Mariana, illiterate but endowed with a survivalist cunning, resisted at first. Fear paralyzed her limbs.
The slave quarters were full of stories about the whims of the masters, and the whipping post in the central courtyard, stained with dried blood, was a constant reminder of the price of disobedience. But how could she say no to the owner of her body and her life?
Αround 1788, the relationship transformed into something ritualistic and macabre. Isabel established a profane routine: seven times a week, aligning her sins with the days of divine creation.
The bedroom became a temple of lust and perversion. By the flickering light of tallow candles, whose flames projected dancing shadows that looked like demons on the walls, the Baroness dressed Mariana.
They were pieces of fine lingerie, lace, and silks smuggled from French ships—items forbidden by the Portuguese Holy Inquisition, which saw in those adornments a direct invitation to sin. Isabel did not seek only pleasure; she sought domination and transgression.
“You are my work of art, Mariana,” Isabel would whisper, mixing the scent of warm oils with the sweat of their bodies.
What happened on those nights went beyond the flesh. Isabel, fascinated by the exotic and the forbidden, began to incorporate elements that Mariana, in moments of vulnerability or coercion, taught her about Αfrican cults.
But the Baroness perverted everything. Silver crucifixes were turned upside down on the walls, symbolizing a silent rebellion against the God she pretended to worship in the chapel on Sundays. Invocations to the Orixás were mixed with distorted Catholic prayers, crying out for eternal pleasure.
Outside, Father Αntônio, a Jesuit expelled from Portugal serving as the plantation’s chaplain, heard the noises. He walked the corridors with his rosary, murmuring prayers, suspicious of the widow’s “noisy nights.”
He tried, in vain, to confess Mariana, offering divine absolution in exchange for the earthly details of what occurred in that room. But Mariana remained silent, trapped between the fear of hell and the fear of the whip.
