Lisbon (72 page)

Tom looked away. Charlotte was his only love, and it seemed to him that all his life other men had held her. His strong hands clenched but he managed to keep control of his voice.

“We will take what the gods give, Charlotte. How long do you have to spend with me?”

She wanted to say.
All my life, Tom!
Carlos had been feeling too ill to attend the Varváez reception and had insisted that she go on alone. He had told her not to disturb him when she came back and that he would let her sleep late, he would lunch with her after he had attended Mass, for tomorrow was All Hallows’ Day. She moistened her lips. “We have until ten o’clock tomorrow, Tom.”

 “Then it is until ten o’clock, Charlotte.” There was a 
tinge of bitterness in his voice. “For I have no real hold on you.”

Oh, but you do, you do!
“I never stopped loving you, Tom,” she said with a break in her voice. “Not for a single moment. ...”

And tomorrow,
he told himself,
1 will find a way to take you with me no matter who stands in the way!
He did not say that. Instead he said, “I have bought a place in England, Charlotte. It is the most beautiful house in the world—or so a girl once told me.”

Charlotte caught her breath. “You have bought Castle Stroud?” she asked unevenly. “Why did you do that?”

 “Memories,” he told her, touching his hand to her cheek. “I remembered a girl who loved it, a girl I thought long dead, and I told myself if I could go there sometimes it would bring her closer to me. I could stare into the fire and imagine her beside me.”

Charlotte seized his hand and rubbed it against her cheek. Her eyes were luminous indeed as she looked up at the tall man beside her. “Tom,” she whispered, “I don’t deserve you.”

They had reached their destination now, and the driver (“I can trust him, Tom, he is devoted to me”) was pounding on the door of the small one-story building. The sleepy innkeeper finally opened it and their coachman arranged for a room.

In silence, with Charlotte’s black lace mantilla concealing her features, she and Tom went inside and found their tiny room, which overlooked the city, was surprisingly cozy. Reluctantly, common sense had returned.

Charlotte scarcely glanced at the room, revealed in the light of a single candle. She tossed aside her mantilla, removed her wig, and let her golden hair cascade down over her shoulders. Her voice was wistful.

“Life is a trap, Tom,” she said slowly. “Its jaws close down upon us, and before we realize it, the trap has sprung. I will not leave Carlos and I will not hurt him—no matter where my wayward heart would take me. We have only tonight. ...”

Tom’s gaze was wistful too. He had always thought of 
his beautiful Charlotte as pliant, swaying like a flower in the wind. He had never thought of her as made of steel.

“I will do nothing to endanger you,” he said hoarsely.

“So when the coach calls for me tomorrow morning, that will be the end of us, Tom.” Her voice was uneven.

“So be it.”

What happened then was inevitable. He blew out the candle and they moved into each other’s arms as if they had never been apart. Tom’s lips traveled over hers like a song, like a prayer, and he held her as if she were the most valuable treasure a man could ever possess.

Charlotte melted against him in a torrent of emotion. A miracle had happened. Tom was back, he was snatched from the dead, he was hers again. . . . She was scarcely aware when he carried her to the bed. She felt her clothes leave her, felt his bare skin, and she was back again, young again, and outside was no foreign city but the silvery sheen of the Derwent Water and the snows of Cumberland. She had thought her body grown cold, for it had been more than two years since Carlos had been able to make love to her, but now abruptly every sense had come alive, awake and tingling beneath Tom’s gentle insistent caresses. Her whole being vibrated like a drum to the beat of his heart, to the rhythmic swaying of his hips as, like a drowning man seeking rescue, he plunged deep and tenderly within her.
He had come back, he had come back, her world was right again
.... Her senses sang and she quivered as his strong masculinity moved vibrantly within her, promising, promising. . . .
Oh, let this never end,
she found herself wishing as she felt her body pulsing to an age-old rhythm, creating a storm of desire that surged through her whole being, making her very senses swim.

“Tom,” she whispered brokenly.
“Oh, Tom, how I have missed you. .
. .”

And the world slipped away as the lovers gave—and received—endless delights.

For them the magic was still there, wreathing them, when Tom at last slipped away and they lay touching, fondly stroking each other’s naked bodies in the golden afterglow of passion

There were no words to express how they felt—and they needed none. Theirs was a silent communion of the heart, a depth of compassion and a yearning that would know no end.

They were made for each other, these two, and they knew it. And for the moment they had both pushed away the nagging truth—that this too would end.

They made love again. And then again.

At last, exhausted, they slipped into sleep, and slept until the sun was shining.

And were awakened violently to a great roar, a sound like the end of the world.

The terrible rumbling roar brought Tom and Charlotte to their feet and to the window. They looked out on an unbelievable sight.

Although on their hilltop they were barely shaking, the buildings in the city below were dancing and teetering and collapsing. Steeples and chimneys were cracking and falling over into the streets, red tile roofs were breaking up, walls were collapsing. That first terrible jar had brought Lisbon to her knees.

There was a sudden pause as if the earth itself was taking a deep breath—and in that pause there was suddenly, all over town, the licking of flames.

The earthquake had struck during First Mass, and in the crowded churches thousands of candles had been overturned—not to mention the braziers over which the poor cooked their food in the open in winding streets and alleys. Hundreds of fires were kindled in an instant. The city had begun to burn.

Abruptly the shaking began again. But this time it was no great single shock—this time it was a violent whipsawing motion that tore buildings apart, seesawing them back and forth as the ground beneath heaved and shimmied and buckled and rose again, bringing down palaces and churches and modest homes alike in a deafening, terrifying din.

Again there was a pause during which the earth seemed to hold its very breath.

“Oh, God!” whispered Charlotte. “Carlos . . . Cassandra . . . Wend!” She plunged for her clothes.

But before she could get into them, the violent shaking had begun again, along with a deep growling fearsome roar that rumbled from what must surely be the very center of the earth. And now Lisbon’s very face was changing. So many great buildings had collapsed, and such a storm of dust was rising from the ruins, that an unreal night had settled over the city—a darkness pierced by jagged flashes of lightning that lit the scene briefly with a ghastly glare.

Transfixed for a moment, Charlotte and Tom stared out into this gathering blackness and heard all the sounds of hell erupting from the dying city below: falling buildings, breaking glass, human screams, collapsing walls, crumbling masonry. And rumbling through it, drowning it, that hideous inhuman tormented din rising from deep within the earth as the bedrock cracked and tore and twisted. All of it combined into a single terrifying torrent of sound that froze the blood and stunned the senses.

What they were hearing was the agonized jolt as continents collided.

Nerveless they stood, staring awed at the blackness swirling toward them.

And suddenly out of that blackness careened a riderless horse. It came up the hill at full tilt, and from one empty stirrup dangled an empty boot.

Charlotte stared in horror at that boot. Boots did not easily depart their owners. Had this one’s owner been knocked from his mount by the quake and pinned under falling masonry that held him firm while his terrified horse jerked free, tearing off the boot as he went?

“Oh, God,” she whispered again, and then Tom was leading her out of the inn “lest the building crash down upon our heads” and she saw the horse again. It stood trembling and exhausted, then at sight of them rolled its eyes wildly and galloped away.

A lifetime seemed to have gone by since that first great 
jolt. In all, this violent upheaval had lasted no more than ten minutes—but it had brought the city down.

The great earthshock which had torn into Lisbon from the southwest when the undersea Gorringe Bank had shifted had brought Lisbon down like a jigsaw puzzle. Beneath the city’s visible loose sands and gravel stretched other, deeper layers—of blue clay, of hippurite limestone, and of basalt. Those parts of the city that rested deep down on blue clay—and that was most of the central city and the waterfront—were totally destroyed, while those parts that rested on basalt or hippurite limestone—like the crowning hilltop of the Castelo de São Jorge—were, miraculously it seemed, undamaged.

The Sete Cidades, the Seven Cities Inn, where Clive had brought Lady Farrington and her daughter, was on such a location—it survived, and so did the ladies. But Clive had gone into the city that morning. They never saw him again.

The pink palace on the square miraculously held during the first violent shock. And when the pause in the shaking came, Prince Damião and Pereira, bellowing at the top of their lungs and pounding against the heavy door with their fists, felt sure they would be rescued. But the shaking had knocked the still-burning torch from its bracket on the wall and the torch had rolled across the long line of black powder, setting it alight. Black powder was scattered all about under the howling pair's feet as they had stumbled about, knocking over some of the kegs of gunpowder that were stored in the dark pantry. They saw the licking flames fizzing toward them underneath the door but they were powerless to stop them.

The pink palace blew up like a powder magazine, taking the prince and Pereira with it. But its spectacular disintegration went unnoticed in the general debacle, for it blew up just as the violent whipsawing began that brought the neighboring buildings crashing down in a choking cloud of dust.

The prince had sought a throne—and might have reached it. His macabre death was but one of many ironies to be visited upon Lisbon that day.

And one of those ironies came to Don Carlos—and came 
to him in church. And it had been a long time since he had attended Mass.

Sitting there in the vast dimness of the lofty church, with the light of the candles winking before him and the sonorous voice of the priest intoning, brought Don Carlos back to his childhood—and the faith of his childhood, so long forgotten.

He had sinned. Before God, he had sinned—and not until he had returned to Lisbon on this last difficult journey, in hopes of restoring his health, had he ever been sorry. He had loved a woman, and although she did not know it, would never know it, he had found out all about her. About her husband, her children. And he had tricked her into a bigamous marriage with him by telling her he was soon to die. Which was certainly not the case then: he had known he had many years to live. He could have helped Charlotte, he could have restored to her the daughters she loved, he could have told her the fate of the lover she had lost—for he had found that out too. But to have done those things would have been to lose her, and more than anything else in this world he had wanted to keep her beside him.

Don Carlos’ hands clenched with a fraction of what had been his old strength, and for a moment his eyes flashed with their old amber fire. He could feel death stealing upon him, although God alone knew how long it would take before he was laid finally to rest, but for the moment his thoughts were all for his beloved Carlotta.

She was honest and true and he had used her ill. God would punish him for that. Indeed—his lips curled in a mirthless smile—God had already punished him for that: rather than visiting on him some merciful “accident” that would carry his soul away, God had made him suffer the torment of the damned—just as his father had. And he was even now fast wasting away, just as so long ago he had predicted to Charlotte that he would.

It was just. He admitted it. And he—so long away from the Church and from grace, how long was it since he had been to Mass?—had been content just to keep her beside him.

But then they had come to Lisbon, seeking a cure for him. Then her lover, the man of whom he had heard so 
much in her delirium back in the days when he had first known her, the days when her life had hung by a slender thread, had returned.

Tom Westing, now a titled gentleman, Lord Derwent, and the richest man in Brazil. . . .

Don Carlos had had no need to see them together. Just knowing that Tom was in town had sent a chill through his heart. But he could imagine them together as they would be if they met, for he had had a very full description of Tom. A magnificent pair, they would be, their faces full of splendor as they looked into each other s eyes, made for each other.