The Portuguese Affair (20 page)

The man pointed at the girl chopping onions.

‘That is Isabel Alvarez.’

When we were very young, Isabel and I shared a bed. Our nursemaid slept in the adjacent room with the baby Felipe, so there was no one to stop us whispering together on the hot sleepless nights of summer. I cannot now remember all that we talked of, what pressing concerns occupied our minds in those days. I think we complained of minor injustices and comforted each other in our sorrows. I know that when my pet sparrow died, and I cried all night, Isabel put her arms around me and cried too. We must have had plans and dreams, but these are lost now from memory, except that I remember we were never to be parted, and if our parents should marry us to husbands who lived far apart, we would run away and live together in the magical forest of Buçaco, where we would build one of our secret houses, like the ones we built every summer when we stayed at the
solar
, only bigger, with carpets on the floor. That was a point of luxury Isabel always insisted upon: carpets from Turkey on the floor. I had my own requirements. I wanted to be sure it would have a place for dogs and horses. Isabel conceded that.

‘But they must not walk on the carpets,’ she said earnestly, and I promised that I would make sure they did not.

When you have shared every bath with your sister and laid your head on the same pillow every night, you come to know every detail of her body as well as your own. Isabel had a tiny mole behind her left ear, not much larger than the head of a farthingale pin, and sometimes I would tickle it to wake her in the morning. I stared now at this slovenly woman with her brood of children and knew she could not be my sister. Her eyes were dull and stupid. She must surely be older than seventeen. And yet, and yet . . . There was something in the curve of the cheek, the shape of the hand that held the chopping knife.

I stepped forward and lifted the lank, greasy hair away from the girl’s left ear. She flinched away, and the hand with the knife flew up towards me. I leapt back.

‘What are you doing!’ the man shouted, bounding across the room to me.

My heart was pounding painfully. Isabel would never aim a knife at me.

‘I know how to prove if this is indeed Isabel Alvarez,’ I said. I was breathing hard and I felt sickness rising in my throat. ‘Tell her I mean her no harm. Tell her to put the knife down.’

I do not know why I addressed him instead of her. Perhaps some instinct prompted me.

‘Do as he says,’ he said roughly to the girl, then took the knife from her hand and threw it across the table. The baby began to cry, and the boy – I saw now that it was a boy – stood up and sidled behind the man who, I suppose, was his father.

I stepped forward and cautiously lifted the girl’s hair again. Her whole body was tense with terror. The skin of her neck was dirty, but there, just below her hairline, was the tiny mole.

‘Oh, Isabel,’ I said, and I could not stop my tears, ‘Isabel, what has happened to you?’

Isabel looked from the man to me and back again, her lips slightly parted and that dull, hopeless look in her eyes. I had never seen such a look of utter despair.

‘You’ll get little sense out of her,’ the man said, with some complacency. ‘She can cook, a little, and keep my bed warm, but she is no good for anything else.’

‘What have you done to her!’ I turned on him, shouting. ‘She was beautiful and clever when last I saw her, at ten years old. Now I find her, barely seventeen, treated like a slave and bearing your brats.’

‘No blame to me,’ he said insolently. He leaned his shoulders against the bare stone wall and smiled again, that knowing smile. ‘She and her brother both fell ill when they were placed here in my mother’s care by Senhor da Alejo, seven years ago. The boy died and the girl developed brain fever. When she recovered she had become simple-minded, as you see.’

‘But surely my . . . my great-uncle came for her?’ I was losing the thread of my story and my pretended relationship with Isabel. ‘And why did your mother betray her trust by letting you take her as your whore?’ I was breathless with horror and confusion.

‘As for the Senhor, he didn’t want her.’ He shrugged indifferently. ‘Until her death five years ago my mother taught the girl to be useful. Simple cooking. How to milk the cow and grow vegetables. And she is my wife and not my whore.’

I did not believe him, with his loud voice and his shifty eyes. I knew he was lying.

How could this have happened? My grandfather would surely have come for Isabel as soon as it was safe, as soon as the Inquisition had given up their search of the area, even if her mind had been as severely damaged as the man said. But it could be that the search had continued. Perhaps he waited until the woman of the farm died, thinking her safe here from the Inquisitors, and then found it was too late. But our grandfather was dead, and now I would never know the reason. This foul villain must have got her with child when she was no more than twelve. And I did not believe he had married her, for there was something that had the ring of falsehood in his voice.

I went to the girl and put my arms around her, but she stood stiff in them, rigid as a wild animal about to run for its life. Oh, what had they done to her!

‘Isabel,’ I said quietly, crooning as if to a child, ‘Isabel, don’t you know me?’

I brushed the greasy hair back from her face, and kissed her gently on her dirty cheek. Her cheek that was still soft and childlike, though I saw that it was bruised below the eye, and there was more bruising on her neck, as if fingers had been tightened around her throat. I could make out the impression of fingers. It seemed to me that she relaxed a little as I held her, and for the first time she looked at me with eyes that had a mind behind them.

‘Don’t you know me?’ I rocked her gently, and began to hum a tune our nurse sang to us when we were sick or fretful. She opened her mouth as if she would speak, then she looked over my shoulder and caught the eye of the man, standing watchful behind me. Her face closed down again. She shook her head and tried to pull away from me. I put my lips close to her ear, that he might not hear, and whispered.

‘Isabel,’ I said, no more than a breath, ‘I am Caterina. Take no heed of these boy’s clothes, they are simply for safety’s sake. I’ve come to take you home.’

For a moment intelligence flashed into her eyes and she knew me. She put her arms around me and laid her head on my shoulder. So softly that it too was only a breath, she whispered, ‘Caterina.’

The man jumped forward and dragged us apart.

‘What are you whispering about? Leave her alone, she’s my wife. You, get back to your work!’

And he struck her a violent blow on the side of the head, which sent her staggering away from me, gasping for breath, but silent. It was the silence that wrenched at my heart. She only stopped herself from falling by catching hold of the edge of the table.

At once her head drooped, her eyes became dull, and she was again the wretched whore of a brutal farmer. Mechanically, she picked up the knife and began chopping the onions again, but I saw that her hands trembled and she nicked the side of her thumb so that blood ran, staining the onions and the table. She sucked her thumb, but did not lift her eyes.

The little boy began to cry, but quietly, as if he too had already learned to suppress the sound of his grief and pain. Even so, the man cuffed him and sent him sprawling across the room, where he crouched in a corner with his hands over his head, his shoulders heaving, but silent. Even so, the baby sensed something and began the thin gulping of breath that is the first sign of tears. Isabel laid down the knife and bent awkwardly, pregnant as she was, to pick the baby up off the floor. She was clearly still stunned by the blow, but she held the child against her shoulder, stroking her back with a hand that was shaking. Her thumb left a patch of blood on the baby’s back.

‘I have come to take Isabel home to her family!’ I shouted at the man. ‘You have no right to keep her here.’

‘She is my wife.’ He was sneering, sure of his power over her. ‘In law she is my property, as surely as my dog or my sheep or my cow or my chickens.’

‘Prove it. Show me some me some proof of your marriage. Who was the priest who married you? Did her grandfather give his consent?’

He swayed back.

Ah
, I thought,
I have you there
.

‘Come, Isabel,’ I said, I am going to take you home.’

He stepped between us.

‘Show me
your
proof, then,
Senhor
Alvarez.’ He mocked me with the word ‘Senhor’, as though I had no claim to it. ‘How can you prove you have the right to take her from me? Has Senhor da Alejo commanded it?’

From the way he spoke, I realised he had not yet heard that our grandfather was dead.

‘Yes,’ I said boldly. ‘He has commanded it. And you had best do as he commands, for he is your master, and if you do not obey, I shall see that you lose this farm and your livelihood as well.’ My heart was beating fast and I spat out the words, so outraged that I was becoming careless.

‘Then let him come. He has not come for her these five years, since my mother died.’

‘The world is changing,’ I said, rash in my desperate need to rescue Isabel from this place. ‘King Antonio has returned, with Drake’s English fleet and army at his back. He has already been hailed as King of Portugal in Peniche. I travelled with them. Now we are on our way to Lisbon. We will drive all the Spaniards out of Portugal and it will be a free country again.’

He gaped at me. Clearly no word had come to this remote place from Coruña or Peniche. He shook his head.

‘You lie.’

‘It is true, and you will hear of it soon enough, even here in the forest.’

I saw that the conviction in my tone had convinced him, or at least made him pause to change his tactics.

‘You have not proved your right to take her. I do not know that you are even of her family.’ His face was twisted in a sneer. ‘Perhaps you want her for your own whore!’

I was so startled by this that I began to laugh, which angered him more. This was the last thing I had expected. My astonishment made me slip my guard. And then I did a foolish thing, and cast away all caution.

‘None has a better right than I to take her away!’ I cried passionately. ‘I am her sister, Caterina. She recognised me just now.’

Isabel had stayed cowering beside the table since he had hit her, trying to comfort the baby, but she looked at me now with frightened eyes and I realised I had taken one step too far. She opened her mouth to speak, then pressed her lips together with a look of despair. The little boy had crept on hands and knees to his mother and was clinging to the ragged hem of her skirt.

‘Her sister!’ He leapt at me, and before I could stop him had torn open my doublet and shirt. ‘A woman? You are a woman?’

I pulled away and tried to fasten my clothes. I was shaking. Oh, fool that I was!

‘I can handle a sword as well as any man, so keep your distance.’ I drew my sword a few inches from the scabbard and looked at him defiantly, but I knew that I had made a fatal mistake.

He stood back and folded his arms again. To my surprise, he smiled. Then laughed. It was a sound to strike fear, but I refused to show it.

‘A woman. Her sister.’ He gave another great hoot of laughter, then spat, so that a gob of spittle landed on the table beside the chopped onions. ‘Then you must be the heretic, Caterina Alvarez. They came searching for you at the
solar
when you escaped from Coimbra. That time they took your grandmother away, that old woman, another heretic. And killed her – good riddance. A true-blooded Portuguese like your grandfather should never have married a dirty Jew like that and got all this brood of heretics. He may be my
master
as you call him, but he brought that curse on himself.’

He was grinning in elation, all the long hatred of centuries distilled into the look he fixed on me.

‘The Inquisition will be glad to know that you have returned,’ he said, triumph and glee mixed in his voice, ‘when I report you. A heretic, a Jew, and now masquerading as a man-woman. This time it is certain. It will be the fire for you.’ His face gleamed with salacious pleasure as he fixed his eyes on my gaping shirt.

It was checkmate. If he did succeed in reporting me to the Inquisitors before I could reach the safety of Peniche and the protection of our expedition, I was bound for the fire. I felt sick with terror.

‘Isabel!’ I cried, reaching out my arms to her. ‘Come with me!’ Tears were running unchecked down my cheeks. My sister.

Isabel too was weeping, but she shook her head slowly, making a helpless gesture with her free hand. Behind the man’s back she mouthed the words at me, ‘The children.’ It was unanswerable.

I was helpless. The children were clinging to her. Even if I could get her away, how could I rescue the children? And I knew, whatever I said, she would not leave without them.

At last she found her voice. ‘Go, Caterina! Quickly! Go!’ Her voice broke in a sob. ‘You cannot help me. Go!’

Then suddenly the man leapt forward and  seized the knife from the table. He sprang for me, but I was expecting it. I grabbed a stool and flung it at his knees. It was a lucky throw. I heard the crack as it struck bone. He staggered and tripped, and before he could regain his balance I was out through the door and racing for my horse, who stood where I had left him at the other end of the yard, keeping well clear of the vicious dog. I had to weave my way through all the rubbish strewn about the yard and in my blind panic I fell over a broken rake, landing on my knees and scraping my palms on the hard and gritty soil. The man was already through the door and coming for me fast, the knife in his hand. As I scrambled to my feet, I felt a sharp stab of pain in the ankle which I had sprained.