The Portuguese Affair

by Ann Swinfen

  Chapter Eleven

  Coimbra, Portugal, 1582

  The auto-da-fè took place at the end of November. By then Francesca had been taken away and we never saw her again. My mother had been put to the question six or seven times before they were satisfied that she was a penitent. We were dressed, my mother and I, in long yellow robes with a black transverse cross, the sambenito, and each given a lighted taper to carry. This is the dress which is appointed for penitents. I knew now that my mother and I would be allowed to live, for the moment at least, whatever pain and abasement still lay in store for us. They put a kind of mitre on our heads and led us out of the cell and up some stairs into the blinding light of dawn. I had managed to hide inside my breeches the purse with our few bits of jewellery in it. After so many weeks in the darkness of our underground prison, my eyes could hardly bear the light.

  I had not been put to the question. I knew that children as young as ten had been tortured and I can only suppose that my mother saved me from it by surrendering her body. By the time we joined the procession to the auto-da-fè she knew she was with child. After the torture and the repeated rapes, she could barely walk. I tried to help her, but was struck aside by one of the officials.

  The ceremony went on from early morning until evening, and all the while we stood under a relentless sun in the great central square where the ceremony took place. There must have been at least two hundred of us, and several thousand citizens seated on banks of benches all around, eagerly watching the spectacle. As the penitents were assembled together before the rostrum where the Inquisitor General and his officials were sitting in their magnificent robes, I caught sight of my father. Like us he was wearing the sambenito; once I would have cried aloud with relief, but lately I had learned much. I pressed my lips together and bit down on them to keep myself silent. His confession had been accepted. If he had been sentenced to be burned, he would have been wearing a robe painted with devils dragging heretics down to Hell. There were perhaps thirty of these, men and women sentenced to be ‘relaxed’ – a strange term, loaded with irony – that is, handed over to the civil authority, because the ecclesiastical authority was not permitted to carry out the sentence of death. It was decreed that the death of the condemned heretics must be accomplished without effusion of blood, so the victims would be burned alive. No blood would be spilled.

  But my father, thank God, was not amongst the relaxed. As confessed penitents we would all be severely punished, my mother, my father and myself. All our property would be confiscated. My father would never again be allowed to practice medicine or work in a university. We would suffer some humiliating penance. But we were alive. At the time it seemed to me that was all that mattered.

  Then the burning began. I dream of it still. The screaming. The smell. Dear God, the smell. And the greasy fragments flying through the air, like a shoal of tiny fish swimming in the smoke, and settling on our hair, our clothes, lying on our tongues with the taste of defilement, filling our lungs with the ashes of our countrymen.

  As the cold November dusk set in and the formal ceremony of the auto-da-fè came to an end, we were escorted to another prison, a large chamber with windows high up in the walls. About fifty of us were confined to this one room, and we were told that our penance would be carried out the next day. We were to be stripped to the waist and paraded through the streets of Coimbra while we were scourged, as a warning to the populace. My father worked his way across the room as discreetly as he could and stood quietly beside us. He touched our hands briefly, but we did not embrace, for any sign of affection would have caught the attention of the two guards by the door. If he was surprised by my hair, hacked short and caked with filth, and my boy’s clothes, he gave no indication.

  ‘Christoval is well, Baltasar,’ my mother whispered, laying a slight emphasis on my new name. ‘Your son has shown himself brave and patient in all we have endured.’

  I coloured with shame. I had endured nothing in comparison with her. Soon she would have to tell my father that she had been raped, but it was not my place to do so. I did lean close to him and whisper, ‘Mother was tortured, Father, the strapado and the half drowning. She has suffered. You also?’

  As we had walked from the auto-da-fè to our new prison I had noticed how he limped, setting each foot down as though he walked on hot coals. He nodded, and gave my hand a squeeze.

  ‘I too had the strapado and the water, and also the burning of the feet. But they will heal, they will heal. They will let us go after the scourging and I will be able to salve them.’

  ‘They will not let us go home, Father,’ I said. My voice caught in a sob which I could not suppress. ‘All our goods, all your books and instruments and medicines, everything will be taken away or destroyed.’

  ‘We have friends,’ he said gently. ‘We must go to them secretly, but they will help. I think we will leave the country, go perhaps to Antwerp.’

  We dared not talk any more, for we were attracting the notice of the guards.

  The next morning they formed us up into a procession not far from my father’s university, outside the Cathedral of Coimbra, the Sé de Coimbra, which has the appearance more of a fortress than a church. With the sleet-laden wind howling down from the north it made a grim backdrop to our shame. They forced us to strip to the waist. Then began the longest walk of my life. We went barefoot, stumbling over the wet cobbles, along the main streets of Coimbra, up and down the ancient alleyways, our feet cut and bruised by the stones, retracing our steps to the cathedral and starting off in a new direction. The whips they used to scourge us had several thongs of thin leather, and at intervals along these thongs were sewn small pieces of broken bone as sharp as knives. The men who carried out the work were skilled at it; the lashes fell on the back with a harsh crack and then were drawn slowly downwards, so that the splinters of bone gouged the skin like a plough breaking the earth. Then the lash was whipped back behind the scourger’s head, the better to swing it down again with greater force.

  At the first lash I screamed with pain. I could not stop myself. My father had set his jaw tight as locked box and would not cry out. My mother, who was staggering as if she were sleep-walking, began a dreadful low moaning which went on and on, as monotonous as a dying animal, for the whole of that dreadful parade. I thought, at the first blow, that I could never experience worse pain, but that was a foolish thought. As my back became one bloody mess of torn flesh, the scourge could not find any new areas of skin – and the men were conscientious in seeking it out. Again and again the leather and bone scored deeper into flesh already broken and bleeding. After several hours, a kind of insensibility set in. I was nothing but a scalding fire of pain, so that I stumbled along in a trance. It came to an end at last. We were driven into the cathedral and made to kneel, which we did thankfully, for we could barely stand, and we were led by a priest in prayers of penitence and thanksgiving.

  I felt the world swimming around me and barely stopped myself from sprawling on the floor, but I knew I must not be taken up unconscious, for I feared that if they discovered I had concealed my sex they would punish me even more. I concentrated my gaze on a chipped paving stone, trying to trace patterns in it. Why did the Inquisition stipulate so precisely that blood must not be drawn from those who were to die, yet all day they had drawn blood in rivers from the penitents? Was this some privilege to be enjoyed only by those accepted as Christian? My upbringing and religious teaching had been a mixture of old Jewish and New Christian doctrine. We attended both church and secret synagogue. From what I had been taught of the kindness and humanity of Jesus, I could not comprehend the practices of the Inquisitors. Did it make one a good Christian, truly faithful, to suffer as we had suffered?

  After that interminable service, shuddering from pain and shock, we were given back our upper garments, and turned out into the night, where a cold wind from the ocean was carrying more sleet inland. I screamed again when the rough cloth touched my back, but my father took my hand, he
ld my mother up by the arm, and hurried us away. All around us, the other penitents were slipped aside down dark alleys, eager to melt into anonymity. We staggered along as best we could, until we came to a small door in a high wall that I recognised as the garden door of a house belonging to one of my father’s Christian colleagues from the university.

  The rest of that night is confused. We were given a place to sleep above the stables, in case it was not safe to come into the house. Our backs were salved by Dr Soiero, another New Christian professor of medicine who had not been taken up for questioning, but had gone into hiding. My mother seemed barely conscious and could not eat, but I managed a little broth, then lay on my face, unable to sleep for the burning pain, while the men talked far into the night. They spoke of some fishing village, and a ship due out from Porto to London, but my mind was too blurred to understand their talk.

  The next morning the owner of the house, Dr Gomez, came out to the stables. He brought a bundle for my father, some of his precious medical texts which he had bribed a guard at our house to give him, and my father’s satchel of medicines.

  ‘Just before the city gates shut at dusk tonight,’ he said, ‘a fisherman will bring his cart round to the alley and you must hide under the empty baskets. He will take you down to Ilhavo, where his brother will smuggle you on to his fishing boat. On the third day from now, when he is well out at sea, he will meet the Santa Maria, sailing from Porto, which will take you on board. It belongs to Dr Hector Nuñez, one of the leaders of the Portuguese community in London. Once away from Portugal you will be safe.’

  My father looked uncomfortable. ‘They have taken everything we have. I have no means of paying for our passage, Dr Gomez.’

  The other man shook his head. ‘Dr Nuñez will expect nothing. He has often helped others fleeing from persecution, and when you reach London he will help you. I will find something to pay the fishermen for the risks they take.’

  I whispered in my father’s ear that I still had one of my gold ear-rings, if he wanted it for the fishermen. I did not want to see him shamed, like a beggar. He nodded and told Dr Gomez that we would give the gold ear-ring as payment to the fishermen for their help.

  ‘That is all arranged, then. The three of you, and Dr Soiero here, will be safe at sea three days from now.’

  ‘But what of Isabel and Felipe!’ I cried. ‘We cannot leave them behind!’

  Dr Gomez and my father looked at me.

  ‘We have talked of this already . . . Christoval,’ my father said. ‘Our friend is riding up to your grandfather’s house today to fetch them. They will meet us at Ilhavo in two days’ time.’

  The plan, which was so simple that we might have been detected at any moment, succeeded perhaps by its very simplicity. My parents, Dr Soiero and I made the night journey buried in a stinking nest of fishnets and osier baskets, jolting over small country roads in the rough cart the fisherman used to bring his catch to the market in Coimbra. My father was rapidly recovering, and benefited from not having to walk while his bandaged feet began to heal. My mother, now she no longer had to remain strong to protect me, had lapsed into a lethargic silence. She ate and drank little, and when we spoke to her she seemed to come back from somewhere far away inside her head.

  When we reached Ilhavo we climbed aboard the fishing boat, which was larger than most of the other boats in the village. Though still the traditional shape, like a peasecod, it had a rough cabin amidships, and the fisherman, whose name I never learned, told us that he regularly ventured further out to sea than his fellows, so it would not arouse suspicion when we sailed out to meet the Santa Maria. Until she put to sea, the boat was kept dragged up above the high water mark on the beach, and we hid in the cabin.

  We waited for Dr Gomez to come, and when at last he did, on the evening of the third day, the fisherman was growing anxious about leaving. He came alone.

  ‘Where are the children?’ cried my mother. It was the first time she had spoken voluntarily since we had left Coimbra.

  Dr Gomez sat down on a heap of nets in the bottom of the boat and put his head in his hands.

  ‘I went to your father’s house, Senhora,’ he said, ‘but there were none but servants there. ‘Three weeks ago, the Inquisition came for your mother. They would probably have taken your father too, were he not such a power in his own terra. He has gone now to Lisbon, to try to buy her release from the governor.’

  He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. His face was lined with exhaustion, and I could see that he did not want to go on.

  ‘Before he left, your father placed his two grandchildren with an Old Christian family, tenants of his, in the next valley, beyond the forest. The da Rocas. Do you know them?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said my father. ‘They are poor, but good people. He thought they would be safer there?’

  ‘Yes. So I rode on there. I found . . . ’ he looked at my mother, then bent his head and fixed his eyes on the nets beneath his feet. ‘I found that all the family had become ill with the bloody flux. Your son . . . your son Felipe died last week.’

  My mother cried out, then stuffed her fist in her mouth, biting on her knuckles to mask any further sound, rocking herself back and forth as the mad Francesca had done.

  ‘My daughter?’ said my father, choking on his words. ‘Little Isabel?’

  ‘She is very ill, though they think she will recover. At the moment, though, she is far too ill to travel.’

  A moan escaped from my mother, and I put my arm around her to try to comfort her. She pulled away, curling herself up like an injured animal.

  Surely we could not leave the country with Isabel still here? The Inquisition would track her down, and she would have to endure imprisonment and torture alone, knowing we had deserted her. I tugged at my father’s sleeve.

  ‘We must go back for Isabel,’ I begged. ‘We cannot leave her behind!’

  His face was bleak and he seemed hardly to hear. Then he turned towards me.

  ‘We cannot risk all these other lives, Caterina,’ he said, forgetting to use my new name. ‘Your grandfather will care for her.’

  I sank back amongst the stinking nets and covered my face with my hands. Behind the darkness of my closed lids I seemed to see Isabel’s eyes, pleading with me.

  Within half an hour, a yoke of oxen had dragged the fishing boat down the beach to the sea, while we remained hidden in the tiny cabin, and we set sail, leaving Dr Gomez in Ilhavo. The fisherman set a course heading north and slightly west, where we hoped to cross the path of the Santa Maria. The boat, which had seemed large amongst its fellows, seemed no bigger than a mussel shell on the vast grey waves of the Atlantic, waves which threw us about like a piece of driftwood, rising up above our heads as if they would crash down on the boat and punch it to the bottom of the ocean. It was growing very dark. The fisherman said we would have to light a lantern once we could make out the ship, or she would pass us by, or even run us down. I clung to the side of the boat, terrified by the immense ocean. I had never been to sea before, and all I could think of was the depth of violent grey water beneath, with nothing between us and drowning but the thin planking of the boat.

  It seemed like a lifetime later, for my fear stretched the time out, yet it cannot have been more than a few hours, when the fisherman called out to us that he could see the ship. I could see nothing, but I had been sitting with my eyes screwed shut and my stomach heaving, so my night sight was poor. My father was trying to help with the boat, while my mother and Dr Soiero sat like helpless puppets, so I was told to light the lantern and climb to the front of the boat, where I was to show it and cover it three times, then pause and show it again. I did as I was told, wondering how so feeble a light could possibly be seen on this heaving monster of an ocean, an ocean which surely stretched to the end of the world.

  Yet it must have been seen. After a while, even I could make out the ship, looming up against the stars, as some of the cloud began to clear. There were lanterns hung fore and
aft, lights shining from her cabin windows in the forecastle and sterncastle, and sailors taking in the sails. The ship hove to – a manoeuvre I was to understand later – and the sailors threw a kind of giant net over the side, with meshes about a foot across. We were to climb this, from our little boat, in the heaving sea, up the side of that huge ship that soared above us like the tower of the university in Coimbra. Before we left the boat, I handed the ear-ring to my father, who gave it to the fisherman, and embraced him in gratitude. They sent me up the side of the ship first – I think because they did not want me to watch, in case my mother fell and was drowned. I do not know to this day how Dr Soiero and my father got her up that net ladder. All I know is that she tumbled over the side of the ship and lay on the deck as though she were already dead. And the two men followed her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Portugal, 1589

  It took me two days of hard riding before I neared Coimbra. Despite my need for haste, I did not dare to use post horses, even if any were to be had in this under-peopled part of the country. Besides, I needed to keep my identity and my purpose secret. My army horse was young and strong, but I must not overtax him, so I rode fast but circumspectly. There might come a moment when I would need to ride for my life, but I feared he would not have the same outstanding gift for speed as Hector, the beloved, ugly piebald I often rode from Walsingham’s stables.

  As for myself, I hoped that I looked like a nondescript government messenger, or some nobleman’s servitor – not rich enough to be worth waylaying, but with the possible attendant risk of punishment for any assailant who might try to attack me. I wore no weapons but my light sword and my dagger. If it came to a fight, I had little hope of defending myself despite my training in swordplay at the Tower by Master Scannard. I could handle a sword now, but I had no experience of using one in anger. Beside, I had had no practice since we had left England, and I knew that my wrist was nowhere near as strong as a man’s. My sprained ankle was nearly sound again, though I would hesitate to put too much reliance on it. The burn on my shoulder had healed over with thin, pinkish, delicate skin.