Beatriz and I exchange glances. It’s just like Elizabeth to go from giggles to curling up around herself as if she wants to disappear. Her eyes seem blank and distant as I continue to read, but eventually she lifts her drooping head. “It isn’t about beauty, it’s about love.” Her voice is flat, as if she were reciting the Hail Mary for the thousandth time.
“Angriote has to die now,” says Beatriz. “He has no other choice.”
I read on. “‘“Your Lady will be ungrateful if she acknowledges not thy pains in her defense,” quoth Amadis. “I swear to do all I can on your behalf.”’”
Revived by disbelief, Elizabeth sits up. “Help an opponent? Angriote won’t think Amadis is much of a knight if he’s going to do that.”
Beatriz nods somberly. “He should have killed him while he could.”
I’m impressed with Amadis, though it’s best not to argue with the princesses. What would Diogo do? I think for a moment but set those thoughts aside, because I have no way to know.
What would Judah Abravanel do? That, I tell myself, is far more worth pondering.
7
LISBON 1439
By late June, the court has drifted west to Sintra, where sea air and lush forests create a haven away from the Lisbon summer. Elizabeth and Beatriz are no longer in residence at court because their family’s lands are nearby, but they come and go between their home and Sintra when the mood strikes them.
I miss Elizabeth, but not too much. Her moods go from laughter to gloom so deep it seems like death then back again, and I get tired of guessing which person she will be. Once Beatriz found Elizabeth in her bedchamber naked from the waist up, a dagger to her chest. Another time, the three of us climbed a tower, and she went on about how just one little jump would solve everything. Soon she was cheerful again, seeming to remember nothing of her bleak mood and exhausting me with her determination that Diogo carry me off to a life of wedded bliss. Or, better yet, die of unrequited love because he cannot have me.
Papa and I now live away from the palace. He finished the atlas while we were at Tomar, and in appreciation, Pedro gave him use of a pleasant house in Sintra, where he will live out his days at the crown’s expense. I keep Papa company morning and evening and go off on my own in the afternoon. Though occasionally I ride Chuva to visit Elizabeth and Beatriz, most of the time, I prefer to be alone.
I left Sagres nearly a year ago and am almost fourteen now, but I still marvel at how two places could be so different. On our promontory, nothing grew more than a few inches because of the incessant wind, and only plants that could worm their roots into crevices survived at all. The trees were mostly cork oaks scattered in fields, and I can’t remember a time when a tree blocked my view unless I deliberately stood behind it.
Here, on the mountain slope exposed to the ocean, fog and mist hang over us, and the frequent summer rains feel as cold as winter. It’s dark most of the time, like a weight I can’t shake off. Even when I urge Chuva to gallop along the paths around Sintra, I don’t feel airy and free the way I did on the beach at Sagres.
It’s beautiful, though, like being in a bed with green blankets underneath and on top of me, from the tips of the pines to the moss covering the ground. My heart lifts when I see rays of light in a clearing, and when the fog burns away, my face turns toward the sun like the yellow sunflowers I remember in the Algarve. I yearn to run across open land, but here there’s no straying from the paths, for lichen-covered fallen branches make a barrier too dense to cross.
Coming home one day, I hear the sound of hooves on the path. Judah Abravanel comes up astride a beautiful chestnut-colored horse large enough for his substantial girth. He settles into a trot beside me.
“Senhorita Riba.” He gives me a deferential nod. “All alone?” He looks into the dense forest, although I don’t know what he expects to see.
“Yes,” I say. “I have no one to ride with.”
By now, we’ve reined in our mounts and stopped in the middle of the path. “I’ve been told it’s safe,” I add. “Chuva wears the colors of the royal household.” I reach down to stroke the side of her neck. “Don’t you, girl?”
“Chuva?” Judah says.
“I named her that when I lived at Sagres. She belongs to Prince Henry, but everyone at the stables thinks of her as mine.”
Chuva nickers and bobs her head, making Judah smile. “It appears Chuva agrees with the stablehands.” He looks down the path. “May I accompany you?”
I had been hoping for a chance to meet again after our encounter outside the synagogue at Tomar, but since my father no longer works at court, it hasn’t happened. “I’d be most pleased,” I say.
“Your father is a remarkable person,” Judah says as we go down the path, “and he has a daughter to match.”
“Me?”
“A daughter who handles every language spoken at court and turns it into signs. I’ve watched you, and I think I’ve picked up a little.” He points to his chest, to his head, and finally to Chuva. I think Chuva… He takes one fist and cradles it inside his other open palm before pointing to me. Belongs to you.
I grin. “That’s very good, but can you sign it in Arabic?”
He gets my joke immediately, throwing back his head in a hearty laugh. “Signs are all languages at once, aren’t they? Perhaps everyone should learn them. It might be easier for us all to get along.”
I don’t know what comes over me, but suddenly I am stammering in Hebrew about wanting to hear that language again. He is so startled he pulls up his horse and turns to face me. “You know Hebrew?”
I feel my face growing hot. Papa would not want me revealing this. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I was just trying to impress you. You know my family are conversos.”
“But perhaps you are not so converted after all.”
I think for a moment I should cross myself and recite the Pater Noster to prove something to him. What kind of Jew is Abravanel anyway? Is he one of those who despises converts, or would he be happy to know someone in the Cresques family isn’t entirely lost?
“You’re afraid.” His voice is so soft, I turn to look at him. Under his thick brows are the most compassionate eyes I have ever seen.
Though I feel tears welling, I manage to shrug. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He holds up his hand to cut off my nonsense. “This is too serious a conversation to have on horseback,” he replies. “Queluz is not too far from here for a good rider like you. Perhaps some Shabbat, you could point your horse in the direction of my home.” He pauses. “If your father permits, of course.”
My father would not permit it, and I think Don Abravanel knows that. I suspect he knows I will come anyway. “Thank you,” I say, feeling like a drowning person being pulled from the sea.
***
When I reach Judah Abravanel’s home the following Shabbat, the family is just getting up from the table after the midday meal. His wife, Simona, insists that I sit down and have some challah and lamb stew, although I ate with Papa before I left. She is as small and wiry as her husband is portly, as animated as he is calm and reserved. Their two daughters, Chana and Rahel, are beautiful girls of about ten and eight, with eyes like black olives and their mother’s gleaming, dark curls. The youngest child is a moon-faced boy of two named Isaac, who watches the world with the contemplative eyes of a sage. His father holds him on his knee while he settles in to read with two men who are visiting for the day.
When Isaac fusses and Simona takes him from his father, I follow her into the bedroom, leaving the girls to play with their dolls. She lays Isaac on the bed and unties the string holding a cloth between his legs. When she takes the cloth away, I notice the flared tip of his penis, so unlike my little Abraham’s soft peak of skin. With a few expert motions, she has folded a dry cloth around him and secured it with the string. “There you are,” she says, standing Isaac up on the bed and holding him while he jumps up and down with a happy grin. “You won’t be needing this much longer,
little man.”
I glance out the door. “What are the men reading?” I ask.
“The Zohar,” Simona says, in a voice so offhand she must think it’s obvious. Seeing my confusion, she tells me it’s a book by an ancient sage, a guide to unlocking the deepest meanings of the Torah. “Can you show Amalia your teeth?”
Isaac thinks for a moment then puts his finger on a lower tooth. “Where’s your nose?” He misses and grazes a nostril. “What do you say when you go to bed?” Simona asks.
“Mema,” he says.
“That’s shema,” she tells me with a smile.
“I know,” I say. “I have a little sister who said that when she was first learning. She wants to be a nun now.” My eyes well up. “I had a baby brother who didn’t live long enough to say it at all.”
She gives me a quizzical look. “Judah told me you might come,” she says. “He was surprised to hear you speak Hebrew, since anusim don’t learn it.”
“I taught myself when I was young,” I say. “My father had some books. He’s a Christian, and the books were from before. My mother taught me—” My voice catches in my throat. “Taught me the things Jews do. We—”
Simona puts Isaac down on the floor. “Go to Papa,” she says, and the little boy toddles off. “Where is your mother now?” she asks softly.
“She died,” I whisper. “Almost three years ago.” I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “I miss her. I miss Shabbat.”
The room squeezes around me, and my head feels hollow. “Would you excuse me?” I ask, not waiting for a reply.
I rush through the back door to the garden. Orderly paths lead outward from a mosaic-tiled fountain at the center. Sparrows flutter around the rippling water, filling their beaks, while a crow squawks from its perch on a stuccoed wall. The smell of roses and drying grass suffuses the air. My mind is in turmoil, and I barely sense these things as I fight the urge to heave the contents of my two dinners into some out-of-the-way spot.
I don’t know what came over me. It is more than a wave of longing for my mother, for I feel that often and haven’t reacted like this. Perhaps being here, I’m realizing all the candles I haven’t lit, the songs I haven’t sung, the blessings I haven’t proclaimed. Or perhaps it is the love Simona shows her children, love that will never shine on me again.
The sparrows desert the fountain as I approach. My whole body aches and I want to fall in a heap and be gone from here, from everywhere, like a drop of water absorbed into the ground.
“Senhorita Riba?” Judah Abravanel is standing a few steps away. “My wife sent me to see if you were all right.”
I dab my eyes with my sleeve. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not a very good guest.”
“You are the guest I expected you to be.” His eyes are solemn. “Does this have to do with what you started to tell me the other day?”
“I’m not sure what that was.”
“Perhaps I can help. I think what you pretend to be is not who you really are.” He gestures to the mosaic design in the fountain. “Like this,” he says. “You might say, ‘this is a fish,’ or ‘this is a flower,’ but they’re shattered pieces put together to look like what they’re supposed to be.”
“I am supposed to be a Jew,” I tell him, surprised that I have said it aloud. “Since I lost my mother, I’ve been—” I think for a moment. “There hasn’t been a me since she died.” Before I know it, I have told him everything—the sausages, the secret mezuzah, the prick of Abraham’s penis, his ritual washing at the pool, the burial of his hair inside the tiny shroud. I have been crying from the beginning, but I almost cannot get the words out between sobs as I tell him about Shabbat afternoons at my grandparents, the singing, the dancing, the wishes for a sweet week over the spices.
When I finally fall silent, Judah speaks. “Your mother was a brave woman. Sevilla dislikes its anusim, even the sincere converts, and it dislikes the false ones even more than it does the ones who remain Jews.”
“I know,” I say. “I saw men die.”
“And more is coming, I fear. You are better off in Portugal, at least as long as Pedro is regent. After that, it will depend on what kind of man Afonso becomes.”
“My sisters don’t have any trouble believing in the Hanged One, but I can’t. I tried for a while, but it didn’t work.”
“And now you can’t be either a Jew or a Christian, while all around you everyone seems to care a great deal about which one everybody is.”
“I think I would like to live as a Jew someday,” I blurt out. “Openly, I mean.”
“Your father should live his remaining days in peace. He’s done everything he could to keep his family safe, and you should respect that.”
“But when he’s gone?” I ask. “What about then?”
“Don’t do anything drastic that you can’t take back.”
I feel as if he has stolen something from me, but then again he doesn’t know my secret. “Actually,” I say, “my baptism might not count. My mother washed it away in the mikveh, and then the church records burned. Maybe I can still choose for myself.”
Judah’s face is grave. “There are people who would drag you to church to splash you with their water the minute they hear this. You’re best off never mentioning it again.”
He thinks for a moment. “The Holy One works in strange ways. Perhaps you have a different fate from what seems possible now.”
Chana and Rahel run into the garden. “Papa,” Chana says, her arms reaching only part way around his belly. “What’s taking you so long? We’ve been ready to sing for hours!”
“Well, then,” he says. “We won’t keep you waiting any longer.” The girls’ laughter is like music as they lead him into the house.
VALENCIA 1492
The scent of roses warmed by the sun nudges me awake. “Is that you?” I ask, but I know it is Judah by the faint smell of cloves that was always on his breath.
As I grew into a woman at Sintra, I rode almost every Saturday afternoon to Queluz, as if I were visiting my own family. Isaac eventually pulled up his own chair to study with the men after dinner. He was a solemn child, showing none of a seven-year-old’s tendency to squirm or get distracted. Chana reached her fifteenth birthday and was betrothed to a second cousin from Lisbon, and Rahel at thirteen was as lovely as a spring blossom and not far behind her sister in marriage.
The princesses remained part of my life as well, but only occasionally. Their lessons largely at an end, they spent most of their time gossiping with the ladies and attending court events. Their foolishness no longer amused me, and as I lost interest in them, they did in me. Papa was clinging to the loose threads of unraveling life. His eyes were too weak to read, so his life turned even more inward. Always small and thin, he shrank into something no more substantial than a seed drifting on a bit of fluff. His mind floated away with his body, and he showed no signs of remembering what he once had been.
And then there was Diogo. When the court was at Sintra, he visited my father frequently. Papa knew every bay and inlet on the African coast, but in time, he had trouble remembering Diogo. I thought the visits would trickle to nothing then, but they didn’t.
I close my eyes, as if this can protect me from unbidden memories. The scent of cloves is fainter now. “Judah,” I whisper. “Did you see it coming?”
Since I couldn’t have the life I wanted, I didn’t think about my future at all when I was young. I suppose that’s why I couldn’t see at first that a man was courting me. Diogo was a wave that began offshore as a bump in the water, and then rose to a crest, hanging for a moment before tossing me, his shocked and gasping victim, onto shore.
“Did you see it coming?” I ask again.
“Life is always coming. Best to act in the moment because it will be gone regardless of what we do.” I sense him shrugging. “The woman who is reluctant to make bread because it might burn has nothing to feed her family.”
“Or herself.”
Judah’s chuckle
makes my heart glad. “And you ate burned bread as a result.”
“We all do.” I smile, knowing that even with all I have endured, I would willingly taste the charred and bitter to be filled again with the bliss of that sweet, soft interior, those moments in which everything seems perfect.
SINTRA 1444
On the Feast of Corpus Christi in late May, church bells ring out over Sintra as Papa and I leave church. He leans on my arm as I guide him to the edge of the crowd. He is tired from the strain of the outing, and we make our way immediately toward home.
“Senhor Riba!” Diogo is standing beside us. “May I?” He puts his arm through the crook of Papa’s elbow, relieving me of the weight. “It would be my pleasure to walk you home.”
“How long have you been back?” I ask.
“My ship docked a week ago, and I’ve been at the palace ever since.”
“Did you find an island of gold?” I arch my eyebrows to show him I am teasing, and he laughs.
“In a sense. We found thousands of people, black as night. We turned back only when we ran short of supplies and the men objected to eating nothing but the monkeys and snakes the natives brought us.”
We climb a staircase in the warren of tiny lanes above the square, to get to our street. “I have only a few weeks to stay in Sintra,” Diogo says. “It would be a pleasure to spend time with you.”
I look at him, dumbfounded. My father is standing on the step of our house waving Diogo inside. “Would you care to join us for dinner?” I ask, knowing what Papa is trying to say.
“I would be delighted,” Diogo says, taking my arm as we go into the house.
Papa enjoys the talk of sea over dinner, but it tires him, and when he goes off to his room to rest, Diogo and I are alone.
“How much you have changed in the years since I saw you on the beach at Sagres,” Diogo says with a tip of his chin so precise I think he may have practiced in a mirror. “You were just a little girl then.”
Is he flirting? The idea seems preposterous. Diogo is a dashing young commander, sure to be favored when Prince Afonso comes of age. He’ll get a share of the treasure he brings back and most likely a title and lands someday. I have scant beauty and no wealth. I don’t have the charm to assist a man in gaining favor at court, and I’m only suited to the quiet life I have now.
The Mapmaker's Daughter Page 9
