Far below several soldiers laughed at him. Manuel had never been on anything larger than a Sicilian pataches, and most of his fairly extensive seagoing experience was of coastal carracks, so the broad deck under him, cut by bands of yellow sunlight that flowed in at open ports big as church windows, crowded with barrels and bales of hay and tubs of rope, and a hundred busy men, was a marvel. “Saint Anna save me,” he said, scarcely able to believe he was on a ship. Why, the monastery itself had no room as large as the one he descended into now. “Get down here,” Laeghr said in an encouraging way.

Once on the deck of that giant room they descended again, to a stuffy chamber a quarter the size, illuminated by narrow fans of sunlight that were let in by ports that were mere slits in the hull. “Here’s where you sleep,” Laeghr said, pointing at a dark corner of the deck, against one massive oak wall of the ship. Forms there shifted, eyes appeared as lids lifted, a dull voice said, “Another one you’ll never find again in this dark, eh master?”

“Shut up, Juan. See boy, there are beams dividing your berth from the rest, that will keep you from rolling around when we get to sea.”

“Just like a coffin, with the lid up there.”

“Shut up, Juan.”

After the sailing master had made clear which slot in particular was Manuel’s, Manuel collapsed in it and began to cry again. The slot was shorter than he was, and the dividing boards set in the deck were cracked and splintered. The men around him slept, or talked among themselves, ignoring Manuel’s presence. His medallion cord choked him, and he shifted it on his neck and remembered to pray.

His guardian saint, the monks had decided, was Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus. He owned a small wooden medallion with her face painted on it, which Abbot Alonso had given to him. Now he took the medallion between his fingers, and looked in the tiny brown dots that were the face’s eyes. “Please, Mother Anna,” he prayed silently, “take me from this ship to my home. Take me home.” He clenched the tag in his fist so tightly that the back of it, carved so that a cross of wood stood out from its surface, left an imprinted red cross in his palm. Many hours passed before he fell asleep.