The fisherwife brought me a mug of fierce local wine, so harsh it nearly scoured the roof of mouth to the bone, but as it began to circulate through my limbs I could feel myself being prodded out of my weariness. The children crept a little closer. I noticed that there was a hank of string lying where the woman had been at her work. Remembering how Andrew had taught a child how to make a cat’s cradle when he was in St Bartholomew’s, recovering from his injuries at Sluys, I beckoned the oldest boy over to me.
‘Do you know how to do this?’
I hooked the string between our fingers, and began to weave the cat’s cradle, hoping I had not forgotten how to do it. By the time I completed it, then showed how to make it vanish back into a simple length of string, all the children were crowding round, even the little girls, demanding to try it. The woman, who was probably the mother of some of them, had set more sardines cooking and had taken up her net mending again. Looking up from the third or fourth cat’s cradle, I realised that my audience had grown considerably. These could not all be the children of one family. Every one of the children in the village had been drawn by the novelty of a stranger, and especially a stranger who could do tricks.
Long before they were all satisfied, the woman clapped her hands.
‘Enough!’ she said, laughing. ‘Your dinner is ready and the Senhor cannot spend all day amusing you.’
Her own children fell upon the food, while the others wandered off, taking the string with them and arguing about how to weave the cradle themselves. She brought out a basket of fruit from the hut, the kind of fruit I remembered from my childhood: peaches and apricots warm from the sun and so juicy that when you bit into them the juice spurted out and ran down your chin. The fruits of the south do sometimes reach London, but they never taste like this. Either they have been picked too soon, to stop them rotting before they can be sold, in which case they are edible, but have little flavour; or else they have been picked ripe, but have developed a taste of mustiness and mould, however careful the dealer has been to wipe away any blackened surface traces.
It was pleasant sitting there at the edge of the beach, with the somnolent midday sun beating down, tempered by a cooling wind off the ocean, whose waves resounded with a deep music on the rocks enclosing the small bay where the village stood. Sitting here amidst the quiet chatter of the children, I could put aside the horrors of Coruña and close my mind, for the moment, to what might lie at the end of my journey to the solar. Yet I must not linger too long. The children and their mother finished eating and when I had eaten the fruit I had been given, I thanked the woman and rose from the log. Before I mounted again I tucked a real under the trencher which had held the sardines. As I rode on my way out of the village, a cavalcade of children ran after me, shouting their good-byes. Two of the boys were linked together by a half-made cat’s cradle.
Early in the afternoon I turned somewhat east, away from the coast and found that my way led through the fringes of the vast pine forest. I had become very hot under the unremitting sun, no longer benefitting from the ocean breeze. Before I reached the forest the land was open and quite barren, with few villages or even isolated farms. As my road passed in among the trees, the glare of the sun was cut off. The trees stood tall and regal as pillars in a church, and shafts of sunlit played across the forest floor as if they fell through illuminated windows. The long heat of the day had roused the scents of the pine, heady as incense. It was very quiet amongst the trees. An occasional bird crossed my path, but there was little birdsong. I imagined that they reserved their singing for the cool of the morning and evening. The forest seemed devoid of animals too, unless they too were sleeping away the heat of the day. The coolness and the shade were like a drink of fresh water. Even the horse felt it, for he raised his head and stepped more briskly. For the last hour he had been plodding like a cart horse.
Late in the day, I found a small wayside inn north of Leiria. It was clean enough, and seemed safe enough, but after a frugal meal I chose to sleep in the stable with my horse, rather than pay extra for a bed, thus saving my money and keeping a watch over my mount. It was not the first time I had spent the night in a stable and I was content, but I slept poorly, for the hard riding and the chafing of my clothes had broken the thin skin which had begun to form over the burn in my shoulder. The pain fretted me and prevented me from driving the anxious thoughts about my plan from my mind. During the day I had been able to concentrate my mind on finding my way and covering the ground as swiftly as I could without over-tiring my horse. The brief interlude in the fishing village had raised my spirits for a time, but lying on my bed of straw and staring into the darkness, I could no longer keep at bay the worries I had thrust away during the daylight hours. Since leaving Portugal seven years ago, my father and I had heard nothing of those of our family who had been left behind. My grandfather, being one of the most substantial landowners in the area inland from Coimbra, and moreover being a pure-blood Christian of ancient Portuguese lineage, would have been safe from the Inquisition. Surely he must have been able to protect the rest of the family. Yet in all these years we had heard nothing, despite sending several letters. Under Spanish occupation, Portugal was no longer a sovereign country and perhaps our letters had never arrived. Or else they had been deliberately confiscated, though I knew my father had always worded them with care. And would their connection with us have endangered even my grandparents? These thoughts tumbled over and over in my head. The following day, or the one after, I would know the answer. In the end, the weariness of my aching body finally drove out all thought, and I slept.
The next day, as I drew even further away from the sea, it grew hotter. It was still early in the summer, but my years in England had made me unaccustomed to Portuguese weather. By midday I was sweating and wiping my face every few minutes on my sleeve. We had reached the Beira Litoral now, with its groves of olives and cork-oaks. Some of the south-facing slopes were terraced for vines, but this was not an area particularly suited to vineyards. There were no towns and few villages here, but scattered over the countryside there were some of the great solares like my grandfather’s estate, and more humble farmhouses, with fields of wheat and barley, and, on the higher ground, sheep grazing.
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.