By Fire, By Water (42 page)

One soldier broke away from his companions. “Do you need something, señorita?”

“Yes,” replied Judith in Spanish. “I’m looking for the chancellor of Aragon.” She smiled politely.

“The chancellor of Aragon. Is that right?”

“Could he be up there?” She glanced toward the Alhambra castle, at the top of the hill.

“They’re all up there. But you and I?” He shook his head.

“And if I tried?”

With his foot, the soldier pointed to a roach scurrying across a cobblestone. “You see that bug?” He squashed the roach. “Can I escort you home, señorita?”

“No, thank you.”

As she hurried back toward the Jewish quarter, an opulent carriage clattered up a narrow street. Inside sat an elegant woman in a purple velvet dress with a high, lacy neck. On her chest hung the silver crucifix.

Judith saw Queen Ysabel turn and look at her, smiling icily and fingering her pendant, as if conjuring its talismanic powers to protect her from Judith’s stare. The queen’s carriage passed and disappeared around a corner.

The chancellor wondered why Torquemada had placed in his cell not only the Gospels but also the Old Testament. Perhaps the Inquisition was offering him a choice. In which book would he locate his faith?

Santángel would not be coerced into accepting what Torquemada or anyone else wanted him to believe, not after all that had happened to Estefan, Gabriel, Felipe, and so many others. He longed, however, to discover whatever truths he could in the Bible, to arm himself with knowledge.

He began with the story of a man, a woman, a serpent, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He read and reread this narrative, wondering why it held such power over him and all of mankind.

The serpent of Genesis unexpectedly brought to mind another—a serpent curled into the Latin words of an obscure apothecary’s formula. Years before, Santángel had heard mention of
aquae serpentis
not from the king’s steward, as Fernando feared, but from the herbalist who had prepared the costly brew. Santángel had not known precisely what the term, or the potion, signified, but it took little prodding to find out. Although he had tried to put it out of his mind years earlier, he was now grateful that he had been unable to do so.

Days and weeks passed in contemplation, longing, and regret. Santángel’s cell, isolated and policed, became the only stable point in a world whirling into disorder. His society’s moral bearings had eroded under a driving rain of ambition, greed, and misguided piety. The chancellor clutched at the Bible’s promise of a different world, a rehabilitated, renewed world, a world alluded to in the prophecies. At last, he appreciated the yearnings of a Cristóbal Colón.

Three monks, by turns, visited every morning, bringing bread and water and removing the chamber pot. They treated him with cautious deference. One, Brother Donato, seemed gentler, perhaps more respectful than the others. From time to time, he grinned shyly, or placed a morsel of pig’s foot in Santángel’s broth.

“Brother Donato,” the chancellor tried one day as the monk turned to leave.

A short, broad-shouldered man with a misshapen nose and a high forehead, Brother Donato turned back. “Yes?”

“Can you help me with this?” Santángel showed him a passage in Isaiah:

Go, swift messengers,
to a nation scattered and torn apart
to a people tall and smooth-skinned—
a trampled tribe, waiting and hoping—
whose land is divided by waters
.
All you who dwell in the world, inhabitants of earth,
watch when the standard is hoisted on the mountains
and hear when the trumpet blasts
.

“He’s telling us, is he not,” asked the chancellor, “to go somewhere. Somewhere in this physical world.”

“So it would appear.”

“If we want to be present
when the standard is hoisted on the mountains
, to witness God’s victory over evil, we’re supposed to travel somewhere.” He translated another line from the same chapter. “
In vessels on the surface of waters.”

Looking at the Latin, Brother Donato blinked a few times. “That would seem to be what Isaiah is saying.”

“Thank you.”

Through the following days and weeks, the chancellor broached the subject again with the monk. He told him that he knew a man who was determined to help fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy. He mentioned a generous, secret gift that would be offered to the Dominican monastery at La Rábida, where Colón’s son, Diego, resided, if Brother Donato would whisper a word to the Superior there.

Judith still expected to receive word from Santángel. Every night, she hoped he would once again appear in her bedroom. While waiting, she endeavored to reestablish her trade in a changed society, to enhance her contacts with local and foreign buyers, to find additional markets in the newly accessible lands to the north. In Castile and Aragon, her linguistic abilities would give her an advantage over most of Granada’s other merchants.

Today, however, was not a day for work. Today the community was celebrating a bar mitzvah. Judith carried a basket of bread, pastries, and grapes. “Levi, come. Let’s celebrate.” Although Levi was a man now, Judith still insisted he accompany her whenever she walked to the synagogue. “Enjoy the leavened bread while you can. Passover is coming.”

Christian soldiers patrolled the streets in elaborate, tight-fitting clothes, carrying swords. Walking through a city no longer her own, Judith felt displaced. Although she had always taken pride in her Spanish ancestry, she felt that her new monarchs, King Fernando and Queen Ysabel, were the figureheads of a foreign culture.

Rumors swept through the quarter like fire: the Jews would be more strictly confined to their district, they would not be allowed to trade with Christians, they would be required to wear identifying badges. Such measures had already been enforced in Madrid and Toledo.

A burly town crier holding a lance, his hair gathered at the nape of his neck, shouted the words from a long proclamation. The festively dressed, curious Jewish community of Granada gathered in the synagogue square to listen.

“From King Fernando and Queen Ysabel, salutations and grace.” The crier looked up and nodded to his audience.

“You well know that we have established a New Inquisition in our realms, and that by this means, many guilty persons have been discovered. But we are informed by our inquisitors that great injury still results from contact between Jews and Christians. Jews have found ways to steal faithful Christians from our Holy Faith, and to subvert them to their own wicked beliefs and convictions. This has been proved by statements and confessions, both from these same Jews and from those who have been perverted and enticed by them, which has resulted in the great injury, detriment, and opprobrium of our Holy Faith.”

The proclaimer paused, breathed deeply, and resumed. “Therefore, we resolve to order the Jews of our kingdoms and lordships to depart and never return to any of these territories, under pain that if they do not comply with this command, they incur the penalty of death and the confiscation of all their possessions. We secure to them that they may travel and be safe, but they must not export gold, silver, or coined money.

“We command that this our charter be posted in the plazas and places of our cities, towns, and villages as an announcement and as a public document. And no one shall damage it in any manner, under penalty of being at our mercy and the deprivation of their offices and the confiscation of their possessions.

“Given in our city of Granada, the thirty-first day of the month of March, the year of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ one thousand four hundred and ninety-two years.”

The town crier turned and nailed the proclamation to the door of the synagogue. Judith, Levi, and the others stood there long after he left, absorbing and discussing the news. Judith felt as if the land on which she stood had turned to water. No citizenship, not even the deepest-rooted investment in a so-called civilization, was permanent or secure.

Offense, pain, questions of justice and injustice swam through their minds and conversations. They also had to plan their departure. How were they to transport wealth to foreign lands, if they were not permitted to carry gold or silver?

It seemed Ysabel and Fernando cared not a whit if they all had to begin their lives over in unknown dominions, where as foreigners they would possess no rights. The Christians assumed that Jews should suffer, as foretold in the Hebrews’ own writings. The Christians’ dark purpose was to assure the fulfillment of such prophecies. This purpose justified the Crowns’ wholesale theft of Jewish property—especially after such a costly “holy” war. Judith recalled Ysabel’s cold smile, her haughty regard, her necklace. She cursed herself for having fashioned that crucifix.

Isaac Azoulay approached. “This is all foretold, Judith.”

“Perhaps,” she conceded. “But how does that help?”

“That which we can’t control,” he philosophized, “we mustn’t allow to affect us.”

“Why mustn’t we? If a bee stings you, you’re going to cry out. It hardly matters
why
he harmed you, or whether you can control it.”

“Then we must do our best to ensure no more bees sting us.”

Demanding that the bar mitzvah be given a chance to chant his Torah portion, the rabbi asked his congregants not to mention the expulsion. Nevertheless, near the end of the service, a lively debate broke out. Some blamed the moral waywardness of the Jews for their bitter fate. Others lamented the ignorance or barbarity of Ysabel and Fernando. Still others accused the religion of Jesus itself, claiming its founder had been misguided, even though most knew little or nothing about Christianity or its Church. “I should hope you’re wrong,” observed Isaac Azoulay in a quiet but commanding voice. “How can Christianity, or, for that matter, Islam, be evil, if they grew out of Judaism? Can evil grow out of good?” Isaac’s comment engendered even feistier debate. Poisonous mushrooms sprouted from the most generous, fertile soils.

“The coming of our beloved Messiah is, at long last, at hand,” sighed a young student.