13

A year earlier, in our courtyard, Yuda himself had described a flogging to Samuel and me, which he’d witnessed the day before in front of the synagogue.

“First Don Israel examined Señor Ezmel.”

Don Israel was a physician, and Señor Ezmel was a locksmith.

“What did Señor Ezmel do?” I said, sitting on a bench.

“Cheated customers. Don Israel said he was healthy, so he had to bend over and raise his shirt.”

Yuda told us the whip was a leather strap folded in half with a handle in the middle, so that both ends struck Señor Ezmel’s back.

Grinning, Yuda raised his arm and slashed down. “There was blood right away. Señor Ezmel yelled that he was sorry and he’d never do it again, so they stopped. I pity him.”

That night, during my worry time in bed, I tried not to picture the whip lashing Yuda’s pudgy back. Though I hated him, I didn’t want him to be flogged.

And he wasn’t. The next day, we learned that the aljama council, awash in gifts from Papá and Belo, decided that Yuda’s offense hadn’t been serious enough.

In February 1485, Mamá and Ledicia had their babies. Ledicia had a daughter, named Jamila, and Mamá had a son, named Jento.

Thanks to the Almighty, all lived and were healthy. I spent as much time as I could going back and forth between houses, hovering over one crib and then the other.

In March, Samuel turned eleven, and in April, Vellida married her Jacob.

I discovered, while dancing, that Beatriz, at age four, had begun to worry. She stumbled once, pulled her hand out of mine, and left the circle.

I followed her. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t like to dance.”

She loved to dance! After coaxing, she told me she didn’t like to stumble when she danced. “I did it wrong, Tía Loma.”

“We don’t have to dance.”

“Good.”

But I wanted to, and I wanted to with her. I had an idea. “Watch.”

“Stay with me!”

But I joined the circle again, clasped hands with two women, and stumbled on purpose. The hands held me up. I kicked when you weren’t supposed to and failed to kick when you were. I added a jump that didn’t belong at all—

—and a laughing Beatriz broke into the circle. We danced together until the music finally stopped.

At the end of May, when the whole family went to the synagogue to celebrate Shavuot, a priest and a Christian scribe in a voluminous white robe leaned against the north wall. The congregation waited for the usual diatribe, but neither of them spoke, so the hazan began the service.

I missed the haranguing! At least that was routine—death, hellfire, demons—I hated it, but I was used to it. This was alarming because it was unusual. I put my arms around Beatriz and Todros. If they became frightened, I was ready to comfort them.

After the service came announcements by the head of the aljama council—of weddings, engagements, births. Flies buzzed. My scalp itched.

When the last announcement was made, the rabbi mounted to the tevah.

“I am told to say this: All the Jews of Spain are instructed by the grand inquisitor, Tomás de Torquemada, to report any Christians that you know of who are Judaizing. For instance, they may ask you how to observe the Sabbath, or when one of our holidays is. Anyone who doesn’t tell the priests”—his chest rose in a deep breath—“will be excommunicated. If you know such conversos, I urge you not to protect them. But any who accuse falsely will be punished by the Inquisition.” He left the tevah.

Belo and Papá knew Christians—New Christians—who Judaized, who were really secret Jews, as much as they could be. I knew them. Was I supposed to go to the Tribunal?

We weren’t the only ones who did business with conversos. Shopkeepers had New Christian customers. Artisans did, too. Yuda’s master, Don Ziza, did. The converso customers of Señor Lauda, the butcher, came to him for kosher meat. Every single one would be a Judaizer! Did he have to inform on them?

The priest ascended the tevah. “Do not add to your own heresy the sin of destroying Christian souls.” He began the usual speech but stopped after only a few demons had tormented us. His voice softened. “I’ve warned you many times, week after week, but you don’t believe in hellfire. You know excommunication, though, and the life of an outcast. I beg you, don’t bring that down on yourselves.” He left with the scribe.

If Belo, Papá, and I became outcasts, could we be outcasts together?

When we got home, Fatima was standing in the vestibule. She told us that a priest was waiting in Belo’s study. “He asked for Loma, too.”

Ai!

Papá kissed my forehead. “Don’t speak unless you must.”

Mamá said, “This is what comes of taking a child everywhere.”

Belo said, “‘I don’t know’ is an excellent answer, Loma.”

In the study, the priest had taken Belo’s chair. On Belo’s desk rested a plate of dates, figs, and almonds, which a servant must have brought.

Servants had also carried in a settle. Belo and Papá bowed, and I curtsied. They didn’t sit, so I didn’t, either.

“Welcome to my house,” Belo said, which I knew he meant to be funny, because the priest was acting as if it were his house. “Please eat. The figs are especially good.”

The priest took a single date and a single almond.

“We’re honored by your visit,” Papá said.

“I’m visiting no one else.”

Did he mean we should feel honored or frightened?

Belo sat on the settle, and Papá and I did, too.

“Don Joseph, you serve the Church.”

Belo collected tithes for a cardinal, and he gave gifts to bishops and cardinals.

“And the monarchs.” Belo took two figs and passed the plate to Papá.

A breeze wafted in. Outside, hooves clip-clopped. Papá handed the plate to me, and I rested it in my lap, because I didn’t know what else to do with it. If I tried to swallow, I’d choke.

The priest waved away a fly. “You eat in the homes of New Christians. If they’re practicing Jewish rites, you would see.” He turned to me. “Child, you’ve been there. Have you seen it?”

Ai! I couldn’t ignore a question. And I had seen it.

“Child—”

“Her name is Paloma,” Belo said.

“Paloma, nothing will happen to you if you tell me.”

What would happen to Belo and Papá? “I d-don’t know.”

“Did they eat cheese and meat together?”

“I d-don’t know.”

“Did they serve bloody meat?” (Kosher meat was never bloody.)

I repeated that I didn’t know.

“What is the weather today?”

“I don’t— It’s hot and sunny.”

“Did they talk with your abuelo and Papá about the law?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don Joseph, I’m aware how dear this child is to you. Soon you may have to bring her to the baptismal font as the only way to save her. You can go, child.”

I looked at Belo. He nodded, and I fled.

The Holy Inquisition joined my list of nightly worries.

The priest didn’t return to our house, and I wasn’t called to the Holy Tribunal, but Señor Lauda, the butcher, denounced three converso housewives for buying kosher meat. One lost half her property and had to spend six months in prison; another had to wear the sanbenito, a yellow tunic, and a tall conical cap, for a week; the third was found innocent. For informing falsely, Señor Lauda was sentenced to death by stoning and was killed.

I heard about it when Mamá told Aljohar in the kitchen, where I was stirring bread into the stew to thicken it. The spoon slipped out of my hand.

Aljohar, who bought the family’s meat, cried, “Woe!” After her lamentations, she added, “Such a kind man. And honest.”

No one else from the aljama came forward to the Inquisition, but Old Christians informed on New. People were tried for what seemed to be minor failings. A man lost all his property for washing his hands before praying—a Christian prayer!

In April 1486, when I was nine and three-quarters, the town council of Valmaseda, far in the north, expelled its Jews, despite the queen’s order that they not be expelled. Belo went to persuade the council to change its mind and took me, Hamdun, and six guards with him.

I half didn’t want to go. Vellida was pregnant with her first, and the baby could come any day. Of course I did go. No one asked my opinion anyway.

On the ride there, Belo was jubilant. “Loma . . .”

“Yes, Belo?” I rode next to him, because I was old enough to be on my own mount, a mule for this trip since the terrain was mountainous.

“Now we use our wealth.” The gold ducats in his saddlebag clinked softly. “We’ll spend whatever we need to to return the Jews to their synagogue before the gentiles can make it into a church.” Holding the reins loosely, he turned his hands palm up in his lap, as he did when he was about to bargain with someone. “Everyone will be delighted. Did I ever ask you this riddle?”

“Which one?” We both loved riddles.

“The wise men of Athens tested a rabbi by ordering him to show them the center of the world, so the rabbi pointed at the ground at his feet. ‘Down there.’ The wise men were amazed and made the rabbi say how he knew. How did he know, Loma?”

That was the riddle? I laughed and admitted I had no idea.

“Ah. The rabbi said to the wise men, ‘Prove me wrong.’” Belo started laughing, too. “They couldn’t!”

That was the answer: they couldn’t. Clever rabbi! It became my favorite riddle.

No other Jewish girl had my adventures. An hour later, I experienced snow up close. Snow! As in my plague delirium. Not coming down, but on the ground near the road. I dismounted and touched it, the coldest thing I’d ever felt.

The next morning, the town councilors of Valmaseda met with Belo, and I was there. They didn’t want a new door for their church or a monument in their square, and they wouldn’t take money outright. They just wanted to be rid of their Jews.

When we left them and crossed the town’s ancient bridge, Belo said, more to himself than to me, “How are people staying warm?”

The breeze was chilly. I was snug in my heavy cloak, my hat, and my plumpness.

The expelled Jews were camped in shabby tents in a green valley watered by the Cadagua River. A flock of thirty-five sheep grazed nearby.

I counted fifteen tents and fifteen wavering fires. In sight were twenty people, tending the fires or gathering brush from the bushes along the river, but more people were probably in the tents, out of the wind.

A straggle of seven Jews, four men and three women, ran toward us, led by a youngish man in a gray cloak and a knotted wool hat, who introduced himself as Rabbi Huda. Belo said who he was and who I was.

The rabbi bowed and turned to his companions. “Don Joseph! God heard us! Do you come from the king and queen?”

“Don Solomon Bohor is hurrying to them.” Belo dismounted from his mule.

I dismounted, too. Don Solomon was Belo’s friend who’d visited us.

Belo added, “Show us how you’re faring.”

“Your granddaughter, too?”

“Yes. She wants to come.”

I did want to.

The guards and Hamdun stayed behind. I noticed Hamdun’s sad face.

As we walked to the tents, the rabbi said, “We have fish from the river, but not enough. We don’t dare slaughter any of the farmer’s sheep, even though we’d pay him back.” He pointed at a farmhouse perched on the hill above us. “Señor Diego hates Jews.”

We stooped to enter the tent the rabbi led us to. I heard mewling and was transported into the past. A sick kitten!

But the whimper turned out to come from a baby. In the back of the tent, a woman sat on a carpet with a blanket around her shoulders and a baby in her lap.

The rabbi said, “Our son won’t nurse. We have no medicine, no physician.”

I crouched by the mamá. How thin the baby’s arms were! And how big his eyes. Beautiful! “Can I hold him?”

The woman shook her head. “I have him.”

The rabbi led us to other tents. We saw a woman with a swollen leg, a man who hadn’t stopped weeping for two days, and a woman who was guarded by her husband because she kept trying to return on foot to Valmaseda, where her married daughter lived as a Christian.

I could think only of the sick baby.

Belo gave half our ducats to Rabbi Huda and told him to use the money to buy food and whatever the aljama needed to better their situation.

The rabbi thanked him. “This will help us find new homes.”

We left the camp to return to the city of Vitoria, which we had passed through on our way here. Belo prayed for half an hour. I felt comforted until he began to talk.

“As soon as I saw those councilors, I knew we’d fail.”

We? Had I failed?

“But there must have been something we could have said—how much money we had. They probably didn’t think we had so much. Should we go back? I’ve already given the rabbi half, so we no longer have it. We shouldn’t go back.”

“Why did you give the rabbi only half, Belo?”

“Half was more than enough! Who knows what else our purse will be needed for tomorrow or next week?”

“Oh.” I asked my most important question: “Belo? Is there a physician in Vitoria?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Can we send him to the rabbi’s baby?”

“That baby is past saving.”

He would die? I wept until I had no more tears.