The Devil on Her Tongue (43 page)

“I’ll return tomorrow,” Gracinha said.

“No, Diamantina will stay and look after me,” Dona Beatriz said. Then, looking at me, said, “I wish you to remain here for the next few days.”

“No,” I said loudly, going towards the door. “I can’t stay.”

“Abílio,” Dona Beatriz said, “reward her as she asks. But it is my request that she stay.”

“I’m sorry, Dona Beatriz, but it’s truly impossible,” I said firmly. I needed to get away from Abílio. “My husband is waiting for me. I have to go back to Funchal.”

Still holding the baby, Abílio came to me. “You must stay, Diamantina. I just met your husband. Bonifacio, isn’t it? I’m certain he would wish you to do as my wife asks. After all, I will soon be choosing the man for the new position.”

I understood. I swallowed, then took a step to one side so I could speak directly to Dona Beatriz. “I must talk to my husband first.”

“Tell him I have demanded that you stay,” she said again.

“Yes, Diamantina,” Abílio echoed, with the warm, familiar smile I knew so well. “You have to stay.”

Gracinha and I went down the back stairs and out of the house together. “Such ingratitude,” she grumbled. “I spent so long with
her, and then she tosses me aside. I was hoping to stay much of the week, and expected a more handsome payment than this.” She slapped the pocket of her apron and the coins there jingled.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It wasn’t my intention—” But she had turned from me, headed down the road leading to the wide gates of the quinta. I went to the kitchen, walking slowly, trying to compose myself, trying not to let my face betray my shock. I remembered my first day in Funchal, how I believed my eyes were tricking me when I thought I saw Abílio Perez.

Bonifacio and Espirito and Cristiano were eating with some of the others in the kitchen. Jacinta had given everyone the news about the birth of Senhor Kipling’s grandson, and they were all talking about it. I sat beside Bonifacio, but shook my head when a woman offered me a bowl of stew.

“Where have you been?” Bonifacio said. “I was finished some time ago. Cristiano said you went into the big house. Is this true?”

“I helped Dona Beatriz.”

“With the birth?” Espirito asked, and I nodded.

“She wants me to stay, Bonifacio,” I said.

He frowned. “Stay? Why? And for how long?”

“She preferred that I care for her and the baby for a few days, but I don’t really want to.”

Espirito said, “If you don’t want to do this, perhaps I can speak to Senhor Perez and—”

I interrupted. “Since Bonifacio is hoping to work for Senhor Kipling, I feel pressured to agree. I’ll go back to Funchal with you to get some clothes and my medicine bag, and then return.”

“Very few can deny Dona Beatriz’s demands,” Espirito said, smiling.

Bonifacio stood, and I looked up at him. “How did the meeting go?” I asked, trying to visualize Abílio talking to him.

“He has others to see. Now I just wait to hear his verdict.”

When I came back to Quinta Isabella with my small case and my medicine bag, Binta greeted me and took me to the back door of the
big house. “You’re expected. Whenever you wish to eat, go to the kitchen and Nini will serve you.”

I went up the narrow back stairs, glancing at the portraits and the paintings of country fields and seascapes that lined the walls. At the top of the stairs I went through a doorway onto the huge landing. When I had followed Gracinha in and then out of Dona Beatriz’s room, I hadn’t been able to take in all I saw, but now I walked slowly around the square landing. A wide, broad staircase descended to an even larger entry hall below.

I stopped counting the bedrooms at seven. As in Olívia and Espirito’s home, there was also a lavatory and a room with a tub for bathing.

The wet nurse, a young Portuguese woman, sat in one corner of the room nursing the baby while Dona Beatriz lay on her bed. She was very still, very pale, and her eyes were closed. I looked around the room, now tidy and calm. There was a pretty dressing table with a frilly skirt. On its top were open cases of gold and silver bracelets and necklaces, gemstones glinting in rings and ear bobs. A number of glass flagons of perfume sat in an organized row.

Two huge wardrobes lined one wall. The bed of dark polished wood had four high posts, and overhead the canopy was of the finest lace. A lacy cover was spread over the bed, and the mounds of pillows were crisp and blindingly white. I tried to imagine Abílio in this room, in this bed.

“How do you feel, Dona?” I asked, setting down my bags.

She opened her eyes. “I’m glad you’re back.” She grimaced. “I still have pains, the same pains as before. I don’t understand why.”

I pulled back the coverlet and gently pressed her abdomen. “Everything feels as it should. Sometimes the womb keeps tightening. I’ll make you an infusion of herbs that calm the womb after birth.” As I put my medicine bag on a table and opened it, Abílio came in.

“Will it stop the pain right away?” Dona Beatriz asked.

“Very soon,” I told her, and turned my back to Abílio and set out my mortar and pestle, as well as an earthenware jar and two paper folds of leaves. Abílio’s presence made my hands shake, and I didn’t
want him to witness the effect he had on me. As I bruised tansy leaves, I breathed in the rising smell of camphor. I sent Jacinta for boiling water, and when she returned with a kettle, I mixed an infusion of the tansy with a pinch of rue. I took out an earthenware jar and removed the stopper.

“What’s that soapy smell?” Dona Beatriz called.

I turned to her, holding the earthenware jar. “This is oil of fleabane, very effective and very powerful.”

“Fleabane?” she repeated.

“It’s poisonous to both animals and humans unless used very carefully. The leaves are salty when crushed, so animals spit it out at the first bite.”

“You’re not giving me poison,” she said with a slightly alarmed tone.

I smiled at her. “Just the tiniest amount won’t hurt you. There are many medicines that can either help or harm. It’s how they’re used.” I tipped the container and let a drop fall onto a spoon, and then stirred it into the tea as she watched me closely. “It’s very hot,” I told her, handing her the cup. “Just take small sips. In a short time the pains will lessen.” I hadn’t looked at Abílio, who was little more than a shadow on the other side of the bed.

“Thank you,” she said to me, blowing on the tea. “Please go and enjoy your dinner in the kitchen. My husband will stay with me until you return. Jacinta will make you a bed on the settee, and you can sleep there tonight, in case I need you.”

I tidied my medicines, then left for my dinner.

I was relieved Abílio was gone when I came back to Dona Beatriz’s room, where Jacinta was preparing her for the night. The Dona’s after-birth pains had stopped, and a book lay open and face down on her bed. I glanced at it:
Os Lusíadas
by Luís Vaz de Camões.

When Jacinta left, Dona Beatriz picked up the book, but then dropped it. “I’m too tired to read, and yet don’t feel like sleeping just yet,” she said.

“Would you like me to read to you?” I asked. “You read?”

“Yes.”

“But this poetry is perhaps a bit dense.”

I picked up the book and smiled at her. “We’ll see how it goes.”

Dona Beatriz slept well, only waking once to ask for a drink of water and for me to help her to the
latrina
. In the morning the wet nurse brought the clean, fed baby to her.

She took him and looked down at him, jiggling him a little. “Leandro,” she crooned. “My little Leandro.”

“The whites of his eyes and his skin are a bit yellow,” I told her. “It’s common in many newborns.” A thin line of milk dribbled from the baby’s bottom lip, and he fussed and squirmed. I turned to the wet nurse. “I’ll make you an infusion of comfrey leaf to drink for the next few days. That will help. Also, unwrap the baby and lay him in sunlight twice a day, letting the sun shine on his bare skin for a few minutes each time. After three or four days his colour will be fine.” I held him against my shoulder and patted his back firmly. In a moment the baby let out a resounding belch, and immediately quieted.

“Do you have children?” Dona Beatriz asked.

I stroked the white silk ribbon running through Leandro’s layered white dress. “No. Although my husband and I are raising a boy, Cristiano.” I lifted the baby closer to touch my lips to the velvety new skin of his forehead, then stopped, realizing I had no business taking such a liberty.

“I’m sure your own child will arrive soon,” she said.

“We’ve been married less than seven months. Not a long time yet.” I looked down at the baby again, admiring his long dark eyelashes.

“No,” Dona Beatriz said softly. “Not a long time. We have only been married a little longer, less than a year.”

I smiled at her. “You have named your son Leandro.”

“Leandro Martinho Duarte Kipling Perez.”

“A fine name.”

“Martinho for my father, of course. And Duarte for my mother. She was Isabella Duarte. My father built this quinta for her when they married.” She paused. “She died last year.”

“My mother also died in the last year,” I told her.

“And my younger sister too. They …” She stopped, blinking. “They died of the black pox.” She looked back at me and held out her arms for her baby, and I set the child in them.