A Ceiling Made of Eggshells

by Gail Carson Levine

  “I apologize, Pero.” But it was true. We wouldn’t be safe while he was alive—if a Jew was ever safe.

  Pero apologized back and then thanked me.

  Belo looked at me, his face expressionless. “How were we endangered by Pero?” It was his tax-farmer voice again. “How will we be endangered in the future?”

  My heart thumped as hard as it had in the presence of the grand inquisitor. What might Belo do to shield us from harm? He could be ruthless.

  Pero’s eyes were big, staring at me.

  If Belo abandoned Pero in the road for bandits to rob and kill, we all would be safer. Marina would be happier eventually.

  “Loma?” Belo said.

  I still didn’t want to reveal Pero’s threat, which would doom him. “The Inquisition! No one wants to be near its tentacles. Pero gambles! And he’s a converso! And we’re Jews! Four risks! Too many!”

  Papá came to ride next to me and reached across our horses’ backs to clasp my hand. “We can always protect our family.”

  Could we? I thought of the littles, especially Beatriz, who worried about everything; Clara; and Jento with his hidden drawers. Could we protect them?

  Belo rode to the guards ahead of us. After a short conversation, he returned. When we reached the fork in the road north of the village of Hontoria, the guards led us onto the right-hand track, going southwest, rather than southeast toward home.

  “Asher, Loma,” Belo said, “don’t argue. This will benefit you, Pero. You’ve escaped the Inquisition. I mean for you to escape it permanently. We’re going to Cádiz to put you on a ship to Tangier.”

  Pero cried, “A boat! Have pity!”

  Belo continued. “From Tangier, you will wait to join a caravan to Fez. You won’t have to wait long. They set out often. I send goods that way. In Fez, you’ll find many goldsmiths and silversmiths. I’ll give you a letter of introduction to my friend and enough money to set up a workshop—unless you gamble it away. There won’t be more from me, and if your papá and sister are wise, there won’t be more from them, either.”

  “He’ll lose his family,” Papá said.

  Belo ignored this. “The crossing is short. You can start over. Not many get such a chance.”

  Papá said, “In Fez, you can be a Jew again if you want to be.”

  “Or you may follow Islam,” I said, “if that suits your purpose.”

  He sent me a venomous look, then put back his placid camel’s face, behind which any wicked ideas could be forming.

  “Marina must have a get!” I cried, remembering her. The writ of divorce.

  “Conditional,” Pero said. “She may want to join me. I’ll write to her.”

  Papá nodded. “Conditional.”

  “Can’t I just go to a different city in Spain? I won’t trouble you again, no matter what.”

  No, I thought.

  “No,” Belo said.

  “Then Fez will be my home. I’ll do my best there.” Pero took a deep breath. “Papá, I’ll be a Jew again there.”

  And there, he’d be able to win the protection of the Muslim religion if he needed it.

  Or, perhaps he really would reform.

  We stood on a quay in Cádiz. Earlier, in the plaza outside the cathedral, we’d visited a moneylender’s stall, where Belo was known from his many trips to the city. Documents were signed, and we left with enough ducats to make Pero’s future come true. Belo had also written a letter of introduction to his friend in Fez, asking him to help Pero establish himself. And we had Marina’s conditional get.

  The harbor was discord in noise and motion. Ships’ officers barked orders at sailors high in the sails. Masters shouted at laborers, who bore freight out of the warehouses that fronted the wharf. Shipwrights scolded apprentices. Saws rasped and whined. Hammering rang out, louder than a thousand woodpeckers. Fishing boats bobbed. Masts swayed. Clouds scudded across the sky. The sea frothed. The only constants were the blue of the seamen’s clothing and the red of their caps.

  I smelled dampness, salt, and sardines.

  A man in a blue taffeta cape and a red cap approached us, arms outstretched, walking with a rolling gait, as if the wharf were rocking. “My friend!”

  Belo introduced us to shipmaster Señor Carlos Calvo, whom he called the most trustworthy seaman ever to ride the waves. I scrutinized the man’s face to decide if Belo was telling the truth.

  Master Calvo’s face was long, but his nose was short. Deep lines framed his smile and creases divided his rounded eyebrows. He had such dark eyes I could hardly see the pupils, which made their expression unreadable.

  He bowed to us and told Belo that I was an “incomparable” beauty. He spoke with an accent, adding an uh after words that didn’t end in a vowel.

  Belo took the master’s elbow and walked him several yards from us. Pero went to join them, but Belo waved him away. The two spoke for several minutes. Master Calvo leaned his head toward Belo and nodded and nodded. Finally, Belo pressed a purse into his hand and folded his fingers over it. Then they returned to us.

  “Master Calvo tells me his ship leaves with the tide. Pero, be guided by him on the voyage, and I wish you success in Fez.” He didn’t embrace him.

  Papá folded him into a long hug. At the end, he patted Pero’s cheek. “Be well. Be safe. Don’t gamble. We’ll miss you.”

  God forgive me, I wouldn’t miss him.

  He held his arms out to me. I went to him for a hug and a kiss on my cheek. He whispered, “You should convert, Lizard, if you want safety.” He let me go and added, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Please persuade Marina to come when I write.”

  Master Calvo put his arm around Pero’s shoulders. “On my ship, gentle folk live in comfort.” He walked Pero away, his voice diminishing, talking about the food, the wine, the conversation.

  Back home, while Fatima massaged his feet, Belo said, “Loma, don’t tell your papá. I instructed Master Calvo that if Pero gambles away all his money and more during the crossing, he’s to pay his debt and put him in the galley.”

  A slave.

  I swallowed, not sure what I was feeling. “He isn’t strong enough to row all day.”

  “He may not gamble,” Belo said drily, “or he may not lose.”

  “Will he starve?” He loved his meals so much.

  “They’ll feed him adequately. They want their oarsmen to keep their strength.”

  He would gamble and lose again, but maybe not on the voyage.

  “Having to work hard,” Belo said, “is the only thing that may change him, and people don’t always stay slaves.”

  If he were to die, would his death be on my head for announcing that I wished him a corpse?

  “In any event, we’re done with him. You can love him again.”

  The best I could feel was relief.

  Pero’s property and possessions were returned to Marina, although Belo had to explain to the bishop why he’d left Spain. He said Pero’s reputation wouldn’t recover from being suspected by the Inquisition, which the bishop accepted.

  A few weeks later, Belo received a letter from Don Solomon that said the trial Pero had been involved in had been moved from Segovia to Ávila. After that, we heard nothing for a long time. I continued to think of Pero and where he might be, whether rowing in a galley or making jewelry, but the trial dropped out of my mind.

  Marina couldn’t return to Judaism unless she moved to a Muslim kingdom. She stayed in her house, supported by her parents and Papá. I visited her when I could, and she seemed not much changed from when Pero had been downstairs working in his studio: glad to see me, a little bored, still interested in her cooking.

  Six months passed without word from Pero. Marina took her get from him to the cathedral, and a priest declared her free to remarry—

  —which she did a month later, in February 1491, to a young converso widower from a wealthy family. By May, she was pregnant. I no longer visited her, but I heard the news from Belo.

  Though I mis
sed having a friend, I was happy for her. I imagined that in time Pero would become a hazy dream, but she’d remember me fondly.

  Two months before Marina’s marriage, in December 1490, both Vellida and Ledicia had had healthy babies and recovered well. To the delight of everyone, Vellida had twins, a boy and a girl, Amram and Orovida. Ledicia named her son David. David and Orovida each had a thatch of brown hair, but Amram emerged bald. All of them had gray eyes.

  Belo and Papá continued to farm taxes. A special tax, which they had to collect, too, was levied on every Jewish family to pay for the war against Granada. In our judería, Belo and Papá paid the tax for the poor.

  They both called it a blessing to be able to do so.

  Papá said, “The Jews of Spain are being bled dry.”

  Belo remained well. We traveled and were away more often than we were home. Missing the littles was a stone in my stomach. I missed the birth of Samuel and Josefina’s first baby, a daughter named Esther, after Bela.

  I thought this would be the design of the coming years: absent when littles were born or when they passed their important milestones; present for meals and audiences with people who meant nothing to me—until everyone ceased asking about my marriage prospects and my youth was spent.

  The first hint of change, though I didn’t recognize it, came on a Sunday night in November 1491, when we happened to be in Toledo. A Christian mob tried to open the judería gate. From the rabbi’s house, we heard banging and shouting. My hand found Bela’s pendant. I remembered the night when I’d been kidnapped. I was too old to be kidnapped, but a Jew of any age could be killed.

  Belo and the rabbi went out into the night. I was tempted to go after them. Belo might have one of his spells—but then what would I do?

  They returned in a few minutes. The constables of the hermandad were protecting the gate.

  In the morning, Belo took me with him to thank the chief constable, whom he knew, as he knew everyone of consequence. The hermandad’s building was called an inn, though it had no paying guests. The constables lived there, and so did their prisoners.

  The building didn’t look frightening: three stories tall, brick, with a clay roof. The door, flanked by columns that rose to the roof, was big enough to admit horses.

  The two constables who guarded the entrance wore pointed steel helmets and the hermandad’s white overgown with the big scarlet cross on the chest. The cross seemed to shout, I am a Christian. Be afraid.

  A constable led us up a narrow flight of wooden stairs and down a corridor. A scream echoed up from the stairs behind us and was abruptly cut off. I clenched my teeth to keep from screaming, too.

  The constable turned. “Just a thief.” He opened a wooden door and had to duck to enter.

  Belo and I went in without having to stoop. We were on a courtyard balcony. Next to the door was a wooden bench.

  “Señor Cruz will see you soon.” The constable left.

  Belo sat. I looked over the wrought-iron railing. The courtyard was bleak: no plants, no fountain, just a diagonal pattern of rusty bricks. While Belo prayed softly, I counted bricks, but I couldn’t see the ones right below us. The sky was gray, the air chilly. I kept listening for more screams, but I heard none.

  Belo said, “This rudeness is odd.”

  At last, a large man came in, the red cross curving over his belly. He faced us, leaning his back against the railing, which I feared might not support his weight. The balcony was narrow. Only about two feet separated the man from us.

  Belo stood to bow, and I curtsied, but this fellow merely nodded.

  “I am glad to see you well, my friend,” Belo said, smiling, and holding out a purse. “Señor Cruz, thank you for your steadfastness last night. Please reward your men, too.”

  Señor Cruz’s hand closed over the purse, but his leathery face didn’t relax. “We did our duty, though many of my men wanted to join the mob, and I half wanted to, too.”

  “My friend! I’m amazed,” Belo said. “If you please, tell me what—”

  “You already know.” He stared over our heads. “All the Jews and Judaizers know. You laugh over it.”

  Belo protested that he didn’t know. “I’m mystified. People banged on the gate. We heard the clamor.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “My granddaughter was terrified.”

  I probably already looked frightened, because I was, but I made my eyes big.

  “The Jewess puts on a good show.” He shrugged his plump shoulders. “All right. At Sunday Mass, the priests read a message from the inquisitors in Ávila. A gaggle of Jews and conversos were found guilty of crucifying a boy from La Guardia and cutting out his heart—”

  My hand pressed against my own heart. No Jew would do that!

  “—and using it in sorcery to destroy all Christians by giving them rabies, and then to take our property, as if”—he leaned across the space that separated us and jabbed his index finger into Belo’s chest with each word—“you . . . didn’t . . . have . . . enough . . . already.”

  28

  Belo tried to draw back, but the wall was right behind him.

  I pushed words out. “He’s an old man!”

  Señor Cruz dropped his hand. “By Christ’s grace, the spell failed, and the guilty were burned in an auto-da-fé.”

  I was panting in horror.

  Belo cried, “No Jew . . . The commandments . . . We never—”

  “Enough.” Señor Cruz held up his hand. “We did our duty. You may go.”

  Belo held himself erect until we were beyond the inn of the hermandad, but then he stumbled and would have fallen if I hadn’t caught his elbow. “It’s not an attack. I’m only shocked, which I thought impossible.”

  It wasn’t until we turned into the next street that I realized: the trial Pero had been in had been moved to Ávila.

  But that was more than a year ago. “Belo, could that be the trial Pero was caught up in?”

  He said it probably was. “They take their time, the inquisitors. It’s a slow business, extracting the answers they want.”

  Another dreadful thought struck me. “Do you think Christians attacked the judería at home?”

  “It’s possible. We must go.”

  The littles!

  We left Toledo an hour later. Soon, a band of gray-gold smoke throbbed along the horizon ahead. When we drew close, we saw that smoke wreathed the walled city of Ocaña. Belo said that the judería was probably aflame, but we didn’t stop. We could have done nothing.

  Riding every inch with me was the memory of the time eight years earlier when the hermandad at home had failed to keep out the mob.

  We spent the night on the side of the road. Hamdun built a fire and served us a meal of dried beef and flatbread. We sat on a rug before the fire to eat.

  While we ate, Belo mused, “A chief constable, a man of that station, doesn’t usually heed the rabble’s nonsense, even the priests’ nonsense. Why did he listen this time?”

  Why would anyone believe Jews could murder a child? Christians and Jews met daily at the marketplace. We bought their goods. They bought ours. Why would they trade with us, if they thought we were evil and wanted to destroy them?

  I took another strip of beef and asked Belo.

  “You know the answer to that. You’ve seen it again and again.”

  Seen what?

  Oh. “Money,” I said. “They sell, we buy; we sell, they buy. It makes everyone nice. If they kill us, they lose, too. Why don’t they remember that?”

  He said three words I’d never heard from him before: “I don’t know.”

  At home, our chief constable had done his job. Everyone was fine. I spent half an hour hugging and petting Jento. At nearly seven, he felt himself too old for cuddling, but he had to endure it anyway. Then I ran in turn to my sisters’ houses and Samuel’s.

  I didn’t want to frighten them, but I made all the littles show me that they were wearing the amulets I’d given them.

  Clara, the animal lover, ha
d hung her necklace around the neck of the family cat. “Yowl is old, Tía Loma. She needs it more than I do.”

  I took it off the cat and clasped it around Clara’s neck. “The pendant will protect you so you can protect Yowl. Yes?”

  She nodded.

  The others were wearing theirs, even confident Todros. I was both sorry and glad they understood that Jews needed a safeguard.

  In January 1492, in the cathedral plaza, heralds announced the monarchs’ victory in Granada. All of Spain was free of Muslim rule.

  In the judería, we were foolish enough to rejoice.

  At dinner, Belo said, “No more war taxes for a while. The poor will be less poor. Peace will be good for the Jews.” He poured himself more wine.

  “Can Loma stay home now?” Jento speared a chunk of lamb with his knife. “She’s teaching me to be better at backgammon. I need her.”

  I paused with my knife halfway to my mouth.

  “We still have to make money,” Papá said. “Do you like studying with Señor Osua?”

  Jento nodded. “He says I have a gift for numbers.”

  Like me.

  Belo sipped his wine. “He has to be paid, so we still have to travel.”

  I resumed eating. “Will the Jews of Granada have to be ransomed?” Those of Málaga had been prisoners for two years before they were set free.

  “More Jews live there,” Papa said. “Let’s hope the monarchs are merciful.”

  They were, A week later, Belo received a letter from Don Solomon, who wrote that the Jews of Granada could stay in their homes and live as they had under the Moors. Two days after that, royal notices were delivered to Belo and Papá, declaring that their tax-farming commissions had been renewed.

  Later, I wondered if these two events—the Jews of Granada and the renewals—were planned to keep people calm, to stop us from suspecting and preparing, and then to create panic when the monarchs loosed their lightning bolt.

  At the beginning of February, Beatriz turned eleven and Papá teased her about her betrothal prospects. She fluffed her hair, just as Vellida used to. Belo teased her, too, which pained me.