Just before sunrise on Friday 3 August 1492, at the town of Palos north of Cádiz, two men walked down from the chapel of St George to the nearby river.
From the high bank on one side of the estuary, a young woman watched as they made their way to where three ships, the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, were moored in the inlet below. The sailors in their homespun tunics and bright red caps raised the anchors, and the ships begin to stir as the flow of the outgoing tide edged them slowly in the direction of the river mouth. From the deck of the largest of these, the Santa Maria, Zarita saw Saulo raise his hand to her in farewell.
The chapel bell stopped pealing and the ships began to move more swiftly towards the Ocean Sea. As they crossed the Saltes sandbar, the broad square sail of the Santa Maria, white with a red cross emblazoned on it, billowed out before the wind.
Christopher Columbus had reckoned it could be six months or more before they came back. It would give her and Saulo time, Zarita thought; time and space to recover from the trauma of their previous lives. When Saulo returned, they would talk together and plan for the future. Perhaps there were unknown lands out there waiting to be discovered – a new place – where people might be free to worship as they chose and could live with each other in harmony and peace.