Rumor, Father, only—

—what would it mean—

They should never have come here. They should never have come here to this place. They are both going to die here. Garrupe raises his head, hair sticking to his cheek. His vision swims. The fever is the only thing that reminds him his body is still alive — the swarming heat has driven even the vermin away. This is his only visitation.

"You aren't here."

"I am, Francisco, I'm here—"

It's just a voice and not a face. Just a shape. His lungs ache with an old memory, as if it were a thousand years ago by now, as if it happened in another country altogether. The sensation is that of starving for air.

"Sebastião Rodrigues, the Jesuit, is not here. I would know him if he were."

"You're delirious."

"No," Francisco says, lifting his ruined leg with difficulty and swinging his feet over the edge of the pallet, "I'm very angry."

The bone of his ankle is jutting. A murky memory rises: the founder of their Order was left with one short leg after the battle of Pamplona. They had to carve down the bones of his leg and re-set them. That's at least one experience Francisco is certain to be spared.

Sebastião is here and everything is ruined. He'd kill him, if he were well enough to stand up. He'd murder him outright. Rodrigues has ruined both of them now.

"Don't get up — stay just where you are." Sebastião kneels beside him. "Your guards were anxious that you might be dying. You hadn't moved for days."

So they sent another priest in to finish the job. Francisco tips his head back, baring his teeth mirthlessly. "Are you one of them now? Have you come to bring me into line?"

"They wouldn't send in their own doctors in case it's a pestilence. I told them I knew a little Portuguese medicine. They let me in."

Picture it: Rodrigues the apostate pleading for him outside his prison door. Begging to save something beyond salvaging. Garrupe touches his thickened tongue to the roof of his mouth, tasting salt. "A little? You're too modest."

"Lie back down. You're on fire."

In ministering to him he touches Francisco all over, which makes him grimace. The pain is only a little more than the first lurch in trying to rise from the mat, but there's a special indignity in being inspected for wounds like this. Furthermore his hands are cold.

"How long have you had a fever?"

Inelegantly, Garrupe shrugs.

Sebastião strips the robe back from his shoulders. He bleeds him sparingly with a wooden bowl and a little knife like a razor — Francisco eyes it enviously from lolled back against the rotten straw and thinks how handy such a thing would be. The red blood runs down and he feels himself grow faint.

They were supposed to be priests, not physicians, but this is the most skillful attention he's received for his wounds since having seawater knocked out of his lungs, so some gratitude is in order. Sebastião's palm rests against his chest, with fingers spread. His hand looks very white, and his knuckles look very red.

"I told him what to bring me. It must have been a tremendous risk. You must understand, I thought you were dead when I left you, they told me you drowned. God be praised, I thought you were dead."

"I thought you apostatized. Was I wrong?"

Sebastião flinches back. It's tremendously satisfying. Francisco breathes slow breaths, clotted with the smell of blood, and considers this.

It must be true, then, if there's no denial. He envies that delirious strength — that sick resilience, to have done what Sebastião has done and still say those words, God be praised. He's gone mad. Francisco is alone here and his only companion is a madman.

*

The fever takes three days to leave him. It's never clear when Rodrigues is there and when he isn't. Francisco's sleep is fitful, and he wakes to strange voices, sometimes more than one man's voice, to a bundle of unfamiliar herbs thrust onto his tongue and just as soon taken away.

In his dreams he is at sea again, rocked by waves.

Someone's fingers are probing for a pulse in the side of his throat — Francisco jerks awake, gasping. Rodrigues is hanging over him with his hair falling down in a single mass.

The words are there in the shape of his lips — it's almost impossible for Francisco to hear him without turning his head. "Make your confession quickly.

Garrupe shakes his head with all the force he can muster.

"There's still time. You're not dead yet. You're stronger than you were before."

His tongue is salt-thick and sluggish, slow to respond. Garrupe rasps, "I refuse. I refuse to confess."

"You can't surrender now. You have to save your strength. I know what they did to you."

"Am I supposed to recite? Sebastião, you don't understand—"

Rodrigues has no idea what's been done to him. He's been stashed away safely all this time while Garrupe was being choked with water and beaten with rods, he's been shuffling around like a lackey. On the beach he was dressed like one of them, scrubbed clean, sheltered from the wind. The old hate surges up again.

"We'll pray together, quickly." He begins a psalm. Francisco shuts his eyes and turns his head.

(Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul, let them be turned— The words don't come naturally to him, they have been driven from his mind.)

The weight of the words is too much — he has to snap eventually. He casts out one gaunt arm, dragging up Rodrigues' sleeve in a fist.

"Stop it. Stop it. How can you be so stupid? I broke. I yielded."

Rodrigues startles back from him.

"I know you did. But you're alive. You can still confess."

"We should have died there."

Died there and become a part of the soil of Japan, burnt up and tossed in the wind like chaff, rotted away in the wet and cold. Garrupe had a broken ankle when they brought him in, some inflammation had broken in and made the flesh raw and livid — it hurts exquisitely on cold nights and that pain keeps him alert to the desolation in which he now lives.

It must be habit that still possesses him like this, the well-worn habit of the past weeks. All those nights lying awake, fumbling inside for the old exercises, the old prayers, and finding the words but not the sense of the words — searching for strength and finding only new depths of weakness, slackness, emptiness. Looking for any kind of sign and finding only a void.

Now he is desolate in a stranger's house. Their letters are lost — maybe they'll find their way back to Lisbon, passed through the helpful hands of a Dutch trader to be picked and pawed at, and maybe they won't. Everything they left behind them is lost — the chalice and paten, the Host, the broken cup they'd used for holy water. All these things are lost completely to them. They have only what they carry with them.

All those nights while Francisco was being hunted like an animal, Rodrigues had been an honored guest. Not quite, but a near thing — they'd fed him and clothed him, anyway, he looks haggard but not broken, there is still flesh on his bones. He hates him for that. But they're both suffering in a constellation of the same ways — their joints swell and twist in the same ways, the skin of their hands cracks and splits and they both stink of wool fat and charcoal. They are still plagued by lice even here in this place, which seems like the blackest joke of all.

They aren't the men they were — he thinks of Rodrigues then in Macao and in his mind's eye he sees a boy, eager and impetuous. Foolish. Hungry to please.

They are at the end of it. The termination of their great work. The rupture of their vows. Everything they professed to believe — washed away, worn down into nothing, pulled out of them like a bad tooth. Valignano won't know what's happened to them, but he might easily guess. Two young men sent to retrieve one old teacher. They should never have left. They should never have returned. They never left. They can never return.

*

Rodrigues is more suited to life in the Japanese style than Garrupe is. The orderliness of their prison is nauseating, after lodging in jail cells and peasants' homes for so long — everything here that is clean and decent is paid for in taxes, and those taxes are extorted from Christians and gentiles alike who cannot pay. They are restricted to a suite of two rooms, all lined with mats and separated by a broad hallway — certainly more comfortable than some places, and evidently newly-constructed, but the furnishings are few and already deteriorating. It is unclear at whose pleasure they're being detained — or even on whose orders, whether it's a further expression of Inoue's amusement at their softness or another man's whim that might be retracted at any moment. They're allowed to wash and change clothes, to stand and move around, to eat — the hunger in Francisco's belly is sickening but he can hardly swallow. They are kept under guard.

The silence of not telling becomes too much to bear — swelling up in his mind and heart, as involuntary as the need to vomit. The interruptions he expects never come — no one pulls the two of them away from each other, the guard knocks sharply on the door at irregular intervals but does not step inside.

To the guards' ears all Latin sounds like prayers. The unbroken stream of Latin that passes between them must sound particularly like that — and they must be afraid of seeming sympathetic to their prisoners, or unduly interested in what they're hearing. It's not precisely a confession — more of a reckoning of accounts, or a history, a report. What did he see? Where was he taken? How was he treated? (What did he suffer, what does he suffer now — what has he done, what will he do? But not for Christ. None of this was undertaken for Christ.)

"How long do we have? Shall I make this brief?"

The history in brief — I doubted you. I betrayed myself. I fell.

"Long enough. I have a friend who's buying us a little time — you won't believe it. Our old guide, Kichijiro."

To call him a friend seems overly generous. They're reduced to relying on the one man more wretched than they are. "You shouldn't trust him. Don't you see what he's done?"

"He's a sinner," Rodrigues says stolidly. "So are we. So let's proceed."

He speaks until his throat is hoarse and his eyes sting. Words fail him at the worst of it, at the bloody edge of memory, but Rodrigues' questions draw the truth out of him anyway. He had never known such fear as when the two of them parted ways — fleeing and being followed, inexorably hunted down, so completely alone. God did not speak to him then. God hadn't been speaking to him since they left Macao — maybe before that.

He'd made it a ways inland on Hirado, deterred and slowed by the terrain — he doesn't know how far, or even how long he'd traveled for, how many days. Sheltering along the coast, away from any human habitation, stealing in by night — he performed Mass there, taught prayers, thinking what would Ferreira do instead of using his own discretion, until that failed him too.

But the time in which those things were possible passed quickly, the last Christians begged him to flee — not for his sake but for their sake, and he did. He fled.

They must have seen it in his face. Perhaps it was the one good thing he's done since coming here — simply leaving the people alone.

They found him in a cave along the coastline, nursing an injured ankle. It was then that he was arrested and left for a while in the custody of three guards, while the stragglers were herded together — they must have been in a sorry state, then, not to warrant any more of a guard detail. They'd proceeded to tell him in a very mild-mannered kind of way that his fellow priest had already turned himself over.

You should go ahead and trample, they'd said, really, it's not as bad as people say it is. Your companion has trampled the image of the Virgin already. He spat upon a crucifix — we saw it. He'll tell you himself, when you see him. Save yourself until then.

Francisco's mouth twists in a grimace, away from dry teeth. "I thought they meant you. Now, I wonder."

In memory he can see them now, each of their faces, distinctly. Not taunting but pitying. Solid, reasonable, moderate men void of any comprehension of the evil they were working on their own countrymen. Perhaps they even believed it then, that Rodrigues had already apostatized. The simpler thing would be for Garrupe to have yielded right then, and these men could have gone back to their barracks for their supper and been commended and Garrupe could have curled up on the wet ground and died an apostate. But he desisted.

"You were always stubborn," Rodrigues says, with bleak good humor shining in his eyes. "What happened next?"

They beat him then. A man struck him a blow to the ear and something broke there, the eardrum ruptured. After that, things become indistinct.

When he met with the Inquisitor he must've been a sorry sight — and Inoue put it quite simply, that Rodrigues had seen sense. He must have thought it was a benevolent lie. That horrible certainty lurches out at Francisco now from his memory — the Inquisitor's smiling face, so much like a teacher's. He was a schoolmaster pitting two difficult pupils against one another — as discipline.

Curiously, the other prisoners in their train were chiefly women — Francisco's argument for mercy hinged on that, that even in Japan women are spared some of the stiff penalties according to men, that if they refused to apostatize the women should be exiled and not killed. It was a weak argument, and Francisco knew it, the Inquisitor knew it — but he seemed touched by the chivalry of it anyway.

Are you very fond of women? he'd asked, with some amusement. Francisco was at a loss for an answer.

Inoue turned then instead to the subject of war — whether Garrupe knew much about the condition and locations of the Dutch fleet, whether he had feared to provoke a military incident by coming to Japan under a false pretense, and so on. Francisco set his jaw and gave his best answers — his most decent answers, anyway — but that made no difference in the end.

Francisco's resistance was not seen as strength. Four more were burned that night, one after another — four women, all Christians who refused to trample. Martyrs, now, he supposes. The fires kept burning all night, one after another. He thought it was to prolong their suffering — now he wonders if it was to prolong the opportunity for mercy. At any time he might have forsworn the faith.

Inoue was so gentle you wanted to melt in his presence, so benevolent, an aging gentleman of good breeding — and yet he was the architect of this brutality. He had ordered the executions by fire — in a lonely place where there would be no spectators. In the last decades, the murdered girls might have only been exiled after all, they might have lived to be venerable old women — it's the stubbornness of men like Garrupe that have made conditions so intolerable for Japanese Christians.

No.

That isn't his own thought — that's Inoue speaking through him, just as Ferreira spoke through them back at the College. They were nothing more than his mouthpieces then, and now if they aren't vigilant they will be the Inquisitor's mouthpieces.

He can no longer trust his own thoughts.

There were tortures, more beatings and half-drownings, the threat of even worse business, and throughout it the promise — that Rodrigues had already apostatized, and that if he forswore himself too they could be reunited. He came to believe it.

The rest of it was a forced march. He spent only one night in a cell — a construction with mud walls on three sides and wooden slats on the other, filled with standing water and seething with bad vapors. There were no other Christians detained there, only a woman in the adjoining cell who wept day and night, crying out for — what? Garrupe didn't know the word. Not for her husband or her child, but for a material thing, some article. Crying out for medicine, a doctor to bring her medicine. For clean clothes, for salt, for drink, for poison, something. Garrupe didn't know the word, had little to bring her and the wound in his ear was festering. He thrust his arm through the wooden bars as far as it would go, offered her millet and a little water, which she did not take. They beat him for that too.

He grew angry with her then — rebuked the woman as she wept, would have struck her if he could. If he'd had the strength in his arm to do it with. Perhaps she's there still to this day, a forgotten woman, forgotten completely.

Mercy failed him, and fluency, and love, all in one night. It wasn't at all like they'd discussed in the privacy of the charcoal-burner's hut; even torture became tedious.

They had no time to give any of the Japanese what they actually needed — no time, no resources, no time for comprehensive instruction, hardly even a grasp of the language. If they'd undertaken to do anything else but recover Ferreira, maybe the two of them could have made a lasting mark — how could they administer the sacraments, with no certainty that the men and women receiving them understood what they were for? Francisco no longer knows what these things are for.

Moving with the Inquisitor's baggage train, like cattle. To be reunited with Rodrigues on the shore, to scream himself bloody as the waves beat against his legs, to commit an act of desperation. To tread the image of the Blessed Virgin with the infant Christ in her arms, and to do it with such emphatic willingness that the wooden plank dug into the wet sand, the brass image dislodged. His body failed him, and his reason, and all of it.

He thought it was mercy — he thought it was mercy that prompted him to cast away all hope of heaven, but he was wrong. He wouldn't do it for the four murdered girls, or for the souls of four helpless strangers, but he'd do it for Rodrigues. How could he ever thought of himself as a priest?

Rodrigues stops him. "Did they take you to the pit?"

Francisco shakes his head, no.

There are some things he'll never understand. Sebastião does not elaborate further, but proceeds to tell the rest.

Francisco shudders to hear it, it's like having some terrible violation revealed to him — his mind fills in the images with distressing clarity. Thinking his only friend in this place was dead, urged by his confessor, Rodrigues yielded. Ferreira had the keys to every chamber of his heart — he'd known him since boyhood, how could he have failed to persuade him? Even if that meant betraying himself.

In Portuguese he asks, "How long?" How long did it take him to shatter?

"Two weeks. I held out two weeks."

Their foreheads are touching. Sebastião clutches his right hand so tightly that it hurts. They cling to each other like drowning men.

"So it happened like that. And like that, I brought you down with me."

Rodrigues says, "You didn't. You didn't, I swear. You would never have trampled if I hadn't first proposed it—"

"For them, maybe, but not for us. We were supposed to be priests." The words are hot in his mouth.

Rodrigues' hands settle on his shoulders — they are sliding down to his lap, his long fingers fumble to grasp Francisco's grubby hands. There's tremendous strength in Sebastião's hands.

(The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary—)

They hold each other for a long moment — Francisco remembers how they parted ways, the rocks and the water. But the scene turns turns from the water's edge to the broken path where Sebastião told the converts to trample — the rasp of the tall grass against their legs, the sharp nick of a broken reed, the singing of the cicadas. The words of the prayer no longer have any sense to them.

(—be it done to me according to Thy word—)

It doesn't seem possible that they ever knew one another before this — that they were ever young men, studying the philosophers together. Other men have suffered worse than this, other Jesuits have been flayed and burned and mutilated — Christ suffered far worse than this before He even carried His cross. They pray together, hands locked together until their knuckles ache.

It's practice for the sacraments Francisco no longer has any confidence in — if there's any healing in their reconciliation it comes from the quick insistence of Rodrigues' Latin recitations and from the familiarity of the words in a strange place.

If there is no consolation in philosophy, at least neither of them is in danger of being too comfortable. The two of them sleep in one bed when they're able, on the first night while the larger cell is being searched and scoured of pests, and between Francisco's shattered ankle and the sharp insistent bones of Rodrigues' hips and elbows there's little rest to be had. But if two lie together they can at least keep warm.

Francisco whispers to him in the dark. "Are you here to undermine me for the second time?"

Sebastião doesn't answer him. He's fast asleep.

Undermine him in what? What else is left? No one else can know — no one else in all of their Society, no one to know that Sebastião betrayed himself only after Garrupe did. Perhaps if Rodrigues were the sole survivor he'd find it in himself to lie — he could never do it face to face, but in a letter, say that Garrupe crumbled under the brunt of insensible unbelief but he, he, he alone kept faith. Or Garrupe would lie and maintain the dignity of their mission — he might have fallen, but Sebastião never did. But the two of them have survived and it's terribly inconvenient to whatever story might have been told about them.

Garrupe finds it no easier to lie than to tell the truth. He saved neither himself, nor Rodrigues, nor their teacher, nor any one of the believers — and now he knows the jerk and throw of a drowning man's head as he ceases to struggle, knows the sound it makes in a young girl's throat when the rising smoke stifles her psalms. It's one thing to imagine and another to know. Was it so terrible for the old Church? To see it, to hear it.

The terrible conviction in his heart is worse than doubt — that all of this was for a purpose and an end that's so distant none of them will live to see it, the Church herself may not survive to see the final end of their work. He can see how the Church might crumble now, how it might break away at its edges and be successfully repulsed through sheer indifference and unimpassioned cruelty. Grind men and women down through hunger, uncertainty, deprivation, public display — cut them off and let them dwindle to a natural bloodless end. Let their strength fail. Like wrapping a thread tightly around one finger and watching the flesh change color. Starvation will finish them, and hard work, taxes, fevers, lice. There will be no more believers after them.

Nothing seems certain any more — none of it has any substance or solidity, none of the places he'd been before coming to Japan. Was this it? Their short, miserable tour of duty here? Was it this for which they prayed? They were sent to Japan to suffer and instead they made themselves the occasion of suffering for so many others — better, more faithful, infinitely more pathetic souls. The two of them have become the instrument of so much hardship since coming here. Hardship without relief.

The people prayed, and God sent them weak priests. Vain, weak, hateful men. Rodrigues prayed for a partner in this venture and got Francisco instead.

If they're separated again Francisco won't survive it — he must borrow Sebastião's strength somehow, take it into himself. Like the Host, he thinks, and laughs from a dry throat.

*

His ankle has begun to mend itself by the time Ferreira comes from the temple where he is kept, but now his lungs have begun to ache, and hard coughing racks him in the night. They can't keep their teacher waiting any longer. They can't delay the inevitable.

Rodrigues is taken from him, protesting that his procedures aren't finished, that Garrupe needs medicine. Their guard calls after him, exasperated: if you could treat him he'd be well by now! He sounds so unimpressed by their displays of Portuguese medicine that Garrupe finds himself doubled up with senseless painful laughter. Their situation has reached the point of absurdity.

How will they torture him, now that there's nothing left to torture him for? They are in limbo now, both of them. Maybe another well-bred lord will ask him probing questions about architecture and botany and the state of the Dutch fleet. Maybe a soldier with rough hands will cut his head off.

What could they possibly want from him now? The destruction of his body?

Every time they're parted Garrupe can wonder if this is the day Sebastião dies — or if this is the day Francisco is hauled out bound in ropes and cast into the sea, or crucified, or burned. He can halfway envision some way the pair of them might redeem themselves — the clouds might part, God might speak to him again, Our Lady might appear in a cataclysm of roses.

One night he dreams of celebrating a Mass. When he wakes, the cut in his arm from Rodrigues' knife is bleeding again, a dull trickle lost in the folds of his stained shirt.

*

Rodrigues is returned to him some three days later with his hair tied back and his face clean-shaven. Dressed like he is, he looks rather splendid. His robes are indigo blue, with a slip of black beneath his collar — or blue so dark it could almost be black. It could almost be suitable.

It's an insult. Garrupe rises to his feet and limps over — night has come, and he tugs the cord from his hair.

"What have they done to you? What's this?"

Sebastião draws back from him, shaking out his hair between his fingers. He's like a wounded bird — all glossy plumage and swelling ribcage, sleek and flustered in complementary shades of blue. No one would mistake him for a peasant now.

"Ferreira wants to speak with you." Rodrigues' face is pale, his eyes are dark. "Try and prepare yourself. Of course, you'll be watched."

"Tell him I'm sick. Tell him I'm coughing blood."

"I won't lie to him. If we refuse, there are consequences—"

"I am, you know. I didn't think it was any of your business." Garrupe holds out his arm to display the dark spots that speckle his sleeve. Black blood on faded blue.

"Ferreira betrayed us. He's a prisoner like we are. But he might be able to help us."

"Bullshit. Why would Ferreira help us? What could he possibly do to improve our situation?"

"Watch what you say."

Inoue controls where Ferreira stays and where he is sent. He's netted up all the former priests remaining in Japan, and neutralized them all. It's at his discretion and in accordance with his taste that the two of them are alive today. Perhaps they will be his informants. Inoue doesn't see Rodrigues as Ferreira's trusted pupil — he only sees him as Ferreira's lackey, a lesser man who does what he does and goes where he goes.

Sebastião Rodrigues, the man. His life before the Jesuits is a cipher — who would he be if he hadn't been a Jesuit? When they were young men at Campolide — ten years ago or even less, the numbers seem all wrong in Garrupe's mind, Sebastião couldn't even grow a beard yet. He'd seemed coltish and severe and full of tender enthusiasm.

There was a kind of softness about him quite apart from gentleness, a sneaking delicacy — and Francisco held himself back on that account, finding it faintly repulsive. To another person it might be attractive. Ferreira saw it too, and never favored him on that account, he tasked him hard and made sure that delicate sensibility was counterbalanced by all the other qualities of their Society — anchored by rigorousness and self-scrutiny.

If Ferreira favored him, it was for some other reason, some thing Francisco never could seek out. Francisco changes course.

"You shouldn't sleep with me any longer. Go back to your own cell."

"I don't mind it."

"It isn't safe. If you get sick, we'll both be blamed. It isn't penance. It's just — stupid."

"You still snore, you know. I can hear it from the other end of the hall."

Rodrigues kisses him on the mouth, and that concedes it.

Like the saints of past centuries who kissed the wounds of lepers. He isn't that far gone yet, but it's a matter of time. That night he can't sleep, between the memory of that terrible fiery kiss and the sharp edges of Rodrigues' shoulder blades pressing against his chest. The ache of his bruises seems sweeter with pressure.

He wants to ask whether Ferreira has been changed — whether he seemed near death, whether they'd cut his tendons to lame him like the martyrs of 1623, whether he has been disfigured. He wants to ask if Rodrigues still loves Ferreira like they both did in Lisbon and Macao. He wants to know if Ferreira mentioned him by name.

In the morning, Rodrigues helps him dress himself in fresh traveling clothes while the guards watch. Their old guide Kichijiro is among the gaggle of attendants, looking shame-faced and stiff-shouldered — he must be taking pains not to stare or seem overly attentive, but it doesn't seem to work. The head guard strikes the boards at his feet with a wooden cane and scatters him. Garrupe submits himself to be bound.

*

There's a fresco of birds painted on the walls of the reception hall — white-feathered birds preen themselves on the gilt-edged screens behind where Ferreira sits. The beauty of the furnishings is almost too much. It makes Garrupe's eyes ache.

"They are not an unreasoning people. You could teach here — geology, astronomy, verse. They're very willing to learn. Some of them are learning Latin — they're curious what's being said about them. Your method of communicating with Rodrigues was clever, but very dangerous."

Some of them are learning Latin. This is a warning, like the interpreter seated at Ferreira's elbow is a warning. Ferreira has been transfigured — horribly transfigured. Suffering has parched him and taken all the gentleness out of his face. But he is well, and whole, not emaciated like them. From the look of cold pity in his face, he must find Francisco to be changed as well.

The interpreter is a good-looking, neat man of no particular age — a samurai, one supposes, dressed to display an unobtrusive richness, but the sword at his belt is its own warning. Ferreira is a cool blot of blue, robed like a gentleman. They're seated opposite each other on the ground, despite the protests of Francisco's ruined leg. Transport in a litter was luxurious in comparison to another journey on foot, but it enforced an unnatural posture, and Francisco carries himself upright only with difficulty after being crammed into a cage intended for a smaller man. Stooping and ragged, he looks like a beaten dog, and he knows it.

Francisco tries to hold his head high, and to keep the distress he feels from bleeding into his voice. Let this be a conversation someplace else, at some other time.

"Your Japanese friends are more concerned about slander. That there may be distortions published abroad about their policies."

(Turn the scene on its head and they are having this exchange in Macao or in Lisbon, they are debating whether or not unfettered access to European writings will set prospective converts back — they have argued this same line of thought before, it's a spring day under a clear sky and Ferreira's face is like the face of God the Father.)

Ferreira says, "Yes," without glancing toward their interpreter.

"They must value your learning in particular very much. You were distinguished even among Jesuits."

You were the best of them, he thinks, but Francisco practices restraint. He will not dispute the way his teacher wants him to — he will not dispute at all.

"They do. I'm glad to teach what I can. There's much to learn."

By the standards of the Japanese, Ferreira is a gentleman — maybe a little rough-hewn and provincial, but learned and loyal and sedate. His allegiances are no longer questionable. What would Ferreira have been if he had never been a priest? Much like this — a bourgeois with pretenses, an ordinary scholar. He'd dabble. They've got him dabbling now, like a sophist for hire. Say one thing and then say another — turn your reason to the task of building up one mission and then tear it down. All their vaunted education is nothing but a knife that cuts both ways.

His own voice is too raw for the serene silence of the temple. The smell of incense is making him dizzy. "Is it true you have a wife?"

Francisco's hand is shaking against his leg. He wants nothing more than to cut it off. The interpreter is watching him without interest, but it's impossible to look away from Ferreira's face. He doesn't look troubled in the least. He looks justified.

"I do. She belonged to my predecessor. I manage his estate and support his widow. It seemed more charitable, but after all I had no choice."

Can he have misheard? His damaged ear is mending now, but everything his teacher has said is warped, as if Garrupe is at the bottom of the ocean and Ferreira is on the shore. It feels as if he'll choke on his next words. "No choice? How can you honestly say you had no choice?"

Ferreira looks away. It's worse than anything he could have said in reproach. Garrupe feels faint with horror.

So much for chastity. It's the smallest of his betrayals — really, it's nothing at all relative to the overwhelming mass of every other principle he's forsaken, not just in surrendering but by surrendering gladly. Ferreira is lost — as lost as Francisco is. Even playing the model prisoner, he can't defend himself against that one truth. Dress him up like a gentleman in borrowed clothes, change his name, issue him a wife and a title — but he'll never be wanted here, he'll always be a foreigner. He is the example of what both of his students might be permitted to rise to — prisoners with pretensions.

"That's enough of that. Tell him about what you're writing," the interpreter interjects. He's losing patience with their meandering dialogue — he'd have made a good Jesuit, no doubt, no patience for slackness. "Explain the arrangement."

Whatever Ferreira says is nothing more than a dull roar in his ears. Garrupe makes his hands into fists against his lap. It feels as if all the blood has leeched away from his face. His blood has turned to water.

Each of them is no better than the other. Ferreira yielded up out of pity and Garrupe out of despair. He wants to ask: is it you who intervened for us? Is it Ferreira whose influence has won them their sliver of time together — does he think he's being merciful? Or is it another one of the noblemen on the Inquisitor's tribunal? Are they satisfied that the threat presented by two priests has been neutralized by their humiliation? Someone somewhere has the assurance that their backs are broken by all this. That the last two Jesuits know better now.

It takes all his self-control not to cry out, instead to contract into a single point of anger. The fever has left him now at last. His heart is cold and dry, settled as a fist. It's difficult to believe this is the man after all, or to believe he'd ever been so hungry for this man's approval above anyone else's — nobody would jostle for this man's favor if they could see him like this, so completely defeated. How desperately uncomfortable this must be for spectators. How heartbreakingly pathetic.

Francisco feels his face grow hard — he feels that coldness sink its roots into his guts.

So long as Garrupe and Rodrigues behave themselves and remain in seclusion, the remaining Christians will not be harmed. They're only peasants, after all — Francisco will see their suffering faces in his dreams for the rest of his life, shot through with fear and confusion. They're only peasants. Men and women who pay their taxes. It's an honest trade.

Is this mercy? Is this punishment?

*

The cold doesn't last. It melts away into water.

He comes back still raging, shaking in the grip of the guards who force him back into his cell — Sebastião springs up to console him the moment their captors have left, but his consolations are all empty, worse than nonsense. Francisco shaking with anger, Sebastião hugging him against his chest half to calm him and half to stifle the sound.

A broken howl cuts its way out of his throat. He thumps with his fists. Sebastião absorbs the blows like a wooden post.

Ferreira never lied to them. He's right. He's right. God help them both.

*

That night Sebastião tells him of his visions. The face of Christ like in the chapel at Evora, the voice of Christ telling him to go ahead and trample. They shared these things back in Evora, but that was different. The two of them were faithful then, and that was an appropriate place for mysticism — and you could meet it with gentle skepticism. In the colleges these things seemed stirring and exciting. Here in Japan all such things are false hopes. His sign is no sign at all.

Francisco shakes his head — it's like being drunk, or being stunned by a blow, hearing Sebastião admit these things. These things seem worse than nonsense. In another time and place they might have debated the matter but here in this place just thinking about it makes him sick to his stomach.

"I still love Christ. I can't stop. Not even when I was in the wilderness, completely alone."

"That must be a great comfort to you!"

It's sick — talking about the abstracts of love and adoration when men and women have died for them while their priests only watched. Not for Christ, but for the pair of them, for a pair of weak priests who struggled with their language and despised their way of living. The Jesuits aren't worthy of these people. Their presence in this country is a blasphemy.

Rodrigues' eyes are half-shut, and strangely frantic. He makes a fluttering sign with his hand. "I see His face. I feel His closeness. More than ever, even, with nothing else to sustain us."

"You're flattering yourself. Stop it. And you're flattering me, because if you didn't it would be too much to bear."

The pair of them are shut out for what they've done, permanently and forever shut out. Not for trampling but for refusing to trample for so long, for coming to Japan at all and opening this new and awful wound alongside the old stripes of persecution. Worse things are waiting for them, so many things that are so much worse. Not the silence of a long night but the silence of the tomb.

"If I were, I'd think consolation would look different than this." Sebastião laughs hoarsely. "It would be more satisfying."

"You trust too much. You trusted Kichijiro, and now here we are. Trust your visions and they'll only break your heart."

"And if I trust in Christ?"

Christ, the heavenly bridegroom. Christ their friend and counselor. If Christ needs men like them to represent Him in this world then it's no wonder He seems so powerless, or else indifferent.

"He'll break your heart," Garrupe rasps. His throat feels like paper. "He'll ruin you."

"Do you really think His forgiveness is that conditional? That you've done worse things than anyone else ever has? We asked to suffer. Both of us."

"Did these people ask for this? Did they want this for their children? They don't even understand what they're suffering for—"

"Oh, of course not. How could they, without our advantages?" The sarcasm in his voice cuts. "It's terrible, all of it. I could never have imagined this, safe at my desk back home. It isn't fair, none of it's fair. Ichizo or Mokichi could have lived and died a hundred years earlier, and never known Christ, and never suffered for Him. He could have been born a hundred years from now in Portugal or Spain and never known such suffering at all. That's the sickness of it.” “I don't understand it either. But I can respect the — hugeness of it. Everything since that night in Tomogi feels like a terrible dream."

"What's there to respect about it? It's senseless. It's wasteful."

"It's brutal, like nature is brutal. And it demands a corresponding act of mercy. Something impossible-seeming." His voice is dreamy and low, but his eyes are captivating. How could anyone fail to be pierced by those eyes? "You're hurting me, you know."

His fingernails have dug white crescents into the sharp bones of Rodrigues' wrist. Francisco releases him, feeling some dull pang.

"Well." He can feel the blood burning in his cheeks. Francisco straightens up his crooked posture and brushes off his hands, making a joke of it. "If I were in better health, then you'd really have something to worry about."

That would be something for the locals to see — come by and gawk at the fractious Christians. They must look like a couple of shaggy skeletons, brawling. Rodrigues laughs.

*

Outside their prison, the seasons turn — the days grow shorter, all the sounds and smells of life carry on within the walls of the compound. Fires burn, guard details grow regular. Workmen dig holes and hammer posts into the ground — whether for some fearful purpose of fresh cruelties or mundane reasons, neither of them can know, perhaps to put up a new outbuilding, a guard post or a latrine. There are no birds overhead; their slit windows afford no glimpse of the natural world. Garrupe marks out the days, and measures the angles of the rising sun.

There are pledges to be signed — some of them strictly civil, testifying that the two of them have not been harmed, but among them is a document with some curious details. It attests that Christianity is a hostile religion, that its claims about the afterlife are contrary to good order and that its professions are manifestly false, that its padres reserve for themselves the power to cast men and women into Hell, and so on — and that the individuals undersigned disavow this foreign faith completely on pain of punishment by Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary, Deus Himself and all His angels. This makes for a distinctly mixed message. Perhaps Ferreira added that part, to hedge against the reluctant using the weight of their own belief to topple them. There have been a slew of such documents since he came to Japan; this one is only a useful failsafe. Garrupe signs his mark to it, and thinks no more of heaven after that.

When night comes — and it always comes — there's privacy in the dark.

*

The two of them continue in their disclosures. He confesses, though he no longer believes, and Rodrigues absolves him. Rodrigues confesses his sins, though his confessor can only doubtfully be called a priest, and Francisco does the same to absolve him in return. The mechanical effect is nearly the same, even if it's hard to feel sanctified — maybe he never had. It's a succession of fine lies. Being lied to is the only thing that gives Francisco any pleasure any more after the truth has been wrung out of him. Together they recall what Communion was like, what it felt like without any of the material elements at hand, the sight and sound and taste and touch from which they've been cut off. For Rodrigues it is a useful exercise. For himself, Francisco feels nothing at all' he searches his memory for what it must have been like — before.

Rodrigues cries when they lie together. He never did before

Francisco kisses him and brushes his hair down from its tangles. Sebastião smells of sweat and cloves. The perfume of cloves saturates the garments their captors give them, but it can't disguise the stark mustiness of cloth kept in storage for a long time. These are somebody else's cast-offs, or spares, or something, and they hang too-short and too-wide in every dimension.

His robe is tugged open almost to the navel. In the dark, all his garments are so dark they appear black. Chest to chest and hip to hip — Sebastião's body is light and finely made. He's always been lean, and now he's practically concave.

Why not? What's stopping them? The prayers are still on Sebastião's lips when Francisco covers them with his mouth.

The taste of salt is like something from his dreams — the two of them adrift at sea, side by side in a rudderless boat as narrow as a coffin. He'd always wanted to be buried in the town he grew up in, and now it would suffice to be buried at all and not burned.

He tugs a hard breath before touching on the lines of his mouth — the bow of his bottom lip, the sweet soft inside of his mouth when Rodrigues lets him in.

If they're seen like this there will be consequences. It's not a very peaceful kiss.

Sebastião calls him by name when they break apart, as if surprised and a little dismayed — but he puts up his hands to touch his face, as if to hold up his heavy head, and doesn't pull away. What reason is there to abstain?

"Let me see you," Francisco says.

Garrupe manhandles him upright — his eyes are burning, his stiff indignation is all over his face.

"This is wrong. This is a mistake."

"I don't care."

"Then let me do it."

Sebastião's hands, untying belts and unraveling the band of cloth that hangs close to his belly, setting it aside with strange carefulness — Francisco's mind turns to thoughts of contraband, of the borrowed blade he saw only once or some miraculously restored string of rosary beads. He wants to touch him there, the low flat plane of his hips where the tied waistband of his trousers used to hang. The rasping sound of their breath seems very loud in the halfway-dark.

Sebastião's robe slips from his shoulders entirely and his naked body is so beautiful and haggard it makes Garrupe's jaw ache.

They can come together like they've never kissed before, as if they've never touched each other — Sebastião kisses the backs of his hands and his knuckles, the bony jut of the side of his wrist. The contrast in delicacy leaves Francisco feeling massive and ungainly — worse still kissing him on the mouth and touching his cheek. He wants to touch him, and he does — the tips of his fingers pass over his chin, the soft underside of his jaw, his throat where the pulse batters. Despite his resistance Sebastião answers him.

It feels like a terrifically long time spent like that, but it can't possibly be — they are lost in each other, they are tangled up in their shared error. If he's going to ruin him he might as well do it completely. He's burning for this, burning as completely as a material fire — there will be nothing left of him when this lust has burned itself out, nothing left but ashes. Garrupe fumbles to liberate his erection one-handed, not without difficulty — more kisses and more tangling.

Sebastião puts out a hand to lift himself up onto his side — Francisco balks a little and leans forward.

"Don't resist me."

"Don't be ridiculous," Sebastião whispers, sounding mildly flustered. He protests, but his body answers — his prick swells, his breath lurches as Francisco's hands trace covetous lines down his chest, down to his hips.

Shall they do this from behind, like the sodomites do? Garrupe grips him with insistence, but Sebastião makes a soft surprised sound and twists against him. Francisco apologizes and presses an arm around to brace him, and lets himself be carried away. All he wants is to be closer to him — to cover him up, as if they weren't here at all. He wants to steal what he's never had.

Sebastião was not a virgin when they met. He has always suspected this, and now every movement seems to confirm it — the way he moves his hips in response, the way his throat makes tremors against the inside of Garrupe's hand, the way he finds him with his fist.

Picture him with a woman, stealing off with some eager girl — or maybe that's not right, maybe the scene in his mind's eye is wrong. The smell of skin, the rasp of cloth.

They fumble for each other in the dark, their bodies come together only with difficulty. Sebastião struggles but there's a close warm place at the top of his thighs and Francisco's raw-knuckled hand flutters frantic against his soft throat. They're as quiet as they can be, pressed into the corner of their room where the raw edge of the straw mat ends and the shadows are deepest — Rodrigues makes a thin whimpering noise and Garrupe slides his hand up to cover his mouth. There isn't much time, but he can lose himself in him, grind out his anger in friction and closeness against the soft places of Sebastião's thighs.

It isn't the complete act, but it's not precisely chaste, and where there's smoke there's fire. So they say, anyway. With a mended body, it wouldn't be like this — if they'd met in secret as novices, when Garrupe was still young and fit and not a clutter of bones, then he could have had him however he wanted. But here this is all he wants, to be as near to him as possible.

There's no reason for Sebastião to pretend resistance like he does. Not the act, but close — they can pass into each other and mingle, their bodies come together to make a single bruise, a single ache. The friction brings him to a guilty climax, it ends in a wet flare of heat — Francisco chokes against his shoulder and everything else falls away.

What they've done is a sin. There's no excusing it. When he draws his hand away, he can hardly breathe. The taste of blood is in the back of his throat. Francisco feels terribly naked, and raw, and wet.

What's passed between them is wrong.

Rodrigues crumples against him; Francisco braces an arm against his back, and holds him tight to still his own trembling.

"Have I ruined everything?"

Rodrigues laughs weakly, pressing his face into the cloth of Garrupe's shoulder. His face is perceptibly wet. Tears of shame to match Francisco's tears of regret. "That isn't possible."

They don't have very long, and both of them must know it. Garrupe gathers him up in his arms.

"I came here as much for love of you as I did to find Ferreira. And I made a very grave mistake."

"If you'd told me about your reservations, someone else could have taken your place."

"Don't you think I know that? Who else would have gone with you? Who else would have undertaken such a reckless mission?"

"More like pride than love, then, I think."

Francisco laughs, bitterly. "You wouldn't be wrong."

"Well, you could have fooled me. I never doubted you."

It's a lie, a bitter lie — he'd believed it as much as Sebastião had, that the two of them were being called to some higher purpose, to save the soul of the man who had made them what they were. It wasn't loving Sebastião that has damned him here — it was trust in Ferreira, their joint admiration.

It isn't clear, now. That's the last night they spend together, the last moment of laxness they're afforded before the end.

*

Exile is a word he knows, a word he can understand when it is spoken outside his prison door. Exile from this place would be a double exile — never to return to Christian Europe, never to return to Japan. It's a hard mercy indeed. A month ago they could both have been martyrs. A year ago. They could have gone and been martyrs in some other place, in China or New France. They could have been wise enough never to leave Portugal in the first place.

Some part of him still protests in vain that Valignano should never have let them go — that even if he and Sebastião were too foolish to realize they were walking into a trap set for them by their own teacher, someone with the authority to intervene should have forbidden their undertaking before it started. They must have seemed on the surface like men with conviction — when really they hadn't known anything, anything at all. Why didn't somebody stop them? Why did God permit them to stray this far?

His cell seems smaller without Rodrigues in it. When he hears his voice, Sebastião calling his name, he rushes to the bars, stumbling over himself in his haste.

"They're going to decide for us soon."

"Decide for what? What is there to decide?"

"They're not going to let us live. They only need one of us to stand as an example. How many believers are there, in the islands off the coast? Not enough to warrant two hostages."

Us, as if the death of one of them will be the death of both of them — the death of all of them, the extinguishing of their order, the end of mankind. A cruel cutting-off. The two of them practically have to shout to be heard across the passageway — no longer caring if they'll be overheard, no longer caring about any of it. One of the guards goes running — off to find an interpreter, probably, and the others bristle with arms.

"Then let it be you. You should live." Garrupe doesn't have to think about it for long. He doesn't have to think about it at all. Looking on Sebastião's face is enough, even just in his mind, with its sweetness and its exhaustion and the hardness behind his eyes that wasn't there under the olive trees at Campolide, in the chapel at Evora.

"That's not my choice to make. If we're very unlucky, Ferreira will be asked for his choice — which one of us makes a better candidate and which one is unnecessary."

"If Ferreira has to choose, naturally he'll pick you. He's always loved you more, since we first studied Virgil together. Since before that, even."

It has to be Sebastião — surviving as a sacrifice for all the believers of Nagasaki, the ones who still remain, fleeing to Macao or staying here as a hostage to buy the security of the ones who remain in the islands off the coast. Dying will be quick, relative to the pain of living here in a stranger's house as an apostate forever. But that's selfish — or it's just practical. Sebastião will suffer and suffer and only love the faithful here more, he might even be fool enough to return a second time — Francisco will come to hate them more and more upon separation, he'll come to hate living, life as a hostage here, life itself. He's not strong enough.

There is a long, terrible pause. "I don't think I believe that, Francisco. I wouldn't be so sure."

Francisco braces against the wall with his arms. His forehead brushes the post. "And what if he sends you away? If one of us is exiled, or at best detained indefinitely as a sign to the rest of the Christians, the other one will be killed outright. If you get the chance to go, go. You're healthy and well, you carry yourself better than I ever did, even now, you should be the one he spares. He loves you."

"You're being an idiot — the man who was our teacher didn't love you any less. He had hopes for you. If he thought you weren't any good, he'd have told you so."

Francisco rakes his fingers through his hair, snagging hard. "Why do I care what he thinks of me now? Why should I? He brought us here. He betrayed both of us. He betrayed our Society. I'd rather die than take his charity. I'd rather die."

"Come over to the door. I want to see you."

In the slit between their cells, they can see each other if they strain — it isn't hard for Francisco to see over, he's always been a tall man and he's nearly a foot taller than some of their captors, but Sebastião has to hold himself there with his arms slung over painfully.

The tears have broken free down Rodrigues' face. He's really pitiable like this, with his hair half-untied and streaming around his face and pale shaking lips, but he's never looked more saintly. He reaches out with his fingers as if to touch the thin hollow of Francisco's cheek.

"Promise me you'll stay alive — if I leave you. No, promise me, swear it to me in front of God and all the saints. You wouldn't break a promise to your old school friend."

His throat has gone terribly tight. His chest has constricted like a fist.

"I'll try. I don't want to be alone again, Sebastião, you have no idea—"

"Whichever one of us survives must go to Macao and tell Valignano everything."

Sebastião sounds so resolute in this that it takes on an edge of absurdity. Francisco laughs darkly.

"Everything? Even about this? I don't think total honesty will flatter either of us."

What's the punishment for sodomy these days? Same as it's always been.

Rodrigues groans and strikes the bars with the heel of his hand. "That isn't the point. It isn't about us any longer. Tell him the names of the martyrs. Every one of them is still precious."

"Then I will." He says this nearly meaning it, but he'd say anything to console him, he doesn't care whether it's the truth or a lie. "I'll tell him everything."

This is foolishness. Neither of them will see Macao again, let alone Portugal. Neither of them will live, yet they go on talking like this, as if rebuke followed by escape is possible. His arms ache. He wants to hold him again.

"I'm so tired, Francisco. I want to rest. I'm so sick of this."

"Go and lie down. Go and wait."

Without him, Sebastião is nothing. It's a vengeful, ugly thought — that without him Rodrigues would never have been so bold as to come here, not even with all his zeal for martyrdom, and if he's to be the one who stays behind, even at the bottom of a muddy grave, it'll be Francisco who carries the story of that fate back to their order. It's greater than life and death.

And yet it is Sebastião who still believes. That's worse, somehow, knowing it's possible and yet not being able to do it. The best either of them has in front of them is a long tribunal and a short, degrading career in letters someplace — not someplace they might damage impressionable souls by their bad example, no. They won't get to fail twice. There will be an everlasting separation between them. Wherever Sebastião goes, he won't be able to follow.

*

They are separated then in the early hours of the morning — Francisco would have fought with teeth and nails but Sebastião is led away from him for the last time, docile and willing. The image of Christ must burn in his heart like contraband.

Alone in his cell he can contemplate at his leisure.

Francisco lies on his back with the rushes prickling against his skin, and waits. There are no sounds from the courtyard, only the trudge of footsteps growing more distant, the creak of new wood.

How would he know if they were taking his friend away to be executed? Not by fire or drowning or the pit but simply by the sword, which is quicker and more efficient. Less occasion for dramatic professions of faith. He's left nothing behind for Francisco to keep except his promises, his goodwill, his memory, his love. These things are like water when he tries to hold onto them in his mind — the memory of how Sebastião's strength felt, or the impression of his tenderness. It's as if these things happened a thousand years ago already.

By telling the truth they'll be betraying Ferreira's work as well as their own — Ferreira who seems worse to him now than the Devil, Ferreira who brought them to this terrible place and brought them such terrible knowledge. What's there to look forward to, without God? Death with no resurrection, night with no dawn at the end of it. They've suffered this far, and they're going to suffer more.

If he survives, he'll write a verse on this, maybe. An elegy. It couldn't hurt to start now.

*

The Portuguese priest Francisco Garrupe passed away due to tuberculosis on the return voyage to Macau. His remains, packed in salt, were returned to the Jesuit college at Macau. They were refused admission due to fears of contagion. The coffin was buried adjacent to the cemetery plot of a Japanese expatriate. His fellow countryman Rodrigues remained in prison until the time of his death. They died separate, secret deaths.

Or there's another way it goes — some years later, Garrupe prevailed upon a Dutch trader to take the two priests away with them, as far as the Catholic outpost at Goa. The two of them ceased to be priests, they became laymen, they hid their past transgressions and dwelled together in secret. They were never to return to Portugal. Their relationship was fraught with difficulties and by the time of Rodrigues' death the two men were no longer on speaking terms. They died broken men.

Or there's another way it goes — both of them surge with new awareness of their faith, they disavow all their old disavowals and die as Catholics. Both of them lose their heads, one after another. They are cast into the fire and they burn together, the mind's eye lingers in its last moments on a small wooden cross as it is eaten up by flames — their bones are mingled together as they are pulverized to eradicate any trace of a relic, any fragment that might be passed down the generations in a Christian household to bless a sick child or commemorate a marriage. The ashes are cast into a cesspit or consigned to the black ocean. They are never separated. They are abandoned to one another's secrets.