When Maria asked what had happened to Samuel’s mother and sisters, he shook his head.

“My sisters were converted and married to men they didn’t know. My mother was burned.”

First they burned the books, then the people who wrote them, then those who read them. They burned books about medicine and magic, books in Hebrew and in Spanish and Portuguese. Samuel’s mother could read and write; she was a healer and a midwife, and had written a book of cures, but there had only been one copy and it had been destroyed. That was why Samuel and his father always transported books, even those that had been outlawed by slave owners in the West Indies.

“I’m glad I memorized my mother’s stories,” Samuel said. “That way they can never be forgotten.”

Maria felt a tightness in her chest when she learned the fate of the women in his family. She only hoped he hadn’t seen what she had seen in England, the last moments of a life engulfed in flames. She’d decided she would hem all of his clothing with blue stitches, to protect him from ill intentions.

“A woman like my mother is frightening to those in power,” Samuel said.

Maria understood that a woman with her own beliefs who refuses to bow to those she believes to be wrong can be considered dangerous. In the county where she’d grown up in England they would call her a witch, they would say she had a tail and spoke to Satan, but in Spain and Portugal they would say that the Jews had dark powers, that they could control the seas and stars, they could work magic to curse people or keep them alive.

The voyage passed as though it were a dream. Once Samuel Dias began talking, he didn’t stop. He spoke about Brazil and Morocco, and of the great flocks of birds in Africa and the beaches in Portugal so hidden a man would never be found, and of islands in the middle of the sea where the only residents were the turtles. He told her of places where men wore scarlet scarves and painted their eyes with kohl and women dressed in silk and calico, their heads covered. In time, Maria talked as well, admitting that her robber father could recite entire plays without taking a breath.

“But why would a man in his right mind memorize another man’s words instead of speaking his own?”

“That’s what a player does.” Maria shrugged. “He pretends to be someone he’s not.”