24

On the second floor, Pero led me through an arch into a living room, where a Moorish maidservant was polishing a silver floor vase. “Sit! Take your ease.” He told the servant to fetch Marina. “Tell her Loma is here.”

Next to the vase was a settle piled with cushions. I sat and looked around, taking a moment to gather my courage. Across from me, the room overlooked the courtyard. A painted wooden crucifix hung above the arch we’d entered through. The chamber’s chief beauty was the ceiling, with its grid of beaded beams and the plaster between them painted a sea-foam green.

I took a deep breath. “I need more than a week.”

“You can’t have it.”

“He won’t come around in a week.” If he ever would. “Please give me a month.”

“A week.”

“Bela would curse you.”

“She would. I don’t think even she could have saved me from gambling.”

Marina bustled in. “Loma!” She took my hands in hers and shook them. “I’m so happy you’ve come! After Samuel’s wedding, Pero said we might have a visitor, but I didn’t suspect it would be you.” Her eyes glistened.

“I’m glad to see you.”

“And to see Pero, yes?” She finally dropped my hands.

“And his beautiful jewelry.”

“Everything he does is a masterpiece. You must stay for dinner! I always make too much. We were about to sit down.”

If Ledicia and her family didn’t come to our house for dinner, as they often did, Papá would tell everyone I was with her. If she came, they would be frightened, but I doubted they’d look for me here.

If I stayed, maybe I could persuade Pero to give me more time. “If I can eat what you’re serving, I’ll be happy to stay.”

“Let’s see,” Pero said. “What is it today?”

“Goose stew with cinnamon, as my mother makes it.”

“Can someone bring Hamdun inside and give him a meal, too?”

“Yes!” Marina hurried out, calling behind her. “I’m so pleased you’re here!”

When she was gone, I said, “Belo is angry. He’ll come around, but by degrees. Not quickly.”

“A week. Denouncing my own family will bring me Old Christian customers.”

Marina came back, followed by two Muslim maids bearing trays. “Come.”

We followed her through another arch into a pretty dining room, which also overlooked the courtyard. The maids set their trays down on the long table. One went to an open cabinet and lifted out a bowl. Between this cupboard and one just like it hung another crucifix—at least three feet long, big enough to show the whites of Jesus’s eyes.

“Not that cupboard,” Marina said. “The other one.”

Pero looked sharply at her.

Blushing she added, “We should all eat from the same cupboard.”

The maid went to the other cabinet and fetched a bowl that looked identical to the first. I understood. Considerately, Marina didn’t want me to have to eat from a bowl that had held dairy.

Apparently, since she had two sets of dishes, Marina was still observing at least some Jewish laws about food.

“Ask Cook to make fritters for dessert,” she told the maids.

Pero bent his head and began in a strong enough voice that the sound would follow the servants out, “Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

I murmured, and Marina echoed loudly, “Amen.” She added, “There are more places to direct my prayers now: Christ, the Holy Mother, the Holy Ghost, God—although I don’t know if He’s the same God. And there are many saints.” She giggled. “How can anything bad befall us?” Her expression changed. “Maybe one of them will send us a baby.”

Poor Marina. We were both childless, and she had to endure Ugly Camel Head, too.

“Christ is a comfort,” he said. “And church is a comfort, too, isn’t it, Wife?”

She ladled stew into my bowl. “If I understood any of it. The singing is pretty, the incense smells nice, and they light as many candles as we—as the Jews—do.”

The stew was delicious, moist, and with the flavors of home: cinnamon, ginger, pepper, garlic.

I’d never spent so much time with Marina. She was naturally chatty, or she was nervous.

“How do you pass your day?” I asked.

“Christian women go out more than Jewish ones do, so I go to the market myself every day, and I don’t have to take anyone with me. Sometimes I sit in the plaza outside the cathedral and watch the pigeons. My family doesn’t visit me, and my neighbors don’t, either. I work in the kitchen a lot. I have to watch the servants—”

“Salad, Loma?” Pero passed me the plate.

Undeterred, she went on. “—or they do things wrong.”

I didn’t ask what things, because I guessed. If she weren’t supervising, the servants might add milk to a stew or melt cheese into a sauce. Unless they were stupid, they would have seen enough to report her. Or perhaps they were so well paid they didn’t care.

I could threaten to denounce her.

Would I do it to save Papá and Belo? I wasn’t sure.

Would that save us? Probably not. The Inquisition would just pull all of us in.

The meal passed slowly. Pero took helping after helping. I told them about Samuel’s new house. Marina asked questions, and the minutes ticked by.

Finally, Pero put down his knife. A maid came and piled the dishes on a tray.

“I’ll see how the fritters are coming.” Marina started to follow the maid out, then turned. “It’s such a pleasure to have you here!”

When she was out of earshot, my heart began to pound. Could I threaten Pero?

“A week, Loma.”

I swallowed acid. My breath came shallowly. I wet my lips.

Marina returned alone with a platter. “I didn’t need help to carry just this.”

I complimented the fritters, which I couldn’t taste.

Pero spoke of the early summer we were having.

Marina smiled at us and burst out, “Loma, come often! I change the menu every day, and I never serve”—she mouthed the word without saying it—“pork.”

She had given me as many reasons to denounce her to the inquisitors for Judaizing as Pero had to denounce us for helping other New Christians do so.

When the fritters were gone, she offered me almonds or a tour of her kitchen, but I said I had to go home.

“First, Brother, would you show me more of your handiwork? Our sisters told me to see everything.”

In his workshop, I said, “Pero . . .”

He shook his head. “You can’t say anything that will change my mind.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”

He folded his arms. “What?”

“You gave me your hospitality.”

“You’re my sister.”

“Then you still have family feeling for us. We’re not so different.” He and I were nothing alike! “We’ve both taken unusual paths. I’ll probably never marry, and you converted.” I was just talking to give myself time to think. Was there any way to lessen his malice? “Are Christians not supposed to be kind?”

“You have a week.”

I shouldn’t have come. “Then I’ll fail. Goodbye, Brother.” I collected Hamdun from the kitchen and started for the judería.

But halfway there, God or Bela sent me wisdom, and I told Hamdun we were going back. When we arrived, Pero was carrying his tray of jewelry to the window again.

He set it down. “A week.”

“Belo is just angry. He loves his family, and you’re still his grandson. Papá loves you. You may need their love someday, even as a Christian. If they’re”—dead, but I couldn’t say the word—“they won’t be able to help you.”

I meant, You may need their money and influence. Pero would gamble again, and eventually he’d lose again, or someone would denounce him for winning. Christian punishment was even harsher than Jewish. Belo and Papá had Christian friends.

“I won’t be ruined now for future aid I may never need.”

“Suppose I go to Papá? Belo is impossible to persuade to do anything, even to discard his worn-out shoes.”

That won a smile. He decided. “Yes, go to Papá. It doesn’t have to be Belo who speaks in my favor. A week, though.”

I probably wouldn’t need more than an hour for Papá.

The rest of my wisdom came purely from Bela. “Can’t we continue to be brother and sister? I’ll visit when I can. I want to see what you create next.”

His face relaxed. “You’ll be welcome when you come.”

Another inspiration arrived from Bela. “Pero . . .” I touched Bela’s amulet. “Would you make a dozen like it?” I could give one to each little and have a few left over for new babies, protecting them and appeasing Pero in one stroke. “Not exactly the same. Use your artistry, but don’t make them so rich I can’t pay for them by myself.”

He smiled one of his rare, real smiles.

“Goodbye, Pero.”

Hamdun, who’d been sitting cross-legged on the cobblestones, stood.

When we neared the judería gate, Hamdun said in his soft, musical voice, “Loma, there’s a saying: The wise can herd lions.” He smiled at me.

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but it sounded well-meaning. “Thank you.”

Luckily, Ledicia hadn’t come to our house for dinner, so my lie wasn’t discovered. I went to Papá in his study that night and brought the necklace Pero had given me.

Papá moved from his desk to a floor cushion and patted the one next to him. “What’s this?”

I sat and told him what Pero had said at Samuel’s wedding about Belo ruining his business. I didn’t mention the threat, though I’d decided I would if I had to.

The necklace jingled in his hand. “Your abuelo is pitiless when he’s angry. I’ll wear the necklace, and I won’t be shy about saying who made it. Belo doesn’t have to know.”

In two weeks, I picked up the amulets, each one made of quartz, not gems, in a different color, each incised, like mine, with the Hebrew letters for God, on thin silver chains—better than my velvet one. How pretty they were. I said so and got another real smile in return.

As a mark of favor because he was my brother, I let Jento pick his amulet before I distributed the others.

He closed his fist around the dark green pendant with flecks of red, a surprising choice because of its somberness. I remembered Belo telling me that Bela said I was a cabinet of hidden drawers. Seemingly, Jento was, too.

I lowered the chain around his neck. “Now nothing can harm you.”

But my confidence in amulets was less than it had been.

I chose the other littles’ pendants myself based on eye color, skin tone, and temperament. When each had one, I felt I had done what I could against the malevolent forces of the world.

At first, I visited Pero to keep him from being angry at us. But soon I went for his wife’s company. We talked by the hour—about cooking, sewing, spinning, weaving. Then we began to play backgammon together.

Hers was a child’s game, just a rush to the end, with no strategy to take advantage of the luck of the dice. I won almost every game, but she wasn’t troubled. Her nature was happy, fortunate for someone married to my brother.

I’d never had a friend before, only sisters and Samuel, and we all knew everything about each other. With Marina, there was discovery, which I relished.

“We’re going to Gerona,” I announced a few days before we left.

“Exciting!”

It used to be. Now it was my life.