9

We left the city, clip-clopping on a road paved with broad, flat stones. As the luckiest girl in all the aljamas, I swore to remember everything.

The road was bordered by pastures, where the green seemed improbably bright. Absently, I started counting the grazing sheep and goats. The morning was pleasant, sunny, cool, with a light breeze.

Entwined with my joy were strings of worry. Would brigands attack? Would the monarchs be angry when I appeared before their persons?

Belo kept the horses to a walk. Papá prayed softly or sang softly, just as he did at home. I felt as if I were nothing but my eyes, my ears, and the part of me that always counted things. Three, seven, eleven riders pounded by, galloping toward our city. A single beggar stood in front of the horse Papá shared with me, forcing him to rein it in. The man, in a threadbare linen cloak, held out a dirty hand for alms. Papá opened his purse and gave him a reale.

The beggar stepped aside, and we set off again.

“Papá,” I said, “I didn’t see him until he was right there!”

“People often don’t see the poor.”

Maybe because no one was afraid of them.

Two oxen drawing a cart clattered toward us. The sky seemed bigger here. Our guards talked among themselves. The road followed our Henares river, which chattered to itself in a language of gurgles and whooshes. The paving stones ended, and the roadway became dusty dirt. No brigands.

As the sun was setting, we arrived in Medinaceli, where we spent the night in the house of the rabbi, and our guards stayed in other Jewish homes. I slept in a bed with the rabbi’s two daughters. In the dark, I pretended they were Vellida and Rica and that Bela had just kissed me and left.

After prayers the next morning, we set out again, in a rainstorm. We put the hoods up on our cloaks, and I was grateful for the warmth of Papá behind me.

Beyond the town, Belo said, “Loma, you’ll meet the Duke of Medinaceli in Tarazona.”

A king, a queen, and now a duke. “Will they mind that I’m with you?”

“His Grace has children and grandchildren of his own,” Papá said. “He is a friend to the Jews.”

Belo added, “He likes people who make money for him.”

Feeling bold, I said, “Belo, would you please snap your fingers?”

Papa said, “Why do you want him to?”

I swallowed, nervous now. “Er . . . Because Mamá says Belo makes golden ducats that way, and he makes them for the duke.” I wanted to see him do it.

Belo and Papá laughed. I felt foolish. Mamá had set this trap for me to fall into.

Papá said, “Loma, we do what the Christians let us do—lend money, collect taxes, run enterprises, like their silver mines, for them.”

“Better than they do, and everyone gets rich,” Belo said. “The Christians can be corrupt, but everybody watches the Jews. We have to be honest.”

How kind Belo and Papá were, to explain everything to me. I felt lucky twice over.

The rain lightened to a drizzle.

“We’d be honest anyway.” Papá kissed the back of my head. “Jews used to be allowed to do more than they can today. We have the best physicians, but they’re kept from treating Christians. The doctors make less, and Christians die. The Almighty shakes His head.”

“In some towns”—Belo pushed back his hood—“Jews can sell hardly anything to Christians. The Jews there are so poor that kind Christians give them charity.”

Papá said, “Some Jews become Christian just so they can earn a living.”

We stopped for the night in the village of Gómara and stayed in the house of one of the five Jewish families, where pallets were set out for us in the living room. After the family retired to bed, Belo pulled his foot salve out of his saddlebag and asked me to rub it in. He took off his shoes and hose.

Papá said, “Loma is tired.”

“She’ll be rested in the morning and my feet will still hurt. She doesn’t mind, do you, Loma?”

I shook my head, though I didn’t want to do it. I knelt as Fatima did. The salve smelled of peppermint, and Belo’s feet smelled of feet.

They were cold!

“Rub harder. Dig between the bones.”

I tried. The tips of my fingers whitened. “Did Bela do this?”

“She refused.”

Could I refuse? No.

“Thank you for coming,” Papá said, “or I’d be kneeling where you are.”

A wave of homesickness engulfed me. What were the littles doing? Did they miss me? I wished I could hug them and breathe them in rather than feet!

Later, on my pallet, my first worry was that plague had entered Ledicia’s house.

The next day dawned warm and sunny. No bandits accosted us. Time passed peacefully. At dusk, we reached Tarazona and went straight to the house of the rabbi and his wife, where I shared a bed with their five-year-old daughter.

Worries marched into my mind like soldiers. Would the king and queen be angry that I was there? What if they disliked children? Would I disgrace Belo and Papá? Would priests come and baptize us?

My imaginings grew wilder. Did the monarchs look like ordinary people, or were they bigger? Did they speak or just roar?

The rabbi’s daughter rolled over and pressed against my side with her nose pushed under my shoulder. Comforted, I finally slept.

My worries woke up with me.

Belo and Papá left me in the morning, first to pray at the synagogue and then to spend time with the rabbi. I helped the rabbi’s wife prepare dinner and made a game with her daughter of mashing garlic and spices together.

But when Belo and Papá returned with the rabbi, they said that we had been invited to take our dinner with the Duke of Medinaceli.

With a Christian? I wondered what we’d be able to eat.

We followed narrow, winding streets out of the judería into other narrow, winding streets. Some of the streets were stone stairs going upward. Once, we had to flatten ourselves against a shoemaker’s shop to make room for a rider on horseback.

Papá said, “The duke is our host for dinner at the Singing Chicken.”

Chickens could sing?

“It’s an inn,” Papá added. “A good place for conversation.”

When we got there, Belo stopped Papá’s hand on the door latch. “Do what we do, Loma, and call the duke ‘Your Grace.’”

We entered a small vestibule: stairs facing us, closed door to the right, open door to the left. We crossed the threshold on the left into an empty room—empty of people, filled with a table that ran the length of the chamber and was covered by a stained white tablecloth. A pillow-covered bench flanked the table. An armchair stood at the end farthest from the vestibule door. A window, shutters open, let in light and cool air. Nailed to the wall above the fireplace was a wooden crucifix. I knew what it was, but I’d never seen one before. I touched the little bulge in my bodice where Bela’s pendant was hidden.

A door on the wall to our right, which would lead to the back of the inn, squeaked open. A very short man entered, a servant, I supposed. He bore a tray that held a small bowl of almonds and one of dried apricots, three pewter mugs, a large ewer, and a small ewer. “Wine for the dons and small beer for the señorita. The duke sends his apologies. He’ll come as soon as he can.” The man left.

Papá poured wine from the big ewer for Belo and himself and beer from the small one for me. He said the prayer and added, “Loma, a grandee makes people wait.”

Belo sat on the bench with his back to the table. Papá sat, too, leaving room for me between them. I sipped my small beer, which tasted like small beer at home, not seeming to be particularly Christian beer. My stomach rumbled. At home, we would have eaten by now. Ledicia might have brought the littles. I’d have encouraged picky Beatriz to eat.

Christ looked so skinny! I counted five ribs sticking out on each side of him. Perhaps he’d been waiting for his dinner, too. I stifled a giggle, put down my mug, and circled the table, counting the wide floorboards that ran the length of the room. Eighteen. I circled again and again. We could have covered four miles on our horses by now.

The door flew open. Belo and Papá jumped up, but I was standing already. I made fists of my trembling hands.

A tall man came in. Standing very erect, with his feet close together, he proclaimed in a voice that was too loud for the room, “Luis de la Cerda y de la Vega, the Duke of Medinaceli.”