Speaking of stars that rise and yet may fall, Papa bids me send a message to Doña Marina, advising her to withdraw any funds she may have with the Medici bank and place them elsewhere. More and more of the Florentines declare that Piero de Medici is a tyrant, too fond of art and luxury to attend to the true wellbeing of the city. Some even call for government by some sort of council of prominent citizens, not least among them the monk Savonarola, whose popularity grows daily. They say he is not intolerant of the Jews and is even considered “soft” on the Jews by those who rail most loudly against us. According to Papa, all this means is that he has a sincere and benevolent desire for our conversion!
Your sister Elvira is spending much time with young Akiva Davila, and we—Akiva’s parents and Papa and I—are beginning to talk about the possibility of a betrothal. Your sister Susanna is wild for a wedding. She also longs for her turn to be the Mendozas’ marriageable daughter! She thinks herself and Elvira both far too old to be single still. As you know, Papa and I believe that a mature young woman who has had time to think and look around, as well as develop household skills, will make a happier and more contented wife than a girl pushed into marriage while still in the throes of puberty. I speak frankly, Rachel, my darling, for I wish you to be well prepared to deal with both the joys and the adversity that life will undoubtedly send you. I married your father for love and have never regretted it, and I vowed that all my daughters would have a say in whom they wed. Fortunately, Papa, who is the best and kindest man in the world as well as one of the wisest, is at one with me on this point. Diego, my darling boy, I say nothing to you of marriage, but Papa and I hope you will not spend your whole life as a wanderer. When the time comes, there are many lovely young Jewish girls in our community who, besides their maidenly virtues, have perhaps more hardihood and courage, a wider breadth of understanding, than they would have had they never been forced to leave Spain.
As for young Akiva, who as I wrote you before is studying to be a rabbi—it is a respected calling, of course, the most respected of all. But a rabbi is dependent on the goodwill and prosperity of his congregation and community. And if the community fails to prosper, or worse, is dispersed—as we were from Spain, and before that from England and France, not to mention our slavery in Egypt and the Babylonian captivity—how then will a young rabbi earn his bread and feed a family? All of this, as you can imagine, is the subject of reasoned discussion among the young couple’s parents and hot debate when Papa and I are at home alone with the girls. Papa would let all of you follow along when Diego studied Talmud (which as far as I can tell is all about arguing), so we must expect you to have strong opinions and be bold about expressing them—especially, as Elvira points out, when it involves your own futures.
Pray for us, my darlings, as we do for you, and may we all be together before another year is past.
All my love, Mama
Chapter 7: Joanna
The first two weeks aboard the carrack were a period of unremitting seasickness for everyone around Joanna. For her, the time passed in a blur of squealing pigs, howling children, the stench of vomit and feces, and the moans and curses of the degradados, with intermittent infusions of brine. The sailors periodically upended barrels of seawater and tossed their contents down the hatch in a swooshing flood that doused the inhabitants of the hold and made a soup of straw, pig filth, and the contents of slop buckets. Joanna and a boy of eleven named Natan, the eldest Jewish child on the ship apart from Joanna, were among the few who did not get seasick. They spent wearisome hours swabbing the hold in a permanent crepuscule that robbed night and day of meaning. The sailors tossed down ship’s biscuit at irregular intervals and allowed the prisoners one small barrel of brackish water at a time. There was never enough water, and Joanna was thirsty all the time.
Joanna took a grim satisfaction in seeing the degradados, especially Imaculada, brought low, though she punctiliously wiped the woman’s sweating brow and washed away the aftermath of each round of puking. Seasickness could not last forever, and this dockside whore—a word Riva would have boxed her ear for using—would have absolute power over her for the foreseeable future. She and Natan talked little at first, for he was Lisbon born, rather than a refugee from Spain like her family. Besides, he had the attitude of Jewish men toward women that she tried hard to nip in the bud in Simon: contempt so unquestioned that boys like Natan did not perceive it as an attitude at all. Women were not fit to study Torah, unclean even to touch at a certain time of the month, creatures so inferior that in daily prayer each man thanked Ha’shem for not making him a woman. But he was still a fellow Jew.
One day, the sailors left the hatch open. With no more than an exchange of glances, Joanna and Natan crept up the ladder onto the deck. The day was gray, the air salt and misty, but Joanna raised her face to drink it in. A perfumed garden could not have enchanted her senses any better. The two children, fearful of detection, stayed close together. Heavy swells made the ship pitch with every wave, and the sailors on deck were fully occupied in keeping it on course. As they crouched behind a giant coil of thick cable, it began to rain. They would be drenched if they made a dash for the hold. Besides, having tasted momentary freedom, Joanna had no desire to bring this adventure to a close.
A bulky canvas tarpaulin covered an unidentifiable mound of equipment a short distance away. In one bound, Joanna reached its shelter and slithered under the edge. A minute later, Natan followed her, sliding in beside her. They knelt shoulder to shoulder, panting more from excitement than the exertion of the dash across the deck. She felt his warm breath on her ear.
“What if they close the hatch cover?” he whispered.
“We wait till no one is looking, then we open it.” The scorn in Joanna’s voice raised it above a whisper.
Natan shushed her. The rain drummed on the tarpaulin above their heads. Their nest within the canvas folds smelled warm and tarry. The sailors’ shouts to each other as they worked sounded impossibly distant.
“Do you think we’ll be missed?”
“Don’t you know all Jews look alike to them?” Her lip curled.
“My new father calls me Jug Ears,” Natan said. “He’s pulled me around by them enough. I think he’ll know me again.”
Joanna snorted. Natan did have big ears that stuck out from his head like the handles of a jug.
“Do you call him Father, then?”
“Of course not! He’s only a degradado. I plan to better myself when we get to São Tomé. I won’t be a child forever, and I won’t be counted among the dregs for long.”
“How do you plan to accomplish that, Jewish boy?”
“That’s just it,” he said. “I’m not a Jewish boy anymore. It’s as a Christian that I will seize my opportunity. I’ll seek favor with Caminha and his men. In ten years I could be a fazendeiro with acres of sugar cane and slaves at my beck and call.”
“Fool!” Joanna said. “You are a slave yourself. Have you not noticed?”
“You’re the fool,” he retorted. “The Africans they plan to buy and sell will be the slaves. It is only just that we should be the masters. We are white, after all.”
“Not to these Portuguese,” Joanna said. “I lived in Granada, where the Moors ruled justly and with respect for the Jews until King Ferdinand conquered them. There were many scholars and wise men among the Moors. King Ferdinand did not see us as black and white but threw us all out even-handedly.”
“Leave the hatch open,” a deep voice said close at hand, “while the rain lasts. It costs us nothing to give them the benefit of fresh water.”
Natan clapped a hand over Joanna’s mouth. Neither of them had heard anyone approach above the drumming of the rain. The sailors went barefoot on deck. Besides, the ship, the wind, and the water were never silent. Joanna chided herself for not thinking sooner to collect what rain she could. A bit of tarred canvas would hold it. Now she would have to wait until the sailors moved away.
“There’s deaders down there, sir
,” another voice said.
“It had better not be ship fever,” the first voice said. “Degradados or the brats?”
“Nay, the jailbirds are but landlubbers. They’ll get their sea legs soon enough. The little ’uns, though, some might have lacked for water. Who knows if anyone down there bothered to see to it. And others likely puked and choked on it. What shall we do with ’em, sir?”
“They’re only taking up space down there,” the officer said. “And the bodies will rot the faster when we reach the tropics. We don’t need ’em as ballast, with all we’re carrying for the new colony. Get a crew and throw them overboard. Then roust out some of those lazy pimps and pickpockets and make them give the hold a good swabbing. Make sure the men bestir themselves. Stand over them with an arquebus if you must. Even if there’s no taint of ship fever, it can’t hurt to be sure.”
Chapter 8: Diego
We lingered in Barcelona, hoping daily that word of our family’s whereabouts would reach us. As news of the ravages of war in Italy trickled in, we became ever more concerned for their safety and fearful about our chances of being reunited with them. The few letters we had received had been two years on the road. Even the most reliable courier to whom they entrusted a message might be diverted, robbed, or dead long before crossing the Pyrenees or reaching a Spanish port. For once, Rachel did not declare that I worried too much.
To make the most of our time, as the days lengthened into summer, we took to daily weapons practice at a farm outside the city that Doña Marina owned. Rachel’s travels had begun there back in 1493. A fallow field that wind and birds had sown with coarse, springy grasses and wildflowers offered us space and privacy to improve our skill at arms and play the occasional impromptu game of batey. Rachel, ever the optimist, had secreted a batu in her baggage when we left Hispaniola. The men at arms, who often joined us, soon grew adept at bouncing the resilient sphere off their shoulders, heads, and knees. Javier, whose wounds still limited his duties, might excel once he was able to run. None of us would ever surpass Hutia, who had been a batey champion in Quisqueya. Meanwhile, I crossed swords with Hernan and Esteban daily. Javier, who had become a passable swordsman, offered the perspective of one who had been forced to kill his opponent in order to save his own life.
In that sunny meadow, it was hard to remember that our lives would be in frequent danger whether we traveled by land or sea. But so it was. Rachel took to wearing a loose gown and tunic to conceal the shirt and breeches underneath. She insisted on lessons in swordsmanship, dismissing as irrelevant the men’s initial discomfort at seeing a lady’s legs exposed. Some of her gold from the Indies went to purchase a light sword made to her measure with a fine blade of Toledo steel. Hutia’s people had been so unfamiliar with edged weapons when they first encountered the Spaniards that many had taken severe cuts when they grasped them by the blade. He was still too ill at ease with swords to carry one, though at Rachel’s insistence, he learned the basic moves of fencing.
“You must be able to defend yourself,” she said. “What if you manage to stun an opponent, let us say, a French soldier encountered by chance, with a rock or cudgel, and then two of his companions come at you with swords? Will you stand there helpless, waiting to be killed? Or will you seize the sword your first enemy has let fall and give a good account of yourself?”
When it came to throwing knives, it was another matter.
“You could almost match the gypsies!” Esteban exclaimed, when after a few days’ practice Hutia had demonstrated his skill by hitting a mark on a distant tree five times in a row.
“Gypsies—these are the Roma of whom you have spoken?” Hutia asked Rachel.
“Yes, and it is no surprise that you can throw a knife with the best of them,” Rachel said, “though those we met near Cordoba had much skill. Among the Taino, Esteban, the smallest children hunt for the pot, bringing down birds and small animals, some no bigger than a rat, with stones. And you have not yet seen him bend a bow. If you will show me the coin in your purse, I will stake whatever odds you like on Hutia to best you at archery.”
“I will take your wager,” Hernan said. “Do you not remember that Esteban bested the gypsies with his bow?”
Rachel’s eyes gleamed.
“Show me your money, then,” she said.
“Rachel,” Hutia protested, “I have never used a Spanish soldier’s bow.”
“And you need not do so now,” Rachel said. “I have a surprise for you.” She unwrapped a bulky package of coarse cloth to reveal a bow much like those the Taino used. “The arrowheads are steel, but as you can see, they are fletched with feathers I brought from Quisqueya.”
The Spaniards crowded close, hefting the bow and exclaiming over the beautifully fletched arrows, their brilliant red color a reminder of the paradise we had found, now vanishing under Spanish conquest and settlement.
“Rachel, these are beautiful. I thank you.” Hutia’s eyes filled with tears. “I will think of my home in Quisqueya every day I carry them, and when I come to use them, may they find the hearts of your enemies.”
“The Taino make their arrowheads of fishbone,” I told the men, hoping to divert their attention from the way Rachel and Hutia were looking at each other. “Their virtue for killing lies not only in their sharpness, but also in the Taino habit of dipping the tips in poison.”
“Do not forget that I too am an archer,” Rachel said. “Taino women live more freely than their European sisters in many respects.”
“You had better let Esteban guide your practice, Rachel,” I said, cutting off whatever Rachel might have said next, probably an artless revelation of the Taino habit of going “naked as their mothers bore them,” as the Admiral always put it.
“Gladly,” Rachel said. “There is always room for improvement. And Hernan, I have ridden mules, but I am no horsewoman. Perhaps you can help me there, and Hutia as well.”
“I will be content to ride a mule,” Hutia said. “It seems to me that horses can discern that I have but recently made their acquaintance. They do not think I have a right to give them orders.”
“It is only a matter of training,” Hernan said.
“What say you, Javier?” Rachel asked. “You are the one with experience of war.”
“I was a foot soldier,” Javier said grudgingly. “I had neither horse nor mule, except once when I captured the mount of a fallen French soldier. But soon enough, my captain took it away for the use of someone of higher rank. Still, you must have a horse, my lady. If you are pursued by a troop of mounted soldiers, a mule will serve you ill, whether you wish to stand and fight or run away. And there’s nothing like a horse to keep a crowd of angry villagers at bay.”
At this, Hutia looked grave, Rachel shuddered, and I sighed, all of us thinking once more of Quisqueya.
At Javier’s suggestion, I worked at fighting from horseback with staff or cudgel, using stout branches of varying lengths, as well as with my sword. At first, Rachel and I found it comical to hear how seriously the erstwhile footman took his new role as our armsmaster. But we soon grew used to it.
What we could not do was persuade Javier to be as helpful to Hutia as he was to me and Rachel, his resentment no less palpable for being unstated. At first I thought he envied the three of us our ability to spend each day together in perfect accord, each of us taking the others’ teasing in good part and finding cause for laughter even though we took our practice and the dangers we would soon encounter seriously. But once I started paying attention, I noticed that he gazed at Rachel with longing. He simmered when Rachel smiled at Hutia or found an excuse to touch him on the arm and glared whenever Hutia kissed her hand, a courtesy he had adopted the first time he had seen it done. Javier grew even more jealous when Hutia put his arms around Rachel to show her some trick of bending her bow. He found ways to distract Rachel’s attention or belittle Hutia’s skill without seeming to.
“They say the Turk can shoot a volley of arrows from horseback at full gallop,” he s
aid one day when Rachel was particularly cock-a-hoop about her archery, having split a series of wands pinned to a tree trunk at the far end of the field.
“Who is the Turk?” Hutia asked.
“They are a heathen people,” Hernan said, “who wish to conquer the world.”
“Heathen are folk who are not Christian,” Rachel explained. “The Turks’ God is called Allah and his prophet Muhammad.”
I knew Hutia would demand a more detailed theology lesson later, but all three of us knew better than to dwell on such a subject in the company of Christians.
“We will not meet any Turks in France or Italy,” I said, “though it is said that they trade with Venice.”
“If you travel by sea,” Esteban said, “you might, for it is said their corsairs infest the Mediterranean.”
By now, the men at arms, of course, were privy to our mission to find our parents. If they guessed the reason our family had left Spain, they were tactful enough to ask no questions. Europe was currently so unsettled, its politics so dire, that not only Jews but any folk outside a fortress might find themselves homeless and in danger.
“The Turks are not the only pirates,” Javier said. “Some say the Knights of Rhodes, who consider themselves crusaders, will attack any rich shipping to fill their coffers against the day they go forth to retake the Holy Land.”
“Nor is Portugal a friend to Spain these days,” I said, for this was a subject on which Doña Marina and I had talked.
Journey of Strangers Page 4
