I dismounted. There was a stream beside the path, running cold and pure down from the higher mountainside and murmuring over its stony bed with a sweet and musical note, like some voice out of those ancient tales. I led the horse over to drink from it and, pulling off my cap, plunged my head into the water. I gasped with the shock, for despite the heat of the day, the stream ran icy cold, having sprung from deep under ground. This was what I needed. A moment of chill clarity to gather my thoughts. I sat down on the bank and flung my wet hair dripping on to my shoulders.

Both my grandparents were dead. The cruel truth of it confronted me. I had clung to the hope that I would find them there, the beloved home unchanged, their arms held out to embrace me, just as they had been when I was a little girl. And even as recently as three weeks ago my grandfather had still been there. The thought of that was almost too much to bear. I laid my forehead on my up-drawn knees and at last allowed myself to weep.

I do not know how long I sat their, hugging my grief, while the horse tugged at a few sparse tussocks of grass amongst the tree roots. At last I drew breath. I rubbed my face with my sleeve and tried to gather my thoughts. There was still Isabel. My little sister would be seventeen now, but I could not understand why she was still at the farm, instead of living with our grandfather at the manor house. Unless the Inquisition was still active in this area, seeking out any person tainted with Jewish blood despite being converted Christians, so that my grandfather had thought it was safer for her to remain there with the da Rocas. But would he not have sought a good marriage for her by now? Perhaps he had been so overwhelmed by grief at my grandmother’s death, that he had become senile. Nay, that made no sense. It was clear that the estate was in good order, the farmland cared for, the house immaculate, and the servants – though frightened by what had happened – were still carrying on with their duties. My grandfather had ridden on business to Lisbon, the servant had said. That did not suggest a man overwhelmed by age or infirmity of body or mind. And now he was gone. Who would inherit the estate now? Surely, it would be Isabel, for he could not have known whether my parents and I were alive or dead..

I must talk to Isabel. I had come hoping to take her back to England, to join my father and me in London, but if she was heiress to this great estate, surely Dom Antonio would ensure that she took her place amongst the Portuguese aristocracy, if that was what she chose. The Spanish Inquisition would have no power in a Portugal ruled by a half-Jewish king. Aye, she might choose to remain here, however sorry I would be to lose her again.

I caught the horse and mounted once more. I had delayed too long, time was passing. I must hurry on to the farm and discuss these matters with my sister. I did not even know whether word had been sent to her about our grandfather’s death at the hands of the Spanish authorities in Lisbon, since the news had only reached the manor yesterday. I should have asked the servant, but I had been too stunned by what he had told me to gather my thoughts.

My horse and I picked our way along the path, heavy with the forest’s sun-warmed spicy aromas, stirred up by his hooves amongst the leaf litter of centuries. At last the trees thinned and we emerged into the open again, where the heat struck me like a blow. I found myself looking down over a shallow valley, cleared of trees, where the tenant farm stood. Here in the north of Portugal, expensive whitewash is reserved for churches and the homes of the wealthy. Common houses are grey stone, schist or granite, and sink into the setting of the surrounding rocks. Down below me I could see such a house, huddled low amongst its barns and outbuildings.

Despite my sorrow at the loss of my grandparents, my heart suddenly lifted at the thought that I would soon see my sister again. Isabel and I had always been close as children, friends as much as sisters. She had not possessed my passion for learning, but she had loved the countryside as I did. All three of us, Isabel and Felipe and I, had swum and ridden and played about the solar with a freedom not often granted to children of our class, certainly not to girls. I had never thought, as a child, to wonder why. Indeed, it was only now, looking back, that I realised that our upbringing was unusual. I must ask my father. Was it my parents or my grandparents who had slipped the reins and allowed us that freedom when we were in the country? In truth it had stood me in good stead in my masquerade to conceal my sex. I was not afraid to ride or climb like a boy. Had I always been reared as the demure daughter Caterina, a part I had sometimes played in Coimbra, then the boy Christoval would have found life difficult indeed.

I held my horse back to a gentle walking pace as we descended the steep path to the farm. I did not want to make a dramatic entry and alarm the inhabitants. Shut away in this remote valley, they must have few visitors. A stranger arriving thus on horseback might mean trouble – a tax collector, perhaps, or the forerunner of a troop of Spanish horse demanding food and quartering. I did not want to find a crossbow confronting me before I could explain my business here.

The farm was not prepossessing. Indeed it was not what I had expected from valued and respectable tenants of my grandfather. There were a few scrawny sheep in a dirty pen, some mangy chickens scratching listlessly in the dirt, and a vicious dog chained up, who would have had the leg off my horse if he could have come near enough.

The whole farm appeared deserted. Could this really be the place where my sister had been lodged for seven years, since that summer when she was ten? The summer when everything fell apart. It was here, we had been told, that she and Felipe had fallen ill, and Felipe had died. It was because of those few words of reassurance from Dr Gomez, as we crouched in the fisherman’s boat in Ilhavo,  promising Isabel would recover, that I had clung all these years to hope. It was those words which had brought me to Portugal, to find my sister and bring her home with me. Yet I was appalled at the sight of the farm, a filthy neglected place. I had never been here before, but I knew that in the past the da Rocas had been considered excellent tenants and sound farmers. What I could see of the farm now seemed an outrage. This was no place for my sister.

I rode slowly down the last of the path, which led first to the farm, then continued on downhill past it, to the lower part of the valley, where I believed there were more tenant farms. Dismounting, I left my horse to stand at the far edge of the yard, and made my way warily in a wide circle around the dog until I could reach the front door of the house and bang on it with my fist. It hung askew, and the mean windows on either side were shuttered. Everything was very dirty, and the paint on the woodwork had blistered and peeled off long ago. No one answered my knock, but I saw a slatternly girl come out of the cowshed with a pail of milk and head towards the back of the house. She wore a ragged dress, with her hair hanging in lank tresses below her shoulders. Her feet were bare and filthy. I shouted at her, but she ignored me. I banged again on the door, beginning to grow angry. Was she deaf? Was there no one else here?

At last, when I was thinking of going in pursuit of the girl round to the back of the house, a man of about thirty emerged from one of the outbuildings and came slowly towards me, glowering. I saw him take in the sword at my side, and the quality of my mount, and my clothes, which (though far from elegant) were many degrees better than his. He wore loose dirty breeches, like the slops our sailors wore, and a sleeveless tunic which revealed thickly muscled arms, from which wiry black hair sprung. Unlike the girl, he wore heavy boots. This, then, must be the farmer, though I had expected a much older man. The girl must be a maidservant or kitchen skivvy. The man shouted at the dog to be silent, and kicked him in the ribs. The cur slunk back to a patch of shade and lay down, his eyes never leaving me. The man straddled his legs, folded his thick arms across his chest, and regarded me with much the same expression as the dog. I was relieved to see that he was not carrying a weapon.