The Blue Tile That Must Reach the Chapel
Summary
A painted tile falls from a high window into the hands of eight-year-old Bia, and suddenly a charming antiques dealer, his hired helper and a jumpy young restorer all want it. Bia runs it through the steep lanes, crooked staircases, yellow trams and fish market of Lisbon's Alfama, sure she is protecting a royal treasure.
Transcript
0:00A Tile Falls
Who throws a treasure out of a window? The question hit Bia Ferreira a half-second after the tile did. It came spinning down from somewhere high above the lane, a flash of blue against the bright spring sky, and it struck the striped awning of her grandmother's café, bounced once, and slid straight into her open hands. It did not break. That was the first strange thing. It was a square of painted clay no bigger than a paperback book, cool and glossy, with a blue ship riding blue waves and a single gold star in the corner. Bia looked up. Five floors above her, a shutter banged in the breeze. Then it was pulled shut from the inside, quickly, by someone who did not want to be seen. And from the bottom of the lane, a voice called out, warm as honey. 'Little one! Do not move. You are holding something that belongs to a king.'
0:53Bia Who Notices
Bia was eight, and she lived above the sardine café with her grandmother in Alfama, the oldest neighbourhood in Lisbon, where the lanes twist like dropped string and the staircases never go where you expect. Every morning she made a list in her head of things nobody else noticed. Dona Celeste hung her washing in rainbow order. The three-legged grey cat slept in the flowerpot by the fountain. And her own cat, Sardinha, a skinny ginger thing with one crooked toe on her left front paw, had come home that morning with all four paws stained bright blue. Bia knew where Sardinha had been. All week the cat had napped on one particular windowsill, five floors up, on the shuttered flat across the lane where nobody lived. The sill was warm, even at dawn. Warm like an oven. Bia had thought that was odd, and filed it away. Her grandmother, Avó Graça, always said the same thing when she turned a plate over to read its maker's mark. 'Look at the back of things, filha. The front is what people want you to see.' Bia hadn't looked at the back of the tile yet. There wasn't time. Because the warm voice was getting closer.
2:07The Dealer's Offer
The man who owned the voice wore a cream linen suit and shoes so polished they reflected the cobbles. He introduced himself with a little bow. 'Senhor Duarte Lobo. Antiques. And that, my clever girl, is a piece of a royal panel lost for three hundred years.' He held out a paper bag of sugared almonds. 'A fair trade. Sweets for you, and the tile goes safely into my care.' Bia noticed things. She noticed the fine white dust on the toes of his perfect shoes, and a smear of blue under one fingernail that he quickly tucked into his pocket. Then a door flew open across the lane and a young woman stumbled out. Her coat was splashed with paint, blue and white and gold, and her eyes were wide. 'Don't give it to him,' she said. 'Run. Take it to the Chapel of the Fishermen. Before the noon bell. Please.' Senhor Lobo's smile did not move, but he snapped his fingers. From the shadow of a doorway stepped a broad man in a grey cap. Bia clutched the tile to her chest. And she ran.
3:11Up the Crooked Stairs
Alfama is built on a hill, and its staircases are its secret passages. Bia took the steps behind the bakery two at a time, the ones with the cracked fourth step that everybody tripped on but her. Behind her she heard the man in the grey cap stumble, and grunt, and keep coming. She ducked under Dona Celeste's washing, red shirt, orange towel, yellow sheet, and felt them flap against her face like flags. Somewhere below, a radio was playing an old sad song. Somewhere above, a canary sang over it. Halfway up, a flash of ginger crossed the steps ahead of her and vanished over a wall. Sardinha. Of course. That cat went wherever she liked. Bia didn't stop to wonder why she seemed to be going the same way. At the top of the stairs she burst into a tiny square with a dry fountain, gasping, and a hand shot out from behind a pillar and closed around her wrist. It was the young woman in the painted coat. 'Give it to me,' she whispered. 'Now.'
4:10Whose Side?
Bia pulled back hard. 'You told me to run to the chapel!' The young woman flinched, as if the words had been too loud. 'I know. I'm Inês. I restore the tiles in that chapel. I just need to see it, only for a second.' But she didn't look at the front of the tile, the beautiful ship. She reached for its back. And Bia saw that the blue on Inês's coat was exactly the blue of Sardinha's paws that morning. The very same shade, splashed and dried. Was Inês the one who'd been in that warm, shuttered flat? Was she the thief, and Senhor Lobo the honest one? Bia's heart thumped against the clay. Then heavy footsteps rang on the stairs below. Inês went pale and let go. 'No. Keep it. Get it to the chapel before noon, and whatever happens, don't let him see the back.' She pushed Bia toward an archway. 'Go!' And the grey cap came over the top step.
5:06The Yellow Tram
Through the archway was the tram line, and a yellow tram was just pulling up to the stop, bell clanging, its wooden sides polished by a hundred years of hands. Bia knew the driver. Everyone knew Senhor Abel, who waved at Avó's café every morning. She stepped on through the open door at the stop, the proper way, the way Avó had taught her, and gripped the brass rail as the doors closed. The tram lurched and groaned up the hill. Through the back window she watched the man in the grey cap reach the empty stop, hands on his knees. Bia breathed. And she thought. Why would a royal treasure need to go to a little fishermen's chapel? Why would a lady who loved old tiles want to grab it, then give it back? Why did Senhor Lobo have blue under his fingernail? The tram juddered to a halt. A delivery van was stuck across the rails ahead, and the driver honked. And at the front door, out of breath and grinning, the man in the grey cap climbed aboard.
6:07The Fish Market
Bia slipped out the back door and into the noise and silver of the morning fish market. Ice slid across steel trays. Sardines glittered in their crates. Women shouted prices over each other like a choir that had never rehearsed. 'Bia!' called Dona Rosa, who sold octopus and had known her since she was a baby. Bia didn't explain. She just ducked under the stall's plastic curtain, and Dona Rosa, without missing a beat, dropped a heap of empty crates in front of her. Through the slats Bia saw the grey cap pass, and pause, and turn. From under the next stall a ginger tail flicked. Sardinha again, stealing a sardine head. The man didn't notice the cat. He was on his phone. 'No, I lost her,' he muttered. 'Yes, I know, Senhor Lobo. The swap is at noon. The scaffolding comes down this afternoon, so it has to be today.' Then he hung up. Swap? Bia's skin went cold. Swap what, for what?
7:05Under the Laundry
Dona Rosa let her use the stall phone. Bia called the café, and Avó Graça answered over the hiss of the grill, calm as always. 'Where are you, filha? Half the lane says you stole a tile from a king.' 'I didn't steal it, it fell. And everyone wants it, and nobody will tell me why.' There was a pause. Bia could hear Avó turning a sardine. 'Then it isn't about the tile,' said Avó. 'It's about what the tile knows. Have you looked at the back of it?' Bia hadn't. Inês had told her not to let anyone see. But Inês wasn't here. Bia hung up and climbed the narrow passage behind the market, under criss-crossing lines of laundry so thick it felt like walking through clouds. She stopped to turn the tile over, right there in the white-sheeted shade. But before she could, a figure stepped out of a doorway at the end of the passage. Cream suit. Polished shoes. A bag of sugared almonds still in hand. Senhor Lobo was smiling. And he was blocking the only way up.
8:07The Sweetest Lie
He didn't grab. He crouched, so they were eye to eye, and he spoke softly. 'You've been very brave. But that woman, Inês, she wants to sell your tile to strangers abroad. I want it in a museum, where everyone can see it. Isn't that better?' It did sound better. For a moment Bia almost held it out. Then she looked down at the ship painted on the front. The blue was so bright. The glaze was smooth as a pond. And the corners were sharp. Back at the café, Avó had a wall of old tiles, real ones, two hundred years old. Their glaze was covered in tiny cracks, fine as the lines on Avó's own hands, and their corners were worn soft by time. This tile looked like it had been born last week. 'Thank you,' said Bia politely, 'but no.' And she ducked under his arm, between two dripping sheets, and up the steps toward the lookout at the top of the hill. Behind her, Senhor Lobo stopped smiling. 'Get her,' he said. Far below, a church clock struck a quarter to twelve.
9:09The Paw Print
The lookout at the top of Alfama is a terrace of tiles and bougainvillea where the whole city tumbles down to the river. Tourists leaned on the railing taking photos of red roofs and white sails. Bia ran to the far corner, where nobody stood, and finally, finally turned the tile over. The back was rough, pale clay. And pressed into it, baked hard forever, was a tiny paw print. Four little toes and a pad. And one toe, on the left, was bent sideways. Bia knew that toe. It was Sardinha's. Suddenly everything she had noticed all morning clicked together like tiles in a panel. The windowsill, warm as an oven, because there was a kiln behind the shutters. Sardinha's blue paws, from walking through wet blue glaze. The white dust on Senhor Lobo's shoes: clay dust. The blue under his nail. This tile wasn't three hundred years old. It had been made this week, in that shuttered flat, while her cat strolled across the wet clay. It wasn't a treasure. It was a fake, painted to swap for a real tile in the chapel's famous panel at noon. And she was holding the proof. 'Hand it over, little one,' said a voice behind her. 'And nobody needs to know.'
10:24Noon at the Chapel
Senhor Lobo stood between her and the steps. But behind him, Inês came running across the terrace, and she did the bravest thing Bia had seen all day. She shouted. 'This man is a forger!' Forty tourists turned around at once, and forty phones turned with them. Senhor Lobo froze in the middle of all those little lenses. Bia slipped past him and down the stone steps to the Chapel of the Fishermen, just below the lookout, as the noon bells began to ring. Inside it was cool and dim, and the whole far wall was the famous panel, hundreds of blue tiles making one great ship on one great sea. Scaffolding stood against it. And on the scaffolding, the man in the grey cap was prising a tile loose from the corner, the one with the gold star. 'Stop!' Bia's voice rang off the ceiling. She held her tile up into a shaft of sunlight, back side out. And through the open door, as if she had been invited, trotted a skinny ginger cat with bright blue feet. Sardinha leapt onto the bench beside her. Bia took her small left paw, very gently, and pressed it against the clay. Every toe fitted. Even the crooked one.
11:37What Inês Knew
Nobody spoke. The bells finished ringing. The man in the grey cap slowly climbed down the scaffolding with the real tile still in his hands, and the old chapel keeper, Senhor Tomás, took it from him the way you'd take back a sleeping baby. Inês came through the door, breathless, and behind her came Senhor Lobo, and behind him, half the lookout with their phones. Inês's voice shook, but she kept going. 'Senhor Lobo asked me for photographs of the panel weeks ago. For a book, he said. I gave them to him. Then I heard he'd rented a flat with a kiln, and I knew.' That morning she had followed him there. She'd found the fake, still warm. When she heard him on the stairs, she panicked and pushed it out the window, hoping it would land somewhere safe. 'It landed on you,' she said to Bia. 'I'm sorry I scared you. I didn't want him to see you find the paw print. I didn't know whose it was. I only knew it meant the tile was new.' 'The blue on your coat,' said Bia. Inês laughed shakily. 'Restoration paint. Same blue as the old tiles. Same blue he copied.' Senhor Lobo cleared his throat. 'This is all,' he began, 'a terrible misunderstanding—'
12:51Avó Arrives
'Is it?' said a calm voice from the doorway. Avó Graça stood there in her café apron, smelling faintly of grilled sardines, with a young police officer at her side whom she had fed lunch every Thursday since he was a schoolboy. 'I closed the café,' Avó said, which was how Bia knew this was serious. Avó never closed the café. She walked straight to Bia, took the tile, and turned it over. She looked at the paw print for a long moment. Then she looked at Sardinha, who was washing a blue foot, entirely unbothered. 'Cats are honest witnesses,' said Avó. 'They only sleep where it's warm. So tell me, Senhor Lobo, what has been keeping that top-floor windowsill so warm all week?' Senhor Lobo opened his mouth, and for the first time all day, no smooth words came out. The man in the grey cap sighed, took off his cap, and said, 'He rents the top flat. I'll show you the key.'
13:47The Real Treasure
They found it all in the shuttered flat: the little kiln, jars of blue glaze, Inês's photographs pinned to the wall, and half a dozen practice tiles that hadn't come out right. They also found a sardine skeleton under the table, which Bia said was definitely Sardinha's work. Senhor Lobo was led away down the steep lane, still in his cream suit, the dust on his shoes in plain sight at last. Nobody shouted at him. The neighbours just watched from their windows, the way Alfama watches everything. Back in the chapel, Senhor Tomás set the real star tile back in its place, and Inês fixed it with fresh mortar. Up close, Bia could see its glaze was cracked like old skin and its corners worn soft. It was not as bright as the fake. It was much more beautiful. 'A lost royal treasure,' said Inês, shaking her head. 'He invented that to make you hand it over. The real one was never lost. It was right here. It just needed someone to notice.'
14:49The Back of Things
The police kept the fake tile as evidence until the summer. Then, one warm evening, Inês walked down the lane with it wrapped in newspaper and gave it to Bia. 'It's yours,' she said. 'You carried it further than anyone.' Avó hung it on the café wall, between two of the real old tiles. But she hung it backwards, so the painted ship faced the plaster, and the plain pale clay faced the room, with one small crooked paw print in the middle. Customers asked about it all the time. And Bia, eight and then nine and then ten, would tell them about the morning a fake treasure fell out of a window, and how she ran the whole of Alfama for it, and how the truth was on the back the whole time. Who throws a treasure out of a window? Someone who hopes the right person will catch it. Above the café, on a sill warmed only by the sun now, Sardinha slept with her paws tucked under. And Bia, who noticed everything, thought that was the best thing she'd seen all day.
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Series: thriller (English)