The Bitter Stones of Intention

THE BITTER STONES OF INTENTION

TONY MASERO

Falsely blamed for a mining accident in England, the engineer James September is exiled to an isolated silica mine in the Portuguese mountains. It is 1882 and he finds that life in the primitive mining village is more than he bargained for, a place where repressed lust and superstition are rife.

James’ troubled past comes back to haunt him and he must struggle with the results of a sinful relationship and the terrible price he has to pay for his transgression. Before long the mountains are set alight with other dangers as Spanish brigands invade and James and a handful of survivors must flee their wrath.

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in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

Publishers Note: This is a work of fiction. All names, characters,

places, and events other than historical personalities are the work of the

author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real person, places,

or events is coincidental.

Cover Art Tony Masero

Copyright © 2021 Tony Masero

DEDICATION

Clive and Luisa Viegas Bennett

of Évora de Alcobaça

for all the good lunches

Prologue

Save me, senhor.

She clasped at his arm, catching his sleeve as he passed by her on the stepping-stones that lay in the stream. Not an overly wide stream but it ran swiftly down from its source higher in the Portuguese mountains.

Wha.... what did you say? he asked quickly, taken by surprise.

Take me away. I do whatever you want. You have money. It will be little thing for you. Save me, please. Her broken English was difficult but she had enough that he understood her words.

What in the devil are you talking about? I cannot save you.

Please, senhor. Please, she begged, her gaunt features tight with pleading. I not go back.

Let me go, senhora. Are you mad, if we are seen there will be hell to pay. Let me go!

With that he desperately wrenched himself free of her grip and with such a force that she lost her balance.

If she had not slipped it would have been a simple thing. A plain matter of refusal. Her reaching hand was in his for an instant but it was wet from the washing. Her feet went suddenly sideways on the wet mossy stones, the worn soles of the espadrilles sliding away as if on grease. With a small scream she plunged half into the stream and even over the rushing noise of the water he thought he heard the splitting crack as her head hit the flat stone where she had been beating out her washing. Her blood blossomed in a sudden blooming cloud of red that stained the water in a halo around her head and her staring eyes, so avidly fixed on him, glazed over almost immediately. She rolled over, the stream pulling her long skirts and dragging at her immersed bare legs. Her head lay split apart before him, a great cracked egg the opening mingling its contents with the rushing water.

Stunned, he watched her face, pale now beneath the tanned skin, as it rolled back and then up, bobbing unheeding in the galloping stream. She was only a slight creature, how could such a thin being fall with such heaviness. The body began to move, the water pulling at it. Her fallen washing was sliding away and floating around her, the released basket let loose and riding the wavelets in a rapid seesaw ride downstream.

He plunged knee deep into the water and caught at her. Her clothing was soaked though yet she still felt light in his arms. A waif, a thing of air. How their women survived here he never knew. They worked tirelessly from dawn until dusk, such a hard and unforgiving life. Was that what she had sought sanctuary from with all her begging? The endless grind of a thankless existence.

He laid her on the bank; her long dark hair splayed in tangled knots across her cheek and parted lips. Kneeling beside her he parted the threads from between her crooked teeth and crossed her hands gently over her breast. How old was she, he wondered? Could be twenty or forty, there was no way of telling. In death she looked even more worn and used than in life. A deeply religious man, he bunched his closed fists on his brow and sighed deeply, with tightly closed eyes he began to pray.

Oh Lord, forgive us. Forgive us all for the pain we inflict without thought. Take this poor woman to your bosom and give her the comfort and joy of your heavenly life, give her what she never received in this life, I beg of you that she rest forever in your peace. And Lord, I beg of you most humbly... please guard me from what will follow....

He realised then, that despite all that had passed between them, he did not even know her name.

Chapter One

On a warm spring day in 1882, James September heaved a heavy sigh of relief as he stepped onto the salt encrusted stones of the busy quay at Lisbon docks. Finally, they were here.

Full of expectation they had waited impatiently in the sea-lanes until daylight and at the first glimmerings of dawn the sails had been unfurled with a mighty crack and the cargo ship had woven its slow, ponderous way into the waiting harbour of the reserved Company berth. Young Richard turned this way and that in excitement at the bustling quayside and James nervously called him to order in fear of him being lost in the crush. James smiled at his son and placed an affectionate arm around his shoulders. It had been a hard task bringing up the ten year old alone. Although, in truth, the boy’s presence had saved him from total despair after the loss of his wife Eva. Richard had been a baby at the time, no more than three years old when Eva had succumbed and it had been James’ sad task to bring up the child with only a hired household help as nanny, his one remaining relative, a sister in Scotland already having five of her own to care for.

As he looked up above the now furled canvas of the Basson & Marry Company cargo vessel that had brought them across from England he breathed deeply. The clear blue sky was filled with the scent of a foreign land and the warmth of the morning sun eased the tension in his shoulders. Sea birds wheeled there amidst the rising battle of raw sewage stink and fresh ozone that flowed upwards from a thin mist that covered the great River Tejo. In contrast the welcoming inland smell of baking bread wafted invitingly towards them from the sprawling city. Thank you dear Lord, he muttered, for this new land and a new start.

They stood beside their piled baggage on the quayside and waited for the Company representative who was to meet them and arrange their transport. James watched his son clamber playfully over the packages and trunks, idly he considered how he might have sent the boy off to boarding school whilst he took up this new position but his own memories of that particular hell were enough to deter him from such a course of action. Not a strong character, his weakness had soon been uncovered there. An insular child much given to introspection, tall and slender, fair haired and pale skinned. With no love of sport or outdoor activity, taunts and ridicule soon followed with all the wickedness and cruelty that only public school boarders could manage. He had wept nightly, he recalled. The great wrenching sadness of that loneliness still strong in him, yet now hidden deep in a shadowy part of his soul. In the end it was a religious calling that had saved him. A turning to the church and prayer, where he could escape the merciless attentions of his peers. It had been a close thing, that call to worship, he had almost taken up the priesthood in later years and only the advent of Eva in his life had turned him from such a path.

Hers had been such an opposite character to his. Dark haired with sparkling, intelligent eyes beneath strong eyebrows and with that healthy ruddy complexion so many Cornish girls bore. She was bold and freethinking, a social creature of gregarious interests and directness of speech. It had been an amazement to their friends and relatives that the two should find such joy in each other’s company. But then, it is truly said that opposites attract.

She was, in her usual independent way, travelling alone and unchaperonned on a visit to her ailing mother when the great Bristol and Exeter Railway collision of 1875 had occurred, ripping apart carriages and taking the life of the young mother with it. The sudden shocking incident had left James wholly unprepared and he still bore that deep wound of loss, which he had never really been able to get over. So it was with gratitude as well as love that he looked on his lively young son who bore so many of his late wife’s adventurous attributes.

James had been born into the family of a wealthy Cornish mine owner and it was natural that he should follow into the mining industry. His father now deceased and something of a tyrant in his day, had insisted on James learning the business at first hand and so the Durham coalfields had been his training ground as a mining engineer and there his experiences had done something to harden his outlook. The Company directors had soon recognised his organisational abilities and moved him from administering the smaller twenty men manned mines up to more productive ones with three hundred workers and more. Although, it was to be his ignored early warnings as to the timbering and bratticing of the Trimdon Grange collapse that had ensured his classification within the Company hierarchy as a man, although of care and attention to his tasks, yet still lacking in the ability to act decisively in such instances. This had in some way, he suspected, led to his present situation, which suggested to him obliquely as a kind of unspoken exile.

For the mine owners themselves the Trimdon disaster had been merely a statistic of seventy four workers killed and a commensurate loss of profit but for James the bodies of men cruelly crushed by the fall of the outcast or stifled by choke gas had shaken him to the core. These were men he had come to know well, hewers and hurriers whom he had called by first name. The children had been the worst to see. Little boy trappers who held open the ventilation doors below ground. Boys who should have been over the twelve years of age stipulated by law but the mine owners paid little attention to such things and children much younger still worked the pits. Seeing their sad remains laid out in neat rows beneath weeping mothers who now faced a life bereft both of child and adult breadwinner had been a heart breaking experience to witness. He had needed little prompting to accept the Company offer of the new placement in Portugal.

A rich find it was promised, as yet only minimally developed. His remit was total managerial control of the site with the expectation of his giving a profitable return within a twelve-month.

The Lisbon offices of Basson & Marry were situated in an old palacete in a select part of the city. The building consisted of a tall white fascia supported by ostentatious pseudo-Greek columns and surrounded by gardens of lawn laid out with giant palms and flourishing oleander.

On his arrival James was directed into a high hallway, one side open to a black and white tiled quadrangle that centred the building. A fountain played there and its gentle rush and cooling waters created a soft and soothing atmosphere. A young woman came towards him as he stood and waited, Richard’s hand held firmly in his own.

Senhor James Setembro? she smiled. "Bem-vindo, welcome, I am Lúcia Alcantara Holmes." An attractive girl of some nineteen years. Warm coffee coloured skin and black hair pinned high with a long skirt and bodice that enhanced a slender and elegant form.

"James September," James corrected, with a slight bow.

Of course. her head swayed to one side. And who is this? she asked, bending down to Richard’s level.

Richard September, at your service, ma’am, the boy answered politely.

She beamed, her generous lips revealing a row of even white teeth. Well, well, the perfect gentleman. So nice to meet you, Richard September. She stood again to face James.

"The Doctor will see you immediately, Senhor September. Please, may I take Richard with me whilst you attend your business? He will be with me in my escritorio, my office, when you are done. It is just along the hall there," she pointed in the direction of an open door further along the corridor.

Thank you, you are most kind.

It is nothing, she smiled.

Richard, go along with the lady and I shall be with you presently.

Doctor, an honorary title given to the director of the Lisbon office, Herbert Longfellow, rose from behind a ponderous and gleaming mahogany desk as James entered the large gloomy room where the windows had been shuttered against the bright sunlight outside.

Come in, come in, old chap. A portly, bald headed bustling man with voluminous grey side-whiskers, he moved eagerly forward to take James’ hand in his. So nice to make your acquaintance. How was the journey? Not too arduous I hope.

Not at all, sir. Thank you.

Come along then. Pray, sit ye down, he indicated a high backed chair standing before his desk. Now then,