‘I am a drummer girl,’ declared I.
‘A drummer girl?’ Señor Gonzalez turned to his lady.
‘Sofia es una tamborilera.’ Doña Marisa fanned herself, her graceful movements enchanting everyone.
We learnt that the Lapwing, the packet to London, would sail on the morrow if the winds veered round, and our new Spanish friends would be gone with it. Doña Marisa explained that they came from the land of Seville, having travelled a great distance to find a special someone in Scarborough, and that their destination was now la luna – the moon! As we walked out on the sands behind them, Pico revealed a secret to me that he would serve as foot-boy to Señor Gonzalez and that he would sail away with them. He, Pico Robinson, was wild for adventure.
‘Yer a namby-pamby girl an’ canna goo wi’ us,’ taunted he.
I wished for adventure on the moon as much as he. ‘I bet a ha’penny I can.’ I stuck out my tongue at him.
‘Done!’ cried he.
I ran up beside the noble lady. ‘Doña Marisa, please may I be your foot-boy?’
‘Sí, I wish for you to be my foot-boy.’ Doña Marisa smiled at me prettily, her eyes as bright as emeralds.
‘Truly?’ I bounced on my toes in excitement.
‘Very much so. Hmm…Perhaps I should cut your hair tomorrow, so no one will know you are una niña.’ She smoothed my tangled hair with her hand.
‘Doña Marisa, may I bring my drum and tight rope?’
‘A tight rope? Por qué?’
‘I’m a rope dancer.’ Methinks my explanation diverted Doña Marisa, who gave a hearty laugh and patted my cheek.
That evening, I dreamt again of the mysterious bolero dancer who had given birth to me. In my dream this time, she appeared as a friendly senhora dressed in a black velvet jacket, red sash and white silk skirt. She placed me as a bebê in the roda – the foundling turnbox wheel at the convent. ‘Adeus, my child,’ whispered she, patting my cheek. She took her leave, her castanets strongly marking the rhythm as she walked away, when she came to a sudden stop, her arms raised in a graceful attitude. ‘Olé!’ cried she, and she beckoned me with her pretty smile and bright emerald eyes. When I awoke the next morning, my secret wish to know who she was – a secret that I hid inside of my heart out of fear of my papai’s wrath – now overwhelmed me for some reason.
Come mid-day mamãe told us that she was going to chapel for choir practise and that we should obey my papai. Pico and I shared a look, and once mamãe took her leave, we rushed upstairs to fetch our bundle of things and to dress ourselves – I, of course, in my boyish clothes and red capa. I left a note that Pico and I would fly up to the moon on gansas and that I wished for papai to come and get me there. Finding no one about, I sneaked into papai’s study to locate my drum. Where could it be? Apre! Hey day! The drum sat on papai’s desk as if it had been expecting me.
I met my fellow runaway out in the garden where I looked for my tight rope. But I had forgotten that one end of the rope was tied to our Scots pine. There, sitting in the shade with his eyes closed, papai leant against the pine, his mind travelling on some great highway of deep thought, as he was wont to say. Pico shook his head in bewilderment. ‘I’ve niver seed a man who likes a tree that much or even thinks that much,’ whispered he.
And so, without further ado, we connivers scurried down to the pier where Señor Gonzalez awaited us in a coble, the afternoon tide having begun to rise. ‘Adeus, Scarborough!’ cried I, my heart brimful of emotion as we were rowed out to sea. Once aboard the Lapwing, Señor Gonzalez led me to Doña Marisa’s windowless fore-cabin where I would serve as her foot-boy.
Doña Marisa’s sweet fragrance of blossoming myrtle filled the interior of the tiny cabin, reminding me of my homeland far away. While she hummed a Portuguese modinha or love song, she brushed my hair, dividing it into five locks, ere she tied each lock with gold thread. I closed my eyes while she snipped each lock, and when she had done, I glanced at the strange boy in the looking-glass.
‘My papai will be angry with me.’ I began to sniffle. ‘He will take away my drum for ever.’
‘No te preocupes. You needn’t worry. Mira!’ Doña Marisa held up a letter. ‘I have already written to your father to explain everything.’ She enclosed a lock of my hair ere she sealed the letter.
‘Doña Marisa, are we going to la luna now?’
She became thoughtful. ‘Sí, la luna. We shall go to the world in the moon.’
This piece of news cheered me, knowing I would see the moon at last. ‘My papai will like it there. No one is sad or sick or angry on the moon.’
Doña Marisa’s brow clouded. ‘You believe that your father shall come for you?’
I nodded at her, knowing papai would read my note. And when he came for me on the moon in eleven days – because that’s how long it took Domingo Gonsales to get there – I would make my demands, and believe you me, I had quite a few of them.
‘Sí, cómo no. He will meet us there.’ Doña Marisa half-smiled at me. ‘Until then, we shall have many magical adventures together.’
We up anchored and set sail on the beauteous blue of the North Sea. I waited on deck for the gigantic gansas to fly us to the moon, but the gansas never did come for us. Perhaps the gansas wished for my papai to join us so that we could travel together to the moon? Once there, papai would surely be cured of his sadness and whatever else ailed him. But as the days passed, I began to wonder if papai was lost again.
Chapter Six
The Magic Oranges
MY FIRST WATERZOOI, thinks I, was in Rotterdam, where we sojourned for a sennight while Doña Marisa took to her bed. My lady, or minha Senhora, which is how I sometimes addressed her in Portuguese, became terribly ill of a sudden. She blamed it on the insufferable heat and on the foul odours that arose from the canals. One day, she began to feel better. ‘Tengo hambre,’ said she. And so I, being a good foot-boy, hastened to fetch her a bowl of waterzooi, a fish and vegetable stew made with egg yolk, cream and broth. She pushed me away, grumbling about the disgusting fish odour, and thereafter buried her head half-way into a pot. ‘Tonta!’ her maid chided me, and she thrust the stinking pot into my hands.
Señor Gonzalez believed that his lady’s mysterious illness began in London, where she bought livery for me and Pico, and that her condition worsened in Harwich, where we sat idle, waiting on the winds for five days. When the winds finally veered round, Captain Bridge, the commander of the Prince of Orange, led us in prayer, as was his custom, and only then did he give the signal to weigh anchor and to unfurl the sails. We were nearly three days out at sea in what became a miserable North Sea crossing for us passengers on a crowded packet-boat.
There, becalmed at sea, we floated in murky waters. I waited on deck under a cheerless sky, praying that the gansas would take us to the moon. But the gansas never came, nor did my papai. Things being so, I worried anew. I wished to speak with Doña Marisa concerning our voyage to the moon, but she refused to leave her cabin, except for an airing once or twice on the arm of her cortejo, Señor Gonzalez. Whenever I approached them, he would wave me away; hence, I sat on deck, wearing a gloomy face.
‘There’s them Spaniards,’ Pico half-whispered to me. ‘A pair o’ landlubbers they are.’
‘What’s a landlubber?’ asked I in my disagreeable mood.
‘It’s a looby who doesna like the sea, yer looby.’ Pico pinched me.
‘Yow!’ I rubbed my arm, scowling at my cousin.
Pico proclaimed it a grand voyage, heedless of my misery. He befriended the Chief Mate, who told him many a brilliant story about Captain Bridge’s derring-do’s during the war, including the time the Captain attempted a dangerous landing amidst ice floes.
‘The Prince of Orange shot the ice, and close to Cuxhaven pier it got, but it grounded on a sandbank, and the ice floes threatened to capsize it,’ recounted the Chief Mate. ‘We would have perished at sea if it had.’
‘Gad zookers,’ exclaimed Pico. ‘What happened next?�
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‘There was nothing for it but to pray the Prince of Orange hadn’t suffered damage. Once the tide ebbed, the Captain delivered the mail and collected the war despatches at Cuxhaven,’ recalled the Chief Mate. ‘Thereafter, we returned home, where the London papers called him a hero because everyone was desperate for news of the war.’
‘Huzzah! Captain Bridge for ever.’ Pico’s broad grin diverted the Chief Mate.
That evening, I stood on deck, gazing at a big orange moon near the horizon.
‘How many moons are there?’ wondered I aloud, for I had seen the moon wear different colours – grey, blue, red, yellow, orange.
‘There’s many a kind of moon,’ the husky voice of Captain Bridge interrupted my musings. ‘Crescent moon, half-moon, full moon, gibbous moon, new moon – oh, and waxing or waning some are.’
‘Are they different colours, Captain?’
‘Oh, ay!’ He winked at me.
In my mind the earth had all sorts of moons circling round at different times. But only one appeared each night, they each of them taking turns, or perhaps they stood watch at different times? I wondered which moon Domingo Gonsales had visited.
That night, I had trouble sleeping. Where, oh, where could those gansas be? Ai de mim! Having given up my hope to fly on a gansa, I determined that we must fly on our own to a moon. I closed my eyes to summon up my magical powers. A rush of wind swept me higher and higher and higher, but I dared not open my eyes or the magic would end. On a sudden, the flapping of a great many wings drew near, and I landed with a thud on a mound of soft feathers. I leant on the gansa’s neck and wearily so, relieved that the gansas had come for us at last and we would reach a moon. And there, wrapped up in the warmth of my gansa, I dozed peacefully for the remainder of our flight.
‘Wake up! Land ho!’ Pico shook me.
I found myself sitting on a dock. I rubbed my sleepy eyes, wondering if our gansas had, indeed, taken us to a moon.
The tide having been favourable, we tacked up the reddish waters of a river to reach Helvoetsluys, where lived town-dwellers called Dutch. Doña Marisa pressed a lace handkerchief to her nose – ‘qué mal olor’ – and she declared this place unhealthful, for the canals here stank during the summer. The foul odour did not signify much to me. Why, everyone knows a moon stinks of cheese. I raced with Pico down the path to explore the small merchant-town with its clean streets, its gabled houses with peculiar mirrors hanging near the windows and its curious, round people – the men dressed in bulky breeches, long coats and three-cornered hats, the women dressed in short petticoats shaped in the form of diving-bells, and lined, straw hats that resembled small umbrellas.
‘Pah! The men smoke on the streets, just like the moon men who smoked ivrywhere,’ observed Pico.
‘Look! Look!’ I pointed. ‘A moon boy is smoking a pipe.’
‘Ivrybody smokes, ’cept the namby-pamby girls.’ Pico snickered.
‘Fie! I can smoke. I’m a foot-boy,’ replied I.
‘Yer still a girl, an’ yer canna smoke,’ rejoined he.
We continued on our way, mindful of the Dutch labourers driving wagons and sledges. I thought it strange to see work horses treated with such kindness, for they each of them walked with a lively step. But the strangest thing to me was that no one begged on the streets. And none of the poor children walked about shoeless or one-shoe’d like the children I had seen in York. Here, the children wore wooden clogs shaped like little canoes. No misery. No poverty. No cruelty to animals. The Dutch must surely belong to the race of moon-folk; at least I thought so.
At the entrance of Hobson’s, an inn frequented by English, I came upon an elderly Dutch man serenading his horse between puffs of his pipe. ‘T sijn de starren (puff), Neen mijn lief (puff) wilt noch wat marren.’
‘Viva!’ I greeted him, wondering what he had sung in his musical moon language.
‘Goedemorgen,’ returned he, as he fed the horse a slice of ‘brood’. As a token of friendship, he gave me a slice of brood, which I thanked him for, and he taught me how to say ‘danke je’.
I peered at the old man. ‘Are you the man on the moon?’
‘De maan (puff, puff)?’
‘De moon?’ I tilted my head to one side.
‘De maan. Ja (puff).’ He resumed his serenade, ‘T is de maan…’
Oh que gosto! What joy! I had reached a moon paradise. And so I congratulated myself on having spoken with my first moon man and eaten my first moon bread. Later, after I had breakfasted on my first moon eggs at the inn, Señor Gonzalez, with Captain Bridge by his side, summoned Pico.
‘Gracias for your service as foot-boy,’ Señor Gonzalez placed his hand on Pico’s shoulder. ‘However, I can no longer employ you. You must return home with Captain Bridge.’
Pico groaned in misery. With a grip like iron, the Captain led Pico away, unmoved by my cousin’s pleas and angry complaints. Oh, to be rid of my tormentor at last. I own that this piece of news made me happy at first. There, on the wharf, sat poor Pico dressed in his black and orange striped livery and cocked hat, soon to be exiled in his own country, while I, Sofia-Elisabete, a true explorer, would seek adventure on a moon.
‘Adeus, Pico!’ I waved my cap at him.
Doña Marisa sighed. ‘Pobrecito.’
‘We still have your foot-boy, mi amor.’ Señor Gonzalez gave her a secretive smile.
We embarked on board a trekschuit, a moon barge towed by a horse at a small trot. Riding astride the horse was a moon lad – the luckiest lad here on this moon – who got to blow a horn whenever he needed to signal for the raising of draw-bridges or to warn of passing barges on the canal. The moon land beyond as far as I could see appeared flat with no hills in sight. Here and there a spinning windmill or a farm-house with green shutters dotted the flat landscape. And everywhere I looked, the trees were laden with apples in the most brilliant hues of green and red. No wonder the moon-folk did not starve; for, they could eat as many apples as they wished.
The weather being fine, as it always is on a moon, the three of us – Doña Marisa, Señor Gonzalez and I – sat on a bench near the stern instead of inside the roef, the main cabin, where the moon men smoked their pipes, their constant companions. Señor Gonzalez, being the dutiful cortejo, shaded his lady with her parasol, while I, being the dutiful foot-boy, fanned her whenever she required a breeze. ‘Tengo hambre,’ said our lady, and so her dutiful cortejo sliced up a big red apple for her to eat.
‘The Dutch have the sweetest apples on earth, but there’s nothing sweeter than a Valencia orange,’ Señor Gonzalez spoke with pride.
‘Ah, but nothing can compare to a magic orange,’ returned she.
My eyes widened with wonder. ‘A magic orange?’
‘Ah, sí. There once lived a wealthy man named Senhor Soares,’ Doña Marisa began. ‘He owned a quinta, a large country house, which was surrounded by a thousand orange trees. Harvest after harvest, his laranjeiras produced the best, the sweetest, the juiciest oranges in all of Portugal. He bragged to everyone that the nectar of a Soares orange was as sweet as a spoonful of wild honey that melted on your tongue and dissolved into your heart.’
I wrinkled my brow. ‘My oranges never tasted like honey.’
‘An orange is not an orange unless it comes from Valencia,’ claimed Señor Gonzalez.
Doña Marisa nodded her agreement, and she continued her story. ‘There was only one thing that Senhor Soares, a widower, treasured above his precious oranges, and that was his beloved daughter, a lindissima named Jacinta, who wore orange blossoms in her long black hair, which she plaited and coiled high atop her head.’
‘Did her mamãe love her?’ wondered I.
Doña Marisa shook her head. ‘She died shortly after Jacinta was born. One day, a handsome Spanish nobleman named Don Luis de Luna arrived at the quinta. He had journeyed from Cádiz to inspect Senhor Soares’s laranjeiras, because no Spaniard could believe that the Soares orange could best a Valencian orange. Don Luis became en
chanted with Jacinta, and they secretly met one evening under their trysting tree, one of the orange trees in the Soares grove. He tantalised Jacinta with an orange that he held in his hand, heedless of her admonition that “an orange is gold in the morning, silver at noon, and lead at night”.’
This confused me. ‘Why is the orange gold?’
‘An orange tastes best in the morning, and, as such, it is better for your health and digestion to eat it then,’ Señor Gonzalez told me. ‘Whereas noon-time is the second-best time of the day to eat an orange. But one should never eat an orange late at night when it could harm your health.’
I scratched my head. ‘Why did Jacinta wish to hurt her belly then?’
Doña Marisa sighed. ‘Jacinta was in love with Don Luis. So she peeled the orange, and when she divided the segments in half for them to eat, she found nestled inside a brilliant and rare orange diamond worth many, many gold escudos. Qué maravilla! In exchange for this exquisite diamond, Don Luis gave her an ancient key, telling her it was the key to his heart.’ Doña Marisa clasped her hands as if in prayer, her gaze heavenward, her lips curved up in a blissful smile. How silly she looked.
I wondered at her fascination with this thing called a diamond and a really old rusty key. ‘Did the diamond make the orange taste bad?’
‘Ay, Dios mío!’ Doña Marisa frowned, and she pressed her handkerchief to her forehead.
‘Foot-boy, have you ever seen an orange diamond?’ inquired Señor Gonzalez.
When I shrugged at him, Doña Marisa proudly showed me her ring, in the centre of which sparkled an orange diamond, the colour of fire.
‘Did you find it inside an orange?’ I asked her.
Señor Gonzalez chuckled, but he abruptly stopped when Doña Marisa gave him the evil eye for whatever reason. It was then that I noticed a diamond ring on Señor Gonzalez’s finger.
‘Señor Gonzalez, was your diamond inside an orange?’
He grunted. ‘Dios mío! I had to peel many an orange for a lady to get this diamond.’
I, Sofia-Elisabete, Love Child of Colonel Fitzwilliam Page 7
