The Mapmaker's Daughter (12 page)

“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.

To avoid looking at him, I busy myself stacking the dishes, but when I glance in his direction, he is staring at me. Something about his look gives me a momentary chill, but I decide it’s just the deepening afternoon shadows obscuring his face. “Now that’s something else to like about you,” he says. “You’re dutiful. Look at how well you have cared for your father all these years.”

“As you said, it is my duty, and I should hardly be praised for it.”

“Amalia, look at me,” Diogo says, and I force myself to meet his eyes. “A man has a great deal of time to reflect when he’s at sea, and on this last voyage, I decided that the time has come for me to marry. It will help me rise at court, and I need someone to look after my interests when I’m away.”

“A man needs a wife,” I say, sounding dumb as an ox.

He doesn’t seem to hear. “You have a quick mind and I imagine you would be quite good at business.” He speaks as if he is checking a list. “You are quiet and gentle, and I want a peaceful home without conflict. And don’t you think it would be pleasant to be rich someday—perhaps tremendously so?”

Is he talking about marrying
me
?

“Amalia, if you are not opposed, I would like to ask your father for your hand.”

I feel disembodied, as if this day is happening to someone else and I am merely watching. “I—I can’t,” I sputter. “My father needs me and—” Attended now by palace servants, Papa wants to see me married before he dies, but he seems so frail and helpless, I can’t bear the thought of leaving him.

Diogo shrugs. “He could live with us, I suppose. I’ll be leaving in a few weeks, and you can tell me your decision when I come back if you prefer.”

I want to tell him I am speechless only because this is so unexpected, but he doesn’t seem eager for a reply. “Well,” he says, looking at the fading light outside. “I’m due at the tavern.” After he helps me to my feet, he touches my hand to his lips but does not take me in his arms or press me for a kiss. Perhaps, I think, a gentleman does not. I am no longer a silly girl expecting to be swept away by passion like the beauties in
Amadis
of
Gaul
.

“Send for me at the palace if you want me to pay a visit to your father.” Before I know it, I am staring at an open doorway wondering what just happened, as Diogo disappears down the street to meet his friends.

***

Terrible news from Sevilla pushes Diogo to the back of my mind. Two thousand people are dead of the bloody flux, among them Susana’s husband and baby. The convent where Luisa is now a postulant nun lost many sisters, but she was spared.

Susana is coming to Sintra with her six-year-old son Pablo and four-year-old daughter Ana Maria. Her letter is so cloying and full of self-pity I can barely read it, although Papa hangs on every word. I send word to Diogo that our house is in upheaval and I can’t answer him now, and for the next few weeks, I ride with heavy heart to Queluz on Saturdays, knowing that Susana will put her nose into my affairs when she arrives, and she won’t be fooled for a moment why I make these trips.

I picture retorting that my life is none of her business, that I’ve gotten along fine without her and won’t let her tell me what to do now, but I feel myself growing smaller, as if I already know I won’t be able to stand up to her abrasive ways. Maybe she’s changed, I tell myself, but I can’t imagine it.

I have bigger problems than Susana’s visit. When I look at my father huddled under a blanket even on warm days, the bones of his skull under his papery skin, I know that his body cannot support life much longer. After he is gone, I don’t know what I will do, since our house belongs to the crown and was provided in honor of his service, not mine. What then? Return with Susana and be under her command in her own home? I would have no place else to go. Our house was sold when we left, and the proceeds used to maintain Luisa in the convent. I don’t see any way out of marriage, but I am facing the prospect not with the honor of being chosen by a handsome and successful man, but with dread I can’t quite explain.

“How serious a Christian is this man?” Judah asks as we sit discussing my dilemma in his courtyard one Shabbat afternoon.

“He takes communion every week,” I say, “but he doesn’t seem to care.” Diogo’s conversation is never pious before or after church, and he is a step behind others in crossing himself, as if he has been thinking about something else. It doesn’t seem to bother him that I don’t go to confession and thus can’t take communion, since he probably would have said something if he thought I was endangering my immortal soul.

“I suppose I might be safe with him,” I say to Judah. “And he’s gone a lot.”

Judah frowns. “Men have ways of watching even when they’re not around. I must tell you, if he forbids you to come here, I would have to go along. A Christian commander bringing back treasure to Portugal would not be the one sent away if there were disharmony at court. After all, regardless of how friendly things may appear, deep down most Christians think even one Jew is too many.”