enough with the creaking timber and crashing waves, but the rolling, once you got used to it, was somehow soothing, and I found I was missing it.
Besides, I couldn’t stop thinking of Isabela. When I had followed her out into the forest I hadn’t much of a plan. My original idea, when we landed on the shore, had been to accompany her as she collected wood or water, and in doing so coax her away from the others and then dump her like a sack of unwanted puppies, far enough from the beach so that she couldn’t find her way back. Naturally I realized that if I was able to find my own way back to the cottage, so would she, and probably quicker than me too, since she no doubt had more experience with that purgatory they call the countryside. So I knew I’d have to stop her returning somehow, tie her up perhaps. She’d get herself free eventually, but by then the ship would have sailed.
But I hadn’t reckoned on her stalking out of the cottage alone, spitting like a cat whose tail’s been trodden on. It was all the fault of that gormless, slug-brained ninny Vítor. Did he have no idea how to handle women? Tell any female that she can’t do something and that is precisely what she will insist on doing. He’d nearly ruined everything. In that mood she certainly wasn’t going to let anyone walk with her.
I had followed her as soon as I could, but it was sheer luck that I stumbled across her standing in the middle of that clearing. I had already taken the precaution of picking up a good stout branch that I’d found. If she saw me with it she would not be suspicious, she would assume I was collecting wood. I’d hidden behind a bush, waiting for her to move back into the trees. I crouched there ready, with the wood grasped tightly in both hands. I didn’t intend to kill her, just knock her out. But when she knelt down in that clearing and bowed her head, she looked like a prisoner meekly awaiting the executioner’s axe. It was as if she was inviting me to do it, begging me even. I stood up and had almost taken my first step into the clearing, when we both heard that unearthly shriek.
Now I felt strangely miserable. I liked the girl, even if she was a heretic. God knows I was no saint myself. I honestly hadn’t meant for her to die. I’d hoped it wouldn’t need to come to that. But I knew she had to be dead now, or would be by morning. Even if that animal, whatever it was, had merely wounded her, lying out there in this rain and biting wind she would surely perish in a few hours. But at least I could console myself with the fact that she hadn’t died at my hand.
But would the Jesuits believe she was dead? Would they expect some proof – bloodstained clothing, a severed hand? Nothing would induce me to go back into the forest and look for her corpse. Besides, they hadn’t asked for proof. An accident, they said, well away from Portuguese soil. Just ensure she doesn’t return. Well, they’d got their accident all right.
And I would have my pardon, not to mention a house and money, enough money to make Silvia crawl out from whatever sweaty bed she was holed up in. Silvia wasn’t dead, she couldn’t be. If only I could remember something, anything. If I could just picture her in my head walking out of that door alive. Her throat, I could see her slender throat, the fragile pulse beneath her jaw. Had I put my hands about that long, slender neck? Had I squeezed until that tiny throb was stilled?
I groaned as I felt an urgent stirring in my groin. I turned over, pressing myself into the hard cold floor, and tried to kick the image of Silvia’s lithe, naked body out of my head. I would find her. I would leave the ship at the very next port and buy passage on the first boat sailing back to Portugal. I could be home within the month and holding her in my arms.
I must have drifted off into sleep eventually, for I woke sweating from a dream in which Dona Flávia was ladling out soup into bowls, and when I dipped a spoon into mine and raised it, I saw