Brasyl

“That you have transgressed the bounds of your vows and faith and brought the Society into perilous disrepute.”

“You are not the first to have come here bearing that charge.”

“I know that, but I believe I am the first with the authority to intervene.” Gonçalvesbowed his head meekly.

“I regret that Salvador considers intervention necessary.”

“My predecessors, none of them returned; what befell them?”

“I would ask you to believe me when I tell you that they departed ftom me hale in will and wind and convinced of the value of my mission. We are far from Salvador here; there are many perils to body and soul. Fierce forest tigers, terrible snakes, bats that feed on man’s blood, toothed fish that can strip the flesh from his bones in instants, let alone any number of diseases and sicknesses.” Father Gonçalves gestured for Qui

The altar was the conventional wooden table, worked in the fever-dream fashion of Gonçalves’s craftmasters to resemble twined branches, the crucifix its only adornment, an indio Christ, exquisitely worked, sufferings incompreehensible to the Old World borne on his face and scourged, pierced body. But the crucifix had not taken Father Qui

“I ca

Again, the coy dip of the head that Qui

“Does not your soul crave the solace of the Sacrament?”

“It surely does, and yet I ca

“Is it because of the Lady, or because of the hand that gives it?”

“Father Gonçalves, did you attack and raze a Carmelite mission and take its people into slavery’”

“Yes.” Qui

“You did this contrary to the act of 1570 prohibiting enslavement of the indigenous peoples and the rule and example of our Order?”

“Come, Father, each to his role; you the admonitory, I the examiner. You are aware what that means?”

“You are empowered to judge and declare Just War against those who scorn the salvation of Christ’s Church. I saw the house of God burned to the waterline, our brothers and sisters in Christ put to the sword. I spoke with a postulant, a survivor, dreadfully burned. Before she died she told me she had seen angels walking on the treetops, the angels that adorn the masts of this self-consecrated basilica.”

Gonçalves shook his head sorrowfully, as at a woodenly obtuse schoolboy. “You speak of enslavement; I see liberation. When you have seen what I have worked for Christ in this place, then presume to judge me.”

Qui

“I shall call upon you this evening to begin the examination of your soul.”

Bur Father Gonçalves’s words, thrown after him, hung in Luis Qui

“They were animals, Father. They had no souls, and I gave them mine.” A flicker of lightning momentarily lit the receiving room. By its brief illumination Qui

“Fathers, we have raised the City of God.”

Gonçalves looked up from his study, face bright and beaming.

“Now this you must see, Father Qui

As admonitory and pai climbed by ladders to the balcony above the portico, the basilica was simultaneously lit by lightning and beaten by thunder, a rolling constant roar that defeated very word or thought. Luis Qui

The double doors opened, men and women in feather and genipapo bearing drums, rattles, maracas, reed instruments, and clay ocarinas. They stood impassive on the steps, the teeming rain ru