Part 14 - Catia's Flight 3: Brazil, mid-January 1814
Guanabara Bay is basically an expansive blue inlet with a large island, surrounded by odd-shaped hills and with its mouth being squeezed shut by city. The buildings of Rio de Janiero are mostly white with red tile roofs, and the streets further back from the shore, if one could examine them without the excess of people thronging them, are so new as to be mostly unpaved. Many of the buildings are new as well, half-finished and crammed with an unknowable number of courtiers, attendants, artisans and anyone else attached to the Portuguese court who once feared the French more than the unknown.
Catia's traveling costume this time is a military blue with brass accents meant to convey courier status. As soon as the ship is moored and the gangways secure, she disembarks, armed with her reticule of documents and the name of her destination; the Paço Imperial, formerly the viceroy's palace. Now it houses the state offices the Prince does not wish kept under his immediate control. There she presents her letters of introduction and intent, to be pored over by chief clerks while she waits, once again, in a red velvet chair.
But it's a different Catia who waits now, more subdued, less assertive. The surroundings are rougher, the officials less refined, and her costume is not as comfortable as she had imagined it would be when she had ordered it back in Lisbon. Then there's the amazing heat of this new climate, and the luggage being unloaded under Evora's supervision, and the worry...
She now knows that Archie did NOT return to his family. He'd been declared dead the very night he'd delivered the counterfeits to the authorities. A body had been found in the streets dressed in Archie's discarded clothes he'd left in her room at the brothel, the face unrecognizable. No one thought to check further. Archie Featherington was dead, his wife a widow.
But he isn't dead. The last bit of intelligence that Catia had managed to gather before leaving England was that Archie had indeed been injured in a street riot that night but that he had been taken to a hospital in Westminster. She knew this as she took ship to Lisbon, but apparently no one else did, not even Holmes.
A secret dispatch had reached her three months later, courtesy of a certain nameless Portuguese Naval officer, telling her that there was a new Lord Featherington, married to the former Lady Featherington, and everything was running more or less smoothly in Featherington Manor with one daughter married.
Catia had hugged this report to her bosom and wept. Her emotions are closer to the surface now than they were in the old days. Archie is alive but gone? Gone where? Why, to sea, of course. Hadn't he said he longed to return to the sea where life was simpler and a man could dwell in peace inside his own head? Where is he? Did he think of her? Would he look for her? Did she want to be found?
For months at the Palácio de Queluz she had played the 'will-I?-perhaps-I-will' game with Sir Charles Stuart, trying to wheedle information out of him about the officers on British Navy ships. Any new men called Nelson? No, no relation, just someone she met in London. She had promised a female relative of the gentleman, as a matter of fact, that if she heard... she could tell from the amused glint in Stuart's eye that he suspected something.
But he had no news for her, not then nor later at the pier as she left her home forever, when she slipped a note to him with the one name that Judge de Mendonça had wanted so badly. Sea crossings are dangerous and were her ship to go down... she chokes off the rest of that thought.
"Madame," the chief of the clerks murmurs at her ear, "I have sent a messenger to His Highness of your arrival. If you would care to return tomorrow, I am sure we will be able to present you with His Highness's invitation to the next beija-mão."
Catia looks at him. "An invitation?" she asks, summoning all her hauteur, "An invitation to an open ceremony where all may approach the Father of his People?"
"Madame will understand," the chief clerk replies a bit stiffly, "that many wish to petition His Highness on matters of housing, redress of property, the granting of new estates, the importation of labor, the completion of certain –"
"The commission of treason?" Catia asks sharply. She appreciates that so many hundreds, if not thousands, of Old World grandees descending all at once on a trading port in a swampy tropical valley, all expecting the same luxuries and services they enjoyed at home to be immediately at their command, would cause difficulties. But even as she says it she realizes that a matter of false English money, HERE, so far from the theater of war Europe has become, would mean very little.
She is also aware that by 'labor' the clerk means slaves newly impounded in Africa. While Portugal itself banned slavery in 1761, the use of slaves in its colonies had not stopped. Right now about half the population of this city are enslaved. She has seen the signs of it in the streets. The thought makes her fierce but she can do nothing about it.
Except, perhaps... She rises, not quite as gracefully or rapidly as she may have done in Portugal. "I await His Highness' pleasure," she says, adding, "Surely he does not reside here?"
"His Highness has very graciously accepted the offer of the mansion of a local merchant," the clerk tells her, "Quinta da Boa Vista, a fine estate about three miles away, overlooking the city and the Bay."
"A great sacrifice for one's monarch," Catia murmurs suggestively and the man takes the bait.
"He is Lord Lopes now, Madame. With all the wealth of the New World at his command, the Prince can afford to be very generous indeed."
The Beija-Mão
Catia notices something else in Rio de Janiero as she journeys to attend the Prince's beija-mão at the appointed time next day. There are quite a few folk in religious habit on the streets, and among the newer houses are the older buildings of convents. She sends a knowing look to Evora, who looks quite regal herself in an elegant green pelisse and bonnet. They talked this over last night in their cramped room at the boarding house. Their plan will work. It has to, for they are out of time.
Quinta da Boa Vista, the estate with the beautiful view, is a handsome house with a squat domed tower at one corner and hints there might be others added if the money holds out. As it is, there are signs of hasty renovations in progress both inside and out. The rooms are nowhere near the size of those at Mafra but they are as crowded as they can possibly be and the line of petitioners already reaches into the front foyer.
Evora comes into her own here. Her sweet smile and gentle manner are thin cover for a steely determination to see her adopted lady's plans succeed. Nobleman after plantation owner after artisan find themselves giving up their place for the agent of the Regency Council of Portugal, all down the line to the chamber where the Father of his People sits enthroned on a small dais under a rigged canopy.
Of course, once in the Presence, none may sit. Evora stands beside Catia, fending off any attempt to push ahead by those who feel their own importance is greater… until they are within smiling distance.
The large eyes in the heavy rectangular face of His Highness light up as he notices the two women. A lord in attendance is dispatched to elbow the dozen men between them and the dais out of the way. Now Catia is before the Prince. She curtseys her lowest. João may recognize Evora – his wife Carlota certainly does, since her thin shrewish face pinches even more – but his attention is all for the lovely courtesan. A clerk bustles forward with the letters she has brought and reminds His Highness in a murmur as to the who, what, where, when, and why.
From her deep curtsey, Catia slips onto her knees with no apparent effort, takes the hand she is offered and kisses it as the room falls silent. Behind her Evora kneels in concert. "Meu Principe," Catia says, "all Portugal weeps for your absence but I come to you with joy, to place myself in your service and under the shadow of your protection."
"Senhora," he replies, "you have served us well." He raises a voice made a little hoarse with placating his fidalgos for seven years, "This woman," he announces, "has saved our Kingdom of Portugal from a great plague."
A murmur of polite interest circulates, though almost certainly no one in the room concerns themselves with what goes on in the Old Country any more, not even João, much. "Ask what you wish, Senhora, and it shall be granted, in the name and with the gratitude of our loyal children in Mother Portugal," the Prince goes on. He is tired and even the company of two such attractive women doesn't lessen the line of supplicants. Of all free men on earth, Princes can be choosers least of all.
Her Last Voyage
There are many islands off the coast of Brazil, most of them paradisiacal, many of them habitable, and all of them, at this stage in the country's history, wanting some show of being owned by the Crown of Portugal. If a woman with a rather dodgy past chooses to accept one or two of these from her king with the mission of bringing civilization and the message of the Holy Church to any benighted natives who may be there, a pious Prince may grant that wish along with a title and an indemnity.
Catia's last voyage is north along the Brazilian coast to a tiny archipelago within easy sailing distance of the port of Santa Maria de Belém do Grão Pará, the City of Mango Trees, at the mouth of the mighty Amazon River. She is 'Baronesa das Ilhas Afortunadas', a whimsical title bestowed by officials who can't quite grasp the idea of a courtesan being ennobled.
The mandate from her sovereign is real enough: to build a convent and a church with its attendant school and perhaps a hospital or two. She carries letters of introduction and instruction to the authorities in Belém, particularly to the chapter of the Catedral Nossa Senhora das Graças, and as Baronesa, according to ancient right, she may decide whether or not her barony is a free state.
Now she stands on the deck of a ship, her hand in Evora's. Catia does not remember her birth mother but in Evora she has found a substitute who supports her ideas and goals. Evora gazes eagerly at the approaching islands, anticipating a life free from court and its endless protocols and restrictions.
Catia however, scans the Atlantic to the north, wondering. Somewhere out there, on any one of over 600 English ships, is her Archie, once Lord Featherington, now a man alone and adrift.
How on earth is she to find him?
END – part 14
*S/P notes: fidalgos = noblemen, Baronesa das Ilhas Afortunadas = Baroness of the Fortunate Islands*
**ffh notes: The Fortunate Islands = a semi-legendary place where winter never came and heroes dwelt, much like Avalon.
The site of Rio de Janeiro was discovered in January 1502 by Portuguese explorers who assumed the bay was the mouth of a river. In fact, it is an inlet of the sea.
Featherington's suggested alias of Nelson is inspired by Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), First Viscount Nelson and a string of other titles, the great hero of the English Regency. A complex man who, despite lifelong seasickness, rose through the Navy's ranks as Britain's protector and died at the moment of his greatest victory, the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805. He was scarred, troubled, shrewd, charismatic, flawed, courageous, all that romantic stuff.
The beija-mão, literal meaning "kissing the hand", was an old Portuguese royal tradition brought to Brazil by the Prince Regent: an open-house every evening except Sundays where any citizen could have his petition/complaints heard by the monarch in person. Sometimes they went on for hours and they did involve kissing the royal hand.
Elias António Lopes built Quinta da Boa Vista in 1803 and offered it to Prince João in 1808, rather than have it confiscated by one of the other incoming nobles. In return he was granted another estate, a title or titles, and an indemnity. He was an importer of slaves.
Once again, the Prince Regent João was a real person, often put down as sub-par in Portugal's popular history. I am inclined to think he was more sinned against than sinning. There is no doubt he would have rewarded Catia as I describe he does, had this situation ever occurred in real life. FFH**
