Read Online The Portuguese Affair by Ann Swinfen - Free Book Online Page A

and put her lips to my ear. ‘Hush, Caterina. We will not choose martyrdom. We will swear our undying faith to the Pope and the Catholic Church. We will admit some small transgressions, that we donned clean linen on Friday evenings and forbore to eat pork, but we shall say that these were simply old customs in our families, and we do not know the reasons for them.’
    ‘But, Mama . . . ‘
    ‘Listen to me, Caterina.’ She took hold of my shoulders and shook me. ‘I do not know if they will put you to the question, but you must know what to say. You know that you are a baptised Christian.’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘We regularly attend the church of San Piero, do we not?’
    ‘Well . . .’
    ‘Caterina!’
    ‘Yes, Mama. We do attend church every Sunday, and make confession, and take communion. I took my first communion last Easter.’
    ‘As you did.’
    ‘Yes.’
    She relaxed a little.
    ‘Good.’
    I looked about me, for I found that my eyes had grown a little accustomed to the dark, and a ghost of grey light, no more than a strip half an inch wide, filtered under the door. The cell was about fifteen feet square, with a deep litter of dirty straw and rubbish on the floor and a heap of old rags in the far corner.
    ‘Come as close to the light as you can.’ My mother was fumbling in the purse she wore under her outer skirt, which the Inquisition’s men had not noticed in their haste to drag us from home and through the night-time streets.
    ‘It’s so cold,’ I said, rubbing my arms, for I was barefoot and wearing nothing but my night shift. ‘How can it be so cold in the summer?’
    ‘We’re deep underground here,’ she said absently. She had found what she was looking for and now seized a handful of my hair.
    ‘What are you doing?’ I tried to pull away.
    ‘I’m going to cut off your hair.’
    ‘My hair!’ I clutched my head with both hands and tried to pull away from her.
    ‘Keep still, Caterina. You are flat-chested still. In that shift you could be a boy, but for your hair. I’m going to cut it off.’
    ‘Why, why?’ I tried to push her away and she gave my hair a jerk.
    ‘Caterina, as a girl you are in far more danger here than a boy would be. Your hair will grow back.’
    I stood still at last as she began to hack at my hair with the tiny pair of scissors she carried with her. I kept silent then, but I could not stop the silent tears rolling down my face as she threw handfuls of my hair into the litter on the floor and stirred it in with the toe of her shoe.
    ‘That’s the best I can do,’ she said. ‘Take off your earrings and put them in here.’ she held out her purse and I dropped into it the small gold pendants I had put back in my ears after I had taken off the heavy pearls I had worn at dinner last night. My mother took off her own earrings, still her jewelled ones, and added them to the purse.
    ‘We must find somewhere to hide this,’ she said, ‘for we may need to bribe the guards.’
    She felt her way across the floor to the far corner, groping along the wall as she went, trying to find some hollow or loose stone where she could conceal the purse. As she trod on the pile of rags there was a sudden shriek and a curse, and she jumped back, her hand to her heart.
    ‘Leave me be,’ a whining voice came from within the rags. ‘Let me sleep, let me sleep.’
    I crept up behind my mother and peered down. As far as I could make out, an old woman, her thin wisps of hair the colour of curdled milk, was curled up there, her arms clutched protectively around her head.
    ‘I’m sorry, Senhora,’ said my mother. ‘I did not see you in the dark.’
    ‘Jaime will come soon,’ said the woman in a voice as flat and dull as the stones of the prison. She nodded her head, up and down, jerky as a marionette. ‘Yes, Jaime will come. Then I will cook his dinner and we will go to my sister. He said we would go to my sister.’ She gave a strange shrill laugh and strained up towards my