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[VII]

When the columns of Major Febrônio de Brito’s expeditionary force and the handful of women camp followers who were still tagging along after them converged on the settlement of Mulungu, two leagues away from Canudos, they had no bearers or guides left. The guides recruited in Queimadas and Monte Santo to orient the reconnaissance patrols had turned downright unfriendly the moment they began to come across hamlets that had been set on fire and were still smoking, and all of them had disappeared at once in the gathering dark as the soldiers, collapsing on the ground and lying propped up on each other’s shoulders, thought long thoughts about the wounds and perhaps the death that awaited them behind the mountain peaks that they could see outlined against an indigo-blue sky slowly turning black.

Some six hours later, the runaway guides arrived in Canudos, panting, to beg the Counselor’s forgiveness for having served the Can. They were taken to the Vilanovas’ store, where Abbot João questioned them in minute detail about the soldiers who were coming and then left them in the hands of the Little Blessed One, the person who always received newcomers. The guides had to swear to him that they were not republicans, that they did not accept the separation of Church and State, or the overthrow of the Emperor Dom Pedro II, or civil marriage, or municipal cemeteries, or the metric system, that they would refuse to answer the census questions, and that they would never again steal or get drunk or bet money. Then at his order they made a slight incision in their flesh with their knives as proof of their willingness to shed their blood fighting the Antichrist. Only then were they led—by armed men, through a crowd of people who had been roused from their sleep a short time before by the guides’ arrival, and who applauded them and shook their hands—to the Sanctuary. The Counselor appeared at the door. They fell to their knees, crossed themselves, tried to touch his tunic, to kiss his feet. Overcome with emotion, a number of them burst into sobs. Instead of simply giving them his blessing, the Counselor, his eyes gazing through and beyond them, as when he received the newly elect, leaned down, raised them to their feet, and looked at them one by one with his burning black eyes that none of them would ever forget. Then he asked Maria Quadrado and the eight pious women of the Sacred Choir—dressed in blue tunics with linen sashes—to light the lamps in the Temple of the Blessed Jesus, as they did each evening when he mounted to the tower to offer his counsel.

Minutes later he appeared on the scaffolding, with the Little Blessed One, the Lion of Natuba, the Mother of Men, and the women of the Sacred Choir gathered round him, and below him, packed together in a dense throng and breathless with anticipation in the dawn that was breaking, were the men and women of Canudos, aware that this was a more unusual occasion than others. As always, the Counselor came straight to the point. He spoke of transubstantiation, of the Father and the Son who were two and one, and three and one in the Divine Holy Spirit, and in order that what was obscure might be clear, he explained that Belo Monte could also be Jerusalem. With his index finger he pointed in the direction of the hillside of A Favela: the Garden of Olives, where the Son had spent the agonizing night of Judas’s betrayal, and a little farther in the distance, the Serra de Canabrava: the Mount of Calvary, where the wicked had crucified Him between two thieves. He added that the Holy Sepulcher lay a quarter of a league away, in Grajaú, amid ash-colored crags, where nameless faithful had erected a cross. He then described in detail to the silent crowd filled with wonder precisely which of the narrow little streets of Canudos were the Way of the Cross, exactly where Christ had fallen for the first time, where He had met His Mother, the spot where the redeemed woman who had sinned wiped the sweat from His face, and the stretch along which Simon of Cyrene had helped Him