Goa

Portugal's exotic colony of Goa, on India's western shore, was in the 16th century the farthest-flung outpost of Europe's fiercest and longest-lasting Inquisition. Here, historical fantasist Dalkey (The Nightingale) uses it as backdrop for an exemplary start to a new series. En route to Cathay on an Elizabethan privateer to establish trade in Oriental medicines, apothecary's apprentice Thomas Chinnery, an engaging young Englishman, stumbles upon, but then loses, a sorcerer's vial of powder that can resurrect the dead. In an obsessive quest for this unholy grail, Thomas follows his only link to it, the enigmatic Hindu beauty Aditi, through Goa's teeming multiracial byways, until he is trapped and interrogated under torture by the colony's fearsome Holy Office, whose Inquisitor Major, Domine Rui Sadrinho, is also hellbent on finding the eerie powder. Under investigation himself for practices even the Portuguese Grand Inquisitor finds irregular, Sadrinho needs the drug to extend beyond death the agonies he relishes inflicting in the name of the Church. Dalkey's meticulous research pays off in ravishing atmospherics that highlight the aromas, sights, sounds and traditions that shroud malevolent European church-and-mercantile-state power politics on a mysterious subcontinent. Every bit as absorbing is the author's rich tapestry of characters, from Timoteo, a 13-year-old monk whose irresistible innocence is the Inquisitor Major's most effective torture device, to sinister Father Antonio Gons ao, the Machiavellian special envoy of the Grand Inquisitor. Dalkey serves an exotic repast here, one that, like the exquisite spices of the Indies, tempts the palate with tantalizing hints of wonders yet to come. (Aug.)