The Carrasca Manor Garden
In the garden of Carrasca Manor, the golden light of late afternoon slipped over the lawns and gravel paths, caressing the old oaks that dominated the property. These trees, three gnarled giants, had been planted by the very first Marquis—a former pirate, it was whispered in the family—to mark the end of his adventures and the beginning of a lineage. Around them, wooden trellises, weathered by sun and years, supported a tangle of jasmine, sweet peas, and even a decorative vine whose tiny grapes were the children's pride.
That day, the garden resonated with joyful commotion. Twenty-two children, divided into two teams, chased a patched-up round ball. Hastily discarded coats served as goals, and the rules—invented, adapted, debated with every play—strangely resembled those of modern football. Simao, the eldest at eight years old, stood straight, his gaze determined. Beside him, João, seven, stomped his foot, ready to defend his right to be captain.
"I'm the captain, I scored three goals yesterday!" Simao declared, puffing out his chest like a little admiral.
"But that's not fair, Simao! Yesterday, you picked the teams, it's my turn!" João protested, crossing his arms with the determination of lost causes.
A village boy, his cheeks full of freckles, suggested, "Why don't we vote, like the grown-ups! Whoever gets the most hands raised is captain."
A girl, quick as a finch, added, "Or, the first one to climb to the big branch of the oak!"
Simao pretended to think, then shook his head, feigning seriousness: "If we climb, I'm the one who's going to get scolded again if we break a branch... So, we vote!"
João, with a smirk, shot back, "You're just saying that because you know you'll win, right?"
The children burst out laughing. They formed a circle, raised their hands, cheated a little, counted and recounted, and finally, Simao was elected captain... by one vote.
"It's rigged," João muttered, without really sulking.
Simao put an arm around his shoulders, very proud: "Come on, you're my vice-captain. You choose whether we kick off or start!"
The game resumed, the ball rolling between the coats, slaloming between the oak roots and clumsy feet. Shouts erupted, a kid stumbled, they stopped, they started again. The old gardener, busy trimming a laurel hedge, cast an amused eye on the scene, his secateurs suspended in the air.
The ball rolled, bounced, skidded on the sand and grass, but above all, it survived every impact. The children laughed, shouted, but it wasn't just a game: every gesture, every trick, every cry of protest was an invention in action.
They hadn't learned this game from a book. They had built it, piece by piece, just as their fathers had built fleets: with what they had at hand, and a lot of audacity.
"Hey, no touching the ball with your hands!" a girl shouted, raising her arms as if to ward off evil.
"Why?" asked a boy, out of breath.
"Because on a boat, if you let go of the rope, you fall! You have to hold on with your feet, not your hands!"
Another, smaller boy, rolled the ball with the tip of his foot, concentrating: "My dad says on deck, your feet are in charge. Hands are for climbing or fighting!"
Simao, the freshly elected captain, improvised a rule: "If you intentionally make someone fall, you have to sit out until your name is called. Like when you fall overboard and have to wait to be fished out!"
The coats formed goals, but sometimes, a coat slipped or flew away in the rush. "Let's just say if the ball touches the coat, it doesn't count. You have to pass between them!"
João, always ready to object, asked, "What if the ball goes out of the garden?"
"We start over, but the team that sent it out has to retrieve it. Like losing a mooring in port."
The old gardener, who had seen more storms than springs, smiled into his beard. "You play like your fathers sail. Always inventing rules to avoid sinking!"
And, without realizing it, the children of Carrasca Manor, sons and daughters of sailors, nobles, or pribateers, were inventing a game where balance, cunning, teamwork, and the ability to improvise counted as much as strength.
On the decks of ships, they had learned to keep their balance, to anticipate movements, to trust their feet more than their hands—and all of this, they found again in this ball that sped near the oak.
________
Upstairs, behind a small-paned window, Beatriz, the Marquise, watched the scene, her chin resting on her hand. Beside her, João, the Marquis, followed the match with interested eyes and ears, while thinking about ....
"Look at them," Beatriz said with a smile. "They've invented their own game, and now they're trying to show you which one is the best captain."
João sighed, setting down his glass.
"Captain, others vote for you. One doesn't impose oneself as captain. That's 'work with,' not 'work for.' But they always want to lead, never to compromise..."
Beatriz shrugged, amused, her eyes sparkling. "João, my dear, you forget these boys aren't simple common children. Here, being captain is almost a birthright. They play as they live, with the certainty that the world belongs to them, or at least this garden. And besides, between us, if one of them started electing his little brother, it would be the beginning of a revolution. You wouldn't want that, would you?"
João looked at her, half-amused, half-frustrated.
Plan B — "The Baptism of Water", later that evening
João, coldly, yet not cruelly:
"You see that pouch, Beatriz? Empty, soft, harmless. But fill it with water... and it suffocates. Work for someone, and you breathe like you're underwater."
He pushes her head quickly and violently inside—not to punish, but to prove. She struggles.
He lets go.
Beatriz, gasping, furious, eyes burning:
"Is this your gospel? Drown me to awaken me? Baptize me with cruelty to prove your truth?"
João, firm and unflinching:
"You call it cruelty. I call it reality, this was a real water baptism Beatriz, a real one. You teach our sons to be polite cogs in someone else's wheel. I want them to build their own, and master the wheels of their lives, not that of others."
Beatriz, shaking, drenched in anger and pain:
"You speak of liberty like scripture, but you demand faith before breath. I tried to raise them to survive—not to vanish in your impossible dream."
Marquis:
"You've betrayed them from the beginning, Beatriz, you demand them faith before even letting them breathe. If you can't walk beside them on the road of choice, maybe they're better without you."
Beatriz, lowers her head—bitterness replaces fire:
"Then maybe they are. But betrayal isn't cruelty—it's ignorance dressed in care. I taught what I inherited. What do you expect from someone built to kneel?"
Marquis, almost whispering: "I expect you to stop kneeling."
Beatriz, voice cracking, religious fury:
"I've known baptisms before. Holy ones. Drenched in promises, sealed with guilt. This one? It hurt deeper. The water didn't forgive me—it remembered the hands that forced it."
João: "Two sons, Beatriz. Not one. And they're watching you. Don't be the ghost my parents were."
Beatriz, finally trembling with clarity: "I wanted to protect them. Taught them how to smile under pressure, how to wait for approval. But I see it now—that silence isn't safety. It's suffocation."
João: "Let them learn both roads—yours and mine. But don't guide them blindfolded like an overbeaten donkey. They're still very easy to influence... too young to choose. Let them breathe both winds."
Beatriz, soft now, eyes wet but mind steady: "Then teach me how to wait. To hold space, not steer. If I was building cages with lace, then help me tear them down. I'll walk beside them, and beside you... even if I don't know where the path ends."
João: "This is where you have to find out: how many stories end like that: 'ha all my life I followed the rules, and I hate the world because it never made me happy...' but when reading the previous actions, it was the same lamentations to begin with: masqueraded as hope of a savior ! To extractthemselvesfrom their misery by the "high"way... to hell..."
"I encountered a kraken, Beatriz..., and I still had many goals, my own goals, my dreams, I am sure all of the eleven survivors of that encounter have goals too.... you must find your own goals..."
"You did what you were 'meant to do'? Did you ever have a dream, something that you may think you might never achieve, but still you struggle to achieve it..."
"You know the rules of humans: survival, betrayal for 'so called to survive' resilient justification of their betrayals ? and so, they made rules to avoid betrayals, but it only acted as a cross on their shoulders, only to lament they got nailed on it in the end, while following the rules..."
"The so-called father who sacrifices his son for his beloved world? Like a lover of stones... you know I hate Muslims: they venerate a stone..."
"You know the difference with Christians? A long time ago: there was a Simao.... later: he decided that he had vanquished the world, and he got called Cephas, meaning stone.... and he decided that the "law stone" was always right, and that was what he believed.... and if you think God doesn't exist: consider that possibility; tired of that idolatry: he nailed them like they asked."
Beatriz, voice low, trembling between sorrow and defiance:
"I've followed the rules too... swallowed them whole until they bloated inside me like promises made by statues. I was told obedience meant peace. It didn't. It meant forgetting."
"You speak of the kraken. I believe you. And yes, perhaps all of the eleven survivors have goals... and to achieve them they survive, even an encounter with a kraken."
"Dreams? I buried mine beneath tradition, believing that what I was 'meant to do' was all I was allowed to. But now I understand—even the idols crack. Even the stones can drown."
"You want to know? I think you are right: God didn't nail them out of wrath. He did it out of exhaustion—from watching them worship their fears and call it truth."
João: "You have to find goals, Beatriz, your goals: your dreams, live your adventures, I will depart with the children."
Beatriz: "And I never had adventures of my own—only the ones I read and envied from afar—do I deserve one now?"
"All my life, I was a hallway for other people's choices. A quiet passage between duties. And now you say go... find..... Find dreams. But I no longer know where mine start and others end."
"If you leave with them, what will I be here? A former teacher of borrowed truths? An echo?"
"But... maybe echoes can still become voices. Maybe silence, at last, can birth something of my own."
"I won't beg you to stay. But I won't stay as I was."
João: a little swayed, but unyielding: "This is precisely because of that: do you lack time? You have fortunes, you have paper, you know how to read, you know how to write, you have more than necessary to achieve at least the hypothesis of a dream..."
"And you are still almost begging me to find 'Your goals'? 'Your dreams'?"
"You will have more space, no children to 'interrupt your thought process...' You are 28 now, Beatriz, and it's been long since I realized parts of my dreams, and you? Did you even achieve one all this while?"
Beatriz, her voice, quiet at first, builds like a rising tide:
"No... I haven't. Not really. Not one I chose with both hands and risked losing with both eyes open. I've fulfilled expectations, shaped lives, polished mirrors—but never stepped into one alone to discover what I'd become."
"You say I have time and tools. But tools in trembling hands are still weapons we fear to use. I read to escape. I wrote to remember what I couldn't say aloud. I watched you chase stars and build empires... and I convinced myself that watching was enough."
"But it wasn't."
"You're right. I've had years, resources, silence, and excuses. But no dream survives behind locked doors and polite prayers. I have spent my life in preparations for a play I never dared to perform."
"So go. Take them. Let their minds be louder than mine ever was. But I won't stay here waiting for the next right moment that may never comes. I will write something now... not for survival or grace—but because I need to find out what voice is mine when I stop imitating love and start finding what is mine."
João: "I never chase after the star... but empire? Depends on what kind of empire you are talking about...."
.....
________
Lisbon, Summer 1668, Count Luis's Study, after 3 PM
The subdued light filters through the stained-glass windows, casting red and gold reflections on the shelves of ancient books. The air, even on this late summer afternoon, remains heavy, charged with the scent of jacarandas and the distant salt of the Atlantic. A slight draft, barely perceptible, rustles the pages left open on a lectern.
On the massive oak table, at the heart of this room that breathes knowledge and power, fine architectural plans, diagrams of complex machines with intricate gears, treatises on rhetoric in Latin, and, placed with a certain reverence, a copy of Descartes' Meditations, bound in new leather, whose gilded gleam catches a fleeting sunbeam, are piled high. Flashes of silver and purple dance on the patinated leather.
Luis, opening a folder with yellowed pages, the paper rustling slightly under his fingers, breaks the contemplative silence:
"Padre Manuel, I had you come to speak to you about a project close to my heart. A vital project for the future of Portugal, for our children. I want to found a modern lycée, not just another college, but a place where rhetoric would be taught with the eloquence of Cicero, arts with the precision of a Michelangelo, engineering that would build aqueducts worthy of Rome, architecture that would make our palaces wonders, our citadels impregnable fortresses... and, most of all, the principles of the new philosophy, that of Descartes. Imagine, Padre, sharp minds, capable of thinking for themselves, of understanding the world not by dogma, but by the spirit of reason with which God has endowed us!"
Padre Manuel, his gray eyebrows raising slightly, intrigued by the audacity of the proposal, adjusts the stiff collar of his cassock. A bead of sweat pearls on his balding forehead.
"Monsieur Descartes' philosophy?" His voice, usually grave and composed, betrays a hint of astonishment.
"That is not common in our colleges, Excellency. Our methods are proven, rooted in centuries of scholastic tradition. But I am listening, of course. What do you wish to accomplish with this... innovation? Is it a new fashion from Paris that you wish to import?"
Luis, approaching the small table on which a crystal carafe rests, its coolness evaporating in droplets on the frosted glass, speaks in a low, almost confidential voice, as he pours the Padre a refreshment.
The clinking of ice in the glass echoes softly in the room.
"Padre, I know this is not the time for grand speeches or heated debates. The City is burdened by the heat, business awaits, and spirits are heavy. But it is precisely in these moments of calm, when the tumult subsides and haste recedes, that people can, I believe, reflect unhurriedly on what truly matters. On the foundations of tomorrow, do you understand?"
Padre Manuel, accepting the glass, his gnarled fingers feeling the welcome coolness of the liquid, sketches a tired smile, his eyes squinted by the heat and years of reading the Holy Scriptures.
"Yes, you are absolutely right, Excellency. The heat invites patience... and prudence in words. Our words travel far, sometimes too far, and it is good that they are weighed. Especially when speaking of novelty in an ancient land."
He takes a sip, savoring the citrus taste.
Luis, in a calm, almost complicit tone, as if sharing a precious secret, sits opposite the prelate.
"I would like this lycée project to be a shared endeavor. Not a matter of hierarchy or command, of decrees falling from above, but a place where everyone, according to their knowledge, according to their vocation, can develop fully. Imagine masters of the Church, scholars of the Court, engineers from the port, all working together."
He pauses briefly, letting his words infuse into the Padre's mind.
"The Church, Padre, has invaluable experience in the transmission of knowledge: reading, writing, arithmetic, Latin which is the golden thread of our civilization, but also faith in eternal life, the salvation of the soul... I have no intention of disrupting that. God forbid such folly!"
His intense gaze rests on the Padre's.
"I simply wish that, in the coolness of our study halls, sheltered from the oppressive sun and the trivialities of the world, young minds can learn to reason for themselves, to build ideas sober of the alcoholism of walls, to observe the world with endless curiosity—and that all this be done with profound respect for our traditions, our Saints and our Fathers, but also with a sincere and courageous openness to novelty. Without fear of the new truths God allows us to discover."
Padre Manuel, nodding slowly, his eyes lost for a moment out the window, where the vibrant afternoon light made shadows dance on the red clay roofs and whitewashed walls.
A solitary seagull soared above the slumbering city. He felt the wisdom of Luis's words, a wisdom mixed with a prudent ambition.
"You speak of development, Excellency. That is indeed the key, the true growth of mind and soul. The Church, it is true, has its deeply rooted habits, sometimes its slowness, its fears of the unknown, but it also knows how to recognize the value of collaboration, the power of the human spirit when it is guided by God's will."
He turns back to the Count, his eyes regaining their sharpness.
"If this lycée can become a place where words circulate freely, where tradition dialogues not with defiance, but with reason, where faith is not afraid of knowledge, then yes, it will have its rightful place, and will be a source of blessings. But we must proceed with tact, Excellency, with infinite caution, without offending established sensibilities, without ruffling timid souls. Lisbon is a city of faith, and faith is fragile in the eyes of the impatient."
Luis, a calm smile illuminating his face, rises and places his hand on the back of the Padre's armchair, a gesture of respect and trust.
"I expect no less, Padre. I do not seek to impose a new path by force or decree, nor to serve personal ambitions, but to work with those who sincerely desire the truth, and who want to transmit this spirit to the next generation."
He pauses, his gaze resting on the books and plans, symbols of ever-evolving knowledge.
"The heat outside reminds us, does it not, that sometimes we must slow down, allow time for reflection, to mature, for water to slowly seep into the parched earth... Perhaps that is how lasting works are built, Padre. Quietly, with patience and prudence."
Padre Manuel, appeased, feeling a true complicity settle in, takes a final sip of his refreshment.
"Then let us journey together, Excellency. The wisdom of silence for good listening, the patience of stone for good building, and the coolness of thought to enlighten minds: that is a program which, I must admit, suits me perfectly. May God guide us in this endeavor."
Luis thought: perhaps try to reform the Portuguese Church before shaking the idea of a hasty process....