pleads with him. “She does love the nuns,” I remind him, and finally he gives in.
I lay awake all night wrestling with guilt. I wanted to be the most important child to Papa and now I will be. The cost? The lives of the two people I loved most. Now, the only member of our family left to go with my father to Raposeira is me.
4
SAGRES 1436
The sunlight makes a path across the covers of my bed as I sit up and pull a strand of hair out of my eyes. The air inside my room is cool, but I can feel the summer heat seeping through the window. I throw on a dress over my muslin undergarments and go out into the main room of the cottage.
My father, heedless of how the incessant wind makes the window behind him rattle, is at a table positioned to give him the best light for his work. Two oil lamps add to the light streaming through the window, setting the table aglow. The whitewashed walls cocoon us in peaceful, still air but can’t entirely mute the sound of the waves slamming against the cliffs in cracking booms and the shorebirds crying overhead.
Our servant, Tareyja, has left a breakfast of orange juice, bread, and a wedge of cheese. Papa has already eaten, I can see, by the crumbs on the breadboard. His cup is on the table, and I come over to ask if it needs filling.
He looks up, his eyes watering from the intensity of the work. “Are you well this morning?” he signs.
I nod my head. “Do you need anything?” He points to his cup, and I take it to the pitcher of orange juice and mix it with water, just the way he likes. When I bring it back, I come to his side to look at his work.
This map is not nearly as big as the atlas. It’s one piece of vellum, weighted down at the four corners with smooth beach stones. At the top is the southern end of Portugal and Spain, and at the bottom is the land just beyond Cape Bojador. Papa has added details from Gil Eanes’s logbook about the land south of the cape, but most of the new information comes from sea raids on Moorish fortresses north of there.
A few days ago, Papa painted a tiny gold-and-blue banner and crown at Raposeira to mark Prince Henry’s court, and just yesterday, he indicated the point at Sagres, where we now live, by a whitewashed stone tower like the one near our house. He hands me his magnifying lens, and I see a man and girl next to the tower. She looks like me, but so small he is using a brush with a single hair to paint her features.
“I’m on the map!” I sign to him, grinning. He makes a sad face, our sign for “sorry,” and taps the map at Cape Bojador. I had asked him to put my face on a mermaid, but there aren’t going to be such creatures on this map, or monsters inland either. The prince isn’t interested in any of that.
Prince Henry’s mind is occupied with only three things: what riches lie south of Cape Bojador, whether the Moors have gotten to them first, and if the people of those lands can be turned into Christians. He says he is sending his ships out to bring the word of God to the savages of Africa, confident that this will make them willing to trade exclusively with him, which will make him rich and starve out the Moors. The fact that all his goals work so well together, he says, is all the proof anyone should need of God’s will.
I make the sign for horse and raise my eyebrows to ask Papa’s permission to go riding. There’s not much to do here out on our lonely point, since most of the books and papers I used to read belonged to the Count of Medina-Sidonia and were left behind in Sevilla. Papa doesn’t worry about me being out on my own though. I am ten now, and in the two years we have lived here, I have come to know every patch of the peninsula at Sagres as well as I know my own bed. If I should get into trouble, someone will see me home. It’s so different from Sevilla, where what I did had to be carefully considered in case the neighbors were watching. Here, the only prowling eyes belong to the sea eagles soaring in
I lay awake all night wrestling with guilt. I wanted to be the most important child to Papa and now I will be. The cost? The lives of the two people I loved most. Now, the only member of our family left to go with my father to Raposeira is me.
4
SAGRES 1436
The sunlight makes a path across the covers of my bed as I sit up and pull a strand of hair out of my eyes. The air inside my room is cool, but I can feel the summer heat seeping through the window. I throw on a dress over my muslin undergarments and go out into the main room of the cottage.
My father, heedless of how the incessant wind makes the window behind him rattle, is at a table positioned to give him the best light for his work. Two oil lamps add to the light streaming through the window, setting the table aglow. The whitewashed walls cocoon us in peaceful, still air but can’t entirely mute the sound of the waves slamming against the cliffs in cracking booms and the shorebirds crying overhead.
Our servant, Tareyja, has left a breakfast of orange juice, bread, and a wedge of cheese. Papa has already eaten, I can see, by the crumbs on the breadboard. His cup is on the table, and I come over to ask if it needs filling.
He looks up, his eyes watering from the intensity of the work. “Are you well this morning?” he signs.
I nod my head. “Do you need anything?” He points to his cup, and I take it to the pitcher of orange juice and mix it with water, just the way he likes. When I bring it back, I come to his side to look at his work.
This map is not nearly as big as the atlas. It’s one piece of vellum, weighted down at the four corners with smooth beach stones. At the top is the southern end of Portugal and Spain, and at the bottom is the land just beyond Cape Bojador. Papa has added details from Gil Eanes’s logbook about the land south of the cape, but most of the new information comes from sea raids on Moorish fortresses north of there.
A few days ago, Papa painted a tiny gold-and-blue banner and crown at Raposeira to mark Prince Henry’s court, and just yesterday, he indicated the point at Sagres, where we now live, by a whitewashed stone tower like the one near our house. He hands me his magnifying lens, and I see a man and girl next to the tower. She looks like me, but so small he is using a brush with a single hair to paint her features.
“I’m on the map!” I sign to him, grinning. He makes a sad face, our sign for “sorry,” and taps the map at Cape Bojador. I had asked him to put my face on a mermaid, but there aren’t going to be such creatures on this map, or monsters inland either. The prince isn’t interested in any of that.
Prince Henry’s mind is occupied with only three things: what riches lie south of Cape Bojador, whether the Moors have gotten to them first, and if the people of those lands can be turned into Christians. He says he is sending his ships out to bring the word of God to the savages of Africa, confident that this will make them willing to trade exclusively with him, which will make him rich and starve out the Moors. The fact that all his goals work so well together, he says, is all the proof anyone should need of God’s will.
I make the sign for horse and raise my eyebrows to ask Papa’s permission to go riding. There’s not much to do here out on our lonely point, since most of the books and papers I used to read belonged to the Count of Medina-Sidonia and were left behind in Sevilla. Papa doesn’t worry about me being out on my own though. I am ten now, and in the two years we have lived here, I have come to know every patch of the peninsula at Sagres as well as I know my own bed. If I should get into trouble, someone will see me home. It’s so different from Sevilla, where what I did had to be carefully considered in case the neighbors were watching. Here, the only prowling eyes belong to the sea eagles soaring in
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