Chapter 17 — The Road to Rio de Janeiro
Dawn tinged the coxilhas gold as Bento left Santa Vitória Ranch behind.
Dew still soaked his boots. The air smelled of cut grass and the cold smoke of the ground fire someone had already lit in the ranch hands’ quarters.
Before mounting, Bento paused a moment by the old gate and looked back – not at the great house, not at the sheds, but at the fig grove, dark against the brightening sky.
He carried little. A change of clothes. A knife that had been his father’s. And, tied by a leather cord against his chest, beneath his shirt, a small medallion bearing Isabel’s portrait, faded by time and by ten years of war’s sweat.
He touched the medallion through the fabric, as he always did before a battle.
Then he rode out.
For the second time in his life, he was setting out for love.
The first time had been when he enlisted in the Ragamuffin War, believing he’d return within a few months to ask for Isabel’s hand.
The second time was happening now.
After ten years.
After battles.
After losses.
After an entire war.
But there was one crucial difference.
This time he knew where to find her.
The horse – a strong chestnut, kept from his last months of campaigning – moved at a steady pace along the roads of the Empire.
Bento felt every league in his body: the dull ache in his thighs, the creak of the saddle, the weight of the captain’s coat he insisted on wearing even on warm days, because it was the only proof, besides his own words, that he wasn’t lying about who he had become.
Autumn was beginning to color the landscape in soft tones. The southern fields gave way to new regions. New towns. New roads. The green of the pampas slowly yielded, league after league, to denser woods, steeper hills, an air that grew thick with humidity the farther the south fell behind him.
And every mile he covered narrowed the distance between two hearts that had waited an entire decade.
Bento rode through the day, until the horse broke a sweat and the sun grew heavy on the back of his neck.
At night he rested at wayside inns, small lodging houses, or farms along the road, always keeping the same ritual before sleep: taking out the medallion, looking at the portrait by candlelight, and tucking it back against his heart.
He was often recognized by his uniform. A captain’s rank still commanded respect. Especially among war veterans, who greeted him with a grave, almost solemn nod, the way one recognizes a brother in arms even without ever having fought at his side.
In a small town near Curitiba, he ran into an old comrade.
Jo?o Pereira.
A sergeant who had served under his command in the war’s final years.
It was Jo?o who recognized him first, crossing the dusty street with a sack of flour over his shoulder. He stopped. Dropped the sack. And shouted Bento’s name with a joy loud enough to turn half the town’s heads.
The reunion was warm. The two embraced the way only men who have shared a trench know how to – hard, in no hurry to let go. Jo?o had a fresh scar over one eyebrow and a small son, whom he introduced with enormous pride, lifting the boy up by the arms as if he were a trophy.
The two of them spent hours talking, sitting on a bench outside the general store, with reheated coffee and stale bread that neither one seemed to notice.
Remembering battles.
Lost friends.
Hard times.
There was a silence, at one point, when Jo?o mentioned the name of a soldier who never came home – a boy from Rio Pardo who used to sing at night to chase away his fear.
Bento lowered his eyes. He remembered the boy.
Remembered his voice. He raised his coffee cup in something like a silent toast, and Jo?o did the same, and neither of them needed to say anything more.
And when Jo?o learned the true reason for the journey, he broke into a smile – a wide one, the kind that crosses a whole face.
“So the war’s over, but your mission isn’t.”
Bento laughed.
“Maybe this one’s the most important of all.”
“And certainly the most dangerous.”
“Why’s that?”
Jo?o took a slow sip of coffee, as though choosing his words carefully.
“Because facing armies is simple. You know where the enemy is. You know when the attack comes. You know when to fall back.”
He paused.
“The hard part is facing your own heart. That one doesn’t warn you before it strikes.”
The words stayed with Bento for days, keeping time with the horse’s hooves on the road.
Because there was truth in them.
A great deal of truth.
For all his hope, a few doubts still lingered, small and stubborn, the size of a stone caught in his boot – just uncomfortable enough to remind him of themselves at every step.
Isabel still loved him.
Of that he had no doubt.
But ten years changed people.
Changed dreams.
Changed expectations.
Who was she now?
Who had he himself become?
Would they still manage to build, together, the future they had so often imagined, lying beneath the fig tree, back when the world still seemed simple?
The weeks turned into months.
The journey went on.
Climbing the Serra do Mar, where the fog came down so thick that Bento lost sight of his own hands on the reins.
Crossing valleys where the echo of his own passing seemed to answer him from the far side of the mountain.
Fording rivers on rafts pulled by men of few words and curious glances at that stranger with the slow southern drawl.
Weathering sudden downpours that soaked his coat through in minutes and forced him to camp under whatever scrap of brush he could find.
Days of blistering heat, when dust stuck to his sweat and stung his eyes.
Cold nights, when the fire barely warmed him and Bento wrapped himself in his poncho, wondering whether, at that very moment, under some other sky, Isabel too lay awake.
But Bento kept going.
Always onward.
One night, during a particularly fierce storm – the kind where the sky seems to split in two and lightning traces the whole landscape white for an instant – he had to take shelter at an old farmhouse he spotted between two claps of thunder.
The owner, an elderly man named álvaro Mendes, welcomed him with hospitality, asking no more questions than necessary, like a man who had already seen many travelers pass through carrying more weight in their souls than on their backs.
Over dinner – a simple, steaming broth, served in a kitchen lit only by the wood stove – they talked for a long while. The farmer asked about the war. About the south. About military life. Bento answered slowly, unhurried, grateful for the warmth and company after days alone on the road.
And somehow he found himself telling Isabel’s story too, almost without meaning to, between one spoonful and the next, until there was no stopping it.
When Bento finished, the old man sat in silence for a few seconds, looking into the fire. The lines on his face seemed deeper in that light.
Then he spoke.
“You know the difference between passion and love?”
“What’s that?”
“Passion defies obstacles.”
Love survives them.
álvaro took the pipe from his lips and gestured vaguely toward the window, at the rain still hammering the roof.
“I had a wife. Rosária, her name was. Died eleven years back, of fever, in a winter worse than this one.”
He paused, as though weighing every word before letting it go.
“Still set two plates at the table sometimes. Without noticing. Because love, son, doesn’t ask whether the person’s still here. It just goes on.”
Bento sat with that, in silence, while the fire crackled.
Perhaps that single sentence summed up his own story.
Because their passion had been born beneath the fig tree.
But their love had survived the war.
Time.
Distance.
A father’s opposition.
Loneliness.
Uncertainty.
And, Bento thought that night, it would perhaps survive even death – the way it still survived, at the two-place table of an old farmer he would likely never see again.
At last, on a clear winter morning, after more than two months on the road, Bento caught sight of something he never imagined he would see.
In the distance, between mountains and sea, rose the capital of the Empire.
Rio de Janeiro.
The city looked enormous.
Far larger than anywhere he’d ever known. The air no longer smelled of open country, but of salt, fish, crowds. The heat was different too – humid, heavy, clinging to the skin, so unlike the dry wind of the pampas that for a moment Bento felt a stranger in his own country.
Ships crowded the bay, their masts like a floating forest. Church towers rose above the rooftops.
Carriages rolled through busy streets, drivers shouting so fast Bento could barely follow.
Crowds of people moved in every direction – street vendors calling out fruit and sweets, enslaved men carrying loads, ladies in fans and hooped dresses, imperial soldiers in uniforms unlike his own.
It was a world entirely different from the gaúcho pampas.
For a few moments he simply stood there watching, his tired horse snorting beside him.
Thinking.
Feeling.
After ten years of waiting, he was finally here.
In the same city where Isabel lived.
Perhaps only a few miles away.
Perhaps only a few hours.
Perhaps closer still.
The mere thought sent his heart racing harder than any cavalry charge ever had.
In the days that followed, he began his search.
The address the colonel had given him pointed to a convent on the outskirts of the city. But reaching it proved anything but simple.
The capital was enormous.
Bewildering to a man from the countryside.
Bento got lost twice on his very first day, and a woman selling flowers on a corner laughed, kindly, at the way he held his reins – “you’ve got the look of a man searching for someone, sir” – and pointed him, without his even asking, toward a church where someone might know about convents in the area.
Still, he kept on.
Asked around.
Investigated.
Sought out information, knocking on doors, repeating Isabel Albuquerque’s name to priests, apothecaries, coachmen, until the syllables came almost automatically from his lips.
Until at last he found the right way.
It was late afternoon when he arrived.
The convent stood on a small rise surrounded by gardens, its white walls tinged red by the low afternoon light.
The tall stone walls remained imposing. The iron gates were closed.
And bells tolled somewhere in the distance, a slow, deep sound that seemed to measure time differently than the rest of the city did.
Bento dismounted slowly, his legs barely steady after so many hours in the saddle – or perhaps it was something else entirely, something that had nothing to do with exhaustion.
For a few seconds he stood still.
Watching.
Breathing.
Trying to master his emotions.
After ten years.
After thousands of miles.
After countless hardships.
He had finally arrived.
He approached the gate, the sound of his own footsteps on the stone ringing far too loud in his ears.
A convent porter appeared shortly after, a short man in an apron, who eyed him with the wariness of someone who had seen many strangers knock at that gate for reasons that weren’t always good ones.
“May I help you?”
Bento felt his throat go dry.
The words seemed hard to form, as though ten years of silence had rusted his very voice.
But at last he managed.
“I’m looking for Isabel Albuquerque.”
The man studied him with curiosity, his eyes dropping quickly over the dusty uniform, the sun-worn face, the hands that trembled slightly.
“Who wishes to speak with her?”
For an instant, every memory of those ten years flashed before his eyes, quick as lightning over the mountains.
The farewell beneath the fig tree.
The letters.
The war.
The longing.
The search.
The promise.
Then he answered, and this time his voice came out steadier than he’d expected.
“My name is Bento Fagundes.”
The porter looked surprised.
As though he recognized the name.
Perhaps because of the letters.
Perhaps because of the stories whispered among the sisters, about the young woman from the south who prayed with her eyes on the gate.
Perhaps for some other reason.
“Wait here.”
He went back inside.
And disappeared.
The minutes that followed felt endless.
Bento paced back and forth, unable to stand still, counting his own steps just to have something to think about besides his own heart.
It was pounding so hard he could hear it.
Every second seemed to last an hour.
Every sound stirred expectation – a small bird in the garden, the rustle of a habit somewhere behind the wall, the wind moving through the leaves.
Until at last he heard footsteps.
Hurried footsteps.
Coming from inside the convent.
Then a voice.
A voice he hadn’t heard in more than ten years.
A voice he would have known anywhere in the world, among a thousand others, in the middle of a crowd, in the middle of a war.
“Bento…”