My cheeks flush with anger at the unfairness of being the only one who won’t get to choose, but I don’t want to leave Papa anyway. I love him. He’s my responsibility. I wanted him all to myself, and that is exactly what I got. I return the silver tray to the cupboard, vowing not to take it out again.
VALENCIA 1492
I remember the reflection I pored over that summer at Sagres. At the gawky age of eleven, I could not see much to be positive about, and I had to admit defeat about blooming overnight. The loose hair constantly around my face made me look unkempt, and my eyes were a mix of colors adding up to an unremarkable shade of brown. In the distortions of the silver tray, my mouth seemed too small and my nose comically large.
I was alone at the end of the world, except for Martim and Tareyja, who were too old and too busy to play, and Papa, who was too idle to be happy company and looking older by the month. The palace at Raposeira might just as well have been boarded up after Prince Henry left for Tangiers. I settled into the routine of spending mornings with Papa before going off for long rides on Chuva.
As the days grew shorter, the word reaching us from Tangiers worsened. The Portuguese troops were poorly supplied and too few for a successful assault, and in early October, Prince Henry was forced to sign terms of capitulation, cede the fortress at Ceuta he had won from the Moors in his youth, and send his army home. Nevertheless, when King Duarte died the next year, the blame for the debacle at Tangiers was shifted by Prince Henry’s minions onto the dead king’s shoulders, and the disgraced prince emerged again to wave the flag for Portugal’s rising greatness in the world.
Henry the Navigator. How little I understood his secrets at the time!
I go to the window and see no signs of life except a scrawny dog sniffing at garbage in an alley. Even looters of Jewish property need a break from the pounding sun. By increments too small to notice, the room has become suffocating, and I stay by the window hoping to catch even the smallest hint of a breeze. In the distance, I hear the slow roll of thunder, and the street darkens for a moment as a cloud passes across the sun.
Perhaps this day will end in rain—welcome except for those like me, whose armful of remaining possessions will be soaked as we make our way out of Spain. May it ruin everything stolen from this house. May torrents sweep through Spain washing away everything, making us the Noahs and Torquemada and his army of benighted souls the victims of God’s wrath.
Everything but the atlas. I cannot bear the thought. Sitting down, I pick it up before succumbing to a listlessness so great I can’t make the effort to open it. Instead, I gaze at the floor and listen for even the smallest sounds, relishing a silence as deep as I remember at Sagres during those rare times the wind died. I remember my last days there, the faint crack of surf against the cliffs, the nicker of horses in the corral. The muted sound of Martim and Tareyja’s voices drift through the air, blending with the soft scratches of father’s quills, and the clicks and taps of his brushes…
SAGRES 1438
Papa finishes wrapping his pens and sets them into a woven basket next to his inks and pigments. His maps and charts are safely rolled inside their stiff leather cases while his tiny pots and dishes dry after Tareyja’s washing.
My belongings are packed and we are waiting now for the escort that will take us away from Sagres. It is August, shortly before my twelfth birthday, and Prince Henry has been back in Raposeira for a little over two months.
“It’s different now,” Papa signed to me one night when I grew tearful, thinking his moodiness was caused by discontent with me. “He’s not the man he was before he went to Tangiers.”
Defeat has made the corners of Henry’s mouth surly and drooped his eyebrows into a permanent scowl. There’s no mention of new military crusades against the Moors, though his hatred of the infidels makes spittle fly whenever he speaks of them. Now all the talk is of Guinea and the opportunities for profit wasted in the past by his strategy of going farther south rather than bringing back more from the areas already explored. He is determined not to allow Guinea’s wealth to fall into the hands of people despised by God. Every coin that Guinea can put in Portugal’s coffers will be his answer to the Moors and to his critics at Duarte’s court.
As usual, I am too wrapped up in my own world to pay much notice of Papa’s growing unease at court. He does not inform me when he sends a letter to Prince Henry asking to be relieved of his role as mapmaker, but within a few days, he is summoned to discuss the request, and I go with him to interpret.
Prince Henry does not press Papa to change his mind. It will be good, he says, to have a younger man who can go along on the voyages and create notebooks and sketches on the spot. We make a dejected journey back to Sagres, and only after supper do I broach the subject hanging heavy in the air.
“Papa, why did you want to leave?”
Papa’s face clouds. “All the prince talks about is—” He pauses to think of a sign before reaching for the wax tablet to write the word “slaves.”
Slaves? I know Prince Henry gave away the first few Africans his commanders brought back, but I can’t imagine what he would do if he had more. Where would he keep them and what would they do?
“Slaves at Raposeira?” I sign, knitting my eyebrows to show confusion.
Papa makes a circle to signify everywhere. He picks up the tablet again, because we don’t have a vocabulary for such things. “Thousands. To sell. For profit.”
“Why would they come?”
“They are captured and brought in chains.”
I smooth out the wax, but I don’t know what to say. It’s one thing to enslave captives after a battle—everyone does that—but to steal them from their homes? “That’s wrong,” I sign, adding an angry downturn of my mouth for emphasis.
He nods agreement. “I don’t want to help him,” he signs. “I told him I wanted to finish my new atlas and then take no more work. I told him I was getting old, and God knows that’s true too.” His eyes cloud, and he reaches down to rub the knee that has given him a decided limp in the last few months.
Several weeks later, we are spending our last hours at Sagres. Papa will finish his atlas at King Duarte’s court in Lisbon. It will be a gift from Henry to his brother, and after it is done, the famed mapmaker Vicente Riba will retire at the court’s expense, in honor of his service.
Chuva is trotting around the corral as if she knows something is about to happen. A cart sits to one side, ready for the draft mules coming up from Raposeira. I go up in the tower to see if the party is on the road, and suddenly I comprehend that I am seeing the ocean from Sagres for the last time. I want to rush down and go to my beach, to every spot I love, but how could I say good-bye? Overwhelmed, I begin to sob, not bothering to wipe my tears.
I see the cloud of dust on the road from Raposeira, and I go down to tell Martim to saddle our horses. Tareyja has to be coaxed out of the house to see us off, and I can tell she has been crying. I bury my head in her ample breasts and let her rock me in her arms until the horses come down our road. Then, because the sun is past its apex and we have little time to linger, I get on Chuva, and in a matter of minutes, we are headed down the path away from Sagres. I don’t look back—can’t look back—for fear I might shatter with grief.
5
SINTRA 1438
We are not the only travelers to Lisbon that summer. Nearing the city, we hear rumors of people dying of plague in cities to the north, and on the outskirts of Setúbal, we see columns of people leaving the city. “Don’t go in,” they tell us. A man points to the haze on the skyline behind the city. “They’re burning corpses. The cemeteries can’t keep up with the dead.”
One of our guards is sent ahead. He tells us that no one in Lisbon has fallen ill, but as a precaution, we will make our way west of the city to the king’s summer palace at Sintra.
I toss that night on a straw mattress in the sweltering attic of an inn whose windows are sealed tight to keep out the disease. The rats scurrying a
cross the roof sound as big as squirrels, and the droppings on the floor make my heart pound at the thought that they have a way of getting in. The vision of their yellow teeth, beady eyes, and wormlike tails is so unnerving that I sleep the rest of the night in a chair with my feet curled up so they can’t run across my toes.
The ferries across the Tagus River are full of people escaping from Lisbon, and we skirt the riverbank, hoping we can find a boatman to ferry us across farther downstream. By nightfall, we have found only a deserted farmhouse, where we devour a bottle of wine, half a round of cheese, and a few dry sausages we find in the larder. The next day, we leave a few coins to reassure ourselves that the owners must be briefly away rather than lying dead somewhere of the plague.
East of the fishing villages at the mouth of the Tagus River, we see a family huddled by the side of the road. The woman is slumped in her husband’s arms, while next to them a small girl holds a crying baby. The man’s shirt has been torn away, revealing horrible black swellings on his neck and back. His eyes are haunted and wracked with pain. His wife turns to me, and I see a bloody froth escaping at the corner of her mouth.
Our guards cry out in horror and send their horses at a gallop. I call out after them to stop. How can we leave children there, with their parents dying? My father’s expression is a mix of revulsion, fear, and grief. He makes a cutting motion across his throat and gestures to me to follow as he gallops away behind the guards.
He is right, I know. Taking the children with us will not save them, and I can’t comfort them without dooming all of us. Still, I see the little girl’s terrified eyes and hear the baby’s wails for hours.
The disease has killed several in the next village we reach, and those who have been spared are at the cemetery burying the dead. One old sailor scoffs, saying he has survived so many plagues that God must plan to drown him instead, though he is certainly taking his time about it. Our guards tell him that if God isn’t brewing up a storm to remedy the oversight right away, they will pay him to take my father and me as close to Sintra as his boat can manage. He casts a momentary glance at the horizon and scans the sky overhead. Then he holds out his hand, rubbing his fingers together to ask for payment.
In minutes, I watch from the boat as our guards, belongings, and horses recede on the distant shore. The rest of our party will find a way to get across the river and bring everything to us at the palace. We have nothing but ourselves, some food and water, and Papa’s map case. The fisherman will leave us on the coast below Sintra, and we will have to find our way from there using prayer and our own two feet.
We sleep that night on the other side of the Tagus. Lights from a fort blaze on the promontory above us, but the abandoned fishing hut we find is safer than risking human contact. The following morning, the old man roasts fish over a driftwood fire. He looks at the dark clouds out to sea and decides he can’t risk taking us around the point because the windward coast will get the worst of the coming weather.
He points toward steep hills so thick with trees they look more black than green. “Sintra is up there,” he says. “You can walk from here, but it would be better to take the coast path until you come to a village where the road goes up the other side of the mountains. It’s an easy climb from there.” With a loud hacking cough, he brings up thick phlegm that he spits onto the sand. “You can stay there tonight, and get to Sintra tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I say, casting a glance at my father. I’ve noticed how weak he is getting, and I assumed we would be put ashore close to the palace.
“I’m just telling you what people who live around here would do.” He shrugs. “Go whatever way you want.” Without another word, he readies his boat and shoves off into the surf, leaving me looking around, astonished at how alone we are in an indifferent world.
By afternoon, my father is struggling to keep going, wincing whenever he moves his knee. Finally we see a village where wisps of smoke rise from chimneys and laborers toil in the fields. Although both are signs that life is going on without the plague, I know not to expect a warm welcome. For all they know, we are carrying the disease to them.
At the first house, a woman tells us she has no room and shuts the door, but a passing neighbor sees our worried faces as we turn away.
“I’m a Christian,” she says, “not like some who just say they are.” She glances at the shut door behind us. “Mistreat a stranger and you turn away the Lord himself.” She gestures toward a distant farmhouse. “I have a barn you can sleep in. We’ll get some bread in both of you right away and a cup of milk from our goats, and later you can eat supper with us. It’s not much, but with a little wine, it will get your strength back.”
I feel the burdens of the day lift and my fears vanish. “Thank you,” I say.
“We do what we can for Our Lord’s sake, don’t we?” she says. I feel the phantom outline of the crucifix I took off as we left Sevilla and never wore again, and I pretend I did not hear her.
***
The woman’s husband, Manuel, is taking vegetables to Sintra the following morning. He lets Papa ride in the cart to rest his aching bones and blistered feet. I am tired too, but far too excited to sit still, so I walk alongside. “Is that where we’re going?” I point to a mist-shrouded peak, where square-notched watchtowers look down to the sea.
“Praise God, no. We don’t go that high,” Manuel replies. “It’s a ruined Moorish fort. No one lives up there—except for a few Jews when the king decided he didn’t want them in Sintra.”
“Jews?” My heart jumps in my chest. “Jews live up there?”
Manuel whacks the mule with his switch. “Don’t know. They have houses in town again, that’s all I heard. Just don’t send them to our village, my wife and I say.” He points to a tree-covered hill. “You see those chimneys sticking up? That’s where we’re going.” Two white chimneys shaped like inverted funnels protrude above the trees. We’re almost there, and the man’s troubling words about Jews vanish from my mind.
We pass the first houses on the edge of Sintra and continue along the ridge that leads from one cluster of buildings to another until we reach the main square. Manuel leaves us in front of the royal palace and goes around to the kitchen entrance, while I swallow deeply and walk toward the uniformed guards standing at the bottom of the wide stairs.
A guard orders me to halt. “No visitors allowed,” he says, “on account of disease.” My heart sinks. Have we come all this way only to be told we aren’t welcome?
I set my shoulders and spend my last bit of strength. “This man is Vicente Riba,” I say, “from the greatest mapmaking family in Spain. We’ve come from Prince Henry’s court at Raposeira, by appointment to the king. Our belongings are coming with the rest of our party. We came on foot as quickly as we could.” I hesitate. “On account of how sick they are in Lisbon.”
“Ah, that’s the problem,” the guard says. “No one enters, for fear they will bring the mortality with them.”
My fatigue gives way to rage. “What are we supposed to do? Wait outside until we can prove we aren’t sick? Or until we are?” I point an accusing finger at the guard. “What would the king say about that?”
The guard shifts from foot to foot, and I press my advantage. I give him a smile I hope is charming, despite my disheveled appearance. “We don’t want to bring the mortality inside either. Isn’t there somewhere we can stay for a few days until—” I don’t want to acknowledge that if we do fall ill, we will be herded like livestock at the end of a stick to find a place outside the city to die.
The guard’s face is troubled. Finally he speaks. “I suppose you’d best come along.”
Two sleeping pallets and a chamber pot are brought into a gardener’s shed built into the wall at one side of the palace grounds, and we settle in amid the rakes and shovels. The garden is bound on three sides by walls and on the fourth by the palace itself. I can see people looking out, so we spend the next few days in plain view, to make sure they can see we have no
t fallen ill.
I strike up one-sided conversations with the marble sea goddess who stands at the center of the garden. Symmetrical paths converge on the statue from all directions, and I go up and down each one, touching heel to toe, until I have walked them all. Because the garden is small, I can do this in a few minutes, and it does little to ease my boredom.
Our good health soon wins us a reprieve. How strange it is, after days on a dirt floor in a tiny shed, to step into the sparkling rooms of the king’s summer palace and see high ceilings adorned with elaborate candelabras, tapestried walls, and furniture upholstered in fine damask and brocade. Our rooms look fit for the king himself, although they are probably the most modest in the palace.
No one seems to notice we are here, and we pass the first day exploring the ground floor and reading books from King Duarte’s library. When our evening meal is brought to our quarters, we learn the king is not in residence and only a few servants remain. The maid tells us that shortly after we took up residence in the shed, plague broke out in the little town where we had slept the night before our arrival. At the news, the king left in a panic for the Convento de Cristo at Tomar. “He feels safer among all those religious folks, I suppose,” she says, “although praying hasn’t helped anyone that I can see.”
Alarming news comes a few days later that plague has breached the walls of the monastery at Tomar. On the ninth of September, word arrives that the king is dead. “What will happen to us?” I ask Papa, but he doesn’t know. The heir to the throne of Portugal is Duarte’s son Afonso, but he is only six years old.
Perhaps my father won’t have a position after all. Will we have to go live with Susana in Sevilla? Will Prince Henry let us return to Sagres? Could we find a little house here in Sintra and exist like mice on whatever money Papa has?
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