The Portuguese Affair Read Online Free PDF Page B

departure I made my way to the Nuñez house to attend a service to bless the mission and pray for success. I went alone, for my father was weak and tired, and had taken to his bed. As I swayed to the hypnotic rhythm of the prayers, I wondered how many of those around me were saying their farewells, intending never to return if the attack on the Spanish garrison in Lisbon were successful. Sara’s father Dunstan Añez was there. He had invested heavily in the expedition, but would not be going to Portugal, for the Queen could not spare him from his duties as her Purveyor of Groceries and Spices. Dom Antonio, standing between Hector Nuñez and Roderigo Lopez, had come from Eton to attend the synagogue, though in Eton he was a regular Christian church-goer. The three of them were in a state of exaltation which turned me cold with apprehension. During the years since the Inquisition had come for us, I had grown fatalistic. Hopes too high, expectations of glory and triumph, seemed to me to invite a crushing blow from the hand of fate. I suppose my inherited Jewish pessimism had been further shaped by my own life and my education in the classics – a man who indulges in hubris must expect to incur nemesis .
    I had been lax in attending our hidden Jewish services in recent years. Like the others in our Marrano community I was also a baptised Christian, and my mother’s father was a great Christian nobleman. As I had grown older I had become more confused about my faith, not less. Like every citizen of England I was obliged to attend church every Sunday, or else pay a fine as a recusant. The Christian services of Elizabeth’s largely tolerant church had become comfortingly familiar to me. Even suspected Catholics who compromised and attended the Protestant services would not be examined too closely, provided they kept their Catholic masses private and did not aid the missions of militant priests sent over from France. Even William Byrd, our most eminent composer, was widely known to be a Catholic, but he was tolerated. On the whole, I found the English church accorded much with my own beliefs.
    Yet the services in our makeshift synagogue – the central hall of the Nuñez house – brought back memories of my childhood, before the Spanish came. Perhaps this expedition would help me to understand whether I was Portuguese Jew or English Christian. I had seen Anne Lopez climb the stairs to the women’s gallery with her mother. They would be here at Ruy’s urging, but from conversations I had had with her over recent months, I knew that she too was troubled by divided loyalties. For her the magnet of England was even stronger, since like her mother she had been born here. But for her father, she would hardly have counted as a Stranger any longer.
    I joined in the prayers and responses as dutifully as ever, but I felt a stranger here myself, and my thoughts took me elsewhere, to my work and friends here in London and the unforeseeable prospects which lay ahead.
    The night before we were to sail from London to Plymouth, on the first stage of our voyage, Simon appeared at our door, having somehow got word that I was leaving, though I had been careful to suggest to the players, whenever I saw them, that the likelihood of my joining the expedition was remote. I was half glad and half sorry to see him. I had come to value the friends I had made in these last few years, so his good wishes and prayers meant much to me, but I have never liked saying farewell. As for my most intimate feelings for Simon, I could hardly admit them even to myself.
    I brought him into our inner parlour, where my father was dozing beside a small fire. It was a warm day outside, the spring weather having brought early and unreliable sunshine, but he had begun to feel the cold more often, so I had lit a fire to comfort him. I motioned Simon to a stool while I tucked a blanket around my father’s knees, then I poured us each a tankard of small ale.
    ‘So,’ he