39

Hasdai hummed loudly. I stood.

Samuel stood, too. “I’ll come with you.”

Hasdai didn’t stand.

Ledicia said, “Why does she have to go?”

“Don Rodrigo didn’t say.”

Papá said he’d go with me and Samuel should stay.

Don Rodrigo bowed when I came out. “I’m sorry, Paloma.”

I curtsied. “You’ve always been kind.”

He had three guards with him, but no one touched me.

Who had ordered this? Would I be tortured, like Pero had been?

My steps lagged, so Papá held out his hand for me, meaning I had to keep up. In the hermandad, the small room I was conducted to was furnished with a table, a bench, a bed, and a chamber pot. No windows.

A bed! They were going to keep me here? “Don Rodrigo, the aljama is leaving tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry.”

The room’s walls were white stucco. A crucifix hung next to the door. The floor was large paving stones. The smell: vomit, sweat, excrement. I remembered Pero’s cell.

“I’ll stay with her.” Papá’s Adam’s apple bobbed in and out as he swallowed again and again.

Don Rodrigo repeated his apologies. “She is to be left alone.”

“I can have a lawyer, can’t I?”

“Don Martín has offered to represent you,” Don Rodrigo said.

A converso attorney who owed us money and hadn’t paid.

He didn’t visit me that day. I wasn’t tortured, either. No inquisitors came. What was this about? Not knowing, not even being able to guess, was its own torment. Did they imagine I had crucified a Christian child?

I walked around and around my cell, counting my steps, listening to my heart clip-clop and my stomach grumble. They might have let me eat dinner before taking me.

In the evening, Papá brought me Sabbath dinner leftovers. He hadn’t been able to discover why I’d been imprisoned. “No one will talk to me. I’m a ghost, already gone.”

Belo would have made them talk.

Papá said that he and Samuel had persuaded the families to delay departure for a day in hopes that I’d be released, but I didn’t expect that I would be. The Christians wouldn’t do anything on their Sabbath, and they didn’t.

Early on Monday morning, I had visitors. I heard Hasdai humming before the door opened and he and his father, Judah Rosillo, came in.

Hasdai produced a paper, rolled and tied with twine, from the folds of his robe. “Papá says I have to do this. He says you and I can get married again.”

A get, a writ of divorce, and not a conditional one.

Hasdai and I had been married for less than eight weeks. Our lips had never met.

Papá Judah, now Señor Judah, said, “We hope you agree.”

I nodded.

“You were a good wife.” Hasdai became more talkative than I’d ever heard him. “I’d like you to be my wife again. You are”—he hummed—“sweet and pretty. Please be well. Please do whatever you have to do to be safe.”

Convert? Was that what he meant?

“Thank you. I wish you a safe journey. Please eat a lot whenever you can.”

He smiled. “I’ll try to get fat.”

They left. I tugged off my wedding ring and buried it in my purse. A moment later, all the adults in my family entered. The children, who were being protected from seeing me here, had been told that I was traveling and would join the caravan later. Wise, but I was deprived of saying farewell and hugging them and breathing them in.

Everyone wept, even Mamá.

My sisters and Samuel had spouses and children, so they had to leave. I didn’t want Mamá to stay with me, but Papá might have remained for a while and then caught up with the caravan.

He said, “Your mamá needs me.”

Your daughter doesn’t?

Mamá said, “Your papá paid Don Rodrigo a fortune.”

Papá put a hand on Mamá’s shoulder. “He’ll see that you’re comfortable and well fed.”

“If—” I gulped. “When I’m released, how”—my voice rose—“how will I get to you? There won’t be anyone to travel with.”

“I’ve spoken with Don Martín and—”

Mamá broke in. “He’s been paid well, too.”

Papá put his hands on my cheeks. “He’s promised to arrange an escort for you.”

My lawyer who hadn’t visited me yet.

Samuel said, “We won’t set sail until the last day if you haven’t come.”

What do you say to your family when you may never see them again? Nothing is right; nothing is enough.

“Asher,” Mamá said, “they’re going to leave without us.” She started for the door.

Everyone else hugged me and followed her out.

An hour later, even through the hermandad’s stone walls, I heard singing and tambourines shaking. The aljama was leaving the city and taking my joy with it—the littles.

A week passed. No inquisitors. Don Rodrigo’s men were polite, and I was fed food a Jew could eat.

Don Martín didn’t come. No one told me the charges against me.

I had one faithful visitor: Hamdun, who came every morning and every evening. He had found work at a livery stable at the edge of the city.

On the morning after my family’s departure, he came with three perfect black figs. “Two for you, one for me.”

I protested the unequal division but he insisted.

“I thought you were going to buy land and goats.”

“I can buy them anytime.”

“And find a widow to marry.”

“I can find her later, too.”

I hugged him.

“You don’t deserve this.”

I gestured around my cell. “It’s not so bad. It isn’t raining.”

We both chuckled. He asked if I was getting enough food. I said I was. A few minutes later, he left. In the evening, he brought his backgammon set, and we played by smoky lamplight. He won more games than I did. I hoped I wouldn’t be here long enough to learn his tactics. As a great kindness, he let me keep the set.

“You can return it when you leave.”

Two weeks passed from the day my family left. No inquisitors. No Don Martín. No charges. Only faithful Hamdun. In seventeen days, I’d have to convert or be executed.