ever come to this. It is not a fortune, but it will help. Don’t let her try to pack her possessions, just set out with whatever you can carry in a pack. Tell the neighbours you are going to spend a few days in Lisbon, but don’t go there. Make for Porto to the north. So many go there to trade, the arrival of two strangers will pass unnoticed. Many artisans work there. It will be easier to find respectable work. The money won’t last for long, Isabela, and I fear that you may have to seek work to support yourself and your mother. She can’t …’
We both knew that though my mother laboured harder than any field hand in her own home, the shame and humiliation of having to take orders from a master or mistress would kill her.
‘I am so sorry that I have failed you, Isabela. I thought always to provide for you and your mother.’ I could hear the shame in his voice. ‘But promise me you will leave Sintra today.’
‘We can’t just abandon you here, Father,’ I protested.
‘My child, don’t you think my pain would be a thousand times worse if I knew you and your mother were suffering in prison as well? I can bear whatever they do to me, but it would kill me if I knew they were hurting you or your mother and I was powerless to stop them. If you want to help me, leave tonight so that at least I don’t have to fear your arrest too.’
‘But why should they arrest us? Father, listen to me, you mustn’t lose hope.’ I gripped his shirt. It was as wet as the walls of his cell. ‘They will find you innocent, I know they will. How could they not? Sebastian knows you’d no more kill the falcons than you would harm your own family.’
My father closed his cold fingers gently over mine. ‘This is about something far more serious than the birds, Isabela. The gyrfalcons were killed deliberately, so that I would be blamed. I am sure of that.’
‘But I don’t understand, Father. Who would hate you enough to do that?’
I couldn’t imagine that my mild, unassuming father had ever made an enemy in his life, and certainly not one who would plot to see him dead.
‘The Inquisition,’ my father said bluntly.
‘But –’
‘Please, child, just listen. There isn’t much time. There is something I should have told you long ago, but your mother would not allow us even to speak of it, and I was too much of a coward to challenge her. It seemed easier just to keep the peace. Isabela … I know your mother has always told you that we are Old Christians. I think she has really come to believe it herself, but it is not the truth.’
‘I don’t understand.’ He had told me not to interrupt, but I couldn’t help it.
He bowed his head as if he was ashamed. ‘I convinced myself that it would be safer if you didn’t know. You were always such an inquisitive child. Even if your mother had refused to tell you anything, you might have asked questions of old Jorge or me, and knowledge of the old ways is dangerous. But the truth is our grandparents, mine and your mother’s, were once Jews. Our parents were born Jews, though they were so young when they were converted they remember little of it. But it is easy for the Inquisition to find out these things, when it is determined to uncover the truth.’
I couldn’t take in what I was hearing. Ever since I could remember, my mother had told me that we were Old Christians. She was so proud of it. And my own father had sat in the room when she had boasted of it, never once contradicting her. It made no sense. I’d seen the rosary which had belonged to my great-great-aunt, the abbess. I had held it, just as I had held the emblem of St Catherine that my father’s forebear had worn in the Crusades. How could they own such things if they were Jews? All my life, my mother had taught me that the Jews were the enemies of the Holy Church, and Marranos were worse for they were demons hiding among the good Christians. But now, if my mother and father were … if we were … But my father was still talking in a low urgent whisper.
‘Isabela, you saw at the auto-da-fé how the