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Zeferino das Lamelas was the godson of the lord of Barrimão, a cavalry major who had accepted the Convention of Evoramonte. His godfather remained an uncompromising Miguelist, although he was an even-tempered man. He lived in the ruined manor house with his brother, Frei Gervásio, a fat, motionless and contemplative former Benedictine. The friar read only from the book of Nature and fed this contemplation with plenty of bacon and poultry. His chronic cough burst from his throat with such a din that it sounded like the cry of a strangled man in the fifth act of a drama.
Every two months, two former monks from Cabeceiras de Basto came to visit Frei Gervásio. The three remembered their dead companions, prayed together and then went solemnly to the table, where wine helped them forget the past. The lord did not possess a great fortune, but he was unmarried, fifty years old and believed that his property would last longer than his life. He gave twenty coins towards the modest donations sent to Dom Miguel in exile and celebrated the king's birthdays at considerable expense. As he counted the years of exile, he also calculated the rank he would receive when the sovereign was restored. He kept up a correspondence with old royalist comrades, but it was Frei Gervásio who wrote the letters for him. The pulpit politics produced by the friar's slow digestion even reached the columns of the Miguelist newspaper Portugal Velho.
In the middle of 1845, a rumour spread among the royalists that Dom Miguel would return. The narrator compares that vague hope to the pagan expectation of a promised Messiah. Frei Gervásio received mysterious letters from priests in Póvoa de Lanhoso and Vieira, full of prophecies and signs. In the narrator's satire, that hope was born in stables of superstitious ignorance, as though a new redeemer were to appear there. The major received the news with exaggerated nods and agreed that the movement would be very great. Russia is stirring, that is what it is, Frei Gervásio declared, linking Lanhoso to Russian autocratic politics.
It was during one of these conversations that Zeferino das Lamelas came in to recount his dispute with Simeão and the attack by José Dias's dogs. He displayed his patched trousers, said that the animals had almost reached his skin and swore revenge. Frei Gervásio advised him to forget the girl and the student and prepare his father's sword to defend throne and altar. The time is nearly upon us, Zeferino, his godfather confirmed. Zeferino rubbed his rough hands together and announced that he would ask the old man for the sword and have it sharpened. Thus a still unconfirmed rumour redirected his private humiliation towards a political fantasy of combat.
Zeferino's father was called Gaspar das Lamelas and had been an ensign in the 17th Infantry Regiment. In 1834, the local Liberals pursued him over beatings and false testimony connected with the investigations of 1828. Gaspar spent several months in hiding, his property was seized and his son, already grown and without a trade, became a stonemason. When the persecution eased, Zeferino was given back the devastated lands and Gaspar returned with his old sword covered in verdigris. He swore that he would yet wash the blade in Liberal blood, leaving his son an inheritance of grievance and revenge.
On Christmas Day 1838, Gaspar got drunk and went out into the street cheering for Dom Miguel. Other drunkards of the same political faith answered with an enthusiasm that quickly became murderous. Gaspar fastened his sash over his woollen coat, put on his old military cap and marched at the head of labourers and boys. The force possessed three muskets, several hooked scythes on thick poles and a pig-killing knife, besides the leader's sword. The guerrilla band grew with men found in taverns and reached Barrimão shouting, wanting to elect the lord as its general. The lord had wine given to them, but refused the command and advised them to go home before receiving a pointless beating. Frei Gervásio also tried to explain from the window that this looked more like an excess of wine than patriotism. Gaspar replied that he had spent fifteen months in hiding, that his house had been ruined and that he would call the Liberals of Santo Tirso to account.
The alarm was sounding in Santo Tirso, and José Dias's father, the local officer of Vilalva, ran to warn the authorities. He mistakenly said that the lord of Barrimão commanded the guerrilla band, and the name of a serious man increased the panic. The merchants packed up their valuables and fled towards Porto, while eighty armed Liberals went down to the bridge. It was Christmas Sunday, a feast of peace among men, but wine helped those souls understand the solemnity in a very communicative fashion. In Gaspar's wine-soaked brain, longing for the king turned three old battles and a rusty sword into new glory. The narrator asks whether the courage of great warriors may sometimes be intoxication with glory, or simply with gin.
At the head of the guerrilla band, Gaspar descended the hill overlooking the wooden bridge at Santo Tirso. The crowd stopped beside the tavern when it saw armed men coming down on the other side. The innkeeper warned Gaspar that they would fall on the bridge like thrushes and the survivors would have to flee without their clogs. The leader's wine was almost digested, and his courage was beginning to give way before that sensible advice. However, former robbers on his staff forced him to drink brandy and threatened to throw the first man who fled off the bridge.
Meanwhile, the district administrator crossed the bridge with only two unarmed officials and asked for the lord of Barrimão. He is not here; I am the leader, Gaspar declared, pushed forwards by his brave men. The administrator replied that a serious man like the lord would never be leading those good, deceived people. Gaspar introduced himself as the well-known ensign of Lamelas and again accused the Liberals of Santo Tirso of pursuing and robbing him. The administrator was an eloquent graduate and saw in the noisy river, the dark towers and the three hundred open mouths the ideal setting for a speech. He advised the crowd to return to honest work and not disturb the peace of the institutions. At the end, one of the drunkest men threw his hat into the air and shouted. The shouting drowned out the administrator's reply, and he turned his back on the mob and withdrew with the dignity of an ancient orator. As soon as they saw him returning, the Liberals entered the wooden bridge with the din of a measured march.
At their head was Lobato, a court clerk and former lieutenant who had fought in the Liberal campaign. The former sergeant Lopes had crossed the Ave by boat with twenty men, unseen, to attack the guerrilla band from the rear. His soldiers were a mixture of former servicemen, tobacco guards, politicians, thieves and martyrs of the prisons. Four men in Gaspar's force fired, the others followed them, and one bullet killed a Liberal in the front rank. Lobato restrained his men's fury and ordered the ranks to fire and reload in turn. The bullets tore wounds in the crowd, and armed and unarmed men alike abandoned their clogs to flee up the slopes.
Gaspar felt Retrinca of Santiago de Antas fall dead against his back and grip him around the neck. Death did not frighten the veteran of three battles, but it restored his old legs: at fifty, he ran faster than the boys. When Lopes's men came leaping and bellowing down the slope, the narrator called the confusion Judgement Day. Gaspar changed direction and ran across a flooded meadow, but his red sash and raised sword made him an obvious target. Bullets whistled close to him and buried themselves in the mud. Lopes spoke to the pursuers, and the fastest of them were almost catching Gaspar. Suddenly, the fugitive disappeared among dense plane trees. The pursuers found his cap and coat on the bank; ten paces away, Gaspar was swimming across the Ave in December, with his sword between his teeth and his sash over one shoulder.
Patarro of Monte Córdova loaded his gun with buckshot and said that he was going to kill that wild duck. The youngest of the four begged him not to shoot an old man with white hair. He thought that Gaspar would drown before reaching the other bank and marvelled at his strange devotion to the sword.
In midstream, the current carried Gaspar along and he almost stopped swimming, but the water slowed and he managed to grasp the muddy bank. After crossing the Ave again by the Lagoncinha Bridge and covering two leagues of mud, he reached home hours later. There he drank a great draught of gin and shouted as he flourished his sword. Afterwards rheumatism attacked his joints, and Gaspar was left paralysed. Seven years later, when the villages of Minho were again acclaiming Dom Miguel, he was still alive and confined to a cart. He wept because his motionless body no longer allowed him to sharpen the blade on Liberal bones. He kept the sword hanging before his eyes and asked for it to be placed in his grave; that is what they did. The narrator expects this Legitimist's skeleton to rise again clutching its sword, provided Russia finally stirs, as Frei Gervásio used to say.