We have had no further word from Doña Marina. Were Italy not so unsettled, Papa would go to Genoa, where she may have sent later news of you. The bankers there will certainly know more than we do about events throughout Europe that might have affected your plans. But we have been strongly advised not to venture north. Charles’s armies are not expected to march out until fall, but already the roads are filled with folk fleeing, as we will. All fear the possibility of being besieged, or worse, having their homes invaded should a siege succeed. Already, Firenze is crammed with terrified Neapolitans and Romans, while Florentines stream out of Firenze in all directions, believing Milan or Venice may be safer. There were once many Jews in Sicily, but Ferdinand and Isabella rule that land, and they were all expelled in 1492, as we were. It is said that some converted, but most sought refuge in Naples. So those poor souls, like us, find themselves on the road a second time.
We taught you children always to seek blessings in adversity. I remind myself of that advice as I see refugee families struggling to transport not only themselves but as many possessions as they can carry. The richest have wagons piled with furniture and household goods, plate and paintings, linens and tapestries. Susanna, who is fascinated by the constant passing parade and often seems to forget that we will be among them soon enough, swears she has seen two sundials and a marble fountain. Fools! They would do better to fill their wagons with food. The French will not carry sufficient provisions for their troops across the Alps. They will have to live off the land and can only devastate it. The blessing in this is that it gives a sort of timetable for the invasion, as Charles would be ill advised to come before the harvest. If he does, there will be famine this winter for invaders and invaded alike, besides the grim prospects for besieged cities.
Lest you think me miraculously become a military strategist, little else is talked of throughout Firenze. Papa and Cousin Chaim and young Akiva, whom I suppose I must start considering a man since he will soon be a rabbi and Elvira’s husband, analyze every bit of gossip and speculation in calculating our chances of success in reaching safety. Chaim, who is a skilled carpenter, is building us two wagons, with Akiva as his apprentice. It is a measure of our fears that Akiva does not complain about this use of time that he might otherwise spend studying Torah! We have two sturdy mules, and the men have been taking turns at guarding their shed each night. One reason for us to leave now, rather than wait till summer, is to reduce the chances of their being stolen or taken from us by force. We will carry feed for the mules in the wagons as well as food for ourselves and the bare necessities. Having said goodbye to my most cherished family possessions in Seville, I am not too attached to the contents of our house in Firenze, though I am sad to think of the pleasure and hope with which the girls and I chose every cup and curtain. I take only our mezuzah, which I would nail to the doorway of hell, should such a place exist and fortune take me there.
Believe me, my darlings, if I thought there were still a chance of either of you seeking us in Firenze, wild horses could not make me leave! Ha’shem guard you, wherever you are. And if by some miracle one of you reads this letter, do not seek us in Christendom. The Christians will never let us rest nor cease to blame us for every ill that befalls them. We will try to make our way to Ottoman lands. Cartography is considered an art here in Italy, and Papa and Chaim have scoured the city for maps showing the route we must travel, as well as talking to merchants, drovers, and caravan guards: in short, to anyone who might help us. We believe we will be safer on the east coast, in Ancona or perhaps Bari, until we can leave Italy altogether. Of course, we will not admit we are Jews while we are on the road. We have still to persuade Akiva to bow to expediency so far as to cut his payot and hang a cross around his neck. He is so proud of his status as a budding rabbi! But if Papa and Chaim cannot persuade him, his mother will. Miriam does not mince words, and she must get it through his thick head that pride must bow to matters of life and death. I am trying to get Elvira to understand that the reason Papa and I almost always agree is that his intelligent, sensible opinions are truly in accord with mine, not because a wife should defer to her husband as invariably the wiser!
Once we reach the coast, Ha’shem be our guide, we will cross the Adriatic Sea to Albania, which is ruled by the Sultan, as are the lands beyond it, Macedonia and Bulgaria. Should we get so far, we will seek out any Jews in those places and form our own opinion of how they fare. Our dream is to find a Jewish community in which we can openly live as exactly who we are. It is hard to believe that we will find one even in Istanbul, where this Sultan Bayezid who is said to respect the skills of Jews resides. But we must try!
I will leave this letter with the Medici bankers, if they will take it, and send a copy by what I can only pray is a trustworthy courier to Marina’s bank in Genoa, as the second most likely place for you to look for it. Both Genoa and Firenze might be in French hands in a few months, but surely Charles needs bankers as much as ever Ferdinand and Isabella did. If the cities are not sacked, even if the banking families are ousted, with luck, papers in their care will not be destroyed. May the blessings of Ha’shem be with you always, my darlings. You are ever in my heart and Papa’s too, whatever may befall you.
All my love, Mama
Chapter 13: Joanna
As the weeks wore on, three things kept Joanna from despair. One was the knowledge that Simon and the little ones needed her. It was her duty to keep them alive. She never doubted that their lives were worth preserving. Much as she despised Natan, he perhaps had the right of it in believing that a door of opportunity might crack open for a hardworking and sufficiently quick-witted Jewish slave, if he were a boy. Another was her growing ability to absent herself completely from the proceedings when Imaculada sold her body or Belmiro gambled it away. Her mind learned to wander the gardens of the Alhambra at these times in a freedom made sweeter by her mother’s presence. The price she paid for these reunions was the aching sense of loss when she came back to herself.
Besides these saving graces, she realized after a while that, the price of her body having been settled before the transaction itself, and the men having no further interest in her once they had spent themselves, no one bothered to look for her or summon her back to the hold for some time afterward. This left her free to creep forward to a spot well before the foremast. Huddled with her arms around her knees and a scrap of sailcloth wrapped around her to shield her from a casual glance, she sat for hours watching the ship’s prow cleave the sea, content to feel spray stinging her face and taste salt upon her lips. At these times, contrary to her periods of dissociation with the men, she felt more fully present than she had since her mother’s death. Both future and memory fell away, leaving her in a timeless, unselfconscious moment of serenity.
No one on board told the children how long the voyage would last or spoke of their fate on the island. Joanna could measure the passing of the days and weeks only by the phases of the moon, which ripened like a great cheese every month, then waned and vanished into darkness, showing a sliver of pale fingernail before it began to round out into a golden ball again. She knew the air was getting warmer, and so were the waters of Ocean. It rained seldom. This meant fresh water was scarce, but Joanna, who felt herself less a prisoner when she could see unbounded sky, was meanly glad that not only the captives but their oppressors too went thirsty.
In the meantime, she cherished every wonder that she saw. Sometimes it was a school of flying fish: hundreds of long, slim forms, in color a dark blue-gray shading into silver, that leaped from the water to sail through the air on frilled wings like a bird’s. They might glide half the length of the ship, then land on the surface of the water and skid along it, raising a wake of spray like a flock of ducks before they soared into the air again.
Occasionally, the whole school lifted itself high enough to land upon the deck, where all at liberty to do so would leap upon them with knives and clubs at the ready, desperate for fresh food. Joanna could manage to beat or sta
mp three or four fish into submission and stow them among the rags that remained of her one dress without drawing attention to herself. The first time, it took her several hours to find a tool for scaling them, a sharp shell that she secreted away for further use. Then she had to persuade the boys to eat the fish raw, as she had no means of cooking them. They needed nourishment, having grown wan and lethargic with little activity and even less food. She thought of keeping none for herself. But if she starved to death, the boys would have no protector. Besides, Simon, quick to guess her intent, forestalled her by pointing out that in order to persuade the little ones to eat raw fish, she must show them she did so herself.
Even more marvelous than the flying fish were the families of sleek gray dolphins. They too could lift themselves from the water, but rather than leaping blindly to their own destruction, they leaped and dove in unison at a safe distance from the ship, smiling as if they knew exactly what they were doing. Once, she spied a whale, a vast creature that struck awe into her heart as it rolled lazily from one gray side to the other, waving a black and white fin like a flattened pillar in salute. The leviathan swam alongside the ship for several miles, prudently twisting and diving to avoid the sailors’ spears, but close enough that Joanna could hear it breathe and see how it blew a spout of water from a hole on top of its head like an animated fountain. Finally, with a derisive flip of its fin at the frustrated sailors, it arched its back in a dive straight downward, its broad tail rising from the surface like a giant’s fan, and plummeted toward the depths, to be seen no more.
Joanna’s only other refuge was rage. Most of the time, it burned within her whether she was tossing to and fro on the now filthy straw waiting for the brief release of sleep, shoveling pig muck, gulping down the prisoners’ scant daily supply of water, or singing lullabies to Shmuel and Benjamin. Her mind seethed with plans for escape. On the ship, she could do nothing. She must be patient. She might have to wait until the boys were bigger and stronger. She would not leave them behind! On an island, surely there would be places to hide, perhaps even a way to reach the mainland. If sugar grew there, so must fruits and other foods. The island must have concealing forests like those she could see when the ship passed close to the shore. Perhaps one of the black slaves everyone talked about would help her. Surely they must long for freedom as she did.
One night, when the moon was new and the dark sky flooded with stars, she saw a school of luminescent fish, glowing pale green and ghostly in the inky depths. The circumstances were not auspicious: the soldier Duarte had bent her over the rail and was doing his business at her back, while remarking in a conversational tone that they had entered the Gulf of Guinea and would reach the island soon.
“There’s no saying what’s to become of you once we get there, girl,” he said, “but you’ve made the voyage less tedious, and that’s a fact.” He pushed himself upright and slapped her on the rump. “You won’t get easy work like this, I wager. They’ll set you to laboring in the cane fields, and you’ll miss your time aboard the ship.”
Fuming, Joanna ground her teeth, determined not to turn or answer. I will remember only the beauty of the fish like a school of green lanterns, she thought. I will regret only that I did not kill you the first time you forced yourself on me. This great ape would sail away, but those who remained, gentleman or degradado, she would kill in a heartbeat without a second of remorse. Perhaps she could swim to the mainland. Such fish as these might light her way to freedom. An island was surrounded by water. It might even have rivers. I will survive, she thought. I will gather skills and weapons. I will bide my time.
Three days later, they arrived off São Tomé. After the usual splashing disposal of the dead, the children in the hold were herded up onto the deck, roped together so they could be easily controlled. Of more than four hundred children who had been crammed into the carrack’s hold, fewer than one hundred remained. The caravels, of shallower draft, sailed closer to the shore. The second carrack appeared over the horizon as they peered at an island that seemed devoid of human life. There was nothing to see but a rim of beach, not scalloped into bays but smoothly rounded like the edge of a plate, backed by a tangle of impenetrable dark green forest. The land rose to a single peak far in the distance, with odd-looking formations, more like upthrust fingers than mountains, popping up through the canopy of trees. After an interminable wait, as the day grew hotter and more humid, sailors from the other ships rowed the captains and other important folk to Captain Caminha’s flagship to consult with him.
Frei Jerónimo summoned the children to spend the time “usefully,” as he declared, in repeating the catechism. Joanna sat well back, hoping to escape notice. The priests, ships’ captains, and commanders of the soldiers conferring with Caminha passed to and fro behind her, so close that if she had dared stretch out an arm or leg, she could have tripped one of them. Ears peeled to gather what information she could, she caught tantalizing snatches. The degradados, Belmiro and Imaculada included, hung about the edges like spectators at a parade, subdued for once. Joanna suspected that they too were fearful about their future.
The interminable catechism ended at last. When the great ones had gone back to their own ships, the whole fleet raised anchor. The ships sailed eastward along São Tomé’s northern coast, with the island on their right. The children were sent below but given more than their usual portion of stale water and weevily biscuit. However miserable life on shore might be, there would at least be fresh food.
“They spoke of a settlement called Ponta Figa,” Joanna told Simon. “That is our destination.”
“Fig Point!” Simon exclaimed. “Will we have figs to eat?”
“I would not count on it,” she said. “But even the great ones do not know what we will find. There has been little news from the island in Lisbon for the past year or two. At least there will be plenty of water, as many rivers flow from the interior.”
“How fare the children on the other ships?” Simon asked.
“I heard nothing of them,” Joanna said.
“I did.” Natan, overhearing this as he passed by, squatted down beside them. Having ingratiated himself with Frei Jerónimo by serving as his acolyte, he was wearing a far better garment than the children’s rags, a thick black woolen robe too big for him that swirled around his wrists and ankles and was clearly hot enough to make him red-faced and sweaty. “Of the two thousand who boarded with us, less than half remain. They expect the island fevers to kill off many more. There will be other dangers too. They speak of giant man-eating lizards—crocodiles—that live in the swamp, as well as snakes and vermin.”
“You will be safe enough, ” Joanna said with contempt, “in the arms of the Church.”
“I intend to be,” Natan said calmly. “You could do worse than follow my example. Frei Jerónimo says those who whored on the ship may be saved if they repent.”
“It is you who whore,” Simon burst out indignantly, “hiding behind the priest’s skirts. Do you think that Adonai cannot see you?”
“Hush, Simon,” Joanna said, putting a hand on his arm. “We will not convince him, nor he us.”
A shout from aloft, followed by excited cries and a general rush to the starboard rail, interrupted their conversation before it could become any more acrimonious. The sailors were hauling in the sails and preparing to drop anchor, although the ship was still far out. The sailors went about their work grumbling about having to row the whole ship’s complement to shore, although the ships risked running aground on hidden shoals if they did not. Many of the degradados climbed the rigging for a better look, despite the shouts of the sailors and soldiers trying to restrain them. They were barely close enough to the beach to see a huddle of people on the shore, a jumble of canvas tents and wooden huts behind them.
“There are not very many of them,” Simon said.
A sailor with a coil of rope over his shoulder spat as he passed by.
“If this is Ponta Figa,” he said, “the new governor is welc
ome to it.”
Chapter 14: Diego
Amir brought us into Toulon at night in the ship’s boat. His oarsmen, skilled at sneaking into a hostile harbor from past forays along the coast, muffled the oars by wrapping them in rags to give us as silent a passage as if we had been under sail. His commander, in the end, had not demanded that I strip but been satisfied with my willingness to do so and the gold we had providently added to our purses in anticipation of being boarded. So our hidden gold and papers remained intact. When we parted, Amir insisted on telling me how to find him in Istanbul.
“I thank you, my friend,” I said, embracing him. “We are in your debt.”
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