“Sweeps! Sweeps!” Acunha roared as the house appeared out of the ripppling mist. The coxswain and his mates lashed still-drowsing oarsmen awake with knouts as the floating house spun ponderously on its pontoon and drifted past within a biscuit-toss of the Fé em Deus. Behind it was the second object Quinn had glimpsed: another pontoon house, and behind it, appearing out of the fog, a whole village upon the waters, turning slowly on the deep, powerful currents of the stream.

“Larboard sweeps!” Captain Acunha shouted, running along the central decking with a landing hook to the station where the two benches of chained rowers craned over their shoulders to find a roofless wooden house bearing down on them at ramming speed, corner-forward. “On my word fend off. Anyone of those putas could sink us. Cleverly now, cleverly … Now!” The sweep slaves had pushed their oars as far forward as they could, and on their captain’s command hauled back, making gentle, oblique contact with the side of the house pontoon, forcing it slowly, massively, ponderously away from the side of the ship. The captain thrust away with the landing pike, fighting for leverage, his whole weight behind the spike, face trembling with effort. Forward oars passed the runaway house to aft oars; clenched muscles shone wet in the mist. The house grazed past Fé em Deus’s stern by a lick of paint and vanished through the downstream horizon.

From the forward deck Luis Quinn watched the houses sail past. A village afloat — a village cast adrift. The latter houses, many of them caught together in duets and trinities by tricks of the current, showed signs of burning: few had roofs; some were charred to the very waterline, stumps and sticks of blackened wood, like shattered teeth. Twenty, thirty, fifty. Six times the sweepers fended off a castaway house, once at the price of a third the larboard side’s oars. Not a village. A town. A deserted town, abandoned, slaughtered, taken.

“Hello the village!” Luis Quinn thundered, his deep sea-formed voice carrying across the smooth, unruffled water. And in the lingua geral. “The village, ho there!” No answering hail, no word, not even the bark of a dog or the grunt of a pig. Then a house, burned down almost to waterline, turned in the stream and through the gaping door Quinn saw a dark object, and a pale hand lift. “There’s someone there!” he thundered. “There is one yet alive!”

“Raise anchors!” Acunha shouted. Windlass catchpawls rattled over capstans. The anchors rose from the water, gray and slimy with river silt. “Sweeps! Starboard side. On my command.” The drum beat; the oars rose and dipped; Fé em Deus turned on the steel waters. “All pull.”

The slaves strained to their oars. Fé em Deus dashed forward, gaining on the house that Quinn had seen. Acunha deftly commanded his sweeps to negotiate the boat through the drifting, rurning pontoons.

“Again lads, let’s have you.”

A final effort and Fé em Deus drew alongside. Quinn strained to see; a figure was visible lying on the floor of what, by the fallen statues and charred altar, must have been a church. Acunha’s scouts, lithe, agile Pauxis all, leaped aboard with lines and secured house to ship.

Quinn followed Acunha on to the raft. His feet slipped on wet, charred paper as he walked through the collapsed, smoking, still-warm ruin. Acunha and the Pauxis knelt around a delirious woman who clutched the rags of a Carmelite postulant’s habit to her like children. A caboclo from the angle of her cheekbones, the fold of her eyes: her face was too direly burned for any other features to identify her. She stared up dumb into the ring of faces that surrounded her, but when Luis Quinn’s shadow fell on her she gave a keening shriek that made even Captain Acunha step back.

“What is it, what happened my daughter?” Quinn asked in the lingua geral, kneeling beside her; but she would not answer, could not answer, slapped away his ministering hands, gasping with fear.

“Leave her, Father,” Acunha ordered. “Bid Dr. Falcon come over from the ship.”

Falcon was helped over the narrow water between the two vessels.

’’I’m a geographer, not a physician,” he muttered, but yet knelt down beside the sister. “Get back get back, give the woman some air, let her see the light.” After a brief examination he drew Quinn and Captain Acunha into his confidence. “She is terribly burned over the major part of her body; I do not know if she inhaled flame, but her breathing is shallow, labored, and heavy with phlegm: at the very least I would say that her lungs have been damaged by smoke. I have seen many a loom fire in Lyon; they can spontaneously combust in cotton duff. I certainly know that it is more often the smoke that kills. But I fear the greatest damage lies here.” He held up a pair of botanical tweezers; caught in their tips a tiny white ovoid the size of a grain of rice.”

“A botfly egg,” Acunha said.

“Indeed sir. Her burns are infested with them; infested, some have already hatched. From that we may deduce that the town was set to the torch not less than three days ago.”

“God and Jesus, they will eat her alive.” Acunha crossed himself, kissed his two fingers.

“I fear there is very little we can do save make her comfortable and easy. Captain, there is an herbal simple I have seen used in Belém do Pará; acculico it is called, a stimulant herb but with a potency for analgesia. I believe it would ease this woman’s suffering.”

Captain Acunha dipped his head in acknowledgment.

“The galley master keeps a supply in his sabretache. It puts a wondrous spark in the slaves’ stamina.”

“Good good. A few balls should suffice. Now, we must move her. Gently, gently.” A hammock slung from a bamboo pole negotiated the postulant as tenderly as they could over to Fé em Deus , but she still screamed and wept at every jolt and rub of her exposed tissue against the weave of the fabric. The slaves carried her to an awning on the aft deck. Falcon administered the leaf and in time soothed the woman’s ravings to a dull, relentless mad burble.

Quinn remained on the boat-church. He knelt to the altar, blessed himmself, and lifted one of the charred papers. Music notation: a Mass by Tassara of Salvador. To the greater glory of God. A simple, riverside church; Quinn had passed many such in the floating villages along the varzea, the seasonal flood plain of the river, rising and falling on their pontoons with the waters. They were without exception trading posts, supply depots for river traffic and lines into the vast hinterland; their church a simple wood-and-thatch pontoon, a raised wooden platform for sanctuary, horns and clappers for summoning bells. An altar cloth worked with glowing, fantastical representations of the four Evangelists in braid and plaited feathers lay half burned at the foot of the altar. It would have brought a fine price at any floating market, but the defilers had preferred to burn it, to burn everything.

This was a judgment , Luis Quinn thought.

The altar was strewn with lumps of rain-softened excrement. Quinn swept them away, cleaned the Communion table with the rags of its former covering, choking at the reek of human filth, smoke, and wet ash. He fetched the cross from the midden of half-burned rubbish where it had been flung. It was as intricate and fabulous as the altar cloth; minutely carved and painted panels depicted the Stations of the Cross. Quinn kissed the panel of Christ Crucified at its center, held his lips a lingering moment before setting the cross in its place. He stepped back, dipped his head in a bow, then genuflected and again crossed his breast.

The Fallen Cross. The permit for Just War.

The postulant would not tolerate Quinn’s presence until he changed his dress for a white shirt and breeches. “She fears my robe not my face,” Quinn commented, setting lights to drive off the mosquitoes. “A Carmelite mission, a poor enough place though they modeled themselves on the Jesuits. Music in church; daub, all that stuff. Who would attack a river mission?”