38

There was a meal after the wedding, meager compared with the usual feast, but I plied my husband with hazelnut nougats, butter cookies, and pastry crescents. He needed to be plumper. And when he chewed he didn’t hum.

Bringing him the best of everything became a game among the littles.

Todros pulled his shoulders back. “I’m your cousin now. We’ll all take care of you.”

Thank you, my darling.

After the celebration, late in the night, I led Hasdai to Jento’s bedroom and carried with me a plate of sugar cookies. “In case you wake up and are hungry.”

I kissed both my brother and my husband on the forehead. When my lips touched Hasdai’s skin, his humming rose to the pitch of a shriek.

I wouldn’t be able to spend much time with him during the day, because I had to help Papá settle our affairs. I asked Aljohar to protect him as much as she could from Mamá, and to bring him snacks.

Hamdun accompanied me wherever I went: to taverns for meals with Old Christians or to houses for meals with conversos. Before we left Spain, we had to pay our debts and we had to collect what was owed us. Each of us could take only one thousand ducats with us, but we could also take bills of exchange that banks would honor. If we were going to be able to continue to help the aljama and other Jews who fled to Naples, we would need funds.

But the people who owed us money offered excuses: the harvest was bad; their own debtors weren’t paying; they were low on cash. They wanted to delay until we were gone and couldn’t collect. But the ones we owed money to pressed for payment.

Everyone wanted to become rich by making us poor. Papá wrote to the monarchs, asking for aid, and paid a messenger to carry the letter, but an answer didn’t come. The days marched on.

In the evenings, I devoted myself to getting to know my husband. I played backgammon with him and Jento on their bed, challenging each in turn, or watching while they played each other. After a few nights, Hasdai’s age gave him the advantage over Jento, who bit back tears whenever he lost two or more games in a row. Hasdai never teased. He was a nice boy—man. If only he didn’t hum!

I brought snacks to munch on during the games: bread slices lathered with roasted garlic and onions or cheese-and-honey sweets or rosewater pastries. In just a week, Hasdai grew a little less thin, and Jento and I began to resemble stew pots.

One night, Jento asked Hasdai why he hummed.

He shrugged. His eyes shifted to me and away, an appeal for rescue.

I reached across the backgammon board for a sweet. “I often count. I know how many tiles there are in every room in the house, because I’ve counted them.”

“How many are there in here?” Jento said.

“There are one hundred and eighty-eight.”

“Why do you do it, Wife?”

Wife sounded strange whenever he said it.

Before I could answer, Jento said, “Todros and Beatriz look older than you. It’s funny you’re her husband.”

Hasdai just said, “My papá didn’t get tall until he was seventeen.”

His papá was a foot taller than mine. When Hasdai was seventeen and I was twenty and he’d gotten his growth, the difference in our ages might not seem important.

Jento repeated Hasdai’s question: “Why do you count?”

“It calms me.”

“That’s why I hum!” Hasdai sounded livelier than I’d ever heard him.

I smiled. “We’re alike that way.” But if he didn’t stop eventually, I’d be counting out loud to defend myself. We’d be the crazy couple of Naples.

When I was out with Hamdun, we often saw workmen at the synagogue, pacing the length of the walls and using their surveyors’ tools to measure their height. As soon as the aljama left, the synagogue would be refitted as a church.

I wondered what God thought of this. Was He angry at the priests? Angry at us for failing to prevent our expulsion?

On June 2, Papá told me about a priest’s announcement in synagogue that Don Solomon would be baptized on Friday, June 15, in Guadalupe, a month and a half before the Jews’ last day to be in Spain.

I thought he would already have been baptized, but Papá said, “The monarchs needed time. They think that if the ceremony is grand enough, more of us will decide to convert, too.”

A few families in our aljama were persuaded, but most weren’t.

In the judería, sorrow rang from every house. Wherever I was—in the kitchen, the courtyard, Papá’s study—I heard wails.

Once, on our way to an inn to try to collect a debt, Hamdun and I followed Señor Ezmel, a locksmith, toward the judería gate. He was walking a donkey loaded with satchels. His son, a boy of about nine, sat atop the pile.

Behind me, a moan rose to a howl. The locksmith’s wife heaved past me and snatched her son. Clutching him tight, she turned and started back. But her husband wrested the child away from her.

I understood. Señor Ezmel was converting, but his wife wasn’t. He was taking their son, and she wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Alcalá de Henares was just a little north of the middle of Spain. Portugal to the west and the sea to the east were equally distant. For a fee, the king of Portugal was willing to admit Spanish Jews for eight months.

Closest of all was the kingdom of Navarre, where the king agreed to take us in forever, if we chose to stay. North of Navarre lay France, where we were unwanted for even long enough to set down one foot.

The southern coast was farthest, and Málaga was the likeliest departure port for North Africa.

Of the 207 families in the aljama, 40 converted; another 40 chose to go to Portugal, hoping the king there would relent and let them stay—or that the Spanish monarchs would change their minds and allow them back in; 12 families set their sights on Navarre and 11 on North Africa. The rest, 104 families, 524 Jews—some elderly, some ill, some children, some pregnant—no doubt influenced by Belo’s possible presence there, decided on the kingdom of Naples.

Our number swelled to 532, counting the Moorish servants who chose to go with their families. Of our servants, only Aljohar elected to come. More might have, if not for Mamá. Hamdun wanted to stay and buy his land and goats and find a wife.

I hugged Aljohar when I found out. “You’re the best comfort this family has.”

She sniffed. “If pirates eat us for dinner, so be it.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t think pirates are cannibals.”

She said darkly, “They may be.”

The town council decided that everyone would leave together for the port of Valencia on July 1, which would give us thirty days to get there, buy provisions, pay our departure tax (really, there was such a tax!), and meet our shipmasters. Papá had written to a ships’ agent to arrange transport for everyone.

On Wednesday, June 27, Papá and I stopped settling our business affairs and joined the servants and the rest of the family in packing. I wrapped Belo’s books in layers of linen.

On June 30, after we’d sat down with the whole family to our Sabbath dinner, someone pounded on the door. Papá went to answer it himself.

He returned alone. His face frightened me—eyes wide, with the whites showing all around. “Loma, Don Rodrigo is here. He says you have to go with him to the inn of the hermandad.”

The prison!