“About forty, your lordship, but some are converts. Perhaps twenty, all told, are Europeans like myself.”
Walter repressed the temptation to laugh.
“It is a grave matter,” he said, “and Portugal should avenge it heavily. While the names are fresh in your mind tell me all you can remember. I shall set them down for the information of the first Portuguese official I encounter.”
The roll progressed until da Silva reached the ecclesiastics.
“First, let me think of the Franciscans. Who, that knew him, would not weep for good Fra Pietro!”
“Fra Pietro!”
There was many a “Brother Peter” in the Franciscan order, yet the words smote Mowbray’s ears with a sudden menace of disaster.
“Tell me of this Fra Pietro,” he said. “What manner of man is he?”
Da Silva, glib of tongue now, told of a monk who was sent to India nearly three years ago. It was rumored that he had been guilty of a breach of discipline, or had, in some manner, displeased the authorities at Lisbon, though what his error none knew, since there never was saint who walked the earth more humble and devout than Fra Pietro. Yes, Antonio was sure the excellent father spoke English, because he conversed, in their own language, with the sailors on board an English ship which once came up the Hughli river. Surely his lordship must have met Fra Pietro, seeing that he described the friar so accurately. He was, indeed, very thin and pallid, with large brown eyes that seemed to be ever contemplating the happiness of heaven!