The Portuguese Affair (18 page)

Accustomed to the more melodious birdsong that filled the English countryside, I had forgotten how maddeningly monotonous the grating sound of the cicadas could be. Even over the sound of my horse’s hoofs it drilled into my head. It drove me to stop early to eat. I had bought cheese, flatbread and olives at the inn, together with a leather jack of thin wine, so under the burning sun of midday I retreated into an olive grove, where there was shade for me and a little thin grazing for the horse. The heat and my growing exhaustion had driven out any desire for food, but I forced myself to eat, knowing that it was important to keep up my strength for whatever might lie ahead. It was much too hot to continue for a while yet. The horse was hobbled. I lay down in the shade of one of the largest trees, my head on my satchel, and watched the silvery leaves barely stirring in the breathless noontide.

Somehow, I fell asleep. When I woke, I could tell by the different slant of the light through the branches that several hours must have passed. The leaves above me were beginning to stir in a slight movement of the wind. I could hear the horse tearing up grass, accompanied still by that mindless scratching of the cicadas. I found I was stiff when I tried to get up – too long in the saddle and too long lying on the baked earth – but I must continue. I put on the horse’s saddle and bridle again. He seemed willing enough, after his rest, to carry on.

I had hoped I might reach my grandfather’s house before nightfall, but my horse was growing tired. As evening began to close in, much more quickly than in
England with its long twilights, and after the horse had stumbled a third time, I reined in and looked about, trying to decide what to do. There would be little hope of finding an inn in this sparse country, unless I pressed on to Coimbra. I had promised Dr Hector that I would avoid the town, and the thought of the prison there turned me cold even in the heat. At last I headed my horse, at a slow, ambling pace, towards a grove of trees on rising land about two miles away. It would be cool under the trees, especially now as the evening drained away the heat of the day. Before heading further into the little wood, I looked again in the direction where I knew Coimbra lay. The wood grew on the foothills which lifted up to the Serra da Estrela and I could see below me the valley through which ran the river Mondego, as it flowed toward Coimbra. I would need to cross it to reach my grandfather’s
solar
. There was, I knew, a bridge a little to the east and north of Coimbra. In the middle of the day tomorrow it might prove busy with beasts and carts, but if I could reach it early there would not be too many people about.

I rode a little further into the wood towards the sound of water and found a stream where both I and my horse drank. Then I unsaddled him, rubbed him down, and hobbled him again so he could graze without wandering too far. In my satchel I had bread left from Peniche – somewhat stale after two days of summer heat – some dried fruit, strips of dried beef and a small goat’s cheese wrapped in vine leaves. I fed well enough on these before lying down under the trees and trying to sleep. I was tired from the long ride, despite my midday siesta, and painfully stiff, not having been on horseback since we had left
London. My shoulder throbbed and was weeping a thin yellow pus. Also, my troubled thoughts kept me awake again. Until now I had not allowed myself to think what I might find when I reached the
solar
, but I would surely be there before the next day was out. My grandparents would be horrified to see me, disguised as I was, sunburnt and coarse. It might be that they would turn me away. Nay, surely they would not do that! They must have been told of our escape from Ilhavo by Dr Gomez, but would know nothing of what had become of us afterwards. All those letters sent by my father, met with nothing but silence.

My worries robbed me of sleep until far into the night. At last I slept, but woke again after a few hours, aching in every muscle and joint, and could not sleep again. I doused my head and face with cold water from the stream, ate a piece of bread and a lump of cheese, and saddled my horse.

When we reached the old stone bridge over the Montego about dawn, there was no one about but a shepherd trying to drive his flock over its arched span ahead of us. The bridge rose high, almost to a perfect semicircle, for the boats which brought produce down from the Beira Alta had to pass underneath it, and the sheep were skittish and reluctant to cross over it.

‘Shy of the bridge, are they?’ I said, dismounting.

He shrugged. ‘Fool animals. Take them over a bridge with a parapet so they can’t see the water, and they think it’s a road, no matter how narrow it is. But here,’ he waved at the bridge, which was wide enough for a hay cart but open on both sides, ‘here they can see the river and they panic.’

‘Like some help?’

‘I’d be glad of it. My boy usually helps me drive them to market in Coimbra, but he’s laid up with a fever.’

Between us we rounded up the sheep which had begun to run along the bank in a skittish crowd and herded them over the bridge. Once on the other side they began calmly to
graze, all fear of the river forgotten.

‘Thank you, Senhor,’ the shepherd said, pulling off his cloth cap and using it to wipe his face.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Tell me, do you know Senhor da Alejo? His
solar
is over that way.’ I gestured away towards the east.

He shook his head and grinned. ‘I live five miles south of here, and only bring the sheep to
Coimbra three or four times a year. I’d not be mixing with the likes of such a man.’

With that he went off, whistling to his dog, who had proved of little use in herding the sheep, but had watched us, panting, from the shade of a thorn bush.

Once I had led my horse over the bridge and remounted, I turned up river and headed in the direction of my grandfather’s estate. Taking the road which led away from Coimbra and into the interior, I began to recognise landmarks I remembered from childhood journeys following this same road. There on the left was the farm which always looked tumbledown and uninhabitable, yet we would see a swarm of children playing around the ramshackle barns and wonder what their lives were like, so different from ours. A little higher up, on the right, stood the mill where part of the river was diverted into a mill leet. This was the mill owned by an abbey in Coimbra, where all the local peasant farmers were obliged to grind their corn and pay a tithe to the abbey, a tax they resented. I wondered whether the tax was more severe now, under a Spanish regime, when money was demanded to maintain the troops controlling the country. There was another mill on my grandfather’s
solar
, where all his tenants had the right to grind their corn. They paid no tax for the privilege. Their only responsibility was to contribute to the maintenance of the mill and the grinding, when it was necessary, of new millstones.

As the familiar fields came into sight, my throat tightened and my eyes blurred with tears. Nothing seemed to have changed since that last summer I had come with my mother and with Isabel and Felipe, to spend the hot months away from
Coimbra, here where the rolling lands of my grandfather’s estate rose up the gently sloping ground to the manor house. Suppose – the idea had never occurred to me before, and came to me suddenly now as if someone had struck me on the head – suppose the summons had never come from my father that summer, which fetched my mother and me back to Coimbra for a few days, so that I might be presented to his scholarly friend from Italy. How would all our lives have been changed?

In the low meadow by the river two mares grazed with their foals, but I saw no sign of my grandfather’s favourite stallion. Even now he would still be in the prime of life, and I wondered whether my grandfather had ridden him off somewhere. As we climbed the hill, the morning sun was reflected from the dazzling whitewash of the main house, with its carved granite window embrasures and doorways. There was no smoke rising from the kitchen chimney, which puzzled me and stirred a faint sense of alarm. Usually there would be smoke from a cooking fire every day, summer and winter. I rode round the corner of the house to the front. At the grand double stairway that swept up to the main door, I slid from my horse and looped his reins through the hitching ring in the wall. For a moment I laid my hand against the old blue and white
azulejos
tiles that decorated the triangular wall between the two branches of the steps. They were as warm as a human hand, and I felt such a rush of sudden joy that for a moment I was dizzy with it. This was the home where I had been happiest.

I mounted the steps and pulled the ornamental handle which, through a system of wires and pulleys, rang a bell inside the house. It was at that moment I suddenly realised I must decide what to say. I had not prepared my story. A servant would answer the door. It might be one I knew, or some stranger. I would not say who or what I was, but would need to pretend to be some passing friend or a distant relative, until I was able to speak to my grandfather himself and reveal who I was.

The man who answered the great oak door was familiar to me, one of my grandmother’s house servants. I thought he might recognise me, but he did not, and instead stood staring at me, speechless, in a manner that was somehow disturbing. My stomach clenched.

‘Is your master at home?’ I said. ‘Senhor da Alejo? I am on my way to
Lisbon, and bring news of his relatives in Amsterdam.’

The man continued to stare at me, then he swallowed and shook his head. He still seemed unable to speak.

‘His wife?’ I said. ‘The Senhora?’

He looked at me as if I were mad, and found his voice at last. ‘The mistress has been dead these seven years. She died in the Inquisitorial prison in
Lisbon.’

He squinted at me suspiciously. ‘How do you not know this, if you are a friend of the family?’

I stared at him. Suddenly I was cold, and shaking. Remembering.

That last time we had arrived here, when we three children had hung out of the carriage window, jostling to see who would catch the first sight of the house. Mama trying in vain to persuade me to behave like a lady, Felipe nearly tumbling head first over the side. Then my grandparents were there, welcoming us into the ancient stone-flagged hallway, so cool and welcome after our hot journey.

‘Come, Caterina,’ said my grandmother, ‘you are almost a young lady. You should not tumble about like a wild boy.’ But she laughed as she spoke.

My grandfather kissed me on the forehead, then held me at arms’ length.

‘You have grown two handspans at least since last summer, Caterina. You will be as tall as I before you are done.’

My grandmother had led us through into the high-ceilinged
salão
, with its floor inlaid with those same blue and white
azulejos
tiles. We had drunk fruit juice and eaten the fig pasties which were always Isabel’s’ favourites. And mine too, though I pretended to be too grownup to snatch at them as she and Felipe did.

Standing here now, I looked beyond into the same hallway behind the servant, the hallway which led to the
salão
where we had eaten the fig pasties.

T
heir voices sounded in my head.

My grandmother concerned.
‘You are pale, my dear. Are you ill?’

My mother
. ‘It’s nothing but the heat. It came early in the city this year. I’m glad to be home here amongst the mountains.’

Minha avó. Mama.

I tried to hide my feelings, but I think I must have revealed something. So my grandmother had died at the very time that we, too, were taken.

‘We did not know,’ I said at last. ‘The . . . the cousins in
Amsterdam have written, but received no reply for many years. It is sad news I shall have to take back to them. But your master, when do you expect him to return?’

He shook his head again, and now I saw that his eyes had filled with tears.

‘He went to Lisbon on business three weeks ago. We knew nothing then of this English invasion and the return of Dom Antonio. Word came yesterday. The master has been taken by King Philip’s men and executed without trial. But we knew nothing here of Dom Antonio’s plans, nothing – he was no part of it!’

The world seem to spin around me and I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the hot door frame to keep myself from sinking to my knees. I had thought, surely, that my grandfather, of all the family, would be safe. We had brought this death upon him. Dom Antonio’s expedition. Drake’s thirst for plunder. Our stupid blundering and delays at Coruña, our triumphal landing at Peniche. What had it accomplished but the deaths of
Portugal’s finest nobles, whether or not they supported the Dom? Three weeks ago he was here, my grandfather. Only three weeks ago. While I sat idle on the
Victory
in the harbour at Coruña.

And my grandmother had died all those years ago, when we had lain in the Inquisition prison at
Coimbra.

Taking me firmly by the arm, the servant led me into the house and made me sit in the cool
salão
and brought me chilled golden wine.

‘I am sorry to have distressed you with this news, Senhor,’ he said, ‘and the heat . . .’

‘Yes,’ I said dully. ‘The heat.’

‘May I know who you are, Senhor?’