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forty years. What ghosts did I raise with these words breathed into the musty darkness? The act of defiance, secret and small though it was, pleased me.
    Lisbon was the last place upon the whole of the earth I should be, but here I was, and there was no undoing what I had set in motion. I began to gather my things in preparation to leave. There was nothing to do now but to remove myself from the protection of Englishmen and find my way in a city full of villains. They had tried to destroy me once, and they would certainly attempt to do so again. Let them make their best effort. The priests and the Inquisitors, the factors and the traders—they would all discover the man to be much more dangerous than the boy. This time the schemes and the plots and the secrets were mine.

Chapter 2
    Ten years earlier, I made the bleak journey from Lisbon to Falmouth. Once the ship sailed out of Portuguese waters, the captain himself had fetched me from my hiding place in the hold and delivered me to one of the smallest cabins. He ordered that meals were to be sent to the room every day, but I was otherwise left to mourn in solitude. That was a mercy. I craved no company and no conversation. I wanted no one to see my tears. I lay upon the thin and scratchy mattress that smelled of mold and sweat, and I tried to dwell upon nothing but the rolling of the ship. I didn’t want to think about those I had left behind, those I had abandoned. I felt alone and desperate and terrified and nauseated with guilt. I wanted to feel nothing at all.
    Everyone I knew was gone. Perhaps my parents might be executed or they might be set free to live in poverty and want. Regardless, I would never see them again. Nor would I ever see my friends. How would my days pass without wily Inácio by my side? How could I imaginewanting to live without Gabriela? Only in being torn apart from her had I understood the depth of what I felt. Now that was a raw wound, gaping and unable to heal. Even if I could someday return to her, she would no doubt be married. I still had her scarf, and I clutched it, pressed it to my face as I tried to recover the faint floral scent of her skin. Life in Lisbon had been cruel, but it was the only life I had ever known, and it was finished.
    After we reached England, I continued the journey with one of the ship’s officers, a thin man with a limp, a blotchy complexion, and a perpetual reddish stubble upon his chin. Mr. Hastings, as he was called, had business in London, and before the ship had departed Lisbon, he accepted payment from Charles Settwell to see me from Falmouth to the capital. He was not a friendly man and spoke to me only to introduce himself and to say he did not much relish the company of children. He said this several times in the course of no more than five minutes, so I suspected it must be true. I nodded when he talked, but said nothing, and that was evidently to his liking.
    Mr. Hastings fulfilled his responsibilities perhaps with less scrupulousness than desired, but with more than might have been expected. He made certain I had a place to sleep and enough to eat. If Hastings dined on beef and beer while I made do with hard cheese and brown bread, it was of no consequence. I ate little and that without relish. It was true that sometimes I was sent to pass the night in the stables while Hastings took a room, but I little cared for comforts. In any case, the stables were preferable when Hastings brought a woman back to our lodgings, although the sounds of his rutting were always mercifully brief. That Hastings had me pay, from my own purse rather than the funds Settwell had provided, for our room and food and, occasionally, his female companionship, was unsurprising. I could not expect him to care for me out of kindness. He was an Englishman, and I understood that most Englishmen did nothing if they did not see profit in it.
    Hastings and I passed our days riding in silence in a bouncingcoach alongside a curious admixture