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By Root 2173 0

now seemed incomprehensible to them. She had joined the saint in a village in Sergipe, where she had been living on the charity of others. After the Counselor, she was the frailest of the band, and there came a day when she fell into a dead faint as they marched along. Abbot João lifted her up and carried her in his arms till nightfall. He carried her for several days and also took it upon himself to bring her little bits of food soaked in liquid that she could keep down. Then at night, again as he would have done with a child, after they had listened to the Counselor together he told her the tales of chivalry he had heard the cantadores recite when he was little, which now—perhaps because his soul had regained its childhood innocence—came back to him with a wealth of detail. She listened to him without interrupting him, and days later, in her voice so faint it was almost inaudible, she asked him questions about the Saracens, Fierabras, and Robert the Devil, whereupon he realized that those phantoms had become as intimate a part of Catarina’s life as they had once been of his.

She had recovered and was walking on her own two feet again when one night Abbot João, trembling with embarrassment, confessed before all the pilgrims that he had often felt the desire to possess her. The Counselor called Catarina to him and asked her if she was offended by what she had just heard. She shook her head. Before the silent circle of pilgrims, the Counselor asked her if she still felt bitterness in her heart because of what had happened in Custódia. She shook her head once more. “You are purified,” the Counselor said. He had both of them join hands and asked all the disciples to pray to the Father for them. One week later the parish priest of Xiquexique married them. How long ago had that been? Four or five years? Feeling that his heart was about to burst, João at last caught sight of the shadows of the jagunços on the lower slopes of O Cambaio. He stopped running and went on in that quick, short stride that had taken him so many miles in his endless journeys.

An hour later he was with Big João, telling him the latest news as he drank cool water and ate a plateful of maize. The two of them were by themselves, since after announcing to the rest of the men that a regiment was coming—none of them could tell him how many soldiers that was—he had asked to be alone with Big João. The former slave was barefoot as usual, and wearing a pair of faded pants held up at the waist by a length of rope from which there hung a knife and a machete, and a shirt with all the buttons missing that bared his hairy chest. He had a carbine slung over his shoulder and two bandoleers draped round his neck like necklaces. When Big João heard that a Catholic Guard was to be formed to protect the Counselor and that he was to be the leader of it, he shook his head emphatically.

“Why not?” Abbot João asked.

“I’m not worthy of such an honor,” the black murmured.

“The Counselor says you are,” Abbot João replied. “He’s a better judge than you.”

“I don’t know how to give orders,” the black protested. “And what’s more, I don’t want to learn how. Let somebody else be the leader.”

“You’re the one who’s going to be the leader,” the Street Commander said. “There’s no time to argue, Big João.”

Lost in thought, the black stood watching the groups of men scattered about amid the rocks and boulders on the mountainside, beneath a sky that had turned a leaden color.

“Watching over the Counselor is a heavy load on my shoulders,” he finally said.

“Choose the best men, the ones who’ve been here the longest, the ones you saw fight well at Uauá and here in O Cambaio,” Abbot João said. “When that army gets here, the Catholic Guard must already exist and serve as a shield for Canudos.”

Big João remained silent, chewing slowly even though his mouth was empty. He stood there gazing at the mountain peaks round about him as though he were seeing the shining warriors of King Dom Sebastião suddenly appear on them: awed, overwhelmed, taken completely by surprise.

“It’s you who’ve chosen