Though a child of tattered clothing and bad manners, Daniel has always held a special place in my heart. Had our life together been an adventure novel, he would have continued to train himself through many hours of candlelit study to become a great sculptor, revered far and wide, by the last page. But life, as Father used to say, is at best a game of Pope Joan played on a slanted table with the dealer hiding all the best cards up his ruffled sleeve. And so my friend was prevented from accomplishing such wonders.
Had fortune smiled upon him, or more importantly, had I, John Zarco Stewart, greater strength in my arms, then my own life might have gained by proximity as well. After all, we sometimes only realize the effects we have had on our loved ones years later.
*
I met Daniel in June of 1800, when I was nine years old. More than two years had passed since I’d discoveredThe Fox Fables in the British Isles. I was heading out early, fortified only by a cup of tea and a crust of corn bread that I’d smeared with honey and gobbled – to my mother’s great displeasure – in an instant.
My destination was a wee lake – or tarn, as Papa called it – far beyond the walls of our city, in the wooded hinterland along the road to Vila do Conde. It was a wondrous spot for watching all manner of birdlife, especially just after the dawn. I was at the time, and still am today, a great lover of those handsome creatures of feather, air, and light – a keen appreciator and imitator of avian song as well. Back then, if I could have begged a beak and wings from God, I surely would have considered becoming one.
I was already approaching the granite steps at the end of our street that led down to the riverside neighborhood when raucous shouting reached me from a nearby alley. Racing there at top speed, I discovered Senhora Beatriz, a widowed washerwoman to whom we gave our soiled sheets every Wednesday, splayed on the cobbles outside her house. Whimpering like a beaten dog, her bony knees were drawn protectively into her belly. A periwigged brute in the livery of a coachman was standing threateningly over her, his countenance distorted by rage.
“You careless bitch!” he shouted, fairly spitting out the words. “You pilfering, lyingMarrana.”
Marrana was a new word to me. Later, my tutor informed me that it meant both swine and converted Jew, an epithet that had confused me, since I had never heard Senhora Beatriz described as anything but a good Christian soul. Indeed, I had only the vaguest idea of what a Jew might be, for though my grandmother had spoken to me of them on two or three occasions, I had not learned anything more than a few legends in which Jewish sorcerers always seemed to be foiling the work of nefarious kings with their magical prayers.
The villainous coach driver now finished his diatribe by snarling, “I’m going to sell you for glue-making, you lazy whore.”
Then, after kicking Senhora Beatriz several times, he grabbed hold of her thinning hair, preparing to pound her head against the cobbles.
My heart was battering against my ribs and I began to feel dizzy. I wondered whether I ought to let loose a scream and if it would be able to fly over the rooftops separating my father from me and shake him awake. In those days, I was fully convinced that – at nearly six feet in height – he possessed unsurpassed power to restore order to the entire world.
I would surely have given voice
