On Sagell Street the walls had ears. Maids listened, neighbors listened, and sometimes the listener was a spy. So faith was spoken of outdoors.
Moixina and Bartolomé Cortés de Alfonso revealed to each other that they kept the Law of Moses «when they went walking along the seashore, on the road to Portopí». On the open road, by the water, no one could be standing behind a door.
Another file tells something even more revealing. One man thanked another for having begun to teach the Law of Moses to a young member of his own family, and admitted that he himself had not dared to do it «for lack of trust». The teaching, the document says, had taken place «while fishing», in a boat.
This is what terror had come to: a father who did not trust his own son. And still the faith passed from one generation to the next, on the shore and out at sea, for centuries.
