In Rio de Janeiro, Marta gave birth to a baby boy, brown and smooth and as shiny-dark-haired as she was.

‘He will be Juan,’ she said, but then she whispered another name into the child’s ear, in Pataxó, which nobody would ever hear or know or be able to take from him, and this was the child’s true secret name and it would protect him from possession and harm. It would remain between mother and son long after their bodies were corrupted and it would echo beyond them, through the infinite Great Forest, and for eternity.

The pregnancy had been easily hidden, as Marta didn’t bloat in the way of white women, but with the birth now, of course, everything was different. It made things awkward for Curado, who’d since returned from the wars in the Banda Oriental, alive and decorated. His wife would not have the Indian girl back to serve at their estancia anymore.

‘She has disgraced herself and shamed God and her womanhood!’ Curado’s wife had said, and insisted Marta return the wooden crucifix that she’d once given her.

Without complaint, Marta took the necklace off and handed it to her master. The child was at her breast and she swept the soft hair from his sweaty forehead. She was relieved to be rid of the crucifix. Marta had always feared the symbol of the white Christ’s terrible death. It was a yoke and now she was free of it.

‘They’ll both have to stay here,’ Curado said, ‘until you are released. And then . . .’ The field marshal gestured with his hands, held them out. ‘And then it will be as it will be.’

Général Fourés nodded, not really listening to what his friend was saying. He watched the little brown child being suckled. Ever since Marta had become pregnant, it had seemed to the général that he’d somehow slipped outside of his life and was watching it take place before him, as though it were somebody else’s—or a dream.

‘Juan,’ he said, the child curled into his mother’s breasts.

A whole new world had taken place in his prison cell. Where was France, where was Napoleon? Nowhere. They were nothing. And Juan was perfect, as beautiful as Marta, a brown cherub, an angel.

Earlier, Marta had painted a thick black stripe across Juan’s tiny chest, and again over one half of his torso to the hips; then down his left arm with double lines (one roughly thicker than the other) and small connecting triangles between them, and two narrow bracelets around his plump wrists. The same motif was above and below his mouth, drawn out across his cheeks and to the ears on either side, all in dark black ink.