Wolves in Winter (3 page)

Her name in our tongue meant ‘virgin’. I asked my father once why she wore no habit, if she was a nun, and he smiled and said she belonged to a convent of a sort, but that he did no
business there. That wasn’t true, I said, because he took powders and salves to Adara that he made up in the back of our shop, and I had seen her handing him pesos to put in his purse.

Tonight, though, Adara had not come for almond water or the bitter black paste my father forbad me touch. There was an urgency in her voice that roused me to listen more attentively.

‘It’s too late,’ I heard my father say.

‘If you come with me now?’

‘No, they have it. They have the
grimoire
. I was betrayed. But you will do as we agreed?’

‘Very well.’

‘I have packed them for her. It’s a poor enough dowry, God knows.’

‘I will care for her.’

My father came up the stairs, treading slowly. He carried a candle and my dress lay over his arm.

‘It’s time to put this on, pretty one.’ He smiled, his teeth showing white in the grey of his beard. It makes me lose my breath now when I think what that smile must have cost
him.

‘Papa, what’s happening? Are we going somewhere special? With Adara? The crown isn’t dry.’

‘Come here, my little love. Something special, yes. Like a pageant. And you will be the most important player.’

Then he told me what I had to do, and opened the shutters wide.

*

It seemed a long time that I waited, hunched on the windowsill. It was icy, and I tried not to shiver, feeling the blood drawing towards my heart and my hands grow numb where
they clutched the window frames. They came across the square, as Papa said they would, a line of torches, yellow light glancing on hooded faces and the fat crucifixes chained on their breasts. That
was the first moment that I was afraid. The men stopped before our door.

‘Samuel Benito. Samuel Benito! In the name of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, you are under arrest.’

Aside from the river of flame beneath my window, the square was entirely dark. No one would stir, no one would come out to defend my father. Peeping over the sill, balancing the wax flowers my
father had wound in my hair with one cold-clumsy hand, I watched him step into the circle of light. He wore his best cloak, but his head was bare. The men fanned out, encircling him, and I saw that
those in the front ranks were not monks, as their hoods made them seem, but soldiers, the hilts of their short swords visible beneath the black robes like quartz in a pebble.

‘Does this belong to you?’ One of them was holding a fat square parcel, which I knew contained a book.

‘It did. I sold it some time ago. I am a bookseller, sir.’ My father’s voice was low and courteous.

There was a muttering amongst the group. I caught the words ‘heretic’ and ‘
morisco
’, but my father’s stillness had unsettled them, somehow. They had expected
a fight. He spoke again.

‘I trust I am to come with you, sir?’

I heard Adara move into the room behind me. I could smell the oil on the two rush torches she carried. She knelt before the stove.

‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’ I spoke from a dream, ensorcelled by the scene outside.

‘They will burn the house. We must be swift. No tears, do you understand me?’

I nodded, my eyes fixed on my father as she dipped the torches to the flame in its iron cage.

‘Now.’

As the light flared I scrambled up on the windowsill, flapping at the red fabric around my legs. My hair was crowned with a circlet of briar roses, retrieved by my father from a sack of carnival
costumes. They were dusty, but from a distance they would seem fresh. My hands were as red as my dress, the palms dipped in my father’s precious cochineal. I was to hold them before me, Papa
said, and be sure to open my eyes very wide. For a moment, none of the men below me saw that I stood there, then one of the figures screamed, pointing up. The torches with which Adara illuminated
me cast their light onto pale faces as they fell to their knees, crossing themselves.

Slowly, I raised my hands, the dye dripping from them like blood.

‘
Demonio!
’

‘
Maligno!
’

‘
Diablo!
’

I was uncertain what to do now. I cast my eyes around the group. Only my father was standing, his face seeking mine. He smiled once more, and the torchlight caught the flash of white in his
beard. He raised his hands to his mouth and bunched them in a kiss, tossing it to me like a fine gentleman.

‘Come now, Mura, come!’

I reached for Adara’s hand, and as I clambered off the windowsill, I took one last look for my father, but he had vanished. All I could see now in the square was a huddle of cloaks and the
swift flash of a swinging blade. Then we were running, banging down the stairs and through the back door of the shop. I could hear them already, beating at the bolts behind us, and I smelled a
sharp, crisp scent, which I knew must be the first of the greedy flames lapping at parchment.

In the alley behind the house, Adara lifted me onto her hip and began to run, my hands clinging to her neck, and her flanks working strongly beneath me as she bounded downhill, her strides
lengthening fluidly, her heartbeat mounting in her neck against my cheek. I was too surprised to weep. We ran through the empty streets behind the Zocodover, down towards the city gates, past the
brick façade of the Santa Maria synagogue, we ran and ran until we came to the door of Adara’s house. She staggered, gasping for air, and let me down, but before she pushed me into the
courtyard I saw that the sky behind us was no longer indigo but orange and gold and red, the fireworks from my lost home burning briefly brighter than the stars.

CHAPTER TWO

I
LEARNED TWO THINGS IN ADARA’S HOUSE. I LEARNED
that people were afraid of me. And I learned that my papa had told
the truth, that my mother would come to me in my dreams. That first night, I lay curled on the floor like a melon rind, hollowed out with shock. When I finally began to sob, Adara was kind. She
gave me a sweet, hot drink made of wine and spices and something else that made me sleep for a long time, and when I awoke my skin smelled of orange water where she had washed me and dressed me in
a clean woollen robe. My hands were still pink from the dye. I ate flat bread with mountain honey and dried apples, feeling strangely calm, as though I had woken from a bad dream.

‘When will Papa come, Adara?’

She too had bathed, though the heavy perfume she wore, rich with rose oil and musk, did not quite hide the scent of her own skin, the salty, almost bitter tang which I had smelled when she
carried me away from our house. Adara’s face twisted, she looked very sad and confused.

‘Not for a long time, little Mura. Those men last night, they were bad men. That’s why we had to trick them, so you could escape. Your papa told me you had to be a good girl here
with me and when the bad men have gone, he will come to fetch you. Maybe before the summer comes . . .’

I wanted to ask why the men had burned our house, and what had happened to Papa’s books, but I half-knew the answer and was afraid to hear it. Adara clapped her hands and a maid came in
with a little bundle.

‘For you,’ Adara said encouragingly.

Inside was a doll; not a stuffed rag, a real one, with a soft body and real golden hair, a pretty wax face and a green velvet dress and cloak. I had never seen such a lovely thing, and I skipped
off happily to show her the fountain and the orange trees, just as Adara had known I would.

The red tint on my hands faded day by day, and my papa did not come. Adara made a little bed for me next to the stove in her own room and gave me a pretty inlaid chest of scented cedar wood in
which to put my own things, my dolly and my red dress, washed and mended. As time went on I added more treasures: some violet-coloured pebbles from the courtyard, a little scent bottle of red glass
with a silver stopper, an inch of brocade I found under a chest. Before I went to sleep I would spread out my marvels and imagine how I would show them to Papa. For a while, I stayed mostly in this
room or in the courtyard, chattering to my doll or watching Adara as she rubbed creams into her skin or painted black lines around her eyes, or peeping from the window at the ladies who shared the
house.

The ladies got up very late, sometimes after dinnertime, and if the winter sun was shining they would sit in the courtyard, their faces creased and puffy, wrapped warmly in their cloaks, combing
out their hair. Adara said I wasn’t to go outside when they were there, but I loved to watch them, drinking endless little glasses of tea and slowly waking themselves so their skin brightened
and their voices began to rise and chatter like starlings along a wall. A few hours before the sun went down, everyone grew busy. The maids came and went with jugs of hot water or mended dresses
over their arms, and the old porter – the only man in the house – jumped up every few minutes to answer the street bell. It was exciting, with packages arriving and the ladies calling
to one another and the smell of roast meat and chocolate from the kitchen.

A maid would bring me a plate of supper and I always ate it quietly, sitting on my bed while Adara dressed herself, peering dissatisfied into her silver looking glass, tweaking her chemise lower
over her bosom, rubbing another layer of rouge over her full lips. When she was ready, I watched her cross the courtyard and climb the staircase, her loose silk robe trailing behind her. The rooms
above were finer than mine, I knew that, with arched windows and benches full of cushions; and though the shutters were closed to the winter air I could hear music and laughter and smell sweet,
smoky incense as it drifted through the cracks into the chilly night. As Adara left she would tell me to get into bed, but I would creep out from under the covers, clutching my doll, and watch the
visitors arrive. Sometimes they came alone, purposeful, their faces muffled; sometimes they were in groups of three or four, already staggering a little with drink and making loud jokes, banging
one another on the shoulder and tripping over their swords. They were men, gentlemen, and I knew they were rich because every morning when I woke I would see a little purse of coins stuffed under
Adara’s pillow as she slept on through the morning light.

In a while, though, I grew restless waiting every day until Adara awakened, and one morning I too climbed the stairs to the rooms above the courtyard, which each evening seemed so gay and happy.
The room I entered was not the grand, golden chamber I had imagined. With the sun stealing in through the shutters I saw a long table covered in wine cups and plates of congealing meat. There was a
full chamber pot underneath and the horrid smell of wine and urine was worsened by a pool of vomit next to the fireplace. On the stained floor was a discarded glove, the pale leather soiled and
yellowed. I put it on, pretending I was a beautiful grown-up lady, and trying to conjure the chattering glow of the night into that dismal room, when I heard a clatter behind me. One of the maids
had come in with a broom and a bucket.

Usually, I hardly saw the maids. They were
esclava
, their skin purple-black like Adara’s, dressed in plain grey wool dresses with white headscarves. When they brought my food or
tidied Adara’s room they barely looked at me, but this girl was standing still as an icicle, gaping, her hands frantically crossing and re-crossing her breast. The spilled hot water steamed
as it spread across the dirty floor. I went to help her pick up the broom, but she backed away from me and I heard her footsteps pounding down the staircase. I could not understand what had
startled her. I began to creep back down the stairs, fearing Adara would scold me if she knew I had broken her rule.

As I passed the kitchen quarters, I heard loud exclamations, the same words I had heard that night in the square, ‘
maligno
’, ‘
demonio
’. Was this something
to do with what had happened to my papa, with the men who had come for the book, with my strange disguise? Why did the slave think I might hurt her? I made my way back to Adara’s room,
feeling very lonely. She was still sleeping, one hand bunched under her chin, soft snores rustling in her throat. I picked up her looking glass from where it lay amongst a huddle of jars and combs
and carried it to the window. I had not often seen myself in a glass, but there was nothing strange to me in my appearance. My skin was coppery-coloured, like many people in Toledo, and many people
in the city too had green eyes, though not so bright as mine. My hair was unusual, true. I had never seen anyone with hair so light and clear as mine, but I knew the reason for that. I had the
blood of the northmen in me.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t look quite like other children, my papa told me. It meant I was special. When he washed me in warm water scented with rosemary and dried me carefully
with a bleached linen cloth, he told me that I was a true child of Toledo, the city where all magic and learning were mixed. They were my mother’s people, he said, the northmen who had come
to Spain even before the time of the caliphs. The Moors called them ‘
al madjus
’, in their Persian language – ‘fire-worshippers’ – and from there we had
our Spanish word, ‘
mago
’.

He told me of conjurers who could change their shape to run with the winds and shift the storms that carried the dark birds of their longships; who spoke with the old gods through the blood of
sacrifice. They were cruel, proud people, he said, fearless. When they fought, it was easy to believe they had magic in them, so wild were they, so reckless. And beautiful, he said, the most
beautiful men the people of the caliphs had ever seen. There was a book by a Moorish traveller who had journeyed up along the rivers to Rus, at the peak of Europe, and his stories were full of awe
at these fair giants, their white skin inked all over until it gleamed like green glass, who carried longswords as heavy again as a man, who could fight without armour, or even a shirt, for the
cold could not touch them.