Journey of Strangers

by Elizabeth Zelvin

  “Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem,” the children chorused in quavering voices.

  “Creatorem caeli et terrae,” Frei Jerónimo said. He looked angry, as if God’s creation of heaven and earth affronted him personally.

  “Creatorem caeli et terrae,” the children repeated.

  Even the youngest, some of whom had gone dumb with the shock of their change in circumstances, were forbidden to shirk the daily hour of religious instruction. Since it was the only hour each day that they were permitted out of the hold, most went willingly. They had already learned that they would be whipped if they failed to participate in the chant, made a mistake when called on to recite alone, cried, or soiled themselves. The smallest, children of three and four who could not always prevent the last of these transgressions, had to remain after the lesson to scrub the deck, bare bottoms tingling under the lash, while Frei Jerónimo harangued them on the terrors of Hell. Since he delivered these sermons in Portuguese, never explaining the Latin of the catechism, the children took his vision of Hell to be an apt description of Christianity and of the horrors that awaited them at the end of the voyage.

  Joanna, whose blood boiled at the idea of professing belief in something she could not understand, had pieced together the meaning of the Credo and the Paternoster with some grudging help from Natan, who suspected her of poaching on his territory in currying favor with the priests as well as the gentlemen in Captain Caminha’s train. Joanna had no intention of currying favor with the priests, and she already knew the gentlemen all too well. Imaculada had lost no time in selling her services to those who could pay better than the sailors. Some were cruel, deriving their pleasure from pinching, slapping, or choking her as they pumped their way to release. Others used her with indifference, walking away afterward without a word.

  Since she could not appear to lack compliance with the catechism, Joanna joined in fervently on the passages with which she took no issue. She still believed in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, outraged and disappointed though she was by His negligence toward his Chosen People of late. When it came to “et in Iesum Christum, Filium Eius unicum, Dominum nostrum,” she bowed her head as if in reverence, so that Frei Jerónimo could not observe her refusal even to move her lips. By the time they got to “remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem, vitam aeternam,” her mind would be racing with all the retorts she could never utter aloud. They believed in the forgiveness of sins, did they? Did they really think their Jesus would let them into heaven no matter how many defenseless children they stole, raped, and enslaved? A fine God that would be!

  Each morning, a tidying of the hold preceded the catechism. This consisted mainly of disposing of the bodies of any children who had died during the night. There were some to be rolled out and tossed overboard every morning. While the dreaded ship fever did not erupt, dehydration and malnutrition took their toll. So did beatings by the degradados, who had no better way of expressing their frustration with the rigors of the voyage and the uncertainty of their lot, since fighting with knives among themselves was forbidden. This would not have stopped them, except that such fights as broke out were swiftly punished with the lash and confiscation of the knives. The threat of loss of a hand on the second offense persuaded the degradados to seek safer forms of relief. Their simmering resentment did not abate as time went on. Joanna took to visiting the pigs to avoid the long, boastful conversations of Belmiro, Mateus, and their mates, reminiscing about their clever thievery as if they had been princes of the Lisbon streets rather than culled by Caminha from the city’s prisons.

  Belmiro did not abuse her himself, not because he was supposed to be her father, but because he would have had to face Imaculada’s wrath had he done so. However, he took to staking her in the endless games of dice that the degradados played among themselves and in card games with the soldiers, equally bored. The sailors had not much time for games of chance, between their duties and sleep, and tended to hold themselves aloof from the rest. They were not sentenced to life on São Tomé but would see Lisbon again before the year was out.

  Mateus was a sly and effective cheater at both cards and dice. The others regarded this with amusement and admiration. So he often won Joanna, not bothering to take her up on deck when Belmiro shook her out of sleep and handed her over, the wiry little man slithering out of his breeches and onto her in full sight of his companions, to their lewd amusement.

  Mateus’s behavior not only caused her misery but also earned her Felicidade’s enmity. Felicidade was a pouter, insinuating rather than commanding when she wished to get her way. A woman who would always reserve her spite for a weaker target, she left pig manure in Joanna’s bedding, called attention to her whenever she spied Joanna seizing a moment of peace to compose herself, and set the little boys under her control, Shmuel and Benji, humiliating tasks whenever Joanna was at hand to see her do it.

  Joanna’s resentment of her half brothers as the cause of her captivity had died the moment they clung to her, crying, on the dock. She lived in fear that they would die, either before the voyage was out or once they reached the island, which the sailors who had seen it described as consisting of a single volcanic mountain, impenetrable forests, and pestilential swamps. She had less fear for Simon, who was old enough to serve Belmiro as a page and messenger and whom Belmiro treated with a careless kindness. He had never had a servant before, and it pleased him to order the boy about. Simon did not know that the messages he sometimes carried concerned the selling of his sister’s body. Joanna thought that she would die of shame if he found out. She did nothing to challenge his liking for Belmiro. For the moment, it guaranteed his safety and continued life.

  To endure the nightly assaults on her body, Joanna learned to retreat within her mind and transport herself far away, as if the indignities committed were happening to someone else. Most often, she would draw on childhood memories of walking with her mother in the gardens of the Alhambra. She did not know how it had come about that her mother had been welcomed in the palace of the Moorish sultan, but she remembered women’s laughter, crystalline like the fountains that plashed and sparkled everywhere amid a profusion of colors and scents. She remembered laughing herself, chasing and being chased by children of her own age, dressed in white, down colonnades of slender columns ending in delicate stone tracery. In time, the memories became so vivid that she could summon them at will and become that little girl, actually forgetting for minutes at a time where she was and what was being done to her.

  It did not occur to her that she might become pregnant until Imaculada pressed on her the remedy she used herself. Her stepmother Riva's response to Joanna's first bleeding had been to slap her cheek and say grimly, “You are a woman now.”

  “I'll not bear on anyone's command,” Imaculada said, “and you, with your narrow hips, might easily die. Do as I say, and if you're lucky, you will not conceive.”

  Natan, older than Simon and, Joanna reluctantly acknowledged, quick and clever, knew what was happening to Joanna but did not have the imagination to sympathize or comprehend the horror of it.

  “Why can you not make the most of the situation?” he asked her one day as they talked in the hold while she mended a shawl of Imaculada’s and he polished a pair of one of the gentlemen’s shoe buckles. “You should do as I do. I believe I will achieve more and grow richer as a sugar king, a fazendeiro, than I could ever have if I had stayed to inherit my father’s shop in Lisbon. Captain Caminha is the king’s chosen donatario: he will be the governor of the island when we arrive, with absolute authority over all. I strive to please him even now, and I believe he knows me by sight. Soon I will make sure he knows my name and considers how I can be of use to him. He has no sons. They say he will make his cousin, Pero Alvares de Caminha, his heir. You have a connection with Dom Pero, do you not? You would be foolish not to use it.”

  “One would think you were sailing on a different ship than I,” Joanna said, “bound for a different island. Ambi
tion makes you stupid. You cannot control your destiny. You are a slave. We are slaves!”

  “We are not slaves,” Natan said. “The black Africans will be our slaves, and we will be their masters.”

  “I am here against my will,” Joanna said. “My body belongs to any man who wishes to use it, and it is not even I who sell it, but my masters. When we arrive in São Tomé, I will be forced to labor without pay. I will never be permitted to leave the island except by death. What, fool, is your definition of a slave, if I am not a slave?”

  “It is different for a woman,” Natan said. He glanced sharply around the room, lowered his voice, and leaned toward her. “Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha’olam, shelo asani isha.”

  Joanna regarded him with contempt as her mind raced with blistering responses, rejecting one after another as unlikely to pierce his complacency.

  “If you still thank God daily for not making you a woman,” she said finally, “you had better not let your friends Captain Caminha and Frei Jerónimo catch you doing it. And while you’re at it, don’t forget the rest of that b’rucha. The Talmud also bids you thank Adonai for not making you a gentile or a slave.”

  Not waiting for his reaction, she rose and stalked across the hold to contemplate the pigs, whose honest adherence to their true nature she much preferred to Natan’s hypocrisy.

  Chapter 12: Diego

  “Are you a pirate?” Rachel asked.

  “Not exactly,” Amir said. “Not at all, in fact, though that does not mean we are not bound to take Christian vessels when we come upon them.”

  He bade his crew step back a pace while we conversed. I could not help hoping that this meeting had improved our fortunes, although Captain Velez and Doña Julieta still waited anxiously to learn their fate. Amir’s men busied themselves with relieving Cecilia’s crew of their weapons and chaining them together for transfer to the galleys. I kept one eye on them and noticed that some of the oarsmen had left their benches to help organize the prisoners and consider the problem of the cracked mast. I concluded they must be free men, not slaves as Christendom believed the sultan’s rowers to be.

  “Surely you must let us go!” Rachel said. “I do not plead for myself alone, nor even just for Diego and my betrothed, but kind Captain Velez—the little girls—the poor sailors, who have done nothing to harm you!”

  “Raquel,” Amir said, “I owe you my freedom, indeed, my life. But I am not the commander here. I will plead with him for the two who rescued me, as honor demands.”

  “And my betrothed?” Rachel put her arm protectively around Hutia. “Can you not say he helped you too?”

  “It would go against my faith to lie to my commander.” Amir cast a curious glance as Hutia. “But I will do it, rather than cause you pain.”

  “Hutia is no enemy of the Turk,” Rachel said. “He is from—”

  “Do not tell me!” Amir said. “I would prefer to commit no further lies. For the others, alas, I can do nothing. And this ship is our prize. Although you may be granted your freedom, you will have to come with us.”

  “Where are you going?” Rachel asked.

  “I may not tell you my mission,” he said. “But a prize crew will take the caravel to Istanbul, the prisoners with her.”

  “What will happen to the girls?” she asked. “They are only children!”

  “The Sultan takes a fifth part of all ventures on land or sea. These two, being maidens, may be sent to Istanbul for his own harem.”

  “Amir! How can you?” Rachel cried. “You have been a slave yourself!”

  “It is not a bad life, Raquel,” Amir said. “They will be given every luxury.”

  “Every luxury but freedom!” Rachel said.

  “Does any woman have freedom, even in Christian lands?” he said. “No one will touch them, not even the Sultan until they are older.”

  “For pity’s sake, Amir,” I said, “can you not hold them for ransom? Their father is a rich French knight of Avignon. Surely there must be a way.”

  “I will do what I can,” Amir said, “though I may need all my credit with my commander to save the three of you.”

  “And the chaperone?” Rachel pleaded. “Poor Doña Julieta.”

  “Oh, very well,” he said. “For your sake, Raquel, I will try. We’ll take her along in any case to tend the children. The crew won’t want them underfoot on the voyage back to Istanbul. That will save her from getting thrown overboard, since she’ll not have much value as a slave. Perhaps her master will ransom her along with his daughters.”

  “And the captain?” I asked, though I knew the answer could not be a welcome one.

  Amir shook his head.

  “Bound for slavery, I fear. In fact, you may advise him that there might be a way out, if he will take it. Sultan Bayezid is building up his navy. He has need of experienced sailors, especially those who know the coasts of Europe. If he is offered a choice between Islam and slavery, he would do well to embrace Islam.”

  “If he turns Muslim to save his skin, will they not distrust him afterward?” I asked, thinking of the conversos and the Inquisition.

  “Not at all,” Amir said. “It is not our way. Once a man accepts the Faith, Allah’s hand is on him. And who are we to distrust one whom Allah trusts? At any rate, no Muslim may be made a slave.”

  “I will tell him,” I said, “now, if I may.”

  Amir said a few words to his men in Turkish. Señor Ortega had been right. Rachel, Hutia, and I would do well to learn that language as soon as possible.

  “I will talk to my commander,” he said. “These sailors will guard you. I have told them to treat you with respect, as you are my guests, not my prisoners. They will escort you to speak with the Spanish captain now.”

  “I thank you, Amir,” I said. “I am deeply grateful.”

  “So am I,” Rachel said, “truly, Amir. But will you not tell us of yourself? Where did you go after leaving us?”

  “I went first to Tunis,” Amir said, “where my grandfather lives. But for me, Tunisia is not home. Granada is lost, and the Ottoman star is rising. So I made my way to Istanbul. But I must not delay getting my commander’s permission to release you into my custody.”

  “And speak to him about ransoming the girls,” Rachel reminded him.

  “One more thing,” he said. “If I cannot dissuade my commander from making you strip, it may go harder for you. He has fought against Christians, whom he calls uncircumcised dogs.”

  “It will not trouble me,” I said, “because I am circumcised. I am a Jew, and so is Rachel, whom you call Raquel.”

  Amir’s eyes widened.

  “I did not know,” he said, “but so much the better. We have many Jews in Istanbul. Sultan Bayezid welcomes them, believing the Spanish king a fool to throw away so many gifted scholars, merchants, physicians, and artisans. You might do worse than to settle there, if, as I surmise, you are seeking a home.”

  “We must find our family,” I said, “before making any decisions about the future. They were in Firenze, but we doubt they are still there.”

  “Perhaps you would like to come with me,” Amir said. “To Jews, I may reveal our mission. We are bound for the Iberian coast, where some Jewish fugitives are still in hiding, waiting to be rescued. Sultan Bayezid is in earnest in wishing to acquire them for his empire.”

  Rachel’s eyes lit up. After all that had happened, she still could not resist an adventure. I sent a quelling glance her way. Hutia, reading her as well as I, pressed his palm into her shoulder as if to suppress her enthusiasm physically.

  “We cannot,” I said. “We must continue on our quest to find our parents. Besides, are not all the Jews long gone from Spain? It has been three years!”

  “Perhaps,” Rachel said, “some of the conversos have been so ill treated by the Inquisition that they have thought better of their decision to turn Christian. The Christians are not like your Muslims, Amir. No matter how sincerely a Jew may convert, he is still a Jew to them.”


  “Many of the Spanish Jews,” Amir said, “fled only as far as Portugal. Now some of them are seeking a way to leave Iberia altogether. That is my job: to issue my Sultan's invitation and carry them to Istanbul.”

  “Are they not required to turn Muslim?” Rachel asked.

  “Not at all,” Amir said. “Under Ottoman rule, those who are not of Islam live in their own communities, conducting their own affairs in peace. They pay taxes, of course. But to us, the Empire's Christians and Jews, like Muslims, are People of the Book, and that must be respected.”

  “Having once left Spain,” I said, “a land that did not want us and still seeks to kill us, we have no wish to return, even on a mission of rescue.”

  “Very well,” Amir said. “I will request permission to put you ashore under cover of night. We are not as far as you may think from France, and our oarsmen are swift. By the way, your companion, Raquel’s betrothed—is he circumcised too?”

  “It would be better to avoid an inspection,” I said. “But we can swear on any oath you like that he is not a Christian.”

  The Sixth Letter

  Firenze, April 1494

  My dearest children,

  I write this greeting with a heavy heart, knowing it unlikely that either of you will ever see this letter. But as I pray that Adonai still spares you, I must send what news I can give. We leave Firenze with no clear idea of where we will come to rest. We think of you constantly. I am thankful your Papa is not like Abraham. He would never agree to sacrifice his child as the patriarch Isaac did, not even at God’s direct command and to secure His blessing for generations! Papa laughs at me when I say this. He says that I cannot expect God to think like mere men and women and that to understand Torah we must sometimes think of the stories in it as parables rather than literal fact. He has little enough to laugh at these days.

  Diego’s letter of last September, telling us that Admiral Columbus’s fleet was off at last for the Indies and Rachel sailing on the Strega to Livorno, did not reach us until three weeks ago. Crumpled and stained with dirt and water and what looked like blood, it had passed through many hands. Although its content was so worrisome, nonetheless, I was glad to get it. Needless to say, Papa went at once to Livorno to seek what news of the Strega he could get. The Strega has made port there two or three times since last fall, but not a single man whom Papa questioned, including sailors who had shipped on her, had seen or heard tell of a lady passenger then or at any other time. Those who knew Captain Olivero personally laughed at the very thought. It seems he is not a man to inspire confidence. Perhaps Diego realized this after sending off the letter and did not put Rachel on the Strega after all? But if that is what happened, where is Rachel? Oh, my darlings, I fear you are forever lost to us. Diego may remain in the Indies, for I gather this second voyage of Admiral Columbus is one of settlement as well as exploration. Papa counsels me not to speak my worst imaginings of what may have befallen Rachel, for they serve no purpose but to make me distraught, which distresses Papa and the girls and exacerbates their fear and sadness. They will need all their courage for our own journey.