Sacred Choir—off to live with her in the Sanctuary so that they could help her support the Counselor when he was so weak from fasting that his legs gave way, feed him the few crumbs he ate, and serve as his protective armor so that he would not be crushed by the pilgrims who wanted to touch him and hounded him to beg for his intercession with the Blessed Jesus for a blind daughter, an invalid son, or a husband who had passed on. Meanwhile, other jagunços took on the responsibility of providing food for the city and defending it. They had once been runaway slaves—Big João, for instance—or cangaceiros with a past that included many murders—as was the case with Pajeú or Abbot João—and now they were men of God. But they nonetheless continued to be practical men, alert to earthly concerns, aware of the threat of hunger and war, and as in Uauá, they were the ones who took the situation in hand. As they reined in the hordes of arsonists, they also herded to Canudos the heads of cattle, horses, mules, donkeys, goats that the haciendas round about resigned themselves to donating to the Blessed Jesus, and sent off to the Vilanova brothers’ warehouses the flour, the seed grain, the clothing, and most importantly the arms they collected in their raids. In just a few days, Canudos was filled to overflowing with resources. At the same time, solitary envoys wandered about the backlands, like biblical prophets, and went down as far as the coast, urging people to come to Canudos and join the elect to fight against that invention of the Dog: the Republic. They were odd-looking emissaries from heaven, dressed not in tunics but in leather pants and shirts, whose mouths spat out the coarse obscenities of ruffians and whom everybody knew because once upon a time they had shared their misery and a roof overhead with them, till one day, brushed by the wings of the angel, they had gone off to Canudos. They were the same as ever, armed with the same knives, carbines, machetes, and yet they were different now, since all they talked about, with a contagious conviction and pride, was the Counselor, God, or the community that they had come from. People extended them their hospitality, listened to them, and many of them, feeling hope stir for the first time, bundled up all their possessions and took off for Canudos.
Major Febrônio de Brito’s forces had already arrived in Queimadas. They numbered five hundred and forty-three soldiers, fourteen officers, and three doctors chosen from among the three infantry battalions of Bahia—the Ninth, Twenty-sixth, and Thirty-third—whom the little town welcomed with a speech by the mayor, a Mass in the Church of Santo Antônio, a meeting with the town council, and a day that was proclaimed a holiday so that the townspeople could take in the parade, complete with drumrolls and bugle fanfares, around the main square. Before the parade began, volunteer messengers had already taken off north to inform Canudos of the number of soldiers and arms in the expeditionary force and the line of march it was planning to follow. The news came as no surprise. What cause for surprise was there if reality confirmed what God had announced to them through the words spoken by the Counselor? The one real piece of news was that the soldiers would come this time by way of Cariacá, the Serra de Acari, and the Vale de Ipueiras. Abbot João suggested to the others that they dig trenches, bring gunpowder and projectiles, and post men on the slopes of Monte Cambaio, for the Protestants would be obliged to come that way.
For the moment, the Counselor’s mind appeared to be more occupied with getting on with the building of the Temple of the Blessed Jesus as quickly as possible than with the war. He still appeared at dawn every day to supervise the construction work, but it kept falling behind because of the building stones; they had to be hauled from quarries located farther and farther away as time went by, and hoisting them up to the towers was hazardous since the ropes sometimes broke and as they fell the huge stones brought scaffoldings and workers