind a tree, reloaded his gun, felling one of the rebels. As his men subdued most of their opponents, he hunted down that Cesarão. The big man, running to grab his sword, had stumbled into another pit, this one filled with waste, on the periphery of the settlement, and was clambering like a crab to get out of it. The Colonel had one goaclass="underline" the chief rebel’s head. With one swing of his sword, he got it.
When the regiment was done, flames shrieked up from what had been the settlement like a monstrous blue bird-of-paradise. The Colonel ordered all the enemy who had not escaped or been slain taken prisoner. There must be at least some among them who would serve as guides back to the São Francisco, and since they had operated under Cesarão’s control, they ought, he was convinced, to be returned to his father’s estate. Cesarão’s head, along with the infernal fetish, hunkered in its bloody, fecal glaze in a burlap sack.
The number of captives was few. None was willing, without coercion, to lead the tormentors out of the jungle. Finally, an older woman, sufficiently broken by the Colonel himself, conducted them to the initial outpost from which they had started. It was, unaccountably, no more than a two-day journey.
The Colonel, Viana
Another small regiment, under the command of Viana, had stopped there, awaiting further orders; they had been sent as backup to the Colonel, since he and his men had not been heard from in months.
Viana inquired about the Africans. Who were they, were they agents of the Dutch, how had they come to be so badly maimed? The Colonel demanded to see his papers. Had Fonte da Ré sent him? An argument ensued. When Viana refused to listen any longer to the “obviously feverish and belligerent cafuzo,” the Colonel ordered his men to seize Viana’s weapons, commandeer his boats, which were anchored at the dock, and place the few remaining rebels on them. He had Viana and his regiment bound and lashed to trees, though they were, ostensibly, the King’s soldiers. Viana promised that the Colonel would never see beyond the gates of a military prison once he got free; the Colonel’s first impulse was to raise his sword; the festering burlap sack could surely hold another head, but dos Santos implored him to think better of it. The Portuguese sentries manning the dock and post opportunely vanished.
The boats plied the river back to its mouth. Every hundred kilometers one of the captives endeavored to leap into freedom of the currents, such that by the time the Colonel reached his father’s plantation, only one young male, whom he had tethered to dos Santos, and two young females remained. José Inocêncio, now walking with the aid of a cane, and his elegant wife, Dona Maria Francisca, received their son and his men in the sitting room of their house. The son presented the recaptured slaves; his bewildered father was unsure that he could take such easy title to any of them, who in any case were too young and wild to incorporate immediately into his docile stock. He would have to consult his lawyer. Still, he had all three taken out to the slave quarters. The young male black, the elder man noted, looked vaguely familiar. At this point, the son presented to him the burlap sack, which by now was swarming and putrid. After a brief and horrifying examination, Londônia ordered it removed and cast out into the voracious river; very likely, like a vial bearing a message of incalculable importance, it rapidly made its way to the open sea.
Once he was fed, outfitted and properly horsed, which devoured nearly a month, the Colonel brought his men back to Salvador. As soon as he reported to his garrison, he was seized; a warrant had been issued for his arrest, for violations of the military code. Viana, already back in the capital city, had reported him. The Colonel was remanded to the military prison, to await adjudication of his case. He asked to meet with Fonte da Ré, but this request was denied on the grounds of practicality. His commander had been killed in battle at Arraial do Cabo, near the port of Nazaré, only a few days earlier.
The Tribunal
There was no precedent in the records of the military courts of Brazil, a councilor with connections to the colonial administrator and hired by José Inocêncio argued, for such a state of affairs, about which officers and prominent townspeople were buzzing. In the case of Lázaro Inocêncio Londônia de Figueiras, there could be no charge of insubordination. Viana held no titular rank above him; the commander only took the steps he did in order to complete his mission without delay; he had remained faithful to the original orders, as best he interpreted them, of his commanding officer; he had suffered an insult to his face, his dignity — there were witnesses. On the first and final counts, the argument appeared to have standing. On the second and third, questions lingered. Fonte da Ré, now deceased, was unable to attest either way. The men in Londônia’s regiment had suddenly grown silent, and might have to be ordered to testify by the tribunal. Still, tying up a fellow officer and his soldiers, when they posed no threat of sedition, desertion or sabotage, constituted an extraordinary scenario. The councilor would have to consult with more learned authorities, and write to Lisbon for more guidance. During this interim, Londônia would remain in military custody.