I.

A VOYAGE TO ALBION

MY FIRST MEMORY, thinks I, was of an old, wrinkled nun named Sister Matilde as she and I rode her burrinho, a burrinho named Bento, meaning ‘blessed’, in a land far away, in the mountains high above Monchique. She would kick Bento with her heels and cry out ‘Allez! Allez!’ in French, for she was born an age ago somewhere near Paris and had fled France during the revolution. Together we would merrily sing ‘Arre burriquito, Arre burriquito’ as we rode down the verdant hillside, atop of which stood the ancient and impoverished Convento de Nossa Senhora do Desterro – Our Lady of Exile – much of it in ruins after the great earthquake of 1755.

‘If you are a bom menina, a good girl,’ Sister Matilde tapped me on the nose, ‘I shall reward you with a lemon ice or a fresh fig in Monchique.’

‘Ice! Ice!’ I cried with joy, for no three-year-old wanted to eat a squashy fig when an ice was to be had.

When we reached the small town of Monchique, Sister Matilde placed me near the door of the tenda, the grocer’s shop, where I begged for alms. I would kiss my palms and then hold out my hands to passersby, many of whom became seized with pity for this anjinho, this tattered little angel wearing wild jonquils in her hair, and they would give me a réis.

I was born on the third of June, in the year 1810, amidst a great upheaval in Lisbon, where tens of thousands of displaced peasants crowded into the city to escape Napoleon’s Le Grande Armée. My papai, being a brave British officer, had been injured in Sobral, and while he was convalescing in Lisbon, he learnt of my existence but we were separated by war and circumstance. Should you wonder, I am no longer a bebê, being now a proper young lady of twelve years of age. But I have excellent recall and a prodigious mind, as papai is wont to tell me. ‘My daughter is “la jeune savante” – the young scholar – and as learned as her tutors,’ he often boasts to his family and connections.

Yes, yes – I know what you are feeling. You wonder how came I to live in the land of Albion? What happened was this: When I was a bebê, I was abandoned at a convent in Lisbon, where Sister Matilde found me. And that is why I lived with Sister Matilde, who sheltered me at the Convento do Desterro, one hundred and sixty miles south of Lisbon. I learnt how to say my prayers, and once, whilst I was praying, God told me he would send a guardian angel to watch over me. Her name was Sister Elisabete, a beautiful, young nun, whom I called Sister Lisbet and whom no one else could see besides me.

It was from there, in July 1813, at the grand age of three, that I took my leave of my homeland. I set out into the world with determination to find my papai, he being so very lost, at least that is what Sister Lisbet told me and what I came to believe. Sister Lisbet explained to me that two Irish nuns would take me to their convent in York, and with Sister Matilde’s blessing, the Irish sisters and I embarked for England, setting sail from Lagos. I had no fear, even when we entered the treacherous waters of the Bay of Biscay and got caught in a gale near the Spanish coast. I said my prayers, and like magic, Sister Lisbet appeared by my side. ‘Wet betokens luck,’ Sister Lisbet whispered to me as the waves and wind knocked our sea-boat about until we reached Falmouth.

For eight long months in York, which seemed an eternity to me, I searched and searched, waited and waited, and prayed and prayed that I would find my papai. Unbeknown to me, my papai had journeyed to Lisbon to search for me, but he had lost my trail there. The following year, as I approached my fourth birth-day, my papai rusticated at Pemberley, his cousin Darcy’s estate in Derbyshire. Sister Lisbet promised to help me find my papai, and she worked her magic to send him an express about York. Hie it there he did in two days’ time, bringing along his cousin and a friend who knew about our convent and who guided my papai to us. Apre! I had found papai, and I gave a thousand thank you’s to God.

‘Papai, why are you crying?’

‘Oh! Filha da minha alma, daughter of my soul…’ And he began to sob again.

‘Are you not happy to see me?’

‘I am extremely happy to see you.’ Papai chucked me under the chin. ‘I thought you would never find me. ’

‘Sister Lisbet helped me find you.’

This gave him a start. ‘What, what? Do you mean Sister Elisabete?’ He looked round, but all he saw was air.

‘You must have faith.’ I shook my finger at him. I thought him curious for not having a strong faith like mine.

‘Yes, I should, poppet.’

‘What’s a pop-head?’

‘A poppet is a child who is dearly loved,’ he tried to explain.

I gasped. ‘Do you love me?’

‘Do I.’ And he kissed both of my hands.

‘Papai, may I have a burrinho?’

He gave a hearty laugh. ‘Why, you imp you.’

I had found my papai and would live with him for ever, unaware that I could no longer stay with Sister Lisbet at the convent in York. When Sister Lisbet apprised me of this fact, I stamped my feet – left-right-left-right – and bawled and carried on. ‘Como! I shan’t give you up, Sister Lisbet, I shan’t,’ says I, who had changed my name from Sofia to Sofia-Elisabete to honour the good sister. Mother Superior at the convent knew not why I was bawling. She reasoned with me that I must leave the convent if I wished to become a proper English lady. I bawled all over again while Sister Lisbet tried to hush me. ‘Calai-vos, calai-vos,’ she soothed me with her mellifluous voice. Sister Lisbet revealed to me that she would always be one dream away whenever I needed her. She gave me a silver cross like hers to wear, and she promised to give me a macaw, a macaw named Graça. I asked her if I could have a burrinho instead, to which Sister Lisbet shook her head and clucked her tongue.

There, at the convent, papai introduced me to my cousin Mr Darcy, a tall and pretty gentleman indeed, and Mr Bingley, a most handsome and good-natured relation of Mr Darcy’s because he is married to the sister of Mrs Darcy. Papai explained that he and Mr Bingley had travelled together to Lisbon last year to search for me and that Mr Bingley had ties with the convent in York because his own father used to celebrate Mass there. Bing, Bing, Bingley-O! How I adore him, let me count the ways. He has reddish hair, a handful of freckles on his cheeks and long, silky eyelashes framing his fine blue eyes. If only he could be my namorado, my beau.

‘Bom dia o senhor.’ I curtseyed prettily to him.

‘Bom dia. Que bella menina!’ Mr Bingley bowed to me. His compliment of my prettiness made me wild for him, and I grasped his hand to kiss it.

Papai cleared his throat. ‘Poppet, let go of his hand now. Poppet, did not you hear me?’ Papai attempted to remove my hand from Mr Bingley’s, but I struggled to hold on, for I had not done yet flirting with my beau. Papai picked me up, and pressing his lips on my cheek, he blew on it – hoooooooonk! – to give me a wet and loud kiss.

‘Gah!’ I cried, in between squeals, for I had never been kissed before.

‘Well now, that is my special gooseberry kiss,’ papai declared.

‘Gooseberry’ was a curious word at first to me, but it took on a special meaning whenever papai wished to tease me or distract me with a kiss. Ever since then, I have been wild for anything goosegog – gooseberry jam, gooseberry fool, gooseberry pie.

For many months thereafter, it was just the two of us: me and papai. We lived for a bit at Pemberley, where Mr Darcy gifted me with a piebald burrinho which I named Pie, the only problem being that Pie would live at Pemberley for ever and never ever with me. My papai introduced me to a macaw named Graça, which he had brought back with him from Portugal. This macaw and Bixby, Mr Darcy’s favourite dog, became boon companions. One could often see Bixby gambolling on the hillocks, the macaw perched on his back. Mr Darcy taught the macaw all sorts of words in different languages, and people would come from miles away just to hear the polyglot macaw speak. One day Graça surprised us with ‘jig it’, which gave Mrs Darcy much mirth since the reserved Mr Darcy has an aversion to dancing, so she says, but in those rare instances when Mr Darcy feels inclined to a reel, he would always pronounce, ‘I am of a mind to jig it’, and take to the dance floor he would, amazing everyone as he tript away with Mrs Darcy.

One night at Pemberley, when the house had quieted, I called upon my magical powers – for every child believes in magic – to float in the air with the utmost concentration from the nursery to my papai’s bedchamber one storey below. Once I had planted my feet back on the ground, I threw off my hateful nightdress and then I climbed into the warm bed with my papai. The next night, my papai had been waiting for me this time.

‘Miss Sofia-Elisabete, we shall be in big trouble once it becomes known you are giving Nurse the slip every night.’

‘I hate the nursery.’

Papai groaned. ‘Did not the good sisters tell you that you must wear a nightdress in England? You cannot sleep in a state of nature like you did in Portugal.’

‘I hate the nightdress.’

‘Hora! Oh, what to do? What to do?’ Papai slapped his forehead.

‘Please papai. Nursey snores.’

Papai gave up. ‘Well, go to sleep for now.’

‘I am not sleepy.’

‘Vem cá. Come here. I will sprinkle magic dust into your peepers and you shall meet with the dustman soon enough.’

In the morning, Nursey gave me a scolding and told me the bugbear would gobble me up for being naughty. When I asked her what a bugbear was, Nursey explained that it was a goblin in the form of a bear that lurked in the woods and preyed on bad children. Not knowing what a bear was, for we never had ursos in the south of Portugal, it perplexed me as to why Nursey seemed to be worked up about a little bug which anyone could squash with their hand. Que maravilha! These folks in the land of Albion have strange customs.

My first olfactory memory, thinks I, was that of papai as I slept near him. My papai brings to mind a hodgepodge of cloves and cinnamon and heavy dew and bark and musty earth. He calls it his manly perfume, because he never likes to bathe much. Me? I don’t like to bathe either. I am my papai’s daughter after all. One day, just before dinner, papai asked me if I had washed my hands.

‘I must have done,’ I twisted my hands behind my back.

Papai lectured me about lying. ‘Right-about-face, soldier, and quick march upstairs to wash your hands.’

The next day, before we sat at table, for my papai always let me dine with him when the Darcys were away, he asked me if I had washed my hands.

Bemused, I showed him my hands. ‘They don’t look dirty, so why do I need to wash them?’

This diverted papai at first, but then he became stern, like the Colonel he is. ‘Wash your greasy hands or I shan’t give you a dish of your goose-grog.’

I rushed upstairs in a panic that I would not get my share of gooseberry fool.

Our tranquil days at Pemberley seemed destined to last for ever, until the day arrived where we received an unexpected visitor. Lord Matlock, he being my papai’s father, rode his black stallion to Pemberley whereupon he sighted my papai, who was angling for Callidus, his epithet for the ever-elusive giant carp which lived in Darcy’s Lake.

‘Pater?’ Papai gazed in astonishment at the imposing figure of Lord Matlock atop his black stallion.

‘Son.’ Lord Matlock sounded grim as he dismounted from his horse. ‘Why have you not visited Matlock? I have ridden here myself to see if there is truth to the rumours I am hearing.’ For the first time, Lord Matlock noticed me playing with my doll near the bank of the lake.

‘Pray what rumours would that be?’

Lord Matlock prodded my papai with his riding whip. ‘Unlike you, I will not dissemble. I am speaking of the rumour that you and your by-blow are living here at Pemberley.’

‘She is my daughter, and it took us a long time to find each other. I will not give her up!’ Papai tugged at his cravat.

‘So it is true!’ Lord Matlock thundered. ‘How dare you pollute the Fitzwilliam name and the shades of Pemberley.’

What to do? How could I, Sofia-Elisabete, end their set-to? I placed myself inside a skiff, and using my aforementioned magical powers, I willed a gust of wind to push the skiff towards the centre of Darcy’s Lake. I cried papai’s name again and again, and that is when Lord Matlock dove into the lake and he swam like a madman to rescue me and to tow the skiff back to the dock.

Lord Matlock scrutinised me, now that I was safe on land. ‘I wonder how you got into the skiff?’

‘I climbed into it.’

‘But how did that rope become loose?’

‘I made it loose.’ I giggled at his puzzled face.

‘Oh, and did you perform magic to make the skiff drift near the centre of the lake?’

I nodded. ‘I told Wind to help me.’

He rubbed his forehead. ‘Why did you put yourself into danger, child?’

‘I stopped you and papai from fighting.’

He admitted defeat. ‘You are definitely a Fitzwilliam and like your father, great heaven’s above.’

Ever since that time, me and my avô, which is what I call my grandfather, have taken a great liking for one another, he teaching me how to use a soap-bubble machine, me teaching him some Portuguese words and customs, such as when I kiss his hand and bless him – ‘a bênção meu avô’. My avô wished more than anything to protect me from Lady Matlock, who no doubt would cut me up, at least that is what I heard my avô half-whisper to papai. Would she use an adaga, a dagger, to cut me up? Surely my papai would protect me from this bruxa, this Lady Matlock, and give me a magical amulet to wear to ward off this evil witch.

The unfortunate day arrived sooner than I wished when we received something called a ‘summons’ from Lady Matlock. My papai hired a yellow bounder which got us to Matlock. From there, we met the Matlock carriage which conveyed us to papai’s ancestral home. No one awaited us outside except for the butler. My avô was busy in the metropolis far away, and so there was nothing for it; we had to face the inquisition on our own.

‘Pray, how old are you?’ Lady Matlock peered down her nose at me as I stood before her, she being seated in a throne-like chair.

‘I am four, which is nearly five, your Ladyskiff,’ said I in my best polished English. My father whispered to me that I should have said ‘your Ladyship’.

‘Not yet five? Impossible, you love brat.’

‘What’s a love brat, your Ladyship?’

‘Why, it is you.’ Lady Matlock sniffed the air. ‘How dare you pollute Matlock with your presence here.’

‘But you summoned me, your Ladyship.’

‘O fie!’ Lady Matlock waved her lace handkerchief at me. ‘But now that you are here, pray tell me something that will amaze me, for I hear that you are uncommonly clever for someone so young.’

I glanced at papai, who urged me on. ‘Well…uh…Mr Darcy’s dog killed fifty rats in under five minutes.’

‘Phoo! Phoo!’ Lady Matlock waved her hand at me in disbelief.

‘Truly,’ I assured her, having seen Bixby the fearless terrier accomplish this grand feat with my own eyes. ‘My papai bet on Bixby. Papai made a cart-load of money.’

Lady Matlock narrowed her eyes at me. ‘What exactly do you want from our noble family? Are you already so fond of money? Is that why you bedevil me? For shame!’

‘All I wish for is…a soap bubble machine!’ I jumped for joy.

‘Absolutely not.’

‘I wish, then, for…a whirligig?’

‘What nonsense!’ Lady Matlock rapped the floor with her walking cane. ‘You, love brat, will be scorned by our rank and class of society for ever.’

‘Can I still have goose-grog?’

‘Do not be ridiculous. I shall degrade myself no longer to the natural daughter of a low creature. You may kiss my hand before you go,’ Lady Matlock commanded in a condescending tone, her arm outstretched before me.

So I did what any mischievous child would do. I grasped her hand to kiss it and I blessed her with ‘a bênção meu boba’.

I could see papai hitch and tug at his cravat. After he had bowed over Lady Matlock’s hand to kiss it, we took our leave, my papai steering me with one hand atop my head.

‘You saucy girl you, calling Lady Matlock a fool,’ he scolded me in a low voice as he led me out of doors. ‘As penance, you will be put on fatigue duty when we return home and your chore this time will be…’

‘Look papai! It’s Sister Lisbet,’ I cried, because no one wished to do chores. I knew this would distract him, because I heard him say once that Sister Lisbet was a ghost he had seen in Lisbon last year when he had been searching for me, and he seemed to pale whenever I mentioned her. I made good my escape, running round the carriage while papai chased after me, and when I attempted on my own to clamber up the step to the carriage, papai tapped me on my shoulder with his glove.

‘Ahem…Miss Sofia-Elisabete, you are in the suds now,’ he declared as he lifted me into the carriage.

And so ended our visit with the snappish Lady Matlock and how I came to know that a love child I was. As our carriage rumbled away from Matlock, Papai held me on his lap, and he explained to me that he had made me out of love but he had not been married to a senhora named Marisa Soares Belles at the time I was born.

This confused me a-plenty. ‘Who is the senhora?’

‘She was a lindissima, a young beauty, I had met once when I was in Lisbon during the war.’ Papai pursed his lips as he looked out the carriage window.

‘Where did she go?’

Papai frowned. ‘I believe ‘twas Brazil. Humph! She was in love with Don Rafael and wished to dance the bolero every night with him.’ His visage darkened with fury of a sudden.

‘Papai, may I learn the bolero.’ I had seen couples dance the bolero in Monchique, and I thought this would appease him.

‘Permission denied!’ he thundered.

‘But papai…’ Hot tears filled in my eyes.

‘O, ho! I dare say you shall never dance the bolero.’ He shuddered and he closed his eyes.

After a few minutes had passed, I tugged at his coat sleeve. ‘Papai?’ I whispered, wondering if he was still cross with me and if he would tell me more about the mysterious Marisa Soares Belles. I thought he had fallen asleep when he did not respond, but then he began to mumble to himself that he shan’t ever apologise to anyone for having a love child nor will he ever give me up or send me back to the convent. Still, this touched me to the quick. With mingled feelings of gratitude and disquietude, I kissed my papai’s hand to bless him.

______________

II.

DESTINY

MY FIRST MOTHER, thinks I, was a bolero dancer by the name of Marisa Soares Belles who had given birth to me. When I dreamt of this lindissima, she was a young beauty of eighteen years of age and adorned with colourful ribbons and spangles. She placed a baby in a roda dos expostos – the foundling turnbox wheel at the convent – and thereafter pulled the bell to alert the nuns inside. With castanets in her hands, she tript about, dancing the bolero as she took her leave. She performed a perfect bien parado – a graceful, sudden stop – with one arm crossed in front of her chest and the other raised above her head. ‘Olé!’ she cried. And here, at that very moment, my dream ended. But I daren’t speak of my dream to my papai for fear that he would become cross with me again.

After we had quit Matlock – without regret I might add – we journeyed to the City of York, where papai rented an apartment for us at Mrs Beazley’s boarding house, a timber-framed dwelling on Blossom Street near the crumbling Micklegate Bar. Papai said this was our new home, now that the war was over and he was on half-pay. Together we strolled the tree-lined New Walk along the River Ouse, where I saw many a mother and father promenading with their children. A cloud of wistfulness enveloped me, when I seized upon a brilliant idea.

‘Papai, can we buy a new mamãe?’

Papai laughed. ‘Where would we buy her?’

‘At Tuke’s Grocers, along with chocolate.’

‘O, ho!’ Papai pointed his walking stick at Mr and Mrs Hart, they being fellow worshippers at my chapel who were strolling arm in arm ahead of us. ‘You shan’t ever see me living in the Land of Henpeckism, a-taking orders from a wife. You see before you a manly man, unshackled and free, and in that state I shall remain until I die a fusty old bachelor.’

Apparently, papai’s speech had been overheard, because the Harts turned round, casting him a look of disdain. Papai tipped his hat to them, and they stared at him without acknowledging him. Papai thought the whole thing a joke – he, the son of an Earl, being given the cut direct by the middling sort. I wondered what a middle person was, and I recalled Lady Matlock having said that I had sprung from a low creature.

‘Papai, am I a low or middle creature?’

‘Truthfully, you are neither because you are my creature.’ Papai winked his eye at me.

The day next, after papai had reclaimed me at the convent school, I begged him to take us to Tuke’s Grocers, a Quaker-run shop on Castlegate where we could purchase Tuke’s Superior Rock Cocoa – pure cocoa and sugar compressed into the form of cakes – which Cook would use to prepare chocolate for breakfast. My papai, being obliging most days for his sweetest little girl in the world, as he was wont to call me, hired a Hackney and away we went.

There, at Tuke’s Grocers, I stood before the display of chocolate, affecting an interest in the superior rock cocoa, cocoa coffee and rich cocoa, the earthy-beefy-sweaty-honeyish aroma tickling my nose. Beside me, and far more interesting, was Mr Tuke’s niece, who bustled about, arranging the cakes of chocolate. I scrutinised this young Quaker with her kind grey eyes.

‘Miss Tuke, how much are you?’

Miss Tuke gave a start. ‘I beg your pardon, little miss?’

‘I wish to buy a new mamãe.’

‘Well, now, mammas can’t be bought…’

I waved her off. ‘Papai bought a fresh, young thing once…’

Miss Tuke gasped. ‘Bless me!’

‘…for six bob,’ I explained. ‘I heard him say so.’

‘Poppet? There you are. Off we go…’ papai grasped my hand. ‘Now, there’s an odd thing. I could swear the lovely Miss Tuke just gave me the cut indirect.’

On the ride back to Blossom Street, I observed the poor children begging on the streets.

‘Look papai,’ said I, pointing out the window of our Hackney. ‘That girl has only one shoe. And that boy over there. And that little girl, too.’

‘Methinks that is the only shoe they’ve got.’ Papai patted my hand.

This bewildered me. ‘Can they buy shoes at whippy-whoppy-gate?’

‘Whipmawhopmagate? They are too poor to do so, my dear child.’

I peered down at the new boots that papai had purchased for me the other day at Whipmawhopmagate, and I struggled with my conscience about giving one of my boots away and having to walk around lopsided with only one boot. In the end I decided that would not do. There had to be a better way, given my destiny to be a nun, for I had resolved that I would join the sisterhood so that I could ride a burrinho like Sister Matilde. Ay! How I wished my destiny was chocolate instead. I could roam the streets atop my piebald donkey, with my tin pail filled with the delicious chocolate that I would feed to all the poor and hungry children who would gather round me, eager to fill their empty stomachs. But how would I learn the secret of making chocolate?

Enter Agnes Wharton.

In mid-July, 1814, papai announced we would decamp to Scarborough, a seaside town on the Yorkshire coast, our traveling companions being the Bennet family and our cousin Georgiana Darcy, she being my papai’s ward and the younger sister of Mr Darcy. We planned to lodge with a really ancient and crippley widow named Mrs Wharton, according to my papai. When we arrived at a well-appointed, three-storey, red-brick house on Queen Street, no one awaited us outside. Of a sudden, the door opened, but all I saw was a shadowy figure in the interior.

‘Why is everyone still dawdling about on the street? Come in! Come in!’ cried the crusty old widow. ‘Symcox, where are you? Show them into the parlour.’

An ancient, decrepit butler tottered his way to the vestibule to conduct us to the parlour, whereupon Mrs Wharton grabbed his ear trumpet.

‘I should give you the sack for making me answer my own door,’ she scolded him.

The impertinent butler burst into a guffaw and he shuffled his way out.

Mrs Wharton laughed good-naturedly. ‘Ah, well, he never listens to me.’

Everyone gaped at Mrs Wharton, who, being forty years of age, was still an exceedingly handsome woman with reddish brown hair and sparkling green eyes.

I tugged at my papai’s hand. ‘Is she the old tabby we come to see?’

Papai coloured as he tried to hush me up.

‘Old!’ Mrs Wharton held up a quizzing glass to inspect papai up and down, he doing the same to her sans quizzing glass, for nothing could intimidate a British Officer like him.

‘Papai! You stared at her bubbies.’ I giggled into my hand.

Papai picked me up in his arms to give me a quick gooseberry kiss. ‘Your papai is an army man, and he cannot help himself.’

I discovered then that grown ups often do not make any sense, and there was nothing for it but to ignore them when that happened. Later, at dinner, papai stole many a glance at Mrs Wharton, as if she had bewitched him. I know this to be true, because the next day, I owned that I overheard the two of them whispering about what a lovely time they had last night. Soon thereafter, papai began to do strange things, like getting his hair dressed, bathing twice in one week and wearing sandalwood scent.

‘Papai, are you flirting?’

‘Flirting, you say?’ Papai coloured. ‘Where did you learn such a word?’

‘I heard Mrs Wharton say so.’

‘Well then, now, you see before you a man that’s a-flirting with Mrs Wharton and proudly so.’

On Sunday papai escorted me and Mrs Wharton to the Catholic chapel on Auborough Street where we celebrated Mass and where I thought I had a revelation. ‘Sister Lisbet! You came back for me,’ I embraced Mrs Wharton, who was all astonishment. Papa flinched at the mention of Sister Lisbet. I had no sooner caused a scene during the middle of Mass, when Sister Lisbet appeared before me and she told me to hush. ‘Calai-vos,’ she whispered into my ear. ‘Be good, and Mrs Wharton shall be your mamãe someday.’

When we joined a party of pleasure to Whitby a few weeks later, I pretended to be asleep while my papai and Mrs Wharton held hands, gazing at the Northern Lights, which only they and I could see. That same night of our Northern Lights, Sister Lisbet appeared in my dream, her red capa flowing about her, her red roses tumbling from her hands, and she told me a secret. The next morning my papai tried to get me to spill it to him, but I refused to tell him the secret. I hear you cry, what was the secret? It was this: The Northern Lights portended love and felicity, and I must help my papai understand that Mrs Wharton was his destiny.

Things being so, I was stunned when papai announced in early August that we would decamp for Pemberley, thereby abandoning Mrs Wharton in Scarborough for ever. I cried and made a fuss, but papai was resolute. ‘Adeus, Mrs Wharton,’ I sobbed in her arms, for I had to come to love her. Adeus – that is how we farewell folks in Portugal when we leave them. Then, a few weeks later papai ordered me to pack my bags to decamp to York. All this decamping made my head spin. Enough, says I. So I packed a small bag and I ran away. ‘Adeus, papai, adeus!’ But Bixby picked up my scent and he led papai to the stables where I was hiding under the hay next to Pie, my loyal donkey.

‘I a’n’t going,’ says I. ‘It i’n’t fair!’

Papai cupped his right ear. ‘Since when did you speak cant?’

‘Since you do.’ I crossed my arms in front of me, petulant as ever.

‘O fie! I a’n’t one to speak cant.’

When papai advised me of the real reason for our leave-taking, namely, to meet up with Mrs Wharton for York races, I threw a handful of hay up in the air with glee and cried out, ‘Adeus, Pie-O! I am for York.’ Back in the ancient City of York, I decided ‘twas time to give a broad hint to my papai, so I began to call Mrs Wharton my mamãe, and sure enough, papai proposed to her, not once, but twice. Hora! She rejected him both times, telling him that he was not ready for marriage and that he suffered from fits of jealousy. Furthermore, his ‘honeyed’ words, ‘Oh, hang it, I love you, Aggie’, were not convincing enough for her, so she told him.

After mamãe returned to Scarborough without us, papai announced he was in need of some French courage. I could hear him in his bedchamber, singing about the mighty roast beef of old England, exclaiming that his cagg was up and swearing like a soldier. ‘Ready. Present. Fire!’ And he would gulp down more French courage.

The next morning, having witnessed and smelled the effects of the demon liquor on my papai, I wrote two letters using my best penmanship: one to my cousin Darcy, and one to mamãe. I begged them to help me because papai was a ‘stinkin human bean’. Our landlady posted the letters for me, and then I prayed. Four days later, cousins Darcy and Georgiana arrived at our boarding house, when they heard me screaming. Unbeknown to them, I had been stung by a bee, and my papai had been sucking the venom out from my wound. Cousin Darcy burst open the door of our apartment.

‘Unhand her, you foul fiend!’ Cousin Darcy grabbed me and he handed me to Georgiana. I could hear the two of them shouting as Georgiana carried me downstairs.

‘Now see here, Darcy.’ Papai tried to reason with him.

‘You cannibal you!’ Darcy cried. ‘How dare you hurt your own child.’

‘ You are a dolt.’

‘Did you spit on my bespoke coat? Prepare to die!’

The two of them began to rough and tumble it. What a hubbub! They had no sooner begun a round of fisticuffs when mamãe arrived at the boarding house. She tried to talk sense to them, but they continued to argue and wrestle, my papai calling cousin Darcy a coxcombical rogue. ‘Men!’ declared mamãe, her disapprobation evident for all to see.

Their set-to finally at an end, cousin Darcy and papai joined us in the parlour, and we could see the red marks on their faces, for they had knocked each other about. Mamãe insisted that papai stop drinking and gadding about with a miscreant named Mr O. P. Umm and that he speak to Father O’Shaughnessy, or Father O as we call him. But papai refused. ‘I shan’t speak with a priest,’ he stamped his foot. My heart sunk down to my toes. Mamãe rose to leave and I began to weep that we would lose her for ever. But papai grasped her hand before she could escape, and he confessed that he had sinned, and sinned again, and again and again, and that he promised to speak to Father O.

‘Papai, how many times have you sinned?’

He grimaced. ‘Too many times, my girl.’

‘God will forgive you,’ said I.

‘Let us hope He will.’

And so we decamped once more, both of our cousins Darcy and Georgiana joining us, to return to Scarborough so that papai could speak with Father O about temperance and other matters. A few days later, mamãe surprised us by taking us to Bunberry House, her estate in Hackness, where she oversees a Catholic school for poor girls and where Father O celebrates Mass with them each month. While I strolled in the garden with my two cousins, we overheard papai’s sudden outburst on the other side of the yew hedges.

‘I beg your pardon! But you do…who do…what what?’

‘Hush, Colonel. I said I have been financing trade with countries on the continent, and I have used the profits to sustain the school and maintain the estate,’ mamãe explained.

‘My God! You’re a smuggler.’

‘Nay. I am a tradeswoman.’

‘I would rather you be a ruthless pirate,’ papai muttered.

‘What? And not give you quarter every Sunday night?’

‘You minx you!’ papai thundered. ‘Your feminine arts and allurements shall not beguile me this time.’

Just when their big row started to get interesting, cousin Darcy told Georgiana to take me back to the main house. ‘Não, não, não,’ I protested, but Georgiana was firm. I stood thus, on the watch, at the parlour window, and from there I espied, with a glad heart, my papai and mamãe in the garden embracing each other. All would be right in our world again, thinks I. To be certain, though, I called upon my magic powers to cast a spell on my papai and mamãe to make them marry soon.

After dinner, we walked the trod to River Cottage, a hermitage on the estate, where we bedded down for the night – mamãe, me and Georgiana in one bedchamber, papai and cousin Darcy in another bedchamber, and Father O in the library – the soothing gurgles of the River Derwent promising us a deep slumber, that is, until we were awakened at midnight by papai’s loud cries, for he had many a nightmare about the war and Fuentes de Oñoro, a town on the border of Spain and Portugal. The next morning Father O and papai disappeared down by the river bank to have a long talk, and while they were gone, I discovered that mamãe knew the secret of chocolate.

Mamãe believes every woman, rich or poor, should learn how to take care of themselves, which meant cooking, cleaning, knitting and the like. Here, at River Cottage, she reigned as mistress, housekeeper and cook. My cousin Georgiana expressed shock at seeing mamãe in the kitchen, but not me. Unlike Georgiana, she being a young lady gently bred who would never go near the kitchen, much less know how to cook, I and other foundlings at the impoverished Convento do Desterro had gathered onions, garlic, chile, potatoes and cabbage to prepare our sopa de peixe, a meagre soup, each day.

I stood there entranced at the kitchen-door as mamãe stirred the shavings of rock cocoa with fresh milk and some spices in a pot over a charcoal fire. She brought the pot to the table, and once she had tossed some flour into the mixture, she began to mill it to absorb the excess cocoa butter. When she returned the pot to the charcoal fire, she added several drops of a magic potion that she kept in a phial, and she began to stir the mixture yet again.

‘Mamãe, what’s in the magic bottle?’

‘It’s a secret.’

‘What’s the secret?’ I persisted, my curiosity insatiable.

‘Love and forgiveness,’ said she.

When Father O and papai returned from their river talk to join us for breakfast, papai joked that he was in need of sustenance. I thought he had the right of it, for his red-rimmed eyes seemed watery and his face tired and drawn from lack of sleep I presumed. I kissed his hand to bless him, as was our habit each morning and each evening, and he mustered a grin for me, but soon thereafter I saw him close his eyes, his lips quivering ever and anon. Father O clapped papai on the back. ‘God bless Sofia Eee. All childher are special.’

We sat at table, eager for Father O to say grace. I coveted the silver pot sitting there on the table and the mystery therein. Once papai poured me a cup of chocolate and the liquid had cooled enough for my tastes, I greedily slurped half of it down, and when I had done, I proudly displayed my chocolate moustache to him, thinking he would find it droll, but he only sighed with an impenetrable sadness ere he wiped my moustache away.

While we breakfasted, papai glanced many a time at mamãe, and she at him. Then, papai ventured to tease Georgiana, who had attempted to poach an egg this morning. Mamãe teased him and she assigned him fatigue duty, namely, to clean the kitchen. It seemed papai would do most anything for her – even empty the pail of slops – if only she would accept his hand.

Two months later, the magic spell took hold. Papai seemed far less troubled, for he read the Bible each morning and he met with Father O many a time to discuss his ‘frailties’. Mamãe said she had accepted papai’s third proposal of marriage because unlike his first two, scanty proposals, she believed he no longer desired to possess her, having understood that she belonged to God, as did we all. For some reason, knowing this gave him peace, so he said, and this peacefulness, in turn, helped to restore his faith in himself that he had the power, the love and a sound mind to address his weaknesses.

Father O, with a gladness in his heart, received papai into the Catholic Church, and thereafter my parents were married. To everyone’s great surprise, Lord Matlock, my avô, attended the wedding ceremony, this despite Lady Matlock’s objections to the marriage and to me – I, Sofia-Elisabete, whom she still referred to as a foreign love brat and the natural daughter of a low creature. I had a new mamãe, but Lady Matlock’s cutting remarks reminded me that I was wholly connected with the mysterious bolero dancer – this Marisa Soares Belles who lived in a land far far away. And so I was.

Voyage to Albion , which is told through the eyes of this enchanting eleven-year-old girl, we learned about her humble beginnings and search for her father. In Story Two, Chocolate Destiny , she described the two most important people in her life, as only she can tell it.

Here, in Story Three, Bugbear in the Old Wood , her grandfather shows her the glories and mysteries of Sherwood Forest and the lessons therein.

These short stories are a part of a series (I, Sofia-Elisabete) I am drafting about a love child growing up in the Regency Period. The back story about Colonel Fitzwilliam and the other adults can be found in Freedom & Mirth: Or, A Pride and Prejudice Serio-Comic Journey (Book One) .

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BUGBEAR IN THE OLD WOOD

MY FIRST DREAM, thinks I, was of an emerald island where no one looked like me, for the inhabitants all had pale skin and many, many dots, more so than my Mr Bingley and his handful of charming freckles. These people, with their strange speech, dress and customs, worshipped Deus, the same God as mine. Cloaked in our red capas, Sister Elisabete and I toured a metropolis canopied by an immense grey sky and there we prayed at an ancient cathedral and lit candles for the poor, for we had encountered ever so many families who were destitute. These desperate scenes of poverty brought to mind my foundling days in Portugal where we had subsisted on sopa de peixe, a meagre soup, chicoria or succory, and pao milho, a bread made of Indian corn. A quittadinia here, a quittadinia there – we all of us poor things of the world, scrounging for food or begging passersby for a coin, be it réis in one country or tinpenny in another.

True, I no longer experienced pangs of hunger. I no longer had to imagine that the cup of water Sister Matilde had given me to fill my stomach was a bowl of sopa de peixe when there was no food to be had at the Convento do Desterro. And I no longer had to accompany Sister Matilde to the town of Monchique to beg for alms. But I shall nought forget the day when we found three newborns in the roda – the foundling turnbox wheel – of the Convento and how Sister Matilde held up her arms in supplication, imploring Deus to help her find food for all the foundlings and to keep them alive until the parents could afford to feed their own children and reclaim them. The next morning and every morning after that, a blessed miracle occurred. Que milagre! A baker delivered loaves of pao milho and a farmer supplied fresh milk and eggs to the Convento, their bills having been paid by Senhor Branco who had muito deneiro. This Senhor Branco had always been reluctant to part with his deniero, but a visitation or two with Saint Elizabeth of Portugal had convinced him otherwise.

My papai, on seeing how scraggy I was, determined to fatten me up good with mighty English roast beef, maccaroni, potatoes and the like. Having never eaten meat before, I found it not to my liking and I would toss my scraps of beef to Bixby who sat under the table. Thereafter, papai would cut up the food on my plate into tiny, uniform pieces, and he lined them up, the meat on one side and the vegetables on the other, like two opposing armies meeting on the battlefield. I would use my fork to spear each piece, and once I had gobbled up everything, my papai would award me my victory ‘goose-grog’ – my gooseberry fool.

One day papai announced, ‘We are for the old Wood to visit your grandfather,’ to which I responded, ‘I hope they have gooseberry fool there.’ You see, I wished to spend my fifth birth-day with Pie and Graça at Pemberley where I could eat a cart-load of gooseberry fool. But papai shook his head at me. ‘No-no-no, to the Fitzwilliam Hunting Lodge we go.’ He guaranteed that Cook at the lodge would make gooseberry fool for me, she being the best cook in the world. He cast his eyes heavenward – the savoury and sweet memories tumbling about in his head no doubt – as he began to rhapsodise about Cook’s apple charlotte. ‘O apple of my eye!’ ‘O sweet charlotte!’ ‘O the goodly apple!’ Mamãe goggled her eyes whenever papai would request that dessert for breakfast, it being clear to her now why he favoured it so. Ay! She would need to cajole the receipt from this Cook.

Our sojourn in the old Wood, as the town folk called Sherwood Forest, would last a month. Things being so, I wished to bring Tin-Key with us, but papai warned that our dear little pug might be mistaken for a wild animal and end up stuffed and nailed to my avô’s trophy wall at the lodge. Reluctantly then did I agree to leave Tin-Key with Mackie, our trusty footman at our Scarborough abode. I hear you cry, ‘What is a Tin-Key?’ I named my pug-puppy Tin-Key in honour of my papai, who, with his ear made out of tin, has the ability to sing in a key all his own, as my mamãe frequently reminds him. During the long carriage ride, papai serenaded us with ‘O, the month of May, the merry month of May, So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!’ Exasperated, mamãe knew not what to do at first, she being a proficient in music, until she learnt to sing along with him to drown out his voice, so she said. On the third day of our journey to the old Wood, whilst papai serenaded us with ‘Oh the roast beef of old England, and old English roast beef’, I tugged at my father’s sleeve with urgency.

Papai frowned at me. ‘Pray tell me you visited the Necessary House before we left the inn.’

‘Não,’ says I. ‘You said quick march it to the carriage.’

‘Well, now, perhaps I did.’ Papai turned to mamãe with a waggish grin. ‘Surely you wish for mamãe to help you?’

‘Não, não, não.’

‘O fie! Fatigue duty again.’ Papai rapped his cane for the driver to stop, and he grabbed the paper that mamãe handed to him.

Later that afternoon we reached our destination of Fitzwilliam Hunting Lodge, which was situated on former Crown land that had been sold to my avô, Lord Matlock. While my mamãe stood about admiring the rustic lodge framed by ancient oaks, I broke from her grip to get a better look and see at the turret that stood atop a small rise. This folly, this enchanted tower, whispered to me in some kind of forgotten language that I must needs clamber up the hillock to explore its mysteries. Hora! Someone had secured the door with a padlock. My avô explained to me that a bugbear resided therein who would gobble up any naughty children, particularly those who snuck about his magical abode without any protection. Que maravilha! These bugbears had strange customs.

‘Meu avô, I am not afraid of Bugbear.’

‘O, ho!’ Avô raised his eyebrow at me. ‘You are a courageous one then.’

‘I bet a ha’penny I could squash him with my hand,’ I boasted.

‘Done! I accept your wager,’ rejoined he.

The next day, while papai and mamãe were out romanticking themselves on a stroll through the old Wood, my avô said he would take me to a faeryland. We rode out on a mare, passing through the pretty village of Edwinstowe, then Birkland, which many consider the wildest portion of the old Wood, and from there another mile or so to Budby Forest where fifty thousand hawthorns bloomed in all their glory. Hoisted atop my avô’s shoulders, I picked ever so many of these sweet-smelling white blossoms from the branches to surprise my mamãe with. Once we had done, we settled ourselves on a log covered in a snow of white blossoms, whereupon my avô began to recite the tale of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. I sat thus, entranced, for what little girl could not be charmed by the likes of Maid Marian, although all that romanticking with her outlaw I could do without. ‘Gah!’ I exclaimed whenever he mentioned the two lovers stealing a kiss.

One day, whilst my papai and mamãe walked out to shoot hare, my avô took me to the Great Pond where I learnt how to swim. My avô knows all about the art of swimming – how to immerse oneself into the water like a frog, how to breathe under water like a carp, how to avoid drinking down a great deal of water like a horse and so forth. Once I had mastered some basic tricks, like swimming on my belly and treading water, I learnt a diverting trick called the flying boulder by jumping high into the air, tucking my knees to my stomach and pinching my nose ere I landed in the water. And each time I performed a perfect flying boulder, my avô would clap his hands in approval. Our happy existence at the Great Pond seemed destined to last for ever, so I thought, but on a sudden a nasty, smelly man with a long beard appeared from nowhere and he began to attack my avô. The two of them tussled for a long while until my avô, being a strong man, shoved his antagonist into the water.

‘Meu avô! Who was that strange man?’ I gaped at the tatterdemalion who hied it like a madman into the old Wood.

‘Eh? Oh, he’s called Yahoo. He lives in the hermitage and I dare say he enjoys attacking me as much as I do him.’

I gasped. ‘Is he a bugbear?’

‘Well, now, you might say he is my bugbear.’ For a moment, my avô looked as guilty as my papai did when he had fallen asleep and snored during Mass and Father O had given him a good set-down for doing so.

When the time came for us to quit the Great Pond, I skipped merrily alongside my avô while he sang in his rich baritone, ‘When Robin Hood was about twenty years, With a hey down, down, and a down, He happened to meet Little John, A jolly brisk blade right fit for the trade, For he was a lusty young man…’ In the shadows of the ancient oaks, I could see Yahoo dodging us all the way back to our abode, but I feared nought with my brave avô at my side.

The following week for my birth-day, papai invited his friends, the Robinsons, to join us at the lodge for a picnic. These Robinsons lived in Edwinstowe where they owned a grocer’s shop. There were five of them in all – a gigantic father, a sweet mother, two boys named Pico and Pequin, ages nine and eight, respectively, and a toddler called Poppaye, who looked, well, like a Poppaye. But we Fitzwilliams could not help but be curious about the origin of the names Pico and Pequin. Mr Robinson enlightened us that these were names of places mentioned in the tale about the voyage to the moon undertaken by the Spanish nobleman Domingo Gonsales with the aid of his flying gansas or geese. Oh, how I wished to fly like a gansa to the moon, but Pico told me no girls could survive the arduous journey to see the Man in the Moon, nor would they be safe from the moon men.

Together, the Robinson boys and I entertained ourselves with all sorts of ancient games, like blindman’s bluff, leap frog, buck buck and running the gauntlet. They taught me how to speak a bit of Notts, and I taught them a few choice words in Portuguese like ‘Viva!’ when you greet someone. When the dinner bell rung, we raced one another to the festive table that Cook had set up out of doors, it being laden with fish, flesh and fowl, pyramids of this, that and the other, and my favourite gooseberry fool.

‘D’yer eat like this ivry day?’ Pico goggled at all the platters of food, particularly the mound of maccaroni.

‘Why, of course. Don’t you?’ It had not occurred to me that the Robinsons were poor since their father was a grocer. Could they not eat all the food in his shop if they so wished? Surely they never went to bed hungry.

Pequin picked up one of the hairy gooseberries. ‘I’ve niver seed a goosegog afore.’

‘Niver?’ I had thought all English ate gooseberries.

Once the dinner concluded, the men smoked their pipes and the women played with Poppaye, while we children stole away to the surrounding old Wood. Boredom having set in, the Robinson boys took out their sling-stones and they began to hurl rocks at an imposing, ancient oak tree. On hearing my papai’s rapid approach, Pico uttered ‘retreat!’ and he tossed his sling-stone into my hands. Convinced that I was the culprit, papai lectured me that I should not sling rocks at Matlock’s Favourite Oak because it would upset my avô.

‘But papai, I wasna a-slingin’ stones. Pico an’ Pequin…’

‘I don’t care who did the slinging. You must not do it,’ commanded he.

‘But papai, I dunna know how to sling. I dunna…’

‘Confound your buts and dunnas. Obey me at once.’ And he held out his hand for the sling-stone, which I gave to him with alacrity. When he stalked away, angry as can be, I stuck out my tongue at those two connivers who fell a-laughing at me and my predicament.

‘Yer in th’ stew now, nincompoop!’ Pico guffawed as if he had said the funniest thing in the world.

‘Pah!’ I cried. ‘Yer niver gettin’ yer sling-stone back.’

‘My papa will clot yer papa good if he doesna give me my sling-stone.’

The next week my avô proposed an excursion to Creswell Crags where we could see the secret caves that sheltered Robin Hood and his Merry Men from the law. To my ten-fold dismay, the Robinson boys would join us. We got into the carriage where I was forced to sit in between the two miscreants, Pico and Pequin, who pinched me and pulled my hair when my avô did not attend us. ‘Yow!’ I cried. To distract my persecutors, I begged my avô to tell us another tale of Robin Hood, and he complied by reciting the legend of Robin Hood who set the prisoners free at King John’s Palace in Clipstone while King John searched the caves at Creswell Crags for the outlaw. ‘I wish to be as big as Little John someday,’ says I. Pico scoffed at me, telling me no slip of a girl could ever be as strong and mighty as Little John. Later, after I had spent a goodly amount of time trapped inside a cave while my captors tormented me with spiders and other horrid creatures, we returned to Edwinstowe where our carriage conveyed us to the front of the grocer’s. I bid the Robinson boys farewell with ‘Adeus!’ because I never wished to see those two imps ever again.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. One sunny day too soon thereafter, Mr Robinson and those aforementioned imps arrived at the lodge. Pico strutted about, gloating that my avô was a-going fishing with them. ‘Yer canna goo wi’ us because yer a namby-pamby girl,’ says he. I gave him a monstrous glare, and to show my superiority, I called him a new word that I had learnt recently in my grammar book. ‘Why, you semicolon you!’ I ran as fast as I could up the hillock where I pounded on the turret door with my fist. ‘Let me in you silly Bugbear! Mil diabos! A thousand devils to you,’ I hollered, my eyes filling up fast with hot tears. I turned round to see that papai had followed me up to the folly, and in a fit of rage, I saluted him with a volley of oaths – ‘hell and the devil!’ ‘hell and the devil!’ – that he always used when he thought I could not hear him.

‘Saucy girl! I counted four oaths in your string of invectives. That’s four fatigue duties for you, Miss Sofia-Elisabete.’

‘I dunna care,’ I lied at first, but then I stamped my feet – left-right-left-right – for I detested chores more than anything.

‘Do you wish to make it five?’

‘It isna fair! He’s my avô,’ I cried. ‘I knowed him first.’

‘When you can speak the King’s English again and behave like a proper young lady, pray let me know.’ With that said, papai executed a crisp, right-about-face, and he marched down the hillock.

Incensed by papai’s air of insouciance, I slid my way around the turret where no one could see me. With my back against the wall, I closed my eyes, and with utmost concentration, I drifted upwards – higher and higher and higher – until I found myself standing atop the turret. I know not how long I was up there, but it seemed like I had no sooner accomplished this grand feat when I heard papai calling my name over and over again. I own that I took great delight in hearing the concern in his voice, for surely he now believed how wronged I had been. Erelong my mamãe joined him, as did my avô who had returned from his angling adventure with the Robinsons. ‘Where are you? Sofia-Elisabete! Where are you?’ they all cried.

I peered down at them through an arrow-slit on the parapet. ‘Meu avô! Meu avô! You have come home at last.’

Three pairs of eyes glanced up at me. I do believe I gave them a good fright, for they certainly seemed shocked to see me high atop the turret.

‘Dear God, no!’ Papai gaped at me in disbelief.

In an instant my avô opened the turret door, having found the padlock unlocked. Their loud footsteps echoed in the folly as he and my papai charged up the winding staircase.

‘Miss Sofia-Elisabete! I shall court-martial you,’ papai bellowed, he being of a snappish humour again for whatever reason.

‘Bugbear chased me up here,’ I explained.

‘I dare say you are lying.’ Papai frowned and he stepped forward to catch me. ‘Vem cá. Come here.’

I ran away from papai as fast as I could. ‘Avô! Avô!’ I sought the safety of my grandfather’s outstretched arms. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

He knelt down to scrutinise me. ‘Child, how came you to be here?’

‘I knocked at the door – tap-tap-tap. Bugbear said “Come!” And so I let myself in. Bugbear chased me round and round, then up and down the stairs. But I squashed him good, I did.’ My tale was so brilliant I had convinced myself that this had truly happened, yes, indeed.

‘Now why would Bugbear chase you? Think carefully little one.’

I hesitated for a moment, breathless, for the gleam of reproach in his clear blue eyes had cut me to the soul. ‘Because…because…I was naughty?’

‘That’ll do.’

Having understood my avô’s disapprobation, I covered my face with my hands to hide my shame. I began to weep a hundred – nay, a thousand – nay, a million – tears, for most assuredly my avô detested me and we would never do flying boulders together ever again. To my great surprise, however, he grasped my right hand and he placed a ha’penny into it. With a wink of his eye, he gathered me into his warm embrace where all was forgive and forgot.

She’s back! She being Sofia-Elisabete, our irrepressible young girl from Portugal and the natural daughter of Colonel Fitzwilliam. In Story One, Voyage to Albion, which is told through the eyes of this enchanting eleven-year-old girl, we learned about her humble beginnings and search for her father. In Story Two, Chocolate Destiny, she described the two most important people in her life, as only she can tell it. In Story Three, Bugbear in the Old Wood, her grandfather showed her the glories and mysteries of Sherwood Forest and the lessons therein.

Here, in Story Four, Tree on the Hill, she learns about the transiency of human happiness, yet there is an everlasting, profound happiness that comes from an appreciation of the natural world – its cycle of life, its growth and change.

These short stories are a part of a series (I, Sofia-Elisabete) I am drafting about a love child growing up in the Regency Period. The back story about Colonel Fitzwilliam and the other adults can be found in Freedom & Mirth: Or, A Pride and Prejudice Serio-Comic Journey (Book One). In Story Four, Tree on the Hill, Sofia-Elisabete cannot understand why her father is having such a difficult time in his life, but the back story for it will be found in Book Two of Freedom & Mirth, which I'm presently drafting.

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TREE ON THE HILL

MY FIRST DRUM, thinks I, was an adufe, or pandiero quadrado, in the shape of a square, its two goat skins stitched along the sides of the frame. I clutched the adufe with both of my thumbs and the pointing finger of my left hand, while the rest of my fingers beat the rhythm on the skins, the seeds rattling pleasantly within. The adufe, which the Moors from North Africa introduced to Portugal, was played by many a woman in the Provinces of Beira and Trás-os-Montes during religious processions and at festivals where couples danced the charamba, a circle dance.

Catarina Baptista, she being an adufeira from Trás-os-Montes, came to live one day in the picturesque market town of Monchique, and she taught me the adufe rhythms – ritmo de passo and ritmo de roda – whenever Sister Matilde and I begged for alms. When I left the Convento do Desterro for good to search for my papai, Senhora Baptista celebrated by playing her adufe as I rode by her on the streets of Monchique. She sang a traditional song about how her adufe was not played with the hand, but with a golden ring, a gift from her heart:

Este pandeiro qu’eu toco não se toca com a mão,
toca-se com anel d’ouro, prenda do meu coração.

Here, in Scarborough, without an adufe to remind me of those sacred, ancient rhythms, I beat my fingers on the table, the bedpost, the cover of a book – whatever I could find and whenever my papai and mamãe were not attending to me, for they said it was impolite to tap my feet or drum my fingers. One afternoon, I heard the strongest of heartbeats – tah-tah da-dum, tah-tah da-dum – coming from below stairs. I snuck down to the kitchen and, there, out in the small kitchen garden, I beheld a most astonishing sight. My papai’s valet, MacTavish, wore a round drum, the size of a gigantic pot, resting high up on his left hip. This drum, so similar to the caixa used by the Portuguese military, hung suspended from a leather strap that he wore over his right shoulder. With a stick in each hand, he beat the drum with the air and spirit of a valiant soldier, making a tempest of sounds such that I had never heard before. ‘Viva! MacTavish,’ cried I, when he had done. ‘Is that your caixa?’ He told me, ay, it was his bres drume.

MacTavish explained that an age ago when he was just a lad of twelve years, he enlisted in the army as a drummer boy after lying about his age. He came from a poor family of ten children, and his maw and paw reasoned that one less bairn around to feed would mean more parritch an’ broo of broth for the others. He and two other young lads in the village enlisted at the same time, for they wished to wear a smart uniform and eat tasty chum in the army – mighty English roast beef! – at least, that is what the gregarious Captain MacAdoo promised them as he and his three drummers beat the beat from village to village to attract and recruit soldiers.

A Drum-Major taught him and the other two lads all the drum signals – march, alarm, approach, assault, battle, retreat and so forth. Why, there were even drum beats to signal the taverns to stop serving ale to the soldiers, or to signal the idle women, they being camp followers, to take their leave. And every so often they had to drum out a miscreant from the army with the Rogue’s March. According to the Drum-Major, the French Army enlisted boys as young as seven years to be drummer boys, and many years ago, the British Army had done the same.

‘I’m almost five, and that’s nearly seven,’ I counted on my fingers. ‘Could I be a drummer boy?’

‘Och! Ye’re a wee bit bairn wi’ wee bit han’s,’ said he. ‘Ah’ll tell ye a’ aboot Mary Ann Talbot instead.’

MacTavish recited the strange story of Miss Talbot, who claimed that, as a youth, she had been disguised as a lad against her will by a certain Captain Bowen and had served in the army as a drummer boy when not acting as a foot-boy for the Captain. She was an eyewitness to the siege of Valenciennes, where many a soldier on both sides swallowed fire. As a drummer boy, she had been ordered to keep a continuous roll despite the cries and confusion on the battlefield. MacTavish doubted not that she had murgullied the drum roll, because only lads, who were trained early from youth, make good drummers.

I scoffed at his maxim, because nothing could stop the rhythm that poured out of my soul. I grabbed his sticks and I began to beat the skin of the brass drum in the same pattern he had done and without bungling it. This shocked MacTavish to see a wee bit lassie like me striking his bres drume, but soon he began to clap his hands and stamp his feet to the beat. Tap-tap tah-too, tap-tap tah-too, tap-tap tah-too, tap-tap tah-too! Amazed by my brilliant display of primitive drumming, MacTavish promised to teach me the drum signals, but only if my papai agreed to it.

The day next I told MacTavish that my papai had granted my request to become a drummer boy and that I could commence my lessons that very afternoon as long as I did not practise more than half-an-hour. MacTavish eyed me warily, calling me a bardy bairn, and said he would speak with my papai about it. ‘But you cannot now,’ I shook my finger at him. I explained that papai was doing his manly duty with mamãe, and away they went – to where, I knew not. I tried my utmost to sound convincing, knowing that my papai and mamãe had walked out and that their stroll would last exactly half-an-hour. MacTavish hesitated, but agreed in the end to meet with me ‘oot in the yaird’ for my first lesson.

There, in a verdant music room, our discourse covered something called ‘technique’, which is a fancy word methinks for holding the sticks properly and for standing upright with my left heel jammed into the hollow of my right foot. In the upper or left hand, one must position the stick firmly between the thumb and two middle fingers and rest it on the third finger above the middle joint, while in the lower or right hand, one must hold the stick with the whole hand, the little finger gripping it firmly like one does with a sword.

Next, my maestro demonstrated how to perform a long roll – rat-tat tat-tat, rat-tat tat-tat – and a stroke roll. He placed his bres drume on a footstool where I could reach it and practise the rolls. And once those beats became easy and familiar to me, he taught me how to close a roll with two heavy strokes with the upper hand, followed by two strokes with the lower hand, quickening the strokes each time till the roll was closed – rat-tat tat-tat-t-rrr-r-r-r-rrr-r-r-r-rrr!

Eager for my second lesson, I arranged to meet with MacTavish the following ‘Soonday’, and he taught me the open flam and the close flam – a-ra a-tat-a-ra a-tat – all of which I learnt quickly. He then demonstrated two drum signals – advance and retreat. No sooner had he done so when papai stalked into the garden. Unbeknown to me, he had returned early from his stroll with mamãe. Upon seeing his Colonel, MacTavish saluted him soldier-like with a pull of his cap.

‘Miss Sofia-Elisabete! Did I not refuse your request to become a drummer boy?’

‘Please, papai, please…’ I stamped my feet – left-right-left-right – in a petulant manner.

‘Permission denied, again.’ He then began to rail at his man. ‘Confound it, MacTavish! I am the master of this house, yet I find I’m running down the stairs and then back up the stairs because of your drum signals. I’ve no idea if I’m supposed to be a-comin’ or a-goin’.’

‘Colonel, Ah’ve faithfully discharged my dooty an’ teatched the lassie a guid drume beatin’,’ MacTavish spoke with his usual dry manner.

‘What duty?’

‘Sir!’ MacTavish gave him a waggish grin, his eyes a-twinkling.

Papai turned round to scowl at me. ‘Why, you rascal pup! Prepare to be court-martialed little drummer boy.’

I tossed the sticks to MacTavish and I took to my heels, my papai uttering a dreadful oath or two behind me, for he had stepped on one of Tin-Key’s turds in the garden. ‘Confound it! That pug is getting turnspit duty,’ he roared like he always did when he stepped on Tin-Key’s turds. Mamãe would joke that the entire town could hear him and that the town folk would all say: ‘Hark! The Colonel must’ve stepped on a turd again to-day.’

When I appeared for my court-martial in his study, he interrogated me about my bad habit of lying. In my defence, I told him I never really lied, but rather, I helped the truth along whenever it needed it. To be sure, this response did not please him and so he withheld my ‘goose-grog’, my gooseberry fool, at dinner that day, and the day next and the day after that. When I complained bitterly about the loss of my goose-grog, he said the alternative was a good flogging with the cat o’ nine tails, so which would it be, drummer boy? ‘The army this is not!’ mamãe cried. She chided him for teasing me in such a coarse manner, and in her soothing voice, she assured me my papai would never use the cat on me; for, if he did, she would use the cat on him, by gock. Papai waggled his eyebrows, wondering aloud if perhaps she meant the wildcat, to which mamãe responded by goggling her eyes and pointing her chin at me for whatever reason.

One afternoon, as my governess, Miss McIntyre, and I strolled near Quay Street, I observed papai leaving the chemist’s and placing a flask into his coat pocket. I waved at him to gain his attention, but he acknowledged me not and thereafter ducked into The Golden Ball for a prime ale – the best thing for his health as he was wont to say. When the time for dinner arrived and we had taken our places at table, I discovered the reason why papai had been skulking about in town.

‘Colonel, where were you this afternoon?’ mamãe enquired of him. ‘Gadding about as usual?’

‘Mrs Fitzwilliam, you are looking at a man who likes to gad about.’

‘I saw papai gadding about to-day,’ I chimed in.

Mamãe raised her eyebrow. ‘Oh? Where was this?’

‘Near Quay Street. Papai went to the…’

‘My dear Sofia-Elisabete!’ papai exclaimed. ‘You shall ruin my little surprise.’

‘What surprise? Oh, tell me, tell me, papai,’ I bounced in my chair with excitement.

Papai gulped down his Madeira and he became thoughtful. ‘I am now of the mind…to grant your request to learn the drum signals – yes, yes. I shall purchase a small drum more appropriate for your wee stature,’ said he with conviction.

I jumped down from my chair with alacrity in order to kiss papai’s hand. With great tenderness of feeling, he chucked me under my chin. Mamãe, however, pursed her lips and tapped her fingers on the table, no doubt wondering why papai had changed his mind of a sudden.

Erelong papai presented me with a small drum and small drum sticks with small buttons on the ends. MacTavish tightened the calf skin head to create a crisp sound. He slung the drum strap about my neck and checked the length of the drum carriage, ensuring it rested on my left thigh such that when I bent my knee, the drum balanced on it. With my wee drum, I soon mastered all of the drum rolls – faint roll, faint stroke, hard roll, hard flam, stroke and flam, half drag, single drag, double drag, drag paradidle, &c. – and all of the drum signals, including the Rogue’s March, Troop, Retreat, General, and the Taptoo. MacTavish called me a musical prodigy, a true musitioner, and he began to teach me the drum beating for the ‘Grenadier’s March’, ‘The Female Drummer’ and ‘Rule Brittania’.

One lazy summer day I hid behind the Scots pine, from where I espied MacTavish a-flirting with Maddison, my mamãe’s maid. He followed her about the garden, beating his drum most passionately and singing ‘Hot Stuff’. When he had done serenading her about stuff, he challenged her to ‘dance a reel wi’ him’, but she ignored him. He therefore surmised that she must be afraid of his Scottish might. ‘Ye doan’t freeghten me wi’ yer wee stuff,’ Maddison replied with an insolent coolness ere she stalked away.

‘Viva! MacTavish.’ I jumped in front of him, giving him a violent start. I begged him to show me the drum beating for ‘Hot Stuff’, but he said I was too proper a young lassie to learn it, and besides, my papai would drumhead court-martial him in the garden if he did. This confused me because the song rallied the British troops, did it not? ‘Advance, Grenadiers! And let fly your Hot Stuff!’

‘MacTavish, did you let fly hot stuff in the war?’

‘Ay.’

‘Did your friends let fly hot stuff?’

‘Na, na. Blown to atoms, they were, by a cannon ball.’ MacTavish explained that drummer boys had to assist with carrying the wounded to the regimental surgeon and thus they were exposed to fire on the battlefield. And that is how his young friends had perished and never got a chance to let fly hot stuff. He and his friends had gone to war for the glory of Britain and a’ that, but instead, he had buried what had remained of them. When he was old enough to be a batman, he was assigned to the Colonel – the Colonel having been Captain Fitzwilliam back then – and he has served the Colonel ever since.

I shrugged at MacTavish. ‘Twas difficult for me to understand how one could lose friends in an instant because of a cannon ball. My thoughts returned to drumming and my wish to be the best drummer boy – nay, the best drummer girl. Now that I understood drum notes and their proportion to one another, and the rules relative to time, I began to practise the method of carrying the drum while marching a quick step behind ‘Drum-Major’ MacTavish, who strutted to and fro like a coxcomb with crisp, precise steps, marking the beat with a cane that he held high in his right hand.

One Sunday, as MacTavish and I marched about the garden beating our drums, we nearly stumbled upon papai, who lay sprawled underneath his favourite Scots pine, dreaming with his eyes half-closed.

‘MacTaveeshhh, pray lead me to…to…the front door. I do believe the house is backwards,’ papai rose to grip his man’s shoulder. ‘I wish to be at home now.’

‘Sir, ye’re at whome, just nae within.’

‘Confound your Scotticisms, MacTaveeshhh, I wish to be at home,’ demanded papai.

‘Sir, ye’re in Scarbro’ an’ at whome already.’

‘No-no-no…impudent scoundrel,’ papai wagged his finger at him. ‘I knows a Scots pine when I a sees one. I dare say I am not within.’

‘Exackly, sir.’ MacTavish sighed as he removed his bres dume. ‘Aweel, aweel, did ye meet wi’ Mr O. P. Umm to-day?’

‘To be sure I did.’ Papai nodded slowly. ‘He is a great friend of mine.’

‘Och, a raal jintilman that one,’ MacTavish drily said.

The next evening Father O came to see us, or more specifically, my papai, the two of them ensconced in papai’s study for a long while. When I asked why papai seemed gloomy, mamãe explained to me that human happiness is transient – it comes and it goes – and such is life, and one must endure these trials with fortitude, faith and prayer, and that my papai sometimes forgets this and loses his faith. She told me that my papai may be flawed, but he loves us a-plenty, and that we must all love one another.

So I waited and loved, waited and loved, for my papai to regain his health and happiness. It seemed like an eternity had passed before he could muster a smile or tease me again. It occurred to me then that papai’s gloom was due to that hateful man, Mr O. P. Umm. ‘Adeus!’ says I, for I never wished Mr O. P. Umm to return to our Scarborough abode.

One morning, while papai and I perambulated the sands of the serene North Bay, a bright white arc appeared on the horizon in the thinning fog bank.

‘Look, papai, it’s a Scar-bow saying “viva” to us.’

Papai turned sentimental. ‘Perhaps it portends a new beginning for me.’

‘Will you ever be happy again?’ I wondered aloud.

‘O, filha da mina alma,’ he reassured me, the daughter of his soul. ‘Don’t you know – I have recently discovered my half-brother and half-sister.’

My eyes became wide with wonder. ‘Hurrah! How lucky you found them.’

‘Hurrah! I guess I am rather lucky,’ he mused. ‘They do not call me Lucky Fitzer for nothing.’

‘Papai, I wish I had half of a brother.’ Methinks I had said something clever, for my papai laughed for the first time in many weeks.

As we continued our stroll on the sandy strip, hand in hand, my attention was drawn to the waves nearby that flowed back and forth gracefully upon the shore in a rhythm all of its own. Could I ever produce that soothing sound on my drum? Determined to find out, I gathered some twigs, imagining how much softer it would sound than a drum stick. I then recalled the adufe and the seeds that rattled between the two skins. With great care, I scooped up two handfuls of pebbles and crushed shells that papai stored in his pockets for me.

Once I had explained to mamãe what I envisioned, she sewed tiny pouches for the pebbles and shells, and she tied each pouch to a sturdy stick. She gathered the twigs I had brought her, tying them into two bundles shaped like whisks. ‘Let us surprise your papai on his birth-day next week,’ mamãe suggested. Together, we practised in secret one of our favourite songs, my mamãe and I singing the beautiful melody while I worked out a unique drum beating using my various implements.

The day of my papai’s birth-day having arrived, Father O toasted him at dinner, wishing him many happy returns of this day, and we feasted on dressed lobster and papai’s favourite apple charlotte. When we had done, mamãe beckoned them to the drawing room for our musical performance. Mamãe helped me with the strap of my drum, whereupon we began to sing ‘Tree on the Hill’, the pebbles and shells creating a pleasant sound on the skin of my drum and marking the rhythm in 4/4 time.

On yonder hill there stands a tree;
Tree on the hill, and the hill stood still.

And on the tree there was a branch;
Branch on the tree, tree on the hill,
and the hill stood still.

For an interlude, I switched to the twig whisks, which mamãe had placed on a small table near me, and I stroked the whisks in a crescendo roll, followed by a diminuendo roll – like the advance and retreat of a zephyr that makes the needle-like leaves quiver on a Scots pine. Papai always said that it is then that the wind can be heard, its susurration being ancient and divine and, for him, salubrious. He called it his wind music.

And on the branch there was a nest;
Nest on the branch, branch on the tree,
tree on the hill, and the hill stood still.

And in the nest there was an egg;
Egg in the nest, nest on the branch,
branch on the tree, tree on the hill,
and the hill stood still.

Using the pebbles and shells this time for a second interlude, I conjured up the crackling of an egg shell as the baby bird secured his freedom and was born, marking his natal day.

And in the egg there was a bird;
Bird in the egg, egg in the nest,
nest on the branch, branch on the tree,
tree on the hill, and the hill stood still.

And on the bird there was a feather;
Feather on the bird, bird in the egg,
egg in the nest, nest on the branch,
branch on the tree, tree on the hill,
and the hill stood still.

I closed with a good roll using the twig whisks, bringing to mind the sudden rush of windswept pine needles on the ground. Twwwoooooshhh. And then, very slowly, I scratched the surface of the skin of the drum several times with the whisks – tsshk tsshk tsshk – like the scattering of a few errant pine needles. Our performance having concluded, both papai and Father O shouted ‘bravo’, and once I had removed my drum, I curtseyed very prettily to my adoring audience of two. Papai hoisted me up to kiss my cheek, and he teased me by tapping my head with one of the twig whisks. His shiny eyes and broad grin betokened an earthly happiness, albeit a fleeting one, which did not signify; for, the eternal joy of the music was now and for ever locked deep in his soul.

The adventures of Sofia-Elisabete, our irrepressible young girl from Portugal and the natural daughter of Colonel Fitzwilliam, continue now with Story Five, World of the Moon , where the line between imagination and reality blurs in the active mind of a child, with a tragical result.

To recap: In Story One, Voyage to Albion, which is told through the eyes of this enchanting eleven-year-old girl, we learned about her humble beginnings and search for her father. In Story Two, Chocolate Destiny, she described the two most important people in her life, as only she can tell it. In Story Three, Bugbear in the Old Wood, her grandfather shows her the glories and mysteries of Sherwood Forest and the lessons therein. In Story Four, Tree on the Hill, she learned about the transiency of human happiness, yet there is an everlasting, profound happiness that comes from an appreciation of the natural world – its cycle of life, its growth and change.

These short stories are a part of a series (I, Sofia-Elisabete) I am drafting about a love child growing up in the Regency Period. The back story about Colonel Fitzwilliam and the other adults can be found in Freedom & Mirth: Or, A Pride and Prejudice Serio-Comic Journey (Book One).

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WORLD OF THE MOON

MY FIRST DANCE, thinks I, was a rope dance with my cousin Anne de Bourgh, whom I called cousin Annie. Papai called her our crazy country cousin, she being an eccentric who lived with Lady Catherine far away in the land of Kent. There, the mother and daughter lived on an estate called Rosings, with its eighty-four glazed windows, twenty-three fireplaces and twelve chimneys. One day, though, Annie had had enough of Xanthippe, an epithet for her overbearing mother, and thus, with cunning and dare, she escaped in her Ladyship’s elegant equipage, and come to Scarborough she did, for she had convinced herself that she was in love with my papai, whom she called cousin Fizzy.

Now, papai did not have the heart to send her back to Rosings, even after she stole his favourite, very tight buckskin breeches, goaded him into having a set-to with puppets during her puppet play, tossed a handful of hasty pudding into his face and hit him on the backside with a bed warming pan. I hear you cry, why ever not then? Is she a mad woman? What happened was this. The rector, Mr Collins, appeared at our door like a common thief-taker, he having been sent by his patroness, Lady Catherine, to seize her daughter like a common criminal. He stood, thus, with handcuffs to forcibly remove Annie from the premises, whereupon papai placed Annie under his protection, claiming that Lord Matlock, my avô, had decreed it so. Annie expressed surprise at papai’s show of clemency, and from that moment on, she embraced him as her champion.

Annie became a member of our family, and she proved to be the best of cousins to me. She taught me how to do a somersault on the ground, how to stand on my head and how to cross my toes. And she taught me many a song, like ‘Pease Pudding Hot’ and ‘The Jolly Ploughman’, and we would sing ‘too-ran-nan, too-ran-nan, too-ran-nan nanty na’ all day long and drive my papai to distraction. Some evenings we would perform mummery for papai, because Annie assured me that our second-rate mummery would bring him immense pleasure and happiness.

But the most diverting thing she taught me was how to walk across a rope without falling. She had discovered the secret of rope dancing from Maddison, my mamãe’s lusty maid, and she revealed that secret to me, having first obtained permission from my mamãe, who said the tight rope must be no higher than ten inches and be strung across the lawn to prevent injury. At first, we obeyed mamãe’s rules, and I learnt how to walk across the rope while playing my drum. Later, whenever mamãe left town to attend to her students at Bunberry school, Annie raised the rope three feet high, and I practiced ‘roasting the pig’ by laying myself upon the rope, holding it with my hands and with my feet crossed, and then ever so swiftly, turning round and round.

One afternoon, mamãe and Annie surprised me with a breeching ceremony where they presented me with a set of proper boy’s clothes to march about in. ‘Such foolery!’ papai cried since breeching ceremonies were for boys only. Mamãe, who could be just as headstrong as any man, remained unpersuadable. She and Annie had sewn me nankeen breeches that buttoned above the waist onto a short red jacket with two rows of brass buttons, and a white cambric shirt with a ruffled trim. To complete the ensemble, they had purchased a striking red military-style cap with tassel from the milliner, white stockings from the hosier and black slippers with straps from the shoe-maker.

‘You daren’t cut her hair, or else…’ papai shook his finger at mamãe.

‘Or else what?’ mamãe teased him, a pair of scissors in her hand. ‘Oh, come now, I promise you I shan’t cut off all her hair. I simply wish to give you a small lock as part of the ceremony.’

‘Her hair is so silky and soft.’ A tear formed in papai’s eye as he beheld the lock in the palm of his hand.

Mamãe snipped another small lock for Annie, who would be departing soon, for my cousin wished to return home to Rosings. Annie had exchanged letters with her two ponies, both of whom missed her deeply, so she said, but we both knew that a contrite Lady Catherine had written her the letters, expressing her wish to see her daughter again before she, her Ladyship, died someday, whenever that would be. ‘Adeus, cousin Annie!’ says I. And upon her leave-taking, I lost my first true friend, and the sorrow of it made me most melancholy. Papai began to worry about me moping about the house, and during breakfast one morning, he hinted at a grand surprise for me.

‘Oh, tell me, tell me,’ pleaded I.

Papai’s eyes twinkled. ‘We shall host a certain important personage.’

‘Papai, who is it?’

‘It is Pico Robinson.’

My heart sunk down to my toes upon hearing that my nemesis, Pico Robinson, would visit us in Scarborough and thereby ruin my whole summer.

Mamãe poured me a cup of chocolate. ‘Is it not great news about Pico?’

‘Não, não, não!’ cried I in despair.

‘My dear girl,’ papai set down his morning newspaper. ‘What are you about? You were great play-fellows with Pico and his brother during our sojourn in the old Wood.’

‘I hate him a-plenty! Please, papai, please make him go whoam .’

‘Manners, Miss Sofia-Elisabete,’ he scolded me. ‘He is your cousin.’

I gasped. ‘He isna my cousin.’

‘Mr Robinson is my half-brother,’ papai explained. ‘How lucky you are, for did you not wish for half of a brother? Well now, you have half of a boy cousin, which is just as good in my mind.’

I gaped at papai in disbelief. ‘Gaaaaaahhh!’ I shouted, and I took to my heels. Upstairs in my bedchamber, I grabbed my drumsticks to beat a defiant drum roll – the one for raising the alarm that the enemy was upon us. Papai berated me for my unsoldierly conduct, and he confiscated my drum for three days as punishment.

‘It i’n’t fair!’ I cried over and over again as I ran about the room to evade papai. I sought refuge in mamãe’s arms where I complained about my mistreatment, but she explained to me something called etiquette. A true Christian politeness comes from a pure heart – one that is good and kind – and if I wished to be a proper lady, I must exercise the goodness of my heart every day and extend the gentle courtesies of life to everyone, including Pico.

‘A hostess must always see to the comfort and happiness of her guests, and she must never ever insult them or be rude to them.’

‘But mamãe, he calls me all sorts of names, like nincompoop.’

‘Rudeness must not be met with rudeness,’ returned she, but I refused to subscribe to her maxim.

Too soon thereafter, my half of a cousin Pico, he being a whole five years older than me, strutted into our drawing room all dressed in the style with his fancy high-waist blue breeches and blue jacket. He bowed genteel-like to my papai and then to mamãe, presenting her with a nosegay. Mamãe complimented him on what a handsome boy he was.

‘How are ter?’ He grinned at me, his eyes gleaming with mischief, his plans set into motion on how best to torment me – I was sure of it.

I sneered at him, which only made him laugh, and when papai cast me a stern look, I deigned to give my half of a cousin a quick curtsey. Papai began to extol the wonders of Scarborough and he remarked how excited I was about Pico’s visit. ‘Sofia-Elisabete has many a fun adventure planned for the two of you,’ he added. Impossible , thinks I, and I shot a glance at papai, wondering why he was allowed to lie, but I was not.

Later, after we had dined, mamãe did the unthinkable and asked Pico to entertain us with a story. I suppose she had no choice about it since she aimed to be a good hostess to our guest. We sat near Pico, who struck a theatrical pose near the fireplace and who recited his favourite story, one that had been written by a bishop so-and-so about Domingo Gonsales’s strange voyage to the world of the moon. Listening to Pico’s colourful version of the tale, I realized he was a champion storyteller, and I begrudged him nought, for did I not pride myself on being a diverting and charming fabulist whenever I chose to be?

Pico recounted how the young Spanish nobleman defied his parents and went a-warring and a-plundering and made himself rich, after which, he got into trouble by killing a man in a duel. Gonsales hid in Lisbon for a while, and finding himself in need of money again for the support of his wife and two children, he journeyed to the East Indies where he traded his ducats for diamonds, emeralds and pearls. On the voyage home, he became terribly sick and thus he had to rusticate on an island, which is where he discovered flocks of gansas, each of these wild geese having a claw like an eagle. Having puzzled his wits together, he captured thirty or so of these gansas, harnessed them with string and cork pulleys and taught them how to carry things, including himself in an engine he had devised.

His rustication having come to an end, Gonsales and his gansas embarked for Spain, but an English fleet bore down on their vessel. With the aid of his harnessed gansas, he escaped to Cape Verde, but take flight again did he to flee from a bunch of savages armed with staves. Thereafter, his gansas struck bolt upright and flew towards heaven. They floated in the air for what seemed like an eternity – but was just eleven days – surrounded by a sky lit up with bright stars. On the twelfth day, they descended on the world of the moon, where he met the Lunars – moon men, moon women and moon children, who spoke not so much a language, but rather in tunes. Some of the moon men were ten feet in height, while others were twenty-seven feet in height, and they could live as long as thirty thousand moons, which is above one thousand years.

The Lunars knew not pain, hunger, murder or thievery. They needed not lawyers, as there was no contention amongst them. They needed not doctors all that much, as the air was pure and temperate; for, it never rained, and there was never wind on the moon. The Lunars, being good Christian folk, lived in a perpetual spring abounding in love, peace and amity, and if perchance a child had a vile disposition, they would exchange the child for another child on earth, usually in America, which, by the bye, is where they got the tobacco that the moon men smoked.

When some of his gansas began to die, Gonsales knew he must needs leave the moon with alacrity. He journeyed back to earth, it taking him a whole nine days to do so. He found himself in a strange land called China, near the city of Pequin, where he was arrested for being a magician, but once he learnt something called Mandarin, he was able to communicate his story to them about his voyage to the moon and thereby hopefully secure permission to return to Spain. And whether he ever did return to Spain and to his beloved wife and children, we shall never know.

That night, after we children had retired, I dreamt of a voyage on the high seas, and when our vessel hit a gale in the North Sea, Pico and I climbed atop a gigantic gansa and we flew to the world of the moon. ‘Viva!’ That is how I greeted the moon children who ran about us dressed in their moon-coloured clothes. ‘Apre! Pray let us exchange Pico for a well-behaved moon child?’ I suggested to them. And so we did. A pretty moon-boy climbed atop the gansa with me, and we descended to earth where we landed in the countryside near Seville, for my aim had been off. There, I found a pot of chocolate ducats half buried in a field, and I bought us pão hespanol and butter that had been made in Alcalá. We lodged that evening on an old palheiro – a haystack with a wood pole in the centre – and when the sky darkened and the bright moon appeared, we could make out the boy in the moon, because Pico-in-the-Moon would live there for ever, or at least for one thousand years, unless the Lunars exchanged him for a child in America given his wicked humour and propensities.

The next morning at breakfast mamãe continued her attentions to Pico, and she surprised him with his favourite hasty pudding all nicely dished up with a hole in the middle containing the melted butter and treacle.

‘O tasty hasty! O hasty tasty!’ Papai winked his eye at us. ‘Observe my technique. I shall spoon some pudding from the brim of the plate, whereupon I shall plunder the sauce hole – mind you, without demolishing it – and as quick as can be, I shall devour the spoonful of hot pudding. Mmm…what triumph!’

‘Papai, I bet a ha’penny that I shan’t demolish the sauce hole on my plate.’

‘Done! I accept your wager.’

I grabbed my spoon and I set about industriously to fortify my sauce hole with extra pudding along its perimeter.

Pico scrutinised my pudding fortress. ‘Yer need a drawbridge for yer castle.’

‘A what-bridge?’

‘A bridge for th’ troopers an’ their hosses to cross to get into th’ castle.’ With his spoon, Pico smashed a part of the wall surrounding my butter and treacle, and the buttery brown liquid spilled forth, like a muddy moat oozing about in my dish of pudding.

I gasped at his treachery. ‘Why, you…you dunderhead!’

‘Manners, Miss Sofia-Elisabete!’ papai reprimanded me. ‘Apologise at once to your cousin.’

‘Não!’

Mamãe interrupted our set-to. ‘Sofia-Elisabete, must I remind you what a good hostess is?’

A dark cloud hovered over me, but my countenance soon brightened. ‘I apologise, cousin Pico, for calling you a dunderhead. I ought not to call you a dunderhead. A dunderhead…’

Papai groaned at my insolence. ‘Yes, yes – but I still win the bet. Where is my ha’penny?’

I, Sofia-Elisabete, being no stranger to losing bets with my papai, removed a ha’penny from my pinafore pocket. Papai snatched the coin from me, and he tossed up the coin ere he placed it inside his coat pocket, while Pico snickered at me and my loss.

Having heard from MacTavish that I was a true musitioner, Pico expressed his wish to play at being a coxcomb Drum Major. ‘An excellent idea, indeed. The two of you shall become good play-fellows,’ mamãe rejoiced at our truce. Eager to show my parents that I could be a good hostess, if I turned my mind to it, I dressed in my modish, nankeen breeches and red jacket to impress my guest, but Pico laughed at me and my boy’s clothes. ‘Yer a rum ‘un!’ he declared. He commanded me to beat my drum and march behind him, and so obey him I did, that is, until papai stalked into the garden to give me a stern look for drumming out Pico from the army with the Rogue’s March.

One afternoon Pico and I accompanied Maddison to the harbour in the South Bay to purchase turbot and soles at the cobles that arrived on the sands each day. While Maddison set about to inspect the fresh fish for our dinner, we children took turns peering through a spyglass to count the number of sails in the harbour. When it was my turn again, I started at the sight of someone who looked like Sister Elisabete. I had not visited with Sister Elisabete in my dreams for a long time, and I wondered if she had forgotten me.

‘What did ter see?’

I boggled for a second. ‘I believe ‘twas a dolphin.’

‘Liar.’ Pico grabbed the spyglass from me. ‘Gad zookers! ‘Tis Domingo Gonsales.’

There, on the pier, stood a Spaniard, magnificent in a majo jacket, wide-brimmed sombrero, breeches and black shoes with buckles, and who flourished his brown capa about like a torero in the bull ring ere he flung it over his left shoulder, and next to him, reaching for his arm, was a handsome señora dressed in a white basquina and black maja jacket, her hair adorned with a peineta and a red flower, her white lace mantilla billowing about in the wind. Entranced, I wondered who this elegant lady could be and why a Spanish noble woman had come to Scarborough of all places, because she looked like an angel on earth.

Pico and I raced each other to get to the pier first, for my cousin was determined to meet his hero, Domingo Gonsales. The two foreigners expressed their amusement at seeing a half-boy like me, who was dressed in boy’s clothes, approach them without an introduction. Pico performed a gallant bow, as did I. We stood about shyly with our caps in our hands, when of a sudden, Pico blurted out, ‘How are ter?’

‘Buenos tardes,’ the Spanish lady dipped her chin. ‘I am Doña Marisa, and this is my cortejo – my escort – Señor Gonzalez.’

I goggled my eyes at the man. ‘Are you really Domingo Gonsales who voyaged to the moon?’

Señor Gonzalez winked his eye at me. ‘No, but seeing how I am Sabádo Gonzalez, I must surely be his primo, his cousin. What are your names?’

‘I’m Pico Robinson, an’ this is my cousin, Sofia-Elisabete Fitzwilliam.’

‘Pico?’ Señor Gonzalez laughed for whatever reason, and then he peered at me. ‘Are you a boy, un niño, or a girl, una niña?’

‘I am a drummer girl,’ said I.

‘A droomer girl?’ Señor Gonzalez turned to his lady.

‘Sofia-Elisabete es una tamborilera.’ Doña Marisa fanned herself, her graceful movements enchanting everyone.

We soon learnt that the Lapwing, the packet to London, would sail on the morning tide and our new Spanish friends with it. They told us that they came from a land called Seville and that they had travelled a great distance to find someone in Scarborough. As we perambulated the sands behind them, Pico divulged a secret to me that he would serve as footboy to Señor Gonzalez and that he would sail away with them, for he was wild for adventure.

‘Yer canna goo wi’ us because yer a namby-pamby girl,’ said he.

I wished for adventure just as much as he did, so I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘I bet a ha’penny I can.’

‘Done!’ cried he.

I ran up beside the noble lady. ‘Doña Marisa, please may I be your footboy?’

‘Sí, I would like that very much.’ Doña Marisa smiled at me prettily, her eyes sparkling like diamonds. ‘Hmm…Perhaps I should cut your hair on the morrow, so no one will know you are una niña.’

‘Doña Marisa, may I bring my drum and tight rope?’

‘A tight rope? Por qué?’

‘I’m a rope dancer.’ Methinks my revelation diverted Doña Marisa and her cortejo.

At six o’clock the next morning, having dressed myself in two sets of clothes and a cape, I met my fellow runaway out in the garden where I strapped my drum on and I grabbed my tight rope. We connivers scurried down to the pier where Señor Gonzalez awaited us in a coble. ‘Adeus, Scarborough!’ says I, as we were rowed out to sea, the morning tide having begun to rise.

Once aboard the Lapwing, Señor Gonzalez conducted me to Doña Marisa’s windowless fore-cabin where I would serve as her footboy. Doña Marisa’s sweet fragrance like that of blossoming myrtle permeated the interior of the tiny cabin, reminding me of my homeland far away. While she hummed a Portuguese modinha or love song, she brushed my hair, dividing it into five locks, ere she tied each lock with gold thread. I closed my eyes while she snipped each lock, and when she had done, I glanced at the strange boy in a small looking-glass that she had handed me.

‘My papai will court-martial me.’ I began to sniffle. ‘He will take away my drum.’

‘No te preocupas. You needn’t worry. Mira!’ Doña Marisa held up a letter. ‘I have already written your father to explain everything.’ She enclosed a lock of my hair before she sealed the letter.

‘Doña Marisa, where are we going?’

Doña Marisa became thoughtful. ‘La luna. We are going to the world of the moon.’

‘My papai will like it there. No one is melancholy or ever gets sick on the moon.’

‘You believe that your father will come find you there?’

I nodded most emphatically.

‘Sí, cómo no. He will meet us there.’ Doña Marisa gave me an enigmatic smile. ‘Until then, we shall have many a fun adventure together.’

We up anchored and set sail on the beauteous blue of the North Sea. I waited on the deck for the gigantic gansa to fly us to the moon, but the gansa never did come for us. I prayed that the gansa would find us before we reached London. Perhaps the gansa was waiting for my papai to join us so that we could travel together to the moon? To be sure, with each passing day it became apparent that papai and I had lost each other once again – at least, that is the way I believe my papai would speak of my adventure to the world of the moon – whereas, no doubt, mamãe would deem it my fortunate misfortune, because should not a child know from whom she sprung?