The Last Jew (48 page)

Yonah hoped she would forget that request, but she didn't, until finally he rode to deliver an invitation to Reyna. Each of them accepted congratulations, for both had been married since their last meeting. Work was proceeding splendidly on the house that was on its way to becoming an inn, and Reyna said she was pleased to hear that his bride had invited her, and Álvaro -- whose last name turned out to be Saravía -- to dinner in the house where she had been a servant for so long.

When they came, bearing gifts of a honeycomb and wine, the two women seemed overly polite to one another for a time. Yonah and the white-haired Álvaro went to walk the land, leaving the women to become acquainted. Álvaro had grown up on a small farm and he praised the efforts Yonah and Adriana had made to bring back some of the trees. 'If you continue to save trees, it would be most useful to build a small barn near the orchard and the olive grove on the upper slope of the hill, where farm implements and picked fruit could be stored.'

It seemed a good suggestion, and they were discussing the cost of the labor and the quantity of stones that would be needed for the walls, when they returned to find the women beaming at one another and talking volubly. The meal was pleasant, and Adriana and Reyna, clearly already friends, embraced when the guests took their leave.

Adriana discussed them warmly as she emptied the table of the remains of the dinner. 'She feels like a mother to you, and I think she is eager to be a grandmother. She asked me if there was perhaps a bun in the oven.'

Yonah was aghast, knowing his wife's sadness and sensitivity about the subject of pregnancy. 'What did you say?'

Adriana smiled. 'I told her not yet, because until now we have only been practicing,' she said.

*

On the first day of February Yonah rode head down against the wind to attend the annual meeting of the physicians of Aragon. Despite the bitter weather eight other physicians attended to hear Yonah deliver a talk about the circulation of the blood according to Avicenna. It was well received and drew questions and good discussion, after which Miguel de Montenegro read a letter that had been delivered to him out of the mail packet of the Saragossa diocese.

To Miguel de Montenegro, physician, I send the greetings of the Toledo diocese, and the hope that you are in good health.

I am assistant to the Most Reverend Enrique Sagasta, auxiliary bishop of Toledo. Bishop Sagasta is head of the Office of Religious Faith in the Toledo See, in which capacity there has come to his attention a nobleman of Tembleque who has been grievously afflicted.

Count Fernán Vasca is his name. A knight of Calatrava who has been an exceedingly generous friend of Holy Mother Church, he has a malady that has left him mute and frozen as any stone, yet painfully in life.

Several physicians have been consulted in his behalf without avail. Recalling the high esteem in which you are held, Bishop Sagasta prays that you may be able to come to Castille. The Church and His Reverence, would consider it a most gracious favor if you will come or, if you are unable, if you will recommend this patient to another skilled physician of your acquaintance, the local physicians having failed in their attempts to help Count Vasca.

The bishop is assured that you or another of your choosing will be well compensated, with double payment if the physician is able to bring about a cure.

Thank you for your attention.

Yours in Christ,

Padre Francisco Rivera de la Espina, Order of Preachers

'I cannot go,' Montenegro said. 'I am growing old. It is bad enough I must travel to sick bishops. Once I start answering the summonses for sick laymen in their districts, I am truly lost. Nor can Pedro Palma go, for he is too new a physician.

'Is anyone else interested in this matter?' he asked, but there were only grins and a shuffling of feet by those in attendance.

'It is a long way to ride. And noblemen are notoriously small payers,' offered a physician from Ocaña, to general laughter.

'Well, the bishop guarantees payment,' Montenegro pointed out. 'Although I do not know either this Bishop Sagasta or the priest who wrote the letter.'

'I know the priest,' Yonah heard himself saying. 'Padre Espina served for a time in Saragossa. He seemed to me to be a most worthy priest.'

Still, nobody showed further interest in the matter, and Miguel de Montenegro shrugged and placed the letter back in his pocket.

Of course Yonah would not even consider going to Toledo, he told himself at first.

He didn't wish to leave Adriana. Tembleque was too far away, and the time needed for such a trip would be great.

If he owed anything to the count of Tembleque, it was revenge.

Yet he seemed to hear Nuño's voice asking if a physician had the right to treat only those members of humanity of whom he approved, or for whom he held respect or affection.

That day and the next, slowly he came to admit to himself that he had unfinished pieces of his life in Tembleque.

Only by responding to Padre Espina's summons to Montenegro, which seemed fated, could he attempt to answer the questions that had always weighed on him, about the murders that had destroyed his family.

At first Adriana asked him not to go. Then she asked that she be allowed to go with him.

The journey itself could be difficult and dangerous, and he had no idea what he might find when he got there. 'It is not possible,' he said gently.

It would have been easier if he had seen anger in her eyes, but what he saw was fright. Several times he had been called to travel a distance for a consultation, and she had been alone for two or three days. But this would be an extended absence.

'I am coming back to you,' he told her.

When he said he would leave her enough money for any emergency, she was angered. 'What if I take it and just go away?' she said.

He brought her behind the house and showed her where he had buried the leather bag containing Manuel Fierro's money, and then had built a manure pile above it. 'You may take it all if ever you truly wish to leave me.'

'It would be too much digging,' she said, and he took her into his arms and kissed her and comforted her. He went to Álvaro Saravía, who promised to visit Adriana once a week, to make certain that firewood would always be stacked where she could get it easily, and that there would always be a pile of hay where she could fork it into the horses' stalls.

Miguel de Montenegro and Pedro Palma were not enthusiastic about caring for Yonah's patients for an extended time, but they didn't refuse him. 'You must ever watch out for noblemen. Once cured they will screw the physician,' Montenegro said.

Yonah decided not to take the gray Arabian, because age had begun to slow the horse. Manuel Fierro's black mare was still strong and he took her instead. Adriana packed a saddlebag with two loaves, fried meat, dried peas, a sack of raisins. He kissed her and left quickly in a morning mist.

He rode the horse southwest at an easy trot. For the first time, being free to travel didn't lift his gypsy spirits. His wife's face stayed in his mind and he had a terrible urge to turn the horse about and ride home, but he did not.

He made good progress. That night he camped behind a windbreak of trees in a brown field that was distant from Saragossa. 'You did well,' he told the mare as he unburdened her of the saddle. 'You are a wonderful animal, Hermana,' he said, stroking and patting the black horse.

42

In the Castle

Nine days later he rode across the red clay of the Sagra plain, approaching the walls of Toledo. He saw the city from far off, sharp and clear on its high rock in the afternoon sun. He was a lifetime away from the terror-stricken youth who had escaped from Toledo on a burro, yet as he passed through the Bisagra Gate he was assailed by troublesome memories. He rode past the headquarters of the Inquisition, marked by its stone escutcheon displaying the cross, the olive branch, and the sword. Once when he was a boy in his father's house he had heard David Mendoza explain the meaning of the symbols to Helkias Toledano: 'If you accept the cross they give you the olive branch. If you refuse it, they give you the sword.'

In front of the diocesan offices he tethered the black horse. Stiff from his long days in the saddle he walked inside, where a friar seated behind a table asked his errand and then motioned him to a stone bench.

Padre Espina appeared after the briefest of waits, beaming. 'How good it is to see you again, Señor Callicó!' He was older and more mature, of course, and more relaxed than Yonah had remembered, a more polished priest.

They sat and talked. To Yonah's relief, Padre Espina showed no disappointment that his letter had produced the physician Callicó instead of the physician Montenegro. 'When you get to the castle, you must announce that you are there at the request of Bishop Sagasta and Padre Espina. The count was without a steward when he took ill, and the Church supplied a steward to aid his wife, the Countess María del Mar Cano. She is the daughter of Gonzalo Cano, a rich and influential marquis in Madrid. The steward is Padre Alberto Guzmán.' He looked at Yonah. 'As I wrote in my letter, several other physicians have tried to help the count.'

'I understand. I can only try as well.'

Padre Espina asked questions about Saragossa and spoke briefly about the joy he was taking in his work. 'My bishop is a Catholic historian, engaged in composing a book of the lives of saints, a blessed project which has the support of our Most Holy Father in Rome, and in which it is my honor and pleasure to assist.' He smiled at Yonah. 'I read daily from my father's breviary and you are often blessed for bringing it to me. I appreciate that you would ride so far in answer to my letter to Señor Montenegro. You have been the kindest of benefactors, giving me back the memory of my father. If ever there is any way I may help you, please tell me of it.

'Would you care to stay and rest here, and go to Tembleque in the morning?' the priest said. 'I can offer you a monastery supper, and a monk's cell in which to rest your head.'

But Yonah had no desire for a monk's cell. 'No, I shall go on, in order to examine the count as soon as possible.'

Padre Espina gave him directions to Tembleque and he repeated them aloud, but he remembered the way.

'I prescribe medication but don't compound it,' Yonah said. 'Do you know of an excellent apothecary who is nearby?'

Espina nodded. 'Santiago López, in the shadow of the cathedral's northern wall. Go with God, señor.'

The shop was tiny and untended, but it had a reassuringly strong scent of herbs. Yonah had to shout the apothecary down from his apartment upstairs. He was middle-aged and balding, with squinting eyes that didn't hide the intelligence lurking there.

'Do you have myrtle? Balsam, acacia nilotica?' Yonah asked him. 'Do you have acid beet? Colocynth? Seeds of pharbitis?'

López took no offence at Yonah's questioning. 'I have most things, señor. As you know, one cannot have all. Should you call for something I do not have, with your permission I will make it known to you and suggest one or more substitute drugs.'

He nodded gravely when Yonah told him he would be ordering medications from the castle of Tembleque. 'I hope you have not come this long way on an impossible errand, señor.'

Yonah nodded. 'We shall see,' he said, and took his leave.

By the time he reached the castle it had been dark for an hour and the barred gate was down.

'Halloo the wall!'

'Who is it that calls?'

'Ramón Callicó, physician of Saragossa.'

'Hold.'

The sentry hurried off but soon returned, this time accompanied by someone with a torch. The two figures peering down at Yonah were captured in a yellow cone of light that moved away with them.

'Enter, Señor Physician!' the sentry called.

The gate was lifted with a fearsome clanking, causing the black horse to shy before she went forward, her shod hooves clattering and striking sparks on the great stone squares of the courtyard.

Padre Alberto Guzmán, round-shouldered and unsmiling, offered him food and drink.

'Yes, thank you, I would like both, but later, after I have met with the count,' Yonah said.

'Best not to disturb him tonight, but to wait until tomorrow to examine him,' the priest said brusquely. Behind him hovered a stocky, red-faced old man in the rough clothing of a peón, with a cloud of white hair and a full beard of the same colour.

'The count cannot move or speak, or understand when he is addressed. There is no reason for you to be in a hurry to see him,' Padre Guzmán said.

Yonah met his stare. 'Nevertheless. I shall need candles and lamps about the bed. Many, to provide a bright light.'

Padre Guzmán's lips thinned in annoyance. 'As you wish. Padre Sebbo will see to the light.' The old man behind him nodded, and Yonah realized that he was a priest and not a workman.

Padre Guzmán took up a lamp and Yonah followed him on a march down corridors and up stone stairways. They passed through a room Yonah remembered, the chamber in which he had had an audience with the count after delivering his armor, and they proceeded into the bedchamber beyond, a black space, the priest's lamp causing the shadows of the giant bedstead to leap crazily on the stone walls. The air was heavily foul.