The Mapmaker's Daughter (16 page)

I feel sick to my stomach and rush upstairs. Diogo’s guests must have left right after the boy, for the house is suddenly quiet. When he comes to stand by my bed, I turn away from him.

“I’m sorry you saw that,” he says.

“I am too.” I pull the coverlet from under me with a violent yank and throw it over myself like a rampart.

“I don’t want to—to fail you as I have.” I hear what sounds like trembling in his voice. “It’s just that I—that men are—” He doesn’t try to go on.

“Men?” I sit up to look at him. “You call that boy desperate for a little money a man?”

“My friends are the ones who do those things. I only watch.”

“Well, that makes everything much better,” I hiss. I don’t know whether to believe him, and I’m not sure I care.

“I made a baby, didn’t I? That’s all you really wanted.” The momentary vulnerability in his eyes disappears as they narrow to slits. “At least I’m fairly certain it’s mine.”

I gasp at the callousness with which he insults me to turn the subject away from himself. “I waited night after night for you!” Spittle flies as my anger boils over. “For what little you have offered!”

He steps back. “My goodness,” he says. “The bitch can bite.”

I get up out of bed and put on my robe. “If you don’t leave my room this minute, I will be gone from this house tomorrow—”

Suddenly I feel as if my body has been pierced by a sword. The pain is so great I crumple to the floor. I feel a flood of warmth between my legs as Diogo calls for Catellina to come to me. The pain subsides and I pant for breath. Then it is upon me again. For hours, I writhe on the bed, trying at the same time to hold the baby in and force it to come, to end a pain so intense I am sure it will kill me.

I try to remember all the invocations to keep the Evil Eye away, and I scream them again and again. Then, with such surprising ease it seems little more than an afterthought, a slippery package comes out between my legs. It’s a bloody and impossibly small baby inside a pale caul. It never takes a breath.

***

Catellina is busying herself in my room when I open my eyes to the morning light. I lie on fresh sheets, but the smell of blood still rises from the bed. “Where is my baby?” I ask.

Her brow is furrowed as she rushes to me. “They’ve taken him away to—” She sees my stricken face. “Your husband thought it best to bury him quickly. Lord have mercy and take him to heaven, even though the baptism wasn’t in time.”

I lean back against the pillows, staring blankly at the ceiling.

A boy.

Baptized.

Buried.

I haven’t done what I could to enter him into our covenant, even if it was no more than the pin prick my mother had given Abraham. My firstborn child, torn from my body, is even more lost than I am. I put my hands over my face and weep.

***

Diogo sails for Africa the next day, and I remain in Lagos only until I stop bleeding. In our grief, we speak no more of the argument we had been having when the baby came, and I never tell him I cannot bear to stay in the house where I experienced such a night. I remember nothing of my agonizing journey back to Lisbon with Catellina, and once there, I sleep for days to gather my strength.

The Evil Eye has felled me. It sought me out in a comfortable house at Lagos with an admired and successful husband and a baby on the way, and it laid me low. How else could I explain why in a few months, a place that seemed so inviting became a nightmare of sweating slaves, predatory men, and my own dead child? I will never return to Lagos. Whatever Diogo wants from a wife, he will have to come to Lisbon to get it.

10

LISBON 1446

When Diogo returns and finds me gone, he comes straight to Lisbon. I am ready to counter his recriminations with my own, but to my surprise he is contrite. He wants me to know that I haven’t done anything to drive him toward men, and that he has never been more successful with whores in the taverns than he has been with me.

He tells me that what I saw that night was part of life at sea, one of the many uses of a cabin boy. Men seek outlets for their lust when there are no women around, and I shouldn’t be surprised that some of them choose boys even when they are on land.

Diogo thinks that my knowing this behavior is widespread should be enough to brush aside my disgust, but his shrugs of explanation only deepen it. Still, he is right that I don’t know much about the world. Perhaps all wives have wounds and astonishments they keep to themselves.

I think of Judah and Simona and grieve that the thousand invisible threads that link them, the loving secrets they convey with their eyes, will not be mine. Diogo and I are linked too, by silent anger and loathing, although I seem to be the only one hurting. I feel as if I am made of lead, and only at Queluz is my spirit light enough to smile.

Diogo will be in Lisbon two months. He and Lançarote de Freitas will resume their rivalry in the spring because Prince Henry does not want to run the risk of ships being lost at sea in harsh weather. My husband’s contrition is only for having upset me, and though he promises not to bring boys into his library to entertain his friends, he tells me what he does away from home is not my business.

Because we want a child, he uses his hand to prepare, but I ask him to do it in his room. Hearing his breath quicken sends chills through me because of what he might be picturing. Still, I welcome his visits, because we are partners in a conspiracy, and it is the only way I feel close to him. We are going to make a baby, and no one has to know how we did it.

We keep an uneasy peace until I mention Judah over dinner. Diogo frowns. “Why do you know so much about his family?” he demands. I tell him I go there from time to time, and that I hope our children will bring us as much pleasure as Judah and Simona’s have them.

“Jews?” Diogo arches his eyebrows. “You’re comparing our children to Jews?”

“That’s not what I mean,” I protest. “They’re well behaved and healthy—that’s all.” But of course it isn’t, not in the slightest.

Diogo scowls. “It’s not good for you to visit them. I already took a risk marrying a converso, and people might get ideas about your sincerity as a Christian.”

“I’ve never heard anyone suspect my sincerity. And this isn’t Spain, after all.” I arch my eyebrows, as if my meaning should be obvious.

“Don’t be so sure. The people of Portugal don’t like Jews or conversos any more than Spaniards do, and it will come out soon enough.”

My body tightens. “Come out? How?”

“You know what happens when people get it in their minds that a Jew has wronged them.”

“And you?” My mouth is suddenly dry. “How do you feel?”

Diogo shrugs. “Abravanel and the others are useful at court. If they’re helpful to me, I can put up with them.” He spears a piece of mutton and chews it once or twice before swallowing hard to force it down his throat. “They are the best educated, that’s for certain. No foolishness about how God wants people to show they trust him by remaining ignorant.”

A bit of sauce wets the side of his mouth, and he wipes it away with his sleeve. “I’ve contracted with a converso to collect taxes on my new lands.” He laughs. “I’ll grow rich, but the people of Esposende will hate him more than me. Now there’s something Jewish blood is good for.”

***

We get along by avoiding each other and speaking little at meals. I go to Queluz only when Diogo is visiting his new lands, but that isn’t enough for him. One evening I mention Simona, and he dents his favorite pewter mug when he throws it against the fireplace.

“I thought I made it clear I didn’t want you to mix with Jews,” he says.

“You told me no such thing,” I say, which only makes him angrier.

“Couldn’t you figure that out for yourself?”

Despite wanting to put on a stony front, I burst into tears. “I have no friends, no family,” I sob. “And I feel more alone when you’re here than when you’re not.”

He ignores my criticism. “Go out and make some Christian friends, why don’t you? Or are only Jews good enough for you?”

I storm from the room, and within a few hours, I am on the road to Queluz, leaving word with Diogo where I am going and saying that I will not be back until he apologizes.

He does not. Two days later, guilt drives me home, and I arrive around dinnertime to find Diogo and a group of his friends enjoying their meal. They are jolly with drink, and no one is happy to see me. I go to my room and bolt the door. I am at my window getting some air to calm myself when I see two boys skirting the edge of the house. Below me, a door opens and they are ushered inside.

***

By summer, I am pregnant again, but I say nothing about the baby aloud, for fear the Evil Eye is close enough to strike. Diogo stays in Lagos when he is not at sea, and I visit Judah and Simona whenever I wish. Their son Isaac is a studious boy with solemn and soulful gray eyes, and at eight, he has lost the blond curls of childhood. I love the way he absentmindedly chews on a ragged strand of hair as he pours over his books, lost in another world.

Judah is away at court more than ever these days, and Isaac, hungry for someone to talk to, explains to me the science of the Muslim doctors Averroes and Avicenna, the philosophy of Aristotle, or whatever he is studying at the time. He reads Portuguese and Hebrew with ease, and I help him with Arabic, which I learned while translating for my father.

Chana was married last summer to a soft-spoken young man from an old Jewish family in Lisbon, and she lives in the aljama, the Jewish quarter there. She is expecting her first child around the same time as mine. Rahel is almost fifteen, and several families with marriageable sons have made inquiries about her.

Judah’s time is taken up with a new business importing textiles from Flanders, a license he was given as a reward for service to the crown. One of the Portuguese princes recently died, and in his will, he repaid a large debt to Judah. Astute as always, Judah saw the regent’s longing eyes and lent most of it back to the crown, using the rest to build a larger house at Queluz.

The chaos, dust, and noise of the workers drive Simona to distraction, as does the increased flow of visitors. Judah is the leading figure among Portugal’s Jews, and though they might look to rabbis for spiritual advice, it’s Judah they come to for everything else. The Abravanel family is among the few Jews exempt by royal decree from having to live in the aljama, so most of his visitors ride out for the day from Lisbon and are back in the city before the curfew for Jews at nightfall.

Like most homes in Portugal and Spain, the new house looks inward to a courtyard that supplies light and air. Though the outer walls are solid with only a few high windows, there will be another wall around the compound, because one never knows when or how quickly life can become unsafe for Jews caught outside the aljama.

As I reach the outskirts of Lisbon one August afternoon, I feel the baby fluttering in my womb, annoyed perhaps by the jostling of the road. I remember how still my first baby was in the days before I lost him, and I’m relieved that this one, with several months yet to go, seems so much stronger. “Go to sleep,” I whisper, but I’m glad it doesn’t. Those little kicks are the best company I will have until I am at Queluz again.

The carriage pulls up in front of the house, and my heart sinks when I see Diogo’s lawyer’s horse tied up outside. Perhaps he’s come home, I think, hoping it isn’t so. Alvaro meets me at the door. “Senhor Montes just arrived.” He motions toward the library. “I told him you weren’t here, and he asked to write a note to send to you.”

Montes looks up from his writing at the sound of my shoes on the stone floor. His face is as grave as Alvaro’s. “Donha Marques,” he says. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

***

Time stops—for how long I don’t know—and I find myself alone in my room as the afternoon shadows lengthen over the street. Diogo is dead. On its way home, his boat broke apart during a storm, on a shallow reef not far from Cape Bojador. Some men scrambled to safety but Diogo’s body washed ashore the following day.

The image is horrifying, but calming in its certainty. Most who die at sea simply vanish. I will be spared wondering whether somehow, years from now, he will walk back through the door. I’m a widow, I tell myself. I’m rid of him.

I stand at the window with the door bolted behind me and let my heart go wild. Diogo isn’t coming home. I’m not yet twenty and I’m a widow. Baruch Hashem, this baby will be mine, to raise as I wish.

I swing between silence and sobs that are a mix of horror and joy. I picture the splintering boards, the rush of water in the cold night. I see waves pounding over the rocks. Did Diogo know how the water claimed him, or did it happen too fast?

Free.

He was my husband, despite his faults, and I try to keep my mind on him, but I can’t.

Widowed.

I am sure his last thoughts weren’t of me, but why should they be? He was fighting for his life, and now I can stop feeling as if I am in a battle with him for my own.

***

I am entering my ninth month of pregnancy by the time the leaves start to fall. The carriage ride to Queluz is too difficult for me now, and though I haven’t seen the Abravanel family in more than a month, all I really want is to curl up in my bed and sleep like a bear.

Senhor Montes is handling the estate. Since my husband had no family to speak of, many decisions have been left to me, and the first thing I did was cancel a scheduled new tax in Esposende. None too soon, for I hear from Montes that people in the north have been rioting over just such increases, and collectors have had to be rescued from attacks on their barricaded homes. If unrest spreads here, I may not be seen as a grieving young widow, but a grasping converso who only cancelled the tax out of fear for her own skin and would show her true colors soon enough.

Am I safe in Lisbon? As if worried too, my baby turns in my womb.

The news grows grimmer over the next weeks—Jewish houses torched in one town, the beating of Jews in another, an effigy of a rabbi burned in a third. When Catellina tells me that in a town just across the Tagus River from Lisbon, not only Jews but converso families are barricading themselves in their homes, I have had enough.