The rest of that night is confused. We were given a place to sleep above the stables, in case it was not safe to come into the house. Our backs were salved by Dr Soiero, another New Christian professor of medicine who had not been taken up for questioning, but had gone into hiding. My mother seemed barely conscious and could not eat, but I managed a little broth, then lay on my face, unable to sleep for the burning pain, while the men talked far into the night. They spoke of some fishing village, and a ship due out from Porto to London, but my mind was too blurred to understand their talk.
The next morning the owner of the house, Dr Gomez, came out to the stables. He brought a bundle for my father, some of his precious medical texts which he had bribed a guard at our house to give him, and my father’s satchel of medicines.
‘Just before the city gates shut at dusk tonight,’ he said, ‘a fisherman will bring his cart round to the alley and you must hide under the empty baskets. He will take you down to Ilhavo, where his brother will smuggle you on to his fishing boat. On the third day from now, when he is well out at sea, he will meet the Santa Maria, sailing from Porto, which will take you on board. It belongs to Dr Hector Nuñez, one of the leaders of the Portuguese community in London. Once away from Portugal you will be safe.’
My father looked uncomfortable. ‘They have taken everything we have. I have no means of paying for our passage, Dr Gomez.’
The other man shook his head. ‘Dr Nuñez will expect nothing. He has often helped others fleeing from persecution, and when you reach London he will help you. I will find something to pay the fishermen for the risks they take.’
I whispered in my father’s ear that I still had one of my gold ear-rings, if he wanted it for the fishermen. I did not want to see him shamed, like a beggar. He nodded and told Dr Gomez that we would give the gold ear-ring as payment to the fishermen for their help.
‘That is all arranged, then. The three of you, and Dr Soiero here, will be safe at sea three days from now.’
‘But what of Isabel and Felipe!’ I cried. ‘We cannot leave them behind!’
Dr Gomez and my father looked at me.
‘We have talked of this already . . . Christoval,’ my father said. ‘Our friend is riding up to your grandfather’s house today to fetch them. They will meet us at Ilhavo in two days’ time.’
The plan, which was so simple that we might have been detected at any moment, succeeded perhaps by its very simplicity. My parents, Dr Soiero and I made the night journey buried in a stinking nest of fishnets and osier baskets, jolting over small country roads in the rough cart the fisherman used to bring his catch to the market in Coimbra. My father was rapidly recovering, and benefited from not having to walk while his bandaged feet began to heal. My mother, now she no longer had to remain strong to protect me, had lapsed into a lethargic silence. She ate and drank little, and when we spoke to her she seemed to come back from somewhere far away inside her head.
When we reached Ilhavo we climbed aboard the fishing boat, which was larger than most of the other boats in the village. Though still the traditional shape, like a peasecod, it had a rough cabin amidships, and the fisherman, whose name I never learned, told us that he regularly ventured further out to sea than his fellows, so it would not arouse suspicion when we sailed out to meet the Santa Maria. Until she put to sea, the boat was kept dragged up above the high water mark on the beach, and we hid in the cabin.
We waited for Dr Gomez to come, and when at last he did, on the evening of the third day, the fisherman was growing anxious about leaving. He came alone.
‘Where are the children?’ cried my mother. It was the first time she had spoken voluntarily since we had left Coimbra.
Dr Gomez sat down on a heap of nets in the bottom of the boat and put his head in his hands.
‘I went to your father’s house, Senhora,’ he said, ‘but there were none but servants there. ‘Three weeks ago, the Inquisition came for your mother. They would probably have taken your father too, were he not such a power in his own terra. He has gone now to Lisbon, to try to buy her release from the governor.’
He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. His face was lined with exhaustion, and I could see that he did not want to go on.
‘Before he left, your father placed his two grandchildren with an Old Christian family, tenants of his, in the next valley, beyond the forest. The da Rocas. Do you know them?’
‘Certainly,’ said my father. ‘They are poor, but good people. He thought they would be safer there?’
‘Yes. So I rode on there. I found . . . ’ he looked at my mother, then bent his head and fixed his eyes on the nets beneath his feet. ‘I found that all the family had become ill with the bloody flux. Your son . . . your son Felipe died last week.’
My mother cried out, then stuffed her fist in her mouth, biting on her knuckles to mask any further sound, rocking herself back and forth as the mad Francesca had done.
‘My daughter?’ said my father, choking on his words. ‘Little Isabel?’
‘She is very ill, though they think she will recover. At the moment, though, she is far too ill to travel.’
A moan escaped from my mother, and I put my arm around her to try to comfort her. She pulled away, curling herself up like an injured animal.
Surely we could not leave the country with Isabel still here? The Inquisition would track her down, and she would have to endure imprisonment and torture alone, knowing we had deserted her. I tugged at my father’s sleeve.
‘We must go back for Isabel,’ I begged. ‘We cannot leave her behind!’
His face was bleak and he seemed hardly to hear. Then he turned towards me.
‘We cannot risk all these other lives, Caterina,’ he said, forgetting to use my new name. ‘Your grandfather will care for her.’
I sank back amongst the stinking nets and covered my face with my hands. Behind the darkness of my closed lids I seemed to see Isabel’s eyes, pleading with me.
Within half an hour, a yoke of oxen had dragged the fishing boat down the beach to the sea, while we remained hidden in the tiny cabin, and we set sail, leaving Dr Gomez in Ilhavo. The fisherman set a course heading north and slightly west, where we hoped to cross the path of the Santa Maria. The boat, which had seemed large amongst its fellows, seemed no bigger than a mussel shell on the vast grey waves of the Atlantic, waves which threw us about like a piece of driftwood, rising up above our heads as if they would crash down on the boat and punch it to the bottom of the ocean. It was growing very dark. The fisherman said we would have to light a lantern once we could make out the ship, or she would pass us by, or even run us down. I clung to the side of the boat, terrified by the immense ocean. I had never been to sea before, and all I could think of was the depth of violent grey water beneath, with nothing between us and drowning but the thin planking of the boat.
It seemed like a lifetime later, for my fear stretched the time out, yet it cannot have been more than a few hours, when the fisherman called out to us that he could see the ship. I could see nothing, but I had been sitting with my eyes screwed shut and my stomach heaving, so my night sight was poor. My father was trying to help with the boat, while my mother and Dr Soiero sat like helpless puppets, so I was told to light the lantern and climb to the front of the boat, where I was to show it and cover it three times, then pause and show it again. I did as I was told, wondering how so feeble a light could possibly be seen on this heaving monster of an ocean, an ocean which surely stretched to the end of the world.
Yet it must have been seen. After a while, even I could make out the ship, looming up against the stars, as some of the cloud began to clear. There were lanterns hung fore and aft, lights shining from her cabin windows in the forecastle and sterncastle, and sailors taking in the sails. The ship hove to – a manoeuvre I was to understand later – and the sailors threw a kind of giant net over the side, with meshes about a foot across. We were to climb this, from our little boat, in the heaving sea, up the side of that huge ship that soared above us like the tower of the university in Coimbra. Before we left the boat, I handed the ear-ring to my father, who gave it to the fisherman, and embraced him in gratitude. They sent me up the side of the ship first – I think because they did not want me to watch, in case my mother fell and was drowned. I do not know to this day how Dr Soiero and my father got her up that net ladder. All I know is that she tumbled over the side of the ship and lay on the deck as though she were already dead. And the two men followed her.