The Mapmaker's Daughter (20 page)

Which had to bond with mine it so resembles.

I find no logical proof of your existence,

Save only that I see you here before me!

And if my eye could not take in your being, I would say

You are pure mind, authentic and sublime.”

I see that there is writing below, but I cannot absorb any more, and I put the letter down. Who could be that special? The stories I used to read with Elizabeth and Beatriz about the princess whose indifference breaks hearts, the aloof maiden who spurns love—perhaps they acted as they did because they knew a suitor’s ardor would not survive the truth of their ordinariness.

“As I wrote out this poem, I realized I cannot lie to you,” Jamil has written below. “I am staying away for another reason. If you wish to see me, I will come next Sunday, but my passions are not easily left behind, and, dear lady, I shall bring them with me or it would be best not to come at all. If you are agreeable, and the weather permits, we can go riding. Judah tells me you are quite the horsewoman. At your service, Jamil ibn Hasan.”

Judah. Of course. The Zohar advises against taking a widow to wife, because the spirit of her first husband can plague the second. “Do not cook in a pot in which your neighbor has cooked,” the ancient rabbi Akiba warned. There’s no future Jewish husband to save myself for, no blood kin to tell me what to do, and no one who will be harmed by my going for a ride with Jamil and seeing where it leads. I pick up a quill to pen my reply.

***

The following Sunday, Jamil arrives with a mount the same color as Chuva, who died several years ago, and I wonder again whether Judah has been filling Jamil’s head with details about me. Eliana is happy to run off to the Abravanels, especially since Chana and Rahel have not yet taken their children back to Lisbon.

“I thought we might ride up to the ruins of the fort,” he says. “Have you been there?”

“It’s the first place I went when I got here,” I tell him. At the time, I could barely contain my excitement at the thought of finding Jews evicted from Sintra living together in a deserted palace, but when I got there, the fort was a ruin, and the town’s few Jews had been back in town for years.

It doesn’t take long to reach an arched entrance that still has rusty bolts and splinters of rotting wood from the sturdy doors that once protected the fortress. Against the inside walls of the plaza sag the ruins of weather-beaten shacks, hastily constructed of rough stone and wood. Makeshift chimneys leading up from blackened hearths jutting through toppled roofs.

“Did you know the Jews were once forced to live here?” I ask Jamil as we water our horses from a cistern of rainwater. “These are the houses they built.”

He takes in the dreary sight. “Whenever I feel insulted among Christians, I remember the many places where my people have the respect they deserve. I can’t imagine what it’s like not to be treated with dignity anywhere.”

“Jews don’t spend much time thinking how good things could be if this world were a different place,” I say with a wry smile. “We’re usually just grateful it’s not worse.” I take my horse by the reins. “There’s a lovely place near here to sit. We can have our meal and let the horses graze.” Jamil’s eyes are bright, as if something has pleased him. He takes his horse and follows me.

Grass and wildflowers have taken over what was once a busy square, where Moors sat on stone benches watching people come and go. Guards once paced the mossy ramparts that lead to crenellated towers looming above us. The castle is above the clouds today, and the plaza is a brilliant, sun-dappled green. Jamil takes down the food we have brought and lays a brightly patterned rug underneath a tree.

He pulls out a leather wineskin and a small cup into which he puts a little for me before tipping back his head and squirting a thin stream of red wine into his mouth. I lay out the torn end of a loaf from yesterday’s Shabbat dinner, and Jamil produces two dry sausages.

“I can’t eat that,” I tell him. “I don’t know what’s in it.”

Jamil smiles. “Don’t worry. I have the butcher’s word it’s kosher. The Prophet Muhammad—sallallahu ëalayhi wa sallam—commands us to keep many of the same dietary laws you do.”

“May Allah honor him and grant him peace?” I ask, turning his Arabic into a question.

“Muslims honor the prophets—Jesus, Moses, and the rest. When we speak their names, we ask God to grant them peace.”

Jamil cuts me a piece of sausage, and the smoky taste of paprika and pungent garlic invades every recess of my mouth. I crush a juniper berry between my teeth and its resinlike flavor mixes with the sweet taste of the meat. “It’s delicious,” I say, as he cuts me another slice.

“You’re quite trusting.” He holds it out to me on the tip of his knife. “Eating sausage just on my word that it’s all right?”

“Trusting?” I hope to sound lighthearted, but my voice comes out solemn and husky. “I’m here alone with you, aren’t I?”

His eyes are penetrating, and my comfort vanishes. What does he want from me? Have I made a mistake coming with him? I look to my horse, grazing in the shadows of the rampart walls, and wonder if I should get away as quickly as I can.

“Yes, you are,” Jamil says, “and I shall honor your trust.” He smiles. “Even if that means protecting you from me.” He reclines, propping himself up on one elbow, but I remain seated, my legs curled discreetly under me. “I thought if I brought you here where there were no distractions, I might find out more about you,” he says. “Where you have been. What you want.”

No one has ever wondered such things about me, and I am so disarmed that, before I know it, I have recounted my life as a secret Jew with my mother, my years at Sagres with Papa, my grim marriage to Diogo, and my salvation in the embrace of the Abravanel family.

He listens quietly. “You’ve already been through enough for several lifetimes,” he says, fixing his intense and beautiful eyes on me.

I look away to avoid his stare. “I imagine you have too.”

Jamil smiles. “That’s for another day.” He gets up to fetch something from his bag. “I brought one more treat for us,” he says, unwrapping a cloth. “Something from home. You have dates here, but not like these.”

The fruit is larger than any I have seen, with creased and fragile-looking folds of skin around soft, glistening flesh. “We call them mujhoolah,” Jamil says, cutting one in half and removing the seed with a flick of his knife. He pinches a morsel between his fingertips and touches the silky flesh to my mouth. It dissolves and breaks away from the skin with the slightest pressure of my tongue. “Mmm,” I sigh.

“Would you like more?” He puts another piece in my mouth, and then he speaks.

“Laughing, you paint your lips brown with date.

The pink tip of your tongue licks its nectar from your fingers.

Do we enter Paradise like this?

Casting off our cloaks like the skin of a mujhoolah

Our flesh melting away in sweet delight?”

His eyes are shining. “You bring out the poet in me,” he says.

I take another date and paint my mouth before feeding half to him and eating the rest myself. Who is this woman, I ask myself, who does such things with a man?

Then his lips are on mine, softer and fuller than I imagined possible. He teases my mouth open and I feel sweetness mingle on our tongues. He pulls away with a smile. “Perhaps it would be wise to swallow first.”

I laugh from somewhere deep within me, not just because what he said strikes me as funny, but because I am soaring, I am singing, I am shedding all the burdens of my past and beginning again.

He kisses me more deeply, cupping his hand around my neck to hold me to him. I kiss him back, yearning to find every secret of his mouth, as if I could lick through to his soul. To my surprise, I feel Jamil pull away. “Are you sure this is what you want?” he asks. “We should stop now if it isn’t, and I will take you home.”

I know what I want—his lips on my hard nipples, bared to the sun and the summer air, his hands lifting my skirts to give me something I have never had, never knew enough to dream of. I pull myself back. “It’s too sudden,” I say. “I have to think about Eliana too. About what’s best for her—and me.”

To my surprise, he looks relieved. He stands up, and looking down at the protrusion in his trousers, he sighs. “My mind tells me to be chivalrous,” he says, “but it appears that another part of my body has a different idea.” Embarrassed, I look away, secretly thrilled to have done that to him.

“I don’t take these things lightly,” Jamil says. “I don’t make a habit of enticing women.”

“You could have anyone,” I say. “I’m twenty-six years old. I’ve borne two children—”

He pulls me to my feet. “You’re right. There are many beautiful girls I can have at home by snapping my fingers.” He takes me in his arms. “And I won’t deny I have partaken of such pleasure, but it makes no impression on me. I’m looking for a woman who is a feast for body and mind. Someone who frees the poetry in my soul.”

He pulls away to look in my eyes. “A woman, Amalia. Not a girl. Am I wrong? Is that not what you are?” He pauses. “You’re trembling.”

I fight back tears. “I’m not sure what I am, but I do think it’s best you take me home.”

“You need time to think,” Jamil says. “It shows you don’t take these things lightly either. I wouldn’t like that.” He tosses the remains of our meal to the birds and goes to get our horses.

13

QUELUZ 1451

That night, I lie next to my daughter, unable to sleep. What do I really know about Jamil? If there were something wrong with his character, Judah would have warned me. But Diogo was attractive and charming at the beginning too, and if I had really loved him, he would have broken my heart.

I think about the way Jamil endeared himself to my daughter and how he did not press me for more than I wanted to give at the fort. I think about his poems, and about his embarrassment at the bulge in his trousers. I remember how my body felt when he kissed me, and how surprised I was when I returned home to feel that the hair in my private place was matted and wet.

My daughter stirs next to me. I must keep my thoughts straight, I tell myself, not just for me but for her. I could never marry him—Judah is right about that—and I haven’t gone to all this trouble to live as a Jew just to throw it away.

Ask
yourself
what
you
don’t want to regret at the end of your life.

“Mama?” I whisper. Somehow, she’s heard my distress, for I sense her beside me. “But what about her?” I whisper, reaching over to touch my daughter.

She
won’t always be young. She’ll have her own life when she’s grown. Will you be able to make up for lost time then?

“I just want what’s best for her.”

Perhaps
what
would
make
you
happy
would
be
best
for
her
too.

Eliana snuffles and rolls over. “I love her so much,” I tell the dark, still air where my mother’s spirit hovers.

The
more
love
you
start
with, the more can grow.

I lie thinking for a moment, and then I get up. Lighting a candle, I settle in at my desk and begin to write.

You said that wishing the prophets peace would bring that peace to me.

Our day leaves me sleepless, and I ask you this:

If I wish my lips were upon yours, would you bring your kisses to me?

If I wish myself to love you, would you love me in return?

***

The following morning, Eliana seems well enough for a ride, so I suggest we go to Sintra to buy her a new hair ribbon. At the palace, I give one of the pages a coin to take my poem to Jamil. “We’ll be in town all morning, if there’s a reply,” I tell him.

I let Eliana dawdle over her choice of ribbon and end up buying her two. We stop at the vegetable shop to get a carrot for our horse and go into the bakery to buy a treat for Simona. Then, when I can think of no other reason to delay, Eliana’s face lights up. “Jamil!” she says. I whirl around and see him standing inside the bakery door.

“I hoped I would find you.” He holds out the letter. “My answer didn’t take long.”

Below my writing, he has written one word.

Yes.

***

A week later, Jamil meets me near the palace. “I’ll take you to a side entry,” he says. “I’ve bribed the guard.” He adjusts the hood of my cloak to obscure my face. This is a mistake, I tell myself, hesitating to take the first step. And then I do. Even if it’s a mistake, I am going to make it gladly and without hesitation.

“The servants know not to disturb me when the outer door is closed,” he says when we are inside his quarters. He takes my cloak and stands back to look at me. “You enchant me,” he murmurs.

We stare into each other’s eyes until I think I may disappear altogether, like a boat slipping over the horizon into an unknown sea. I feel a tug in my belly as he pulls my hair free from the band holding it. I shake it out so that it falls down my back, and I hear his quick intake of breath.

We kiss deeply, hungrily. He pulls my dress down to my waist and cups my breasts through my chemise. I help him remove my underskirts until I am standing before him in only a single layer of thin silk. It’s so unlike my wedding night that I want to laugh. My body feels glorious, and I want this beautiful person to know every part of me.

Jamil’s hair touches his shoulders like a lion’s mane, and I run my fingers through it. He unbuckles his belt, and soon his voluminous pants have dropped to his knees, and he stands before me, his erect penis surrounded by a nimbus of velvety dark hair.