Bahia, 1878. On a hot March night, Colonel Joaquim Ferreira da Silva lay dying in his bed. His screams echoed through the São Miguel plantation mansion. The doctor, called in haste, could do nothing. He was the tenth plantation owner to die that way that year. All with the same symptoms: excruciating abdominal pain, uncontrollable vomiting, convulsions.

And they all had something in common. A woman had passed through their kitchens days before their deaths. Her name was Felicidade (Happiness), but there was nothing happy about her story. Brazil in 1878 was living its last breaths as a slave-holding nation. It was only 10 years away from abolition, but on the farms of the Recôncavo Baiano, time seemed to have stopped in the previous century.

Here, more than 200 sugar cane plantations kept thousands of enslaved people in inhumane conditions. The Recôncavo Baiano was the economic heart of the empire. Its fertile lands produced the wealth that sustained the imperial elite. But that wealth was built on the suffering of men, women, and children who were treated as property, less valuable than cattle, more disposable than tools.

The plantation owners were absolute kings in their domains. Their words were law, their wills unquestionable. The power of life and death over hundreds of human beings was in their hands. And many exercised this power with a cruelty that defied any notion of humanity. Enslaved women faced an additional horror.

Besides the grueling work in the cane fields under the scorching sun, besides the public whippings for any slip-up, real or imagined, they lived under the constant threat of sexual violence. There was no protection, there was no justice. Their bodies did not belong to them. It was in this scenario of institutionalized brutality that Felicidade had grown up.

Born on the Santa Rita Plantation in 1848, she never knew any reality other than slavery. Her mother died in childbirth; her father was sold south when she was only 3 years old. Like so many other enslaved children, Felicidade grew up an orphan, even though she had been born.

From a young age, Felicidade showed an unusual intelligence. At 7 years old, she already knew all the plants around the slave quarters. She watched attentively when the elders prepared teas for pain, poultices for wounds, baths for fevers. She had a prodigious memory and an insatiable curiosity. Old Benedita, a healer respected even by the whites of the Big House, took the girl under her protection.

For years, Benedita taught Felicidade everything she knew about the plants of Brazil and Africa. She showed her which ones cured and which ones killed. She taught her that the difference between medicine and poison was often just a matter of quantity. “Knowledge is power,” Benedita would say. “And for us, power is survival.”

Felicidade learned about the jurubeba that cured sick livers, about the espinheira santa that calmed stomachs, about the aroeira that healed wounds. But she also learned about the castor bean, whose seeds in excess caused violent vomiting. About the dumb cane, whose contact caused terrible burns. About the angel’s trumpet, which in small doses was medicinal, but in larger doses caused hallucinations, convulsions, and death.

By age 15, Felicidade was already known as a healer on three neighboring plantations. The owners allowed her to circulate because her remedies worked, and healthy slaves were more productive. She treated everything from infant colic to mysterious fevers. Her fame grew. But in 1866, everything changed.

Felicidade was 18 when she was forcibly taken to the Big House of the Santa Rita Plantation. The master’s son, João Carlos, had returned from the capital. Young, spoiled, and cruel. He saw enslaved women as objects for his pleasure. What happened that night marked Felicidade forever. She returned to the slave quarters with a wounded body and something broken inside her.

For weeks, she barely spoke, barely ate; she seemed a shadow of the vibrant woman she was. Benedita cared for Felicidade during those terrible weeks. She applied her herbs, her baths, her prayers, but she knew that some wounds were not of the body, they were of the soul, and those had no simple cure.

“What are you going to do?” asked Benedita one night, while the two were preparing medicines by candlelight.

Felicidade didn’t answer immediately. Her fingers worked mechanically, crushing leaves in the mortar. When she finally spoke, her voice was cold, controlled, frightening in its calm. “I’m going to collect the debt.”

Benedita understood. She didn’t try to dissuade her. She herself had lost two daughters to the brutality of the masters. She knew that pain, she knew that thirst for justice that the world would never offer. In the following months, Felicidade returned to work. She continued preparing remedies, continued curing the sick, but she also began to experiment.

She tested combinations of plants, observed effects, noted results mentally—she couldn’t write. Teaching slaves to read was a crime, but her memory was her notebook. She discovered that certain combinations were particularly effective. Angel’s trumpet mixed with castor bean produced symptoms that looked like cholera.

Oleander combined with dumb cane caused a collapse that mimicked a heart attack. And most importantly, in the right doses, symptoms took days to appear, enough time for her to be far away.

One year after her trauma, Felicidade had her opportunity. The master of the Boa Vista Plantation, Colonel Antônio Pereira, was known for his extreme cruelty. He had a habit of pulling slaves’ teeth as punishment, branded faces with hot irons. He separated mothers from newborn babies for pure amusement, to see their despair. Felicidade was called to treat his wife, Dona Mariana, who suffered from constant migraines. For three weeks, she visited the Big House daily, preparing teas and compresses for the lady.

She gained the family’s trust, had access to the kitchen, the pantry, the chambers. In the last week, she prepared a special tea for Colonel Antônio. “For the nerves,” she explained. “To sleep better.” The colonel, who had been irritated with money problems, accepted. He drank the tea for five consecutive nights. On the morning of the sixth day, Colonel Antônio Pereira did not wake up.

They found him cold in his bed. The doctor diagnosed a heart attack. He was only 42 years old. But this wasn’t uncommon. The stress of managing the plantations, they said, took its toll. Felicidade was three leagues away when the news arrived. She felt nothing. She expected to feel satisfaction, maybe remorse, but there was only an emptiness and a certainty.

The world was a little less cruel.

Over the following years, Felicidade perfected her technique. She learned to be even more careful. Never two masters too close together, never in too short an interval, always varying the symptoms, always varying the methods. She began to choose her victims with criteria.

They weren’t random masters; they were the worst ones, the ones who raped girls, the ones who separated families out of cruelty, the ones who branded bodies with hot irons, the ones who whipped to death for imaginary infractions. Between 1867 and 1878, 40 plantation owners died under similar circumstances in the Recôncavo Baiano.

Official causes varied: cholera, yellow fever, heart attack, stroke. No one connected the deaths; no one suspected a pattern. Felicidade had become a kind of silent legend in the slave quarters. Her name was whispered with reverence and fear. When she arrived at a plantation to treat the sick, the enslaved knew, they watched who she visited in the Big House, and they waited.

What made Felicidade truly extraordinary was not just her skill with poisons; it was her strategic intelligence. She had built a protection network over the years. First, she maintained her reputation as an impeccable healer. For every person she killed, she saved 100 others. White masters swore by her remedies. Their wives requested her.

Their children were treated by her. This trust was her best camouflage. Second, she never spoke about her acts, not even to the people closest to her, not even to other enslaved women who begged her for vengeance. Her silence was absolute. There were no confessions, no boasting, no confidences that could be used against her.

And third, she always had a perfect alibi. When a master died, she was treating sick people at another plantation, or gathering herbs in the woods, or preparing remedies in the slave quarters surrounded by witnesses. Her presence was so common, so expected, that no one paid special attention. And fourth, most importantly, she was patient.

Sometimes she waited months to act, a whole year in some cases. She never acted on impulse, never out of momentary anger. Each death was planned meticulously, executed with surgical precision. In 1873, something almost went wrong. And it was this incident that showed how far Felicidade’s cunning went. Colonel Rodrigo Mendes, of the Flor da Bahia Plantation, was particularly cruel.

He had a habit of forcing enslaved mothers to witness the whipping of their children. He considered it educational. He sold a 3-month-old baby, separating it from its mother to teach her not to get too attached. Felicidade was called to treat the colonel’s gout. For two weeks, she applied compresses and prepared teas. In the third week, the colonel began to show strange symptoms: nausea, abdominal pain, extreme weakness. But this time there was a complication.

The doctor called was young, recently graduated in Europe, full of new ideas. Dr. Henrique Tavares grew suspicious. The symptoms didn’t exactly match any known disease. There was something manufactured in that clinical picture. He began to ask questions, investigated what the colonel had eaten, drunk, taken as medication, and discovered that Felicidade had prepared a special tea for gout that the colonel had been taking religiously.

“Bring that woman,” ordered the doctor. “I want to examine her herbs.”

Felicidade was summoned to the Big House. She took her bag of remedies with her. She was calm, serene; she had prepared for this moment for years.

“What herbs did you use in the colonel’s tea?” asked Dr. Henrique.

“Guaco, doctor,” Felicidade answered promptly, “with horsetail and stone-breaker for the gout, as you know, herbs approved by Dona Teresa of the São João Plantation herself, who has used them for years.”

She wasn’t lying. Those were exactly the herbs she used. What she didn’t mention was the tiny amount of another substance she added, an oleander extract so diluted it would be impossible to detect without sophisticated chemical analysis—technology that simply didn’t exist in the Recôncavo Baiano of 1873. The doctor examined the herbs, smelled them, tasted a pinch.

They were exactly what Felicidade said. He was frustrated, but he couldn’t prove anything.

“And why then is the colonel getting worse?” he insisted.

Felicidade lowered her eyes, assuming the submissive posture whites expected of her. “I beg your pardon, doctor, but I don’t know. Perhaps my knowledge is limited. Perhaps the colonel needs stronger medicine, from a real doctor like you. I am just an ignorant black woman who learned from the old ones.”

The fake humility was perfect. The doctor, satisfied to have his superiority recognized, dismissed her. “Very well. I will take the case from here. Go back to your duties.”

Felicidade left the Big House calmly, but internally she knew she needed to change strategy. That doctor was dangerous; he thought too much, observed too much. Two weeks later, Colonel Rodrigo Mendes had a miraculous improvement. Felicidade hadn’t prepared any more tea for him. He recovered, and Dr. Henrique became convinced it had been his European medicine that saved the colonel. But Felicidade was patient. She would wait.

Colonel Rodrigo would have his time.

After the incident with Dr. Henrique, Felicidade became even more careful. She began to study patterns of natural death. She observed which diseases were common, which symptoms doctors diagnosed most easily. She discovered that yellow fever was convenient; it caused dramatic symptoms everyone knew. She discovered that stroke was a generic diagnosis for any sudden death without a clear explanation. She discovered that cardiac arrest was accepted without question for men over 40. She also began to vary her methods.

Sometimes she used fast-acting poisons, administered in a single fatal dose. Other times, she preferred slow, progressive poisoning that mimicked chronic illness. It depended on the situation, the target, the opportunity. And she learned something crucial: Whites never suspected slaves. Their own arrogance was her best protection. To them, slaves were incapable of such planning, such execution, such intelligence.

They were seen as domestic animals—dangerous if mistreated, perhaps, but incapable of sophisticated strategy. This systematic underestimation allowed Felicidade to operate for more than a decade without arousing real suspicion.

Among her most notable victims was Colonel Francisco Albuquerque, of the Esperança Plantation. He had a habit of punishing elderly slaves to death, considering them unproductive. Felicidade prepared a rheumatism remedy for him that he took for three months. When he died, the diagnosis was multiple organ failure due to advanced age. He was 51 years old. Also Captain Bernardo Santos, known for systematically raping enslaved girls as soon as they turned 12.

Felicidade treated him for a urinary infection with a special tea. He died of septicemia two weeks later. And Major Augusto Ferreira, who separated enslaved couples for fun, selling husbands far away just to see the wives’ suffering. Felicidade prepared a blood tonic for him. He had a massive heart attack during dinner at age 43.

In 1878, something began to change in the Recôncavo Baiano. The deaths had become too frequent. Even in an era where tropical diseases killed regularly, the number of dead plantation owners began to draw attention. A young police chief from Salvador, Dr. Teixeira, took over the post in Santo Amaro. Unlike his predecessors, he wasn’t on the colonels’ payrolls. He had his own ideas, new methods learned in São Paulo. He began to map the deaths, created a list, and noticed a pattern. In almost all cases, a slave healer named Felicidade had been present at the plantation in the weeks prior to the death.

Chief Teixeira wanted to investigate; he summoned Felicidade for interrogation in April 1878. It was an unprecedented situation: A white police chief interrogating a slave about crimes against white masters. Felicidade appeared calmly. She answered all questions with clarity and humility. Yes, she knew all those masters. Yes, she had treated them.

Yes, some died afterward. “But, Doctor,” she said with a soft voice, “I treat hundreds of people. Most survive and get well. Some die, it is true, but isn’t that the nature of life? Even the best doctors in Bahia lose patients.”

The chief had no proof, only coincidences. And even if he had, the legal system of the time would hardly prosecute a plantation owner for the death of a slave, much less the opposite. But Chief Teixeira did something that scared Felicidade: he warned the plantation owners. He circulated a notice recommending extreme caution when hiring slave healers, especially a black woman named Felicidade. For the first time in 11 years, Felicidade was in real danger.

In May 1878, Felicidade disappeared. She simply vanished from the Santa Rita Plantation overnight. No one saw her leave, no one knew where she had gone. The plantation owner, successor to the late João Carlos, who had died of fever in 1875, was furious. Not for the loss of the slave herself—she was already 30 years old, “old”—but for the affront. Slaves did not run away from his properties with impunity.

He organized capture expeditions. The bush captains scoured the region. They interrogated quilombolas (residents of settlements founded by escaped slaves) and investigated every slave quarter and every corner of the woods. They found no trace of Felicidade. It was as if she had dissolved into thin air.

In the following decades, many theories arose about Felicidade’s fate. Some said she had died in the woods, devoured by wild animals. Others swore they had seen her in Salvador, working as a free street vendor under another name. There were those who claimed she had fled to the Urubu Quilombo in the woods of Cachoeira. Others said she had boarded a ship to Africa, returning to the land of her ancestors she had never known.

The most popular version in the slave quarters was different. They said Felicidade hadn’t fled alone. They said dozens of slaves had disappeared that same week. All at the same time, all silently. They said she had led a mass escape to a secret quilombo deep in the Chapada Diamantina, where they founded a community that exists to this day.

This story, of course, was never confirmed, but it remained alive in the collective memory of Bahia’s black communities. A legend of resistance and vengeance. What we know for sure is this: After Felicidade’s disappearance, the mysterious deaths of plantation owners in the Recôncavo Baiano practically ceased. From 40 suspicious deaths between 1867 and 1878, the number dropped to just three between 1878 and 1888.

This could be coincidence, or it could be that without Felicidade, there was no one with the knowledge, the courage, and the coldness necessary to continue that silent work. Official records never mention Felicidade by name. She doesn’t appear in police documents, there are no court cases, no records of capture or death. For official history, she simply didn’t exist.

But in the quilombola communities of Bahia, her name is still remembered. There are songs that speak of a healer who cured the world of cruelty. There are stories told in whispers about the woman who collected the debt the world would never pay.

Felicidade’s story raises deep questions about justice, morality, and resistance. She was a serial killer, without a doubt. But in a system where there was no justice for enslaved people, where there was no legal protection, where there was no recourse against systematic violence, what was left besides vengeance? The masters she killed were, by accounts, among the cruelest of a cruel era.

Men who tortured, raped, mutilated, and killed the human beings they considered property. Men who separated families, sold babies, branded bodies with hot irons. Felicidade didn’t kill randomly, she didn’t kill for pleasure, she didn’t kill the benevolent masters—and there were some. She chose the monsters and eliminated them with surgical precision.

Does that make her a heroine or a villain? The answer depends on where you stand. For the descendants of the plantation owners, she would be a dangerous murderer. For the descendants of the enslaved, she was a warrior of freedom.

Felicidade’s story reminds us that resistance to slavery took many forms. It wasn’t just the great revolts, the famous quilombos, the known heroes. It was the silent, everyday, invisible resistance. It was the healer who cured her brothers by day and punished the torturers by night. It was the cook who seasoned the masters’ food with something more than salt.

It was the midwife who knew secrets that could destroy entire families. These women didn’t make it into the history books. There are no monuments in their honor. There are no streets with their names. But they existed, and their resistance, their courage, their silent vengeance were as important as any armed revolt. Did Felicidade die, flee, does she continue alive in some hidden corner of Brazil? We will never know. But her legacy remains: the reminder that even in the most oppressive system, even in the most brutal slavery, there were those who found ways to resist.

And sometimes that resistance tasted like vengeance—slow, patient, meticulous, and absolutely deadly. The last time Felicidade’s name appears in any record is in a letter from 1880, two years after her disappearance. A plantation owner in Sergipe wrote to a colleague in Bahia asking for a recommendation for a competent healer.

The answer was short: “Be careful with healers who are too competent. Sometimes, the cure they bring is not the one you expect.” The Recôncavo Baiano was never the same after 1878. And maybe, just maybe, that was exactly what Felicidade intended from the beginning.

This is a work of historical fiction based on real events and contexts from the period of slavery in Brazil. The specific characters and events are dramatizations created for educational and reflective purposes.