Hunting Midnight (9 page)

Fanny and I followed her from two hundred paces behind. I was quite sure that no one else was. But what neither of us had anticipated was that her enemy had left the city before her. There was but one possible route over the last mile to our destination, and it was there that he was waiting for us.

IX

A
ramshackle old mill, overgrown with blackberry vines, used to stand alongside the country lane we walked on Saturdays. When this landmark came into sight, a man in a long dark coat emerged and stood in the road for a moment, then crossed to the other side and disappeared into a pine grove.

I recognized him as her uncle, Tomás Gonçalves. He was bald and barrel-chested, and he walked with a stoop, as though an invisible weight were tied around his neck.

It will sound preposterous now, but I believed then that we shared the intention of watching over Violeta from afar. I was infinitely gratified that an adult, and a large and powerful one at that, had had the exact same idea as me.

Violeta, hidden from me around a curve in the road, was now approaching the place where she had been attacked two weeks earlier. I rushed on, and when I saw her next, she was walking as though on tiptoe into a thicket of gorse. She must have heard a noise, for she knelt by a bush to conceal herself.

Then she jumped up and ran ahead. Tomás Gonçalves charged at her from the side, grabbing her arms just below her shoulders and shaking her violently.

When she shrieked, Fanny raced off, barking. I followed, screaming Violeta’s name.

By now the villain had ripped her bonnet off and gripped what was left of her hair, tugging her head back with such force that I feared her neck might break. To silence her, for she was now screaming Daniel’s name, he raised his other hand and struck her across the face.

On seeing Fanny heading straight for him, he threw Violeta to the ground. When the dog reached them, she stood behind the
lass, about ten feet from Tomás, making a furious racket. Violeta, her mouth bleeding, had managed to sit up. We looked at each other, stunned. Everything had gone wrong and we both knew it.

“Run, John! Run!” she screamed suddenly, realizing that her uncle was about to try to throttle me, despite the threat of my border collie’s fangs.

The last thing I remember was him charging toward me and wrapping a handkerchief around his fist. And a very loud noise.

I woke to my mother’s moist eyes. I had no idea where I was. My head was throbbing and my mouth was dry, as though I had swallowed sand.

“Water,” I croaked. Mama lifted a cup to my lips.

I am told that I fell back to sleep immediately, my last sip dribbling down my cheek to my pillow. When I woke again, I recalled having been in the forest, but the reason escaped me. Mama, who kept vigil in my room, explained that Violeta’s uncle had walloped me on the back of my head. I had fallen and lost consciousness. All this had happened the day before. My previous awakening had been twelve hours earlier.

She had little faith in men of medicine, but Mama had allowed Dr. Silva to bleed me twice at my temples with leeches to prevent the accumulation of toxic fluids on my brain.

“And Violeta?” I asked.

“She’s safe, John. Do not worry.”

Mama took my hand. She held it to her lips and kissed it, then folded it into a fist and gave it back to me, saying, “Keep that with you always.”

Father stepped into the room and smiled down at me. “How is my wee man?”

“My head feels all broken.”

He sat down on my bed, leaned over, and kissed me on the lips. Then he took an amethyst stone he had brought back for me from upriver the week before and placed it on my chest.

“You are a brave tyke. A
kelpie
of merit. But you disobeyed me again. You were to come and fetch me if you encountered trouble.”

“Violeta made me promise not to tell anyone‚” I explained.

He touched his fingers to my lips to quiet me and said, “I am not cross with you, but this might have ended tragically for all concerned. We have been very lucky.”

“What happened to her uncle?”

Papa said that the loud noise I had heard was a gunshot. The same hunter Daniel and I spoke to on the day Violeta was first attacked had heard Fanny’s barks and come running. When Tomás grabbed me and hit me, the hunter fired a shot above our heads. Then, while Tomás looked around to find the source of the gunfire, Fanny leapt at him. Her teeth ripped clean through his breeches and tore a chunk of flesh from his thigh.

The hunter was still a long way off. He fired another shot aimed to do permanent damage this time, which came within inches of Tomás’s head. In fear for his life, he cursed Violeta and lumbered off.

“The hunter carried you home,” Papa told me. “We are greatly indebted to him.”

He added that if it had not been for the good stranger, I might have been awaiting burial at this moment. I could not
comprehend
that. I tried to imagine being dead. I stopped breathing and made my face go blank.

“What are you doing, John?” Papa asked.

“Just thinking about things. Where’s Violeta now?”

“She is with her mother, resting.”

“And does Daniel know what happened?”

“Indeed he does. I went to his house to tell him.”

“And where is Tomás Gonçalves?”

“He is no longer a problem,” Papa replied, and would say no more.

Violeta visited me the next afternoon, her wan face framed by a hideous black bonnet, which she refused to remove despite my entreaties. Mama gasped on seeing her, then fell into a
disquieting
silence, clearly afraid of all that might spill from her if she were to begin to express her feelings. She served us tea and sat with us, gripping Violeta’s hand. After a time, Mama got up,
kissed the lass on the cheek, and left us to ourselves. When I asked Violeta what punishment had been given her uncle Tomás, she informed me that she did not know. He had vanished from their home. Her mother refused to talk of him.

Daniel must have been hiding on our street, waiting for Violeta to visit, for he knocked on our front door a few minutes later and was led to my room by Mama. It was the first time he had seen the lass since the day of her attack. His eyes were red with sleeplessness, his voice brittle. Lacking a vocabulary equal to his emotions, he grew impatient with himself and short-tempered with Violeta. Too troubled and fragile to understand that his harshness was only the result of frustration, she in turn withdrew into her own sadness. Mama joined us after a while, and her presence prevented them from attempting to voice their feelings.

While serving Violeta tea, Mama asked if she might try to cut her hair in a pleasing shape. “I have been my husband’s barber since our wedding,” she said, smiling.

Violeta unfastened her bonnet. Her hair had been shorn down to her scalp, which was covered with scabs, making her eyes appear to bulge. “Not even the most skillful barber would be of help to me now,” she said sorrowfully.

I was so overwhelmed that I could not speak, and I looked at Mama to make things right. She had set her teacup on our table and reached a trembling hand to her chest. Fighting for breath, she said, “I shall still be able to help you, dear child.”

Daniel, unable to restrain himself, demanded to know who had done this to her. In a clipped monotone, the lass explained that her mother refused to believe that her uncle had attacked her. She had ordered her eldest sons to bind Violeta’s arms behind her back and hold her down on her bed while she herself did the cutting.

“I kicked and fought, but it was of no use. It never is.” Gazing down, she whispered that if her mother caught her in one additional “lie,” then her head would be shaved every week and she would be denied a bonnet. Everyone in Porto would see that she was an incurable liar. “My mother said next time she would cut off something that would never grow back.”

“I’d like to kill your mother!” Daniel shouted.

“What would she cut off?” I asked.

“Hush, John!” Mama snapped. “Not another word from you.” There was fire in her eyes. “Listen to me, Violeta, you must never think for one moment they are right. You must remember that you are innocent.” She crouched by the lass and kissed her brow. “And you are still beautiful. They can never take that from you. Never!”

“I am coming home with you today,” Daniel declared. “And I shall sleep at the foot of your bed.”

“We shall leave for America as soon as we can!” I exclaimed.

“Hush, both of you!” Mama ordered. “If your mother is not of a mind to believe you, Violeta, then how, in God’s name, does she think you were hurt on these two occasions?”

“She says I am always falling because I’m so clumsy – that my evil disposition has left me unbalanced. And that my uncle would marry me were I not so awkward.”

“You would marry a villain who has … who has done these things to you?” Daniel snarled. He took a step toward her and shook his fist. “Listen to me, you will marry no one!”

“There is a great deal you do not understand,” said Violeta imploringly.

“Dearest child …” said Mama, caressing her cheek.

Violeta stilled her hand. “I must go. I’ve already stayed too long.” She stood up.

“You cannot go!” I shouted. “I shall not let you go back to your home. Mama, tell her she can stay here with us. Tell her! Tell her now.”

My mother did her best to calm me, saying that she would discuss these matters with Papa that very night, but it was all too much for me. I shouted like a banshee and cursed her as she led my friends away. Then I stumbled to the window and threw my shutters open, mortified by my powerlessness. I called after Violeta and Daniel, but that only made her race off, leaving the lad far behind.

Later that day my father told me what he had done to Violeta’s uncle Tomás. Two evenings previous, after I had been carried home by the good hunter, he commissioned two petty criminals to destroy each and every clock in Tomás’s shop. The next night,
Papa hunted him down to the Willow Tavern, a foul
establishment
behind the San Francisco Church. He discovered the villain seated at a table fashioned from a barrel, trying to drink away his ruin with a half-empty bottle of gin and gabbling with two cronies guffawing like mules.

Father marched up to the group and introduced himself as a Mr. Burns. “Sir, I have learned of your misfortune and I should like to interest you in a proposition,” he said.

He explained to the men that he had acquired a watchmaking shop in Lisbon and was hoping to find a man of proper training to take charge. He suggested that a stroll outside might allow Gonçalves and himself to carry on their conversation in a more private manner. As there was no point in letting a bottle of gin go half empty, he purchased it for them.

Violeta’s uncle limped along the streets, owing to the hunk of flesh that Fanny had happily ripped from his thigh. Papa strolled arm in arm with him, encouraging him to keep his lips moistened with drink. With the gin thus emptied, he steered the man off into a darkened alley, where he brought the glass bottle down squarely onto his head.

Gonçalves collapsed to the cobbles but did not lose
consciousness
. He moaned piteously, “Everything is gone, all gone,” and began to weep.

Papa now informed the man of his true identity, explaining that he had had his shop smashed to pieces for hurting me and Violeta. “And I will have you reduced to kindling as well, unless you leave for Lisbon now and never return. That is your only choice!”

Gonçalves was nursing his bleeding head in his hands and struggling to stand back up.

Papa squatted next to the limp wretch and held the glass spikes of the broken bottle to his face. “I shall put you on the next coach to Lisbon and even pay your way. But should you ever return to Porto, I shall take a bottle just like this one and twist it round your nose until you have neither nostrils nor mouth nor eyes.”

At precisely twenty-one minutes past seven by my father’s watch, Tomás Gonçalves was gone forever from our city.

Without Gonçalves and the income provided by his shop, Violeta’s family was rendered destitute in a matter of weeks, and all of the children were forced to go to work. Violeta became a wick-cutter at a workshop just off the Rua dos Ingleses. Inside that cavernous factory she worked from dawn to dusk, and all her wages were given directly to her mother, so she had nary a farthing to her name.

Saturdays and Sundays ought to have been her days of
freedom
and light, but as punishment for the “lies” that had lost her family its champion, her mother kept her imprisoned in their home. At times her ankle was even chained to her bed, I was told by Mama, who had witnessed this indignity herself. On these occasions she was made to embroider prayers on towels, for sale in the marketplace.

Perhaps owing to my father’s partial responsibility for their poverty, Mama never failed during those first difficult weeks to carry carrots, potatoes, and other vegetables to Violeta’s home on Saturdays. In this way, she said, they might at least partake of a warm and wholesome soup. She was the one who kept Papa and me informed about the lass. And it was she who told me as well that Daniel and I were forever forbidden from paying a visit to her house, for her mother maintained that we’d been a ruinous influence on Violeta’s life. Even so, I later discovered that he stood below her window all night on several occasions, trying in vain to get her to appear at her shutters. He ended this practice when he was told by Violeta’s younger brother that their mother beat her every time he was spotted in their street.