By Fire, By Water (23 page)

“Why?” she breathed.

“You are—your work is—exquisite.” There, he had said it, if inadvertently. Judith glanced away. She had heard it.

She wrapped the bracelet in its polishing cloth and dropped it in the pocket of her smock. “Chancellor, I have to go to the market.”

“Perhaps I could accompany you.”

“Accompany me?” She frowned.

“I may need to purchase a few gifts.”

“Here? In the Jewish quarter?” She let out a little laugh. “I’m afraid, Chancellor, there isn’t much to see just now. It’s getting late.” He followed her out. She locked the door of her workshop. “And my scimitar? My cross?”

She shook her head. “If you wanted a cup or a bangle, I might be able to oblige. But a sword, a cross, the very emblems of your war?” She shook her head. “Thank you for visiting me.”

She walked out of her courtyard. Santángel watched her another moment, then turned to leave.

The synagogue, a small two-story building, stood at the side of a misshapen plaza, neither a triangle nor quite a rectangle. Inside, the Jews of Granada prayed individually and together. Some mumbled, others loudly declaimed Hebrew blessings, supplications, and psalms. Still others exchanged news, in Arabic, about events in far-off lands. A foreign sea captain had recently discovered a great river, perhaps the longest in the world. The king of Portugal had executed some eighty noblemen at once. The great Jewish philosopher, Isaac Abravanel, had narrowly escaped their fate.

Young boys played tag or hide-and-seek. Wives and daughters, in the balconies, looked on, reciting the liturgy. Judith stood among them, as always, glancing at the people around her, mumbling the prayers.

Near the wall, in his foreign, close-fitting vest and pants, stood the last person she would have expected to find here, the chancellor of Aragon. He watched the men blessing and beseeching God in their jumble of Levantine cadences as if studying an unintelligible map.

Luis de Santángel had surprised her earlier, when he came to her shop, but his presence in the synagogue was incomprehensible. Had he followed her? As she glanced again at the elegant courtier, he must have sensed her thoughts, for he turned and looked directly at her.

Again, as she guided Baba Shlomo out of the synagogue, Judith met the chancellor by the door.

“Madam.” He bowed.

“Good evening, Chancellor.”

Santángel turned to the small, white-bearded man beside her. “You must be Baba Shlomo,” he said in the Aragonese dialect.

“I am, indeed.” The old man beamed, clearly delighted to meet a stranger who spoke the language of his youth. “With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

Judith turned to Baba Shlomo and carefully adjusted his robe. “This is the gentleman I told you about. The diplomat from Zaragoza.”

“Ah. And what brings you to our house of worship?”

“The romance of the exotic, I suppose,” replied Santángel.

“Would you find a Sabbath supper sufficiently exotic?” Baba Shlomo looked blindly at the chancellor. “We’d love to have you for the night.”

Santángel knew that custom, here, dictated that hosts house their guests from evening until morning. “That is very kind, but entirely unmerited.”

Baba Shlomo reached for the chancellor’s shoulder. “Nonsense,” he insisted. “Come, join us. I have many questions.”

Santángel turned back to Judith. She was looking askance, her amber eyes impenetrable.

After washing their hands, lighting the candles, and pronouncing the blessings over bread and wine, Judith and Baba Shlomo invited Santángel to join them at the low brass table, where they sat with Levi on leather cushions. She had prepared a spicy fish stew. They drank from silver cups and ate from glazed clay pots.

Judith had rarely seen Baba Shlomo so animated. Questions spilled from his lips like tea from a deep pitcher. Were there still Jews in Zaragoza? The old man seemed relieved to learn that there were, and that Santángel personally knew one or two members of the community. How were the Israelites of Aragon faring? What about the holidays Baba Shlomo remembered from his youth, the day of Rejoicing in the Torah, the Festival of the Harvest, when the followers of Moses would exit their quarter, parading around the city with their scrolls or their palm fronds, and the followers of Jesus would join them, and for a brief time it would seem there had never been strife between them? Were there still enough Jews in Zaragoza to bring life to such festivities? Did the Christians allow it?

Santángel hated to disappoint the old man by not responding. At the same time, he represented the courts of Castile and Aragon, even in a private home. He answered with a challenge. “Do you have it so much better in Granada? Because of your faith, you have to pay a special ‘Jew Tax,’ no?”

“Yes, of course, just as in Christian lands.”

“And you’re not permitted to build houses taller than those of your neighbors, or to pray in public.”

“Such regulations,” said Baba Shlomo, “hardly affect our daily lives.”

“From what I understand,” pursued Santángel, ignoring his objection, “your graves have to lie flat upon the ground, so the Mohammedans can walk upon them. And if a Muslim wants to marry your daughter, you can’t refuse him. In what way do you fare better than the Jews of Aragon, or Castile?”

“We may disagree with our neighbors,” remarked Judith, unsettled by all the chancellor was suggesting, “but they don’t kill us for it.”

Santángel smiled, pleased she had decided to join the conversation.

“Usually, they don’t,” Baba Shlomo corrected her.

As she turned to Baba Shlomo, her expression softened.

“The same can be said of the Jews in Zaragoza and Toledo,” asserted Santángel, “and the other Christian lands.” Even as he uttered the words, he knew that while literally true, they were meant to disguise his unease about the state of Jewish life in Zaragoza.

“But you, yourself, sir,” asked Judith. “Why did you come to our services? Are you Jewish or Christian?”

Santángel sipped his wine. “My lady, what is the advantage of knowing, with absolute certainty, what one believes? There’s much to be said for doubt.”

“All people suffer,” said Judith. “But if you don’t know what you believe, you suffer alone.”

“I’m Christian, madam. Third generation.” He said it as though he meant it, meeting her gaze.

Judith had invited gentiles into her home before, but the Sabbath dinner was a religious observance. Christians, she knew, sometimes studied Jewish rituals with the sole aim of finding fault in them.

On the other hand, this chancellor appeared to be a man of great distinction. Was it not an honor to entertain such a gentleman at one’s dinner table? Again, her eyes caught his. This time, she did not look away.

What she saw surprised her. For a moment, he was not a foreign dignitary, but a man. Christians, she had heard, rarely revealed their vulnerability. “Third generation,” she repeated.

“They say the errors of past generations are erased,” the chancellor explained, “when one accepts Christ.” He smiled tenuously and sipped his wine again.

Judith returned his smile, resting her chin lightly upon the back of her hand, a loose strand of hair sweeping her cheek. Luis de Santángel made no effort to hide his fascination.

“I have a question.” Levi, now fourteen, asserted his right to participate as an adult. “If you are Christian, that means you believe in Yehoshua ben Yosef—Jesus Christ, as you say. No?”

Santángel peered at him. He was two years older than Gabriel. Had Gabriel been raised in the traditions of his ancestors, would he resemble this young man, at least in his bearing and manner? The differences were immediately apparent. Levi’s posture, slightly hunched, conveyed humility and a familiarity with life’s disappointments, but his warm expression communicated trust and confidence. He seemed to feel no shame about wearing a skull cap at dinnertime. While Gabriel fancied himself a knight or a crusader, courageous and proud, conquering infidels, Levi thought of himself as a Jew, content to remain in his small, confined neighborhood.

“Yes, of course,” the chancellor replied. “The Christians believe in Jesus.”

“He was a magician, right? He knew how to turn loaves of bread into fish, how to bring dead people back. That’s what my rabbi told me.”

“I wouldn’t want to contradict your rabbi, but the Christians don’t characterize Him as a magician, any more than Moses was a magician when he threw down his rod and it turned into snakes.”

“But Moses didn’t do that. God did that.”

The chancellor smiled. “Well, I suppose you could say God was responsible for Jesus’s miracles, too.”

“Then why do you pray to Jesus?”

“Levi, stop this,” Judith reprimanded her nephew.

“I just want to understand.”

“Your nephew is unusually intelligent,” the chancellor told Judith.

His words reassured Judith, who agreed with his assessment but knew others often thought Levi bold.

Santángel turned back to the boy. “I’m sorry I can’t answer all your questions. I’m simply not the right person.”

He glanced back at Judith, who offered him the hint of a smile, evidently pleased that he had cut short her nephew’s inquiry.

Santángel lay on the tree-shaded terrace atop Judith’s home. Under a wedge of moon and a splash of stars, a warm breeze washed over him. He relived the evening: Judith’s eyes, lingering on her nephew and Baba Shlomo; the way she tilted her head to the side as she listened; her high cheekbones; her jet-black hair. He was struck by her manner, anxious to please but challenging nonetheless, and the way she unsettled him. He had not found a woman so beguiling since he had first set eyes upon his departed wife.

The warm air of Granada and the spicy dinner made his throat feel dry, keeping him awake. He heard a few quiet footsteps somewhere in the house. He rose to slake his thirst. As he padded down the stairwell, he passed Judith’s room, with its warped door that did not quite close. He saw his hostess preparing for bed. He told himself not to stare at her milky ivory skin, untouched by the sun; her graceful legs; her taut, full breasts; the half-shadowed curve of her back. He caught his breath.

Downstairs, Santángel filled a silver goblet and drained it in one gulp. Water trickled down his chin onto his nightshirt.

For once, as he reluctantly crossed between the waking world into the many worlds of dreams, imagery of blood and horror did not flood his mind. Nor did he frantically search Pedro de Arbués’s apartments, once again, for the book that could damn him and those he loved. Instead, he revisited the evening’s dinner conversation, the synagogue, the glimpse of Judith’s skin, the Alhambra, lulled by the half-remembered refrains of ancient prayers.

    
CHAPTER TWELVE