“Do you think I don’t know that?” she yelled. “If we don’t have a weapon against this, get me one!” Then she turned to Godin and Mutis, the only learned men within reach and thus suitable targets of her furious decree. “Build it yourselves if you have to, but I don’t want to hear that we’re defenseless against those heretics. By whatever means, we must vanquish the Protestants for the glory of Christ. Now go and find me the weapon that will give us our victory!”
Afternoon, May 12 (Gregorian), 1756
Santos
From Cádiz to Toledo, to search for diaries and old letters; then to Coimbra, to gather testimonies by acquaintances; and then to Rotterdam, to find safe passage to Dutch Braziclass="underline" Louis Godin and José Celestino Mutis had embarked on an espionage mission only briefly delayed by the bothersome fact that any trip between Europe and the Indies was safer on a Dutch ship.
After disembarking at the colony port of Mauritsstad, they hired a smaller vessel to take them southward along the coast of the continent, to an island just off the city of São Paulo, called São Vicente. They carried royal letters of introduction to ensure their accommodation at the Carmelite monastery, but they didn’t unpack; as soon as they landed, they started asking around for the house that had belonged to the doctor Francisco Lourenço Rodrigues. Finding it didn’t take them too many hours of wandering. They were received by a young lady who at first didn’t take well to the unexpected visit, but their letters of introduction once again did the trick.
They sat in her living room, voicing their awkward gratitude in careful Spanish. She ordered one of her slaves to serve them cups of coffee with cubes of sugar. “My grandfather’s house is honored by the presence of emissaries from Her Majesty,” she began, and repeated herself, more slowly, so they would understand her Portuguese.
“We count ourselves fortunate,” replied Godin, “that the house still stands. We learned that most of the doctor’s sons joined the clergy and spread all over Christendom. Our assignment would have been much more challenging if we’d had to track down each of them.”
“I can imagine the difficulty. Even my father’s generation is dying out. But I’ll be happy to give any help you need.”
Godin opened a satchel he’d kept close to him at all times during their journey, and leafed through a journal with pictures more valuable than all the sugar in Brazil. “The reason we’re here is to examine some papers that belonged to your uncle Bartolomeu.” He showed her one of the pages, and she turned pensive.
Mutis guessed she was trying to remember which of all her uncles they meant; Doctor Rodrigues had sired a dozen children. “Your uncle,” he explained, “has become a topic of interest to Her Majesty. It was a bit hard to find his place of origin because he adopted the surname Gusmão as an homage to one of his teachers.”
“Oh, I think I know who you’re talking about.” She examined the page again. It had a drawing that resembled a fat goose with eggs in its belly. It didn’t seem familiar to her. “I don’t think I even met him; he must have left for the seminary before I was born. You’ll have to forgive that I have so few memories of him. He died twenty years ago.”
“Twenty-two,” corrected Mutis.
“There you have it: I was a child. What is it that you need from him?”
“We have been told,” replied Godin, “that after his death, his personal belongings were transported back here, to his childhood home. Priests aren’t known for their many possessions, but we’re interested in collecting his writings, and we noticed that some portions were incomplete. We were hoping that at least there could be a notebook among his things.”
She raised her eyes to the ceiling, making a mental map of the house. “Usually, the ships with letters and boxes do reach São Vicente. It’s mostly the ships bound for Europe that sink. But I’ll have to send a slave to check in the upper rooms. Honestly, I don’t often go into the rooms of my dead relatives. It may take a while to identify the right trunk.”
“May we do the searching, if you don’t mind?” asked Mutis.
“I don’t see why not,” replied the woman, to their relief. “You’re here on Queen’s business, after all.”
“Thank you,” said Godin before finishing his coffee. “We can’t reveal the nature of our mission, but you should know that you’re doing a priceless service to the Iberian Empire.”
Night, May 16 (Gregorian), 1756
Santos
Sorting through the chests and boxes piled up in the house took the better part of the week. Some of Father Bartolomeu’s brothers had also been priests and arranged, like him, for their childhood home in Brazil to be the destination of their personal effects.
Godin was amazed that men who lived by the vow of poverty could accumulate so much. “This trip could’ve been avoided,” he said as he relocated a stack of folders. “The drawings could have been sent to a library in Lisbon if the Church hadn’t gone into panic over them.”
“Panic is what Inquisitors are supposed to do,” said Mutis with a tired voice. “We’re besieged by every kind of heretic. You can’t blame the Church for staying vigilant.”
“What do we need vigilance for? The Turks haven’t attacked Christendom in decades.”
Without pausing his search, Mutis replied, “If the Turks have stopped bothering us, it’s only because the Great Ming’s infernal carriages keep them occupied.”
“If we don’t find anything,” said Godin as he lifted his head out of a trunk, “all that zeal will be to blame.”
Mutis closed the notebook he’d just finished browsing, set it aside, and opened the next one. “If we don’t find anything, it’ll be because God didn’t want us to.”
Godin decided to drop that topic, which could only lead to trouble, and said instead, “José, have you seen paper as old as this?”
“Let me see it.” Mutis took it carefully in his hands. “You can barely make out the shape of the sail.”
“I know it’s faded, but do you recognize the etching?”
Mutis nodded. It certainly looked like a structure they had found in Bartolomeu’s notes. “It’s one of the earlier designs he discarded.”
“But the paper itself cannot have been his; it’s at least a century old.”
Mutis turned it around. “Bartolomeu made annotations here. May I have my magnifying glass?”
“As soon as I remember where I left it.” Godin took hesitant steps between old leather bags, broken alchemical instruments, a portable chalkboard, an unrolled map of Portugal, a fish preserved in a jar, a case full of thin glass tubes, several dozen Bibles, and a large, rusty mechanical clock to reach the desk where, earlier that day, Mutis had been examining some dried leaves that had fancied his curiosity. Godin extended his hand from where he stood, toppling an inkwell full of cobwebs, a tiny horse head made of ivory, and a bent candleholder to grab the magnifying glass before returning to where Mutis was sitting.
“Thank you. Let’s see… this portion is definitely Bartolomeu’s handwriting.”
“Does it say anything important?”
“A name: ‘Lana de Terzi.’ I think I saw a mention of this name in Bartolomeu’s notebook.” He put the glass down and gestured at the disorganized room they were in. “Of course, the question of why he wanted to keep this specific page remains open.”