With permission of the author, I present a beautifully written excerpt from the latest Epic Novel by L. A. Couriel! Review Follows...
Outside Lisbon, the paleness of the morning star provided them with a welcome veil of anonymity. Ginebra was puzzled that no carriage, nor even a wagon, was at their service. But Sebastian believed Ginebra would better withstand the jostling of a long journey on a horse of her own rather than being helplessly bumped about in a springless carriage. He chose the horse for her — a brown one, reasonably obedient, calm-tempered, and not inclined to break into a pointless gallop. The horse had a habit of frequently swiveling his ears, which brought bursts of giggling from Ginebra. An early consequence of Sebastian’s choice was a thoroughly sore backside, but with time she came to appreciate the advisability of riding horseback.
On the third day, she even dared to change from ladylike sidesaddle riding to riding astride like one of the men. She settled her feet into the stirrups and even tried to speed the horse up by digging the spurs into the sides of its bulging belly. Sebastian didn’t conceal his enjoyment of the sight. After she’d set out on the horse, he circled her and carefully arranged the drape of her clothing so that from a distance the shape of her body didn’t look feminine at all. They rode during daylight, and each evening they made camp. They didn’t stop in at taverns or farmhouses, despite the lure of a comfortable bed. Sebastian didn’t wish to be identified as the king. And for that reason, he covered himself from head to toe in a faded travel cloak. To any chance observer, their little convoy looked poor, awkward, and quite unexceptional. When they halted, they went to the effort of quickly erecting a tightly closed little tent for Ginebra, but the rest of them slept on the ground, covered by broad sheets of canvas. They skillfully lit a fire with coals left over from the night before and set a heavy iron pot of satiating stew on the fire. As Sebastian slept on the hard ground, he rested his head on the edge of his stiff leather saddle and his bodyguards, trained and responsive, surrounded him. Up to this point, he respected her honor with the utmost courtliness.
Her rustic etiquette was rudimentary, nothing to compare to the manners of the women of Lisbon’s court, but it didn’t prevent him from treating her like the highest nobility. Her appreciation for him grew. His ability to adorn their relations with layers of varied ceremony impressed and touched her. The contrast between the wild and licentious young man of the Penha de França and the king bent over his saddle, weighed down with deliberations, aroused her curiosity. He’s doing his best for me, she thought.
The bodyguards plucked at a couple of swollen-looking citole guitars and sang sad songs that sent spiraling tremors of sweetness down her back. They sang about far-off lands and brave sailors, broad-hipped and sharp-tongued Portuguese women, taciturn Brazilian women who sold their bodies, and chaste young maidens. There were melancholy ballads along with songs of praise for those fated to stay behind at the port and dampen their robes with tears as they watched the sea join the sky in the distance to become the cruel horizon that swallowed their husbands away from them. They sang about the forces of the sea, which never rest for a moment and which prey on the ships that have foundered and sunk to the bottom. They described the poor drowned sailors in the abyss of darkness, whose hearts still repeat their lovers’ names. They were careful of their language, and when the authentic songs described debauchery, they held back — even devising alternative lines with suitable rhymes and meter. Those improvisations evoked volleys of loud laughter and meaningful winks. Ginebra enjoyed the jolly atmosphere and the restrained mischievousness. The sad songs were entirely different from those she’d learned in the hills of the Estrela. She tried to repeat the words to herself and memorize the tunes, although they moistened her eyes with melancholy. She glanced furtively at the king, who was putting his heart into his singing, and tried to hide her sadness. Sebastian’s eyes met hers. “Any questions?” he asked in a challenging, soldierly voice.
She reddened all over and tried to think fast. Luckily it’s dark, she said to herself, and answered hurriedly: “I do have a question. About the peacocks — why is the castle overrun with so many peacocks?” He broke out in mad, childish laughter and lobbed a smooth pebble into the darkness. His head sank between his shoulders. “They belonged to my father, Prince João. His father, King João the Third — that’s my grandfather — saw that he liked peacocks, so he had the navy bring him lots of them from all over the world. That’s why there are different kinds of peacocks at the castle. When my father died, I was seven, and that’s what he left me. It’s when my grandpa died that I inherited the empire.” He choked up briefly. “Out in Covilhã, don’t they teach that?” The fourth day of the trip was hazy and dingy. The air was full of grayish grit. The sun looked like a moon, even at midday. The animals slumped, and their walk had no energy, as if they’d jointly decided to demonstrate their dissatisfaction.
The travelers wrapped themselves in their cloaks and hunched their shoulders, and the day’s ride proceeded sluggishly. They passed by shepherdesses in crude gray cloaks. The shepherdesses carried crooks long as spears and batted the rocks with their tips. The clacking noise spread across the sound of the sheep bells. Clusters of unkempt sheep stolidly grazed the flat plain’s grass, ignoring the long-haired sheepdogs that had also lost all desire to exhibit more than minimal verve. Ginebra peered at them through the slits of her head-covering and remembered when she would confidently, energetically lead her modest flock on the Estrela toward cool springs of water among the rocky surfaces.
The next day, they rode through the air that a rolling downpour had cleansed in advance of them, and their horses trod carefully in the mud. The trail ended at the broad yard of an abandoned farm. The farm was fenced as if its owners had forsaken it only a few days before. An abandoned wooden cart stood close to the gate, its shaft disconnected and one wheel broken. One of the bodyguards removed a sign that had been fixed to a post, and he remarked — softly so that the king wouldn’t hear — that the tax authorities or Inquisition had confiscated this farm.
Ginebra felt a brief whimper pass across her heart, digging a furrow of painful memory. Sebastian looked at her, and to her surprise, the furrow quickly mended. Two roving dogs were firmly put to flight. The travelers scattered straw from the barn around the area and readied themselves for sleeping on the ground at the deserted farm. This time Ginebra had the courage to lie outside the tent, like just another of the riders, and she let her back drop onto a thick woolen rug. She patted her skirts smooth, pulled them tight around her legs, covered herself with a heavy cloak against the chill, and laid her head on a bundle unloaded from the back of one of the horses. The bundle had a smell made up of grain, horse sweat, hyssop, and cow leather. She liked the blend. The bundle’s unique smell mixed with the smells of earth that rose in waves, released upward with the stored heat of the land.
Sebastian was dozing not far from her. His breathing quickly became part of the night noises. Crickets or cicadas? The rasping was far away, and, uncharacteristically, she found the source difficult to recognize. You’re changing, her heart told her. Genuinely changing. The night sky was clear. The bodyguards stayed awake; they were sitting around the fire. Merry flames cracked thick branches, and she felt supreme freedom flowing in her veins. Around her, wondering gazes swept the starry sky, and there were unfounded, slightly facetious declarations of the prominent stars’ exact names. Ginebra contented herself with a noncommittal murmur when they were right and smiled under the veil of the darkness when they weren’t.
She thought it wouldn’t be proper to share the secret that enabled her to precisely identify the complex structures on the celestial map and fluently read out the names of three dozen constellations. Ginebra tried to be as useful to the travelers as she could be: She drew water from wells and springs, she rinsed the dust of the roads off vegetables, she climbed trees to pick fruit, and she energetically gathered firewood. From time to time, she adorned her lapel with a nice chrysanthemum that she’d picked. The loyal bodyguards peeked at her covertly from atop their horses, but they didn’t dare speak to her.
She learned to tell them apart. Three were rough-looking veterans. Tomás, Hector, and Tiago were wrinkly and whiskery, and it was when they smiled that they looked their cruelest. All three alternated between chewing and smoking crude, fragrant tobacco leaves, which were the latest fashion among the more prosperous circles in the Iberian Peninsula. The smell of the smoke was far-reaching, and Ginebra clenched her nose against it. The innovation seemed to have addicted them. Their bag of brown leaves bulged, testifying that they enjoyed a plentiful supply thanks to their connections at court. Trying to be considerate, they spat only away from her direction. The fourth of them, João, seemed to be Sebastian’s age but must have been older. He didn’t smoke, and he was fairly good-looking. His cheeks were smooth as a boy’s, with just a thin plume of hair descending the jaw and thickening around the chin as if to point at the cross, the color of greenish copper, hanging very close to his throat. His hair was long and brown, his eyes between brown and green, his robe and broad- brimmed hat a greenish brown, and his delicate eyebrows sparse and brown. Even his skin inclined toward the color of a mature tree’s foliage.
If he were lying on the ground, I could step on him by mistake, Ginebra thought, and she smiled to herself. He, on the other hand, never smiled at all, and instead of conversing with his fellows, he made do with nodding. He was a master archer, and his bow rocked tranquilly in a case next to his saddle. From time to time, he would lithely and silently straighten his long body and then quickly, with undular but purposeful movements, strike an arrow into a hare, rabbit, or wild duck that happened along.
Then he let his cheering comrades skin, or pluck, the prey. Thus, he provided them with a variety of fresh food for the evening’s stew. After each kill, he crossed himself duteously; and Ginebra guessed that his gentle soul was requesting absolution. When she shared that perception with Sebastian, he corrected her: “That’s not an apology. It’s a wish. João wishes his next shot to be accurate too, whether it’s at an animal or at a man.”
One evening they were all sitting around the crackling coals as a rabbit was being roasted with slow care. Ginebra was hungry and eager to see the tender meat parceled into the bowls. When the pieces of steaming flesh were finally distributed, she tried hard — despite her growling stomach — not to look too avid. But she revealed her appetite by her obviously ravenous way of digging her fork in. Sebastian didn’t hide his enjoyment of the sight, and he gave out with a laugh. “Is something funny?” she challenged. “You are. You have the manners of a pretentious pauper. Go on and tear into it with your hands, country girl!” Sebastian laughed.
She set the bowl aside and went at him with her fists. He didn’t try to avoid her but merely rolled backward and maneuvered to save the content of his plate while laughing harder at the attack. When she understood what a spectacle she’d presented, she started laughing herself, stopped her assault, and sat back down. Remember your place, she reminded herself silently. She realized the bodyguards had been sitting upright all the time, with their expressions tense and their hands on the hilts of their swords. João also had an eye on the neckline of her robe.
The next day, she noticed João was distinctly slumping as he rode, as if he’d fallen asleep in the saddle. But João was actually scanning his surroundings all the time from the corner of his eye. He made sure that his hat shadowed his face. But once, when a sunbeam poured across the shadow, she caught a bold, unseemly gaze again, sizing up her body.
Caught in his misbehavior, João casually turned his eyes ahead, toward Sebastian’s back. Did João covet her, or did he suspect she intended to escape? She looked fearfully at the quiver’s diminishing load of arrows. That young man could hit her at a distance without bothering to dismount. He was the most dangerous of them.
Coimbra appeared on the horizon to their right, with its many turrets and church spires. She hadn’t anticipated the sight of the city. Silly girl. Of course, if they were bound north, Coimbra would pop up ahead sooner or later. The desire pulsed inside her, for a moment, to spur the horse and gallop to her sister Isabel’s house. But it was impossible, of course. As far as her sister knew, Ginebra was under arrest in Lisbon, in a cell ten cubits underground, suffering the tortures of the Inquisition. Ginebra couldn’t reveal her current circumstances to Isabel.
This new life allowed for no contact with the old one. If they did meet, she would have to explain that she was among a party of secret travelers led by the king of Portugal. What an unconvincing fantasy. Most likely, they’d think she was out of her mind. The poor girl escaped jail, and she’s dangerously delusional. No evidence to support her story. Even if she slipped away from the entourage and knocked at the gate of the house, and luckily someone opened it before daylight and someone believed her, then it would be all the worse because they’d understand right away that she was a concubine. It was all over her face. And worse yet, she was a paid escort — a royal palace whore. No, making contact was impossible. That life was dead.
“Am I a whore?” thought Ginebra. How could that be when the king hasn’t even touched me? The confusion and the contradiction drove her to distraction. Her thoughts rebalanced only when the hammering of the church bells slipped past them and hit at her from the rear. They were leaving the city behind. Ginebra wept tearlessly into the roughness of her travel scarf. She hoped the jostling from the horse’s gait obscured her silenced sobs.
Suddenly she saw that Sebastian was riding close by her side and watching her. How long had he been there? “… I was saying you must have noticed that the farther north we go, the fewer houses have tile fronts. Right?”
“Oh. Yes. Why?” “So instead of tiles with complicated, colorful decorations, there’s a lot more granite with mixed salt-and-pepper colors or just a layer of simple, colorful plaster, isn’t there?” “True.” “And do you know why?” Ginebra didn’t answer, but she might have voiced some sound because Sebastian immediately followed up: “The ceramic tiles, which Lisbon is famous for, play an important role in protecting the houses. They’re shields against the rain in the hot southern region, but a little water can seep in because of the spaces between them. Here in the north, the winter is cold, and the water seeping into the cracks freezes into ice. The ice widens the cracks, it breaks the hold of the tiles on the wall, and the tiles fall off. You’re from the north, and you didn’t know that?”
He was basking in his knowledge. No, she hadn’t known. She shook her head and politely thanked him for the explanation. Then she decided to play along further. “You had good teachers,” she concluded, and his young face glowed. For once, he’d managed to impress her with what he knew.
The old astronomer floated before her eyes, with his deep explanations of everything everywhere. The contrast between the two people, the impulsive young man and the deliberative astronomer, was like characters in a play, and it made her burst out in chiming laughter. Sebastian looked at her in surprise and wound up laughing without understanding why. But as she laughed, she couldn’t miss the way João the archer moved his eyes, tracking her alertly. Her belly tightened.
The dusk was long-lasting. They camped near a clean, bubbling spring. Their rocky nook reminded her of her days of freedom in the hills, and her heart was pained. She stood in the tent, removed her sweat-soaked underclothing, and bundled it up. Then she put on a roomy robe, a bit haphazardly, and left the tent, closing the flap with as much noise as the thick cloth could produce and managing to draw the archer’s attention.
She concealed the little bundle, but not fully. Then she walked a hundred paces away from the tent and descended to the spring. The water rinsed her calves with pleasant coolness and licked her thighs. For a moment, she remembered how Soraya’s son would romp in the spring waters of the palace harem’s Garden of Eden. She bent over, with a distinct absence of modesty, and scattered the contents of the bundle. With a short stick, she dunked the undergarments into the water; and she lengthily scrubbed and rinsed them in the spring water. From the corner of her eye, she saw that her privacy was being infringed. Not just once, but doubly. The closer figure was João.
A plot began to buzz into existence between her temples. She pretended not to notice anything. She rinsed and pounded her underclothes well, like a trained laundress. Then she scrupulously wrung them out and hung them as high as she could on the branches of an oak tree. Her stretching exposed more than a bit of her thighs and neck. Water dripped to the ground and was trapped in the channels of tiny rivulets. She stepped back and tilted her head to the side, her hands on her hips, as if considering whether to leave everything to dry thoroughly. Then she turned and started back toward the camp.
A whooshing hiss made her quickly look over her shoulder. She gave a hop, shocked at what she saw. Sebastian was standing by the oak — erect, indignant, and immovable. His body was turned at the end of a spin, and both his hands held a sword still poised where its arc had finished. The body of João the archer still stood on its feet, his hands holding her underwear to his chest but with no head to instruct them further. Only after his head stopped rolling on the ground did his entire body slowly list and collapse. Her profaned undergarments fell and scattered in a pool of blood. Inside her chest, a moment before she fainted onto the high-grown turf, she felt her heart give the special beat that the autocrat experiences from the supreme satisfaction of exercising absolute power. That heartbeat exploded inside her with an imperial bloodlust that was unfamiliar and embarrassing but immeasurably pleasant.
No one bothered digging a grave for the deceased. The brawny men repositioned his head at his shoulders, wordlessly covered him with layers of rough rocks from the field, and stood quietly by the heap. Tomás spat and crossed himself in alternation, scratched his arm, dragged his sleeve across his nose. and finally pronounced a short eulogy: “Here lies a lunkhead who didn’t know his place in this world. May he find peace in God’s heaven. Thank you for leaving more wine in the barrel for each of us. Ptui.”
The horse that was relieved of its rider joined the other pack animals, and the next day bundles were quietly transferred onto it from the others to even the load. The riding recommenced. Now Ginebra had seen three dead bodies in her life, leaving her days in the prison aside, and they all had died violent deaths for reasons relating somehow to her. She mused on Jorge, Nicolau, and João. As the travelers proceeded unaccompanied by João, they were obliged to trap their food. Ginebra participated in the gallop of horses. She wielded a net with increasing skill and caught a few plump partridges. They also caught a swan, and he was gleefully added to the seething pan. His meat turned out to be too stringy for her taste, and despite her sincere efforts, she couldn’t finish her portion. João was no longer mentioned.
The next day, they crossed the Douro River and reached Oporto at the approach of dusk, as the king had planned. No one suspected that the dust-covered travelers with their few pack horses and modest baggage were the ruler of the empire, his concubine, and his retinue. They entered the gate unobtrusively, with the eldest of the escort presenting himself to the city’s yawning guardsmen as the leader of the small convoy.
Carrying no commercial cargo, they aroused no interest among the voluble tax collectors and weren’t told to pass through the customs house. All the while, Sebastian was covered from head to toe; only his eyes showed through slits torn in his hood. Ginebra confided her astonishment. How could they fail to recognize their sovereign? And what if it was suddenly necessary that they recognize him and obey his orders?
Sebastian withdrew his fist from his robes. “See this? The royal signet ring! If I need to show my seal, it will be honored, and I’ll receive all my royal privileges and consideration.” Ginebra still wasn’t convinced. And as a pawnbroker, she was curious: “But who’s to say it isn’t counterfeit?” The king explained he had guarded against that. He’d long ago appointed twelve keepers of the seal all across Portugal. They knew the seal to the smallest detail. In any case of doubt, they were called, and they examined the imprint in question. If necessary, they could testify before municipal or district judges of the appropriate jurisdiction. “No one is more trustworthy,” Sebastian added with genuine pride.
She recalled João, who betrayed his trust and was summarily beheaded beside the spring as punishment, and she shuddered. Sebastian kept his promise. Their horses trod the city streets and stepped gingerly through the steep passages of the Miragaia neighborhood leading to the riverside. Near sunset, the furnace of the sun blazed at them like molten gold and dazzled Ginebra. Its fire stretched across the river’s bend to the blackness of the ocean. The river filled with dark, vibrating shadows and with sparks of flame. Its water pulsed like the neck artery of a dying giant, and it darkened and blackened until it burst like a ripe golden fruit.
She had to shield her eyes. The glare of the sun, and its twin that danced on the river, splashed into her pupils and stung them into contraction. The buildings, the riverbank, the sky, everything turned into flowing, swirling gold, and into darkness. A nebulous memory visited her. Is this how Jerusalem looks?
Her vision of the Holy City included cliffs, boulders, and scattered spots of shrubbery. A golden gleam radiated from its streets. Broad, ripe fields of yellowish grain extended around it, adorned by many olive groves. Just like Oporto. She turned to Sebastian. “Is there a river in Jerusalem?” “If there isn’t,” the young king answered readily, “I’ll dig you one!”
They awoke at dawn in the little camp they’d pitched on the northern bank. Opposite them, across the river, rose the heavy shadows of great stone buildings whose roofs were shingled with terracotta. On the southern bank, a light-colored road connected the piers of the Vila Nova de Gaiaon, where a little procession of wagons was moving. Along the river to their right, from the direction of the salty ocean, a great, pink, solid-looking divine finger slipped along the water. Ginebra blinked in surprise; she had never seen a cloud at such a diagonal tilt before. The celestial finger advanced quickly from the mouth of the river into the city, stretching and lengthening from its base to point heavenward. A light wind was blowing, and the finger began to hurry toward the deep reaches of the river’s channel in a mighty rebuke against the colorful toy boats and houses below.
“It’s a warning,” she said. “It’s a bad omen. Our plan isn’t going to work.” “Nonsense. It’s an illusion,” Sebastian hurried to reassure her. “Because the river turns sharply, the cloud looks out of balance. Just an illusion! Like all this world — an illusion of the moment! Here, look. It’s already disappearing.” He spoke confidently, but his undersized arm was shaking and she turned her eyes away from it. Shallow beaches spread lazily along the north bank of the Douro. Yellow dunes touched the gray stone piers that marked the edge of the built-up city. The workshops and spacious yards of the shipbuilders divided the flat mounds among themselves. There was a great bustle in the royal shipyards. Enormous beams of wood, looking silvery and wind-eaten, filled the yards with a warp and weft of scaffolding. The scaffolding stretched from the waterline to the highest platform.
Rosy skeletons for more than a dozen ships rested on the scaffolding. Many skilled workers and their apprentices labored around them. Some of the skeletons would turn into riverboats for shipping barrels of wine from deep inside the continent, but most of them would be military galleons of impressive size. Ginebra whistled with wonder at the sight of the high-reaching masts. At the tops of the masts — an altitude of six stories at least — long, colorful triangular banners flapped in the wind. She could easily picture such a monumental creation plowing the waves, its rigging strained to the limit, its sails pushing faster and faster, its prow beating and slicing the waves with one wallop after another.
A blush of excitement spread over her cheeks. She turned to Sebastian. Her eyes sparkled, and he smiled back in satisfaction. He scanned the masts with a scrutinizing gaze and said nothing. She noticed that the ends of the wooden beams were submerged in the river. Supplies of lumber were sitting in perfect order. She ran her eyes appreciatively over the enormous bands of wood, meticulously sawn. Carpenters did the work of turning them into narrow, planed boards. Others hammered gigantic nails and bent both ends of long, flat metal strips. “That’s the prow,” Sebastian explained, indicating a juncture of curves. Ginebra was fascinated. Her eyes caressed the body of the embryonic ship. Her nose caught a mixture of sharp smells: fresh wood, paint, caulk, and sap. She enjoyed seeing the precise fitting of wood to wood. His eyes followed hers. “Not a drop,” he said proudly — “Not a drop will slip into the body of the ship, even when it’s riding deep in the water. Our builders — my builders — are the best in the world!” A forest of oblique wooden poles supported the body of the closest ship. The sun threw stripes of black shadow that slid in arcs down the reddish wood. “What I like best is to see a launch at high tide. When everything is ready, they knock away the supports and the new ship glides into the river. That’s a very festive time,” he assured her. “Generally I’m sitting in a canopy chair on the pier when it happens.” He smiled. “And everyone is drinking and cheering. What a sight!”
She asked if she could come close to the shipyard, and Sebastian wrapped his face in cloth and asked her to hide her face too. She complied, and he gently pulled her kerchief and secured it around her ears. “If they see who I am,” he said, “we’ll be here for a week. And I — I have other plans. It wouldn’t be fair to them. They need official notification from the palace at least a week in advance if I’m coming. They have to get ready.”
In their anonymity, they approached the boats. Nearby, a smith was forging nails over a bed of glowing coals. “May I touch the ship?” The question popped out by itself, echoing the emotion she’d felt many years before in the astronomer’s workroom when she first touched the wondrous loxodrome with her fingers. There she’d felt freedom, liberty, and equal privilege. But Sebastian recoiled. “Don’t you dare,” he cautioned her sternly. “You’d cause all hell to break loose! A woman touching an unfinished boat?”
He spat twice to each side, but right away — seeing the anger in her glaring eyes — he regretted it. “Come on. I really don’t want anyone to notice who I am. I can’t be seen here without a proper entourage. Really. Let’s go before they find out it’s me.”
The next evening, he chose to ride out from the city walls and camp again — in an uncultivated area devoid of any uniqueness to recommend it. Not even an olive grove. Her disappointment showed. Entering town incognito was understandable. Prowling around the dockyards dressed in tatters and hiding their faces was understandable, too. But not even to sleep in a proper bed at some modest inn?
He’d dismissed his bodyguards and sent them to find themselves beds right in town. They located a place where some voluble young women were also staying. Sebastian warned them not to drink too much and to keep their mouths shut. She wondered why she, unlike them, had to sleep in a tent again, alone in a random field, instead of inside the beautiful city. But Sebastian was adamant.
“And another thing,” he added. “Tonight, when you go to sleep, stay fully dressed.” In response to the question that appeared on her face, he put a forefinger to his lips and said: “Shh...” Night fell. A full moon, in all its glory, swelled its cheeks above the hills of Oporto and was reflected in the Douro. The surface of the river held still as if under orders. Even the gulls stopped shrieking. The hoarse howls of jackals arose far away from time to time, interrupting the deep silence. The dormant city gleamed its magic sluggishly, trapping the twin moons between its riverbanks. Ginebra’s thoughts raced between them until she dozed off.
“Ginebra. Get up, Ginebra. Shh, shh... Get up.” She forced her eyes open a bit. Sebastian was leaning over her. “Are you dressed the way I told you?” he asked quietly. She nodded. “Let’s go,” he said. They slipped silently out of the little tent. The full moon’s light showed that the king was carrying some short, acrid- smelling poles. Torches. He held her arm. “Come on.” They walked a few feet, seemingly without purpose. Sebastian kept checking their position with respect to the river and the sea until they were standing beneath an unusually large baobab tree. She could see a mound of stones, the ruins of some kind of building, a field of thorns, and nothing else. She was sure he was tricking her, and she demanded an explanation. But Sebastian merely crawled into a short, sunken arched space inside the ruined building and said gleefully, “It’s here!”
“What’s here?” “Sit down.” He began to push and lift heavy stones out of his way, puffing with exertion as he set them aside. She began to suspect that the full moon had muddled his sanity. “Sebastian…” She was alarmed. Doubts ate at her. Aside from his physical handicap, did he also suffer from moonstruck madness? “Shh…” Almost unconsciously, she looked up at the stars and memorized the important elements of the map. Yes, she’d be able to relocate this place if ever necessary. But what was he trying to do? Sebastian labored for a long while. An entire mound of stones was silently displaced. Her thoughts wandered to his undersized arm. His moon-born mania and the jackals’ howls filled her with alarm and did nothing for her peace of mind. The sound of the stone moving was followed by the noise of wooden planks being dragged.
She was breathing heavily by the time she heard: “Come here!” Sebastian pulled her into a dark hole. They bent over as low as they could, and he dragged something flat — it looked like a wooden door — into place above their heads to hide the entrance. Then she gathered he was trying to light a torch. The flame took hold well, and she saw to her astonishment that they were at the start of a tunnel. Its end was out of sight. “What is this?” “Wait. We’re not there yet.”
They began to walk, and he held her tightly. His touch was more pleasant to her than ever. She enjoyed his daring and his exceptionality. He was always thinking and behaving in an unexpected way. It engrossed and enchanted her — and now more than ever, despite his strange manner. “We’re not where yet?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. They took five steps down the tunnel, which became steeper as they did. “Do you hear that?”
“What am I supposed to hear?” But as she finished the question, she realized she heard water burbling from far away. “You’ve brought me to a well in the middle of the night? For what?” “Just be patient. Be patient.” They advanced slowly. She noticed that the floor of the tunnel was becoming regular and comfortable. The walls grew apart, and the tunnel turned into a broad cave. The sound of running water echoed toward them from the sides. Sebastian dramatically raised the torch above their heads — and she stopped, thunderstruck. Before her, beneath a tan granite ceiling, flowed a river that emerged from a dark orifice on her left, passed onward, and was swallowed into an archway on her right — black and smooth as a gigantic, endless snake. The black water forged on and on, lapping the rock with a hypnotizing sensuality.
She couldn’t believe her eyes and leaned against the wall with one hand. The torchlight flickered on the water like a thousand glinting little eyes. The wall felt smooth. The granite had been dressed with masterful geometric precision. They were standing on a broad surface of stone, a sort of platform leveled carefully, and it opened even wider at the other side. Sebastian chuckled.
“Welcome to the best-kept secret in the city of Oporto. A secret known only to kings. Even the mayor and the princess aren’t aware of it. This is the hidden source of the Rio da Vila. The Romans dug the river down to a depth of dozens of yards beneath their city of Portus Cale, which is where our country got the name Portugal. The river has been running for more than twelve hundred years without being seen. A few miles away, it powers a millstone inside a cellar next to the customs house, where Henry the Navigator lived. From there, it empties out undetected onto the floor of the Douro River, from beneath the surface, between Bishop’s Hill and the docks. Even Henry the Navigator never knew where the water came from. The river’s secret was handed down just like the crown. Only the members of the royal dynasty have had the privilege of standing here, where you are, to learn how to defend the city if one day the enemy tries to cut its water off.”
Her heart pulsed with growing excitement. The significance of receiving these revelations from him was dawning on her. The peculiar sequence of events that he’d arranged was reaching its peak: his unexplained restraint regarding her body, the strange journey to Oporto with no suitable royal retinue, his violent reaction to the impropriety of João the archer, the covering of his face in public and his unwillingness to be recognized.
The pieces fell into place all at once. He had placed his trust in her. “I knew that you —” her words were interrupted as his warm mouth sealed her lips with a kiss. Their tongues twined. He pressed his entire body to her in desire. His hands grasped her and plunged between the folds of her clothing. The torch fell and rolled aside, and they sank to the floor of the cave alongside the black water.
She hesitated a moment and felt him impatiently tearing her clothes from her. Ginebra sighed, considered, and then yielded to him with a moan. The granite grotto filled with insatiable passion.
When only an ember remained of the torch, Sebastian rolled across it. “We have to go back up. According to the royal tradition that says we have to come here on the night of the full moon, we also have only the time of one torch for our pleasure. The cave’s entrance must be hidden again before daylight. Let’s go!”
They returned as they’d come. He pushed the wooden barrier off the opening, hopped out, turned around, and held out a hand to her.
The moonlight put wrinkles of maturity and new responsibility into his young, enthusiastic face. She held her hand toward him, and Sebastian lowered his arm and pulled her up toward himself. When she was half out, her legs dangling, he paused, looked into her eyes, and said, “For you, I’ll conquer Jerusalem.” He paused again and then added: “And I’ll give it to the Jews.”
~~~
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