“Nay,” answered Oliveira. “That will be not.”
I pointed north-west, vaguely toward Portugal, and said, “His ship departed in May. If it be not in Lisbon by now, it cannot be far from there.”
“That much I grant you, Piloto. But though the ship may be near Lisbon, Don João is not.”
“I cannot comprehend you.”
Oliveira leaned close. “Shall I tell you a secret, that I had from Pedro Faleiro before he embarked on that same ship?”
“Speak it.”
“Don João is already dead. The order was given by Don Jeronymo, to certain agents of his aboard the ship, that on the seventh day out to sea they were to seize Don João and hurl him over the side, and report him lost by mischance.”
“What?”
“Aye, I swear it! Faleiro was drinking with the men who were hired to do it, and Andrade also, and in the tavern the two did boast that they had been paid in gold to do Don João to death, and also his mulatto concubine Dona Teresa, who—”
“Nay!” I cried, in a voice so great that it made the masts quiver. “Nay, it cannot be!”
And indeed I believed in that moment it was impossible, that Don João was too wise and well connected to fall victim to such a plot, and that my dark and dark-souled Dona Teresa, so luminous of intelligence and guided moreover by her mokisso-witching, would surely be proof against all such villainy. In the deepest pit of my soul did I deny their deaths: but then, as the tide will flow inexorably back upon rocks that have been laid high and bare, so too did fear and doubt come to sweep onto that denial and flood it with uncertainty, and after uncertainty came terror, all in the next instant. For even the mighty and the well guarded can be undone by a determined enemy, or else kings would never fall to assassins; and after my first refusal to accept their deaths came the sudden reversal of that, the agony of doubt, the dread that it was so, that my ally Don João was gone forever and that Dona Teresa, whose witchcraft had insinuated so deep into my heart and loins, would never again return to me.
Oliveira, not knowing why I was so moved and not yet realizing that I was already half berserk, said in his same quiet way, “Aye, the two of them would be given to the sharks, so it was arranged, and thus Don João never would trouble Don Jeronymo again. A pity, I did think, for Don João was a shrewd man and also a just one, and might well have—”
“Jesu!” I bellowed, and hurled myself against Oliveira as though he were Dona Teresa’s own murderer. My hands went to his throat and dug deep, so that his eyes began to start from his face and his cheeks turned purple, and I shook him and shook him and shook him, making his head loll on his shoulders like the head of a child’s straw-stuffed poppet, and he made thick gargling sounds and slapped without effect against me, feeble as a babe. As I throttled him I continued to roar and cry aloud, and nearly the whole ship’s company came running to see what was the matter, forming a ring round us but no one at first daring to intervene in this dispute between master and second-in-command. Then Pinto Cabral, who was a wise and thoughtful man, laid a hand to my shoulder and said a few words in a gentle way, believing me mad, and in that moment I regained my senses enough to release Oliveira and hurl him from me. He went sprawling across the bridge and fetched up in a corner, trembling and gagging and stroking his throat. I too trembled, and more than trembled: I shook, I convulsed as though in a fit.
Never before had I experienced any such earthquake of the soul. I crouched against the planks, pounding my knuckles into them while tears hot as burning acid did roll into my beard and drip between my knees. To the eye of my mind came a hideous vision of ruffians seizing Dona Teresa in the night, all soft and bleary of her slumbers, and taking Don João, who slept beside her, and carrying them to the rail of the ship and hurling them swiftly and silently into the dark, perhaps slitting their throats first so that they could not call out for aid, and then Dona Teresa entering into the maw of the sea, Dona Teresa vanishing forever from sight, Dona Teresa food for the sharks—she who had spoken of being married by a Cardinal in Lisbon, she who had yearned for Rome and Paris, she who had dangled her lovely breasts across my thighs to wake my manhood, a day or two before she had sailed, she now wholly rapt into that dark and cold and enormous watery shroud—no, no, no, it was beyond thinking! I was wholly broken by it.
I know not how long I did crouch there, shaken and dazed and numbed, whether it was ten seconds or ten minutes, but at last I conquered my grief to some degree and arose, and in a low growling voice did order the seamen back to their duties, gesturing at them with my elbows and not meeting their eyes.
I went to Oliveira, who still rubbed his throat, where marks of my hands were beginning to show. He looked at me in terror, thinking perhaps that I meant to finish the job. I knelt by him and said, “Are you badly harmed?”
“Piloto, you all but slew me!”
“It was a sudden madness that came over me. I am much abashed. Can you rise?”
“Aye.”
“Come, then.”
I helped him up. His eyes were still wide and his face very red, and he was shivering as though we had passed into Arctic seas. Even now he was uncertain of me, and stood poised to run from me if my present softness were only a prelude to another attack.
Most of the crew still watched. I whirled to them and cried, “Away from here! Back to your tasks!” To Cabral I said, “You are in command for this hour.” And I said to Oliveira, “Come to my cabin with me. I will make amends to you with some good brandy-wine, and we will talk.”
“You frightened me greatly, Piloto.”
“It was a madness,” I said again. “It will not return. Come with me.”
In the narrow space of my cabin I uncorked the dark smoky brandy-wine and poured a strong dose for him and another for me, my hand still shaking so badly that I all but spilled it in the pouring, and his the same, so that he all but spilled it in the drinking. In silence we had our liquor, and at length I said, “The tale you told me gave me a deep disruption of the soul, and for the moment drove me wild with grief. I greatly regret this attack on you: I hope you will forgive me.”
He ran his finger about his sweaty collar. “I will survive, Piloto.”
“You understand how it is, when a man hears terrible news, how sometimes he strikes out at the closest at hand, even if it be someone entirely innocent?”
“Such things happen,” said Oliveira.
We drank us a second drink.
Then he looked at me and said, “May I speak with frankness, Piloto?”
“Indeed. Say anything.”
“We are not close friends, are we, but only men who have sailed together twice or thrice. And you are English, and I a Portugal, so there is little in common between us. But yet I would not want to see you come to harm, for I think you are a skillful pilot, and a man of good heart, and moreover—”
“To the point; if you will.”
“I approach the point, Piloto. It is quite plain to me that you were powerfully stricken with grief at the news I gave you, and your great emotion speaks much for your loyalty to Don João, who was your especial protector, I am aware. But nevertheless—”