CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE SOUND OF SHEEP

Yonah traveled north again on Moise, slowly wandering along the border with Portugal, keeping pace with the autumn browning of the green land. Half a dozen times he stopped and performed brief labor to earn money for food, but he stayed in no one place until he reached Salamanca, where workers were being hired for the repair of the cathedral.

He told the burly foreman his name was Ramón Callicó. “What are you able to do?” the foreman asked, no doubt hoping he was a journeyman mason or a carpenter.

“I am able to work,” Yonah said, and the man nodded.

The oxen and huge draft horses used to drag the heavy stone were kept in a nearby barn. Yonah kept Moise in the barn as well, and at night he slept next to the burro, lulled by the sounds of the animals in their stalls.

By day, he became part of a small army—laborers, masons, stone carvers, and drovers—struggling to replace blocks of the dark stone that made up the cathedral’s walls, which in places were ten feet thick. The work was sweaty and terrible, noisy with the complaints of the animals, the curses and shouted orders of foremen and drovers, the tapping of hammers and banging of mauls, and the constant, grinding growl of heavy stone being moved over resistant ground. Small blocks of stone were carried by laborers. When the larger blocks had been moved as far as possible by animals, men became the beasts of power, long lines of them straining to move the stone by hauling on stout ropes, or standing side by side as they pushed, leaning against their enemy, the stone.

Yonah was somehow pleased to work on the repair of a house of worship, even one designed for the prayer of others. He wasn’t the only non-Christian helping to repair the cathedral; the master artisans were Moors who worked stone and wood with wondrous skill. When Yonah’s father had been approached by Padre Sebastián Alvarez to design and fashion a reliquary to hold a Christian relic, Helkias had discussed the opportunity with Rabbi Ortega, who had advised him to accept the commission. “It is a mitzvah to help people pray,” the rabbi had said, and he had pointed out that the delicate and beautiful work on the synagogues of Toledo had been done by Moors.

*   *   *

The labor on the cathedral was all-consuming. Like the others, Yonah toiled dully and without laughter, speaking only in brief utterances about the work, protecting his difference from them by keeping all thought to himself. Sometimes he was teamed with a bald peón who was built like a block of stone, squat and wide. Yonah never learned his patronymic but the foremen called him Leon.

One morning, when Yonah had been in Salamanca for seven weeks, he was working with Leon, wrestling stone into place. He looked up from their labors to see a procession of black-cowled men walking from the cathedral after their Matins prayers, which had begun before the workers arrived.

Leon stared at the friar at the head of the procession.

“That one is Fray Tomás Torquemada. Chief inquisitor,” he whispered. “I am from Santa Cruz, where he is prior of the monastery.”

Yonah looked and saw a tall, elderly friar with a long straight nose and a pointed chin, and brooding, contemplative eyes. Lost in thought, Torquemada was quickly past them. There were perhaps two dozen priests and friars in the straggling column, and in their midst Yonah saw another tall man, with a face he would recognize anywhere. Bonestruca came almost within Yonah’s shadow, deep in conversation with a companion, so close Yonah was able to see a scratch on his neck and a sore on his upper lip.

The friar glanced up and looked Yonah squarely in the face, but the gray eyes showed no recognition or interest as they flickered away again, and even as Yonah stood frozen with apprehension, Bonestruca moved past.

“What brings Fray Torquemada to Salamanca?” Yonah asked Leon, and the peón shrugged.

But later in the day Yonah heard the foreman tell another worker that inquisitors from every part of Spain had gathered for a meeting in the cathedral, and he began to wonder if this was why God had saved him and brought him here, this opportunity to kill the man who had murdered both his father and his brother.

*   *   *

Next morning, he watched again as the inquisitors passed from the cathedral after Matins. He decided that the best place for him to assault Bonestruca would be to the left of the cathedral entrance, close to where he worked. He would be able to depend upon striking only once before he was overwhelmed, and he thought that to kill Bonestruca he would have to use his sharp hoe like an ax, stabbing him in the throat.

That night he lay sleepless and anxious on his bed of straw in the barn. Sometimes as a boy he had had daydreams about being a warrior, and in recent years he had told himself he would enjoy avenging the deaths of his father and his brother. But now, brought to a situation where that might be possible, he anguished, not knowing if he could kill. He asked the Lord to grant him strength when the moment arrived.

In the morning he went to the cathedral as usual.

When a friar came through the doors after Matins, Yonah picked up the hoe and went to the place near the cathedral entrance. Almost at once he began to tremble uncontrollably.

Five more friars followed the first, and then no one else came.

The foreman stared at Yonah, seeing him standing pale and idle. “Are you sick?”

“No, señor.”

“Should you be helping to mix the mortar?” he asked, noting the hoe.

“Yes, señor.”

“Well then, go and be about it,” the man growled, and Yonah did as he was bidden.

That afternoon he heard that the meeting of the guardians of the faith had ended the afternoon before, and he knew he was stupid and foolish, unfit to be God’s avenging arm. He had delayed too long and Bonestruca was gone, returned with the other inquisitors of Spain to the regions of their terrible responsibility.

*   *   *

The work in Salamanca lasted late into the spring. In mid-March a muscle in Leon’s back tore while they moved a block of stone, and Yonah saw the peón roll on the ground in agony. Leon was lifted into the bed of a wagon and carried away, and Yonah never saw him again. Yonah was paired with others when there was need for two laborers, but they had nothing in common with one another. He turned away from them out of fear, and no one became his friend.

Not all the repairs had been made to the 355-year-old cathedral when the labor ended amid heated arguments about the structure’s future. Many of the townfolk said their house of God wasn’t large enough. Despite the fact that the Chapel of San Martín contained frescoes of the thirteenth century, the cathedral had little ornamentation and suffered in contrast to the distinguished cathedrals in other places. Already there were those who had begun to raise money to build a new cathedral in Salamanca, and further repairs on the old cathedral were postponed.

Yonah escaped into unemployment and drifted south again. On the seventh day of May, the birthday that made him eighteen years old, he was in the border town of Coria. He stopped at an inn and treated himself to a stew of goat meat and lentils, but an overheard discourse between three men at a nearby table ruined his celebration.

They were speaking of the Jews who had fled Spain for Portugal.

“In order to gain admittance to Portugal for six months,” one of the men said, “they agreed to pay King John one-fourth of their worldly goods and one ducat for every soul allowed to cross the border. One hundred and twenty thousand ducats in all. The six months of their residency expired in February, and can you countenance what the whoreson king did then? He declared the Jews to be slaves of the state.”

“Ai … May God curse King John.”

From their tone Yonah guessed they were conversos. Most Christians would not have been so wounded about the enslavement of Jews.

He had made no sound, but one of the three glanced over and observed him sitting still and stiff, and knew he had listened. The man said something to his companions quietly, and the three rose from their chairs and left the inn.

Yonah realized once more the wisdom Abba and Uncle Aron had shown in determining that the safer course from Toledo had been east instead of west into Portugal. His appetite gone, he continued to sit at the table while his cold stew congealed.

*   *   *

That afternoon he rode toward the blatting of many sheep. Soon he came to a flock spreading away from its center and presently saw the reason they were allowed to wander. Their old shepherd, gaunt and white haired, lay on the ground.

“I am stricken,” he told Yonah simply.

His face against the grass was as pale as his hair, and he made a soft sibilance each time he struggled to breathe. Yonah turned him on his back, fetched him water and tried to see after his comfort, but the old man indicated that his greatest agony was the impending loss of the flock.

“I can get your sheep,” Yonah said, and he mounted Moise and rode away. It wasn’t a difficult task. Many times he had worked with Aron Toledano’s flock. Uncle Aron had had fewer animals, and as many goats as sheep, but Yonah was familiar with their ways. These sheep hadn’t strayed far, and after some small difficulty he herded them into a tight group.

The old man managed to gasp that his name was Geronimo Pico.

“How else can I help you?”

The shepherd was in severe pain, his arms clasping his chest. “The sheep must be returned … to Don Emilio de Valladolid, near Plasencia,” he said.

“And so must you be returned,” Yonah said. He lifted the shepherd onto the burro and took up the old man’s rude crook. They made slow time, for he needed to hasten over a wide area just to keep the sheep together. It was late in the afternoon when he witnessed the aged shepherd drop from Moise’s back. Somehow, from the heavy fall and the nerveless sprawl of the body, he knew at once that the old man was dead.

Still, he spent time calling out to Geronimo Pico, patting the aged face and rubbing the man’s wrists before acknowledging death.

“Ai, damnation…”

Absurdly whispering the Kaddish for the stranger, he slung the body across Moise’s back, face down and arms dangling, and made certain the flock was bunched before proceeding along the trail. Plasencia was not far; presently he came to a man and a woman working in a field.

“The farm of Don Emilio de Valladolid?”

“Yes,” the man said. He gazed at the corpse and crossed himself. “Geronimo the shepherd.”

“Yes.”

He told Yonah how to find the farmhouse. “Past the great tree split by lightning, across the stream, and on the right you will see it.”

It was a large, well-kept finca and Yonah drove the sheep into the barnyard. Three workmen appeared who needed no explanation when they saw the corpse; they slid the shepherd from the burro, making sad little grunts of regret, and carried the body away.

*   *   *

The landowner was a florid-faced, sleepy-eyed man who wore fine clothes that were covered with stains. He disliked the interruption of his evening meal, and he came outside and spoke to his overseer. “Is there reason for all this noise of the sheep?”

“The shepherd is dead. This one brought him back with the flock.”

“Get the fucking animals away from my house.”

“Yes, Don Emilio.”

The overseer was a lean man of medium height, with brown hair that was turning gray, and steady brown eyes. He and his sons helped Yonah move the flock to a field, the sons smiling and shouting insults at one another. They were Adolfo, a lanky boy who was about sixteen years of age, and Gaspar, several years younger than his brother. The man sent them to fetch two bowls of food—a thick, hot gruel of wheat—and he and Yonah sat on the ground near the sheep and ate silently.

The overseer belched and considered the stranger. “I am Fernando Ruiz.”

“Ramón Callicó.”

“You appear to know how to care for sheep, Ramón Callicó.” Fernando Ruiz was aware that many men would have abandoned the body of Geronimo the shepherd and driven the valuable flock far away, as fast as the beasts could move. This one who sat before him hadn’t done that, signifying that he was either crazy or honest, and he saw no madness in the young man’s eyes.

“We need a shepherd. My boy Adolfo would do well, but he is still a year too young for such responsibility. You wish to continue to care for these sheep?”

The grazing animals were quiet save for an occasional soft bleat, a sound Yonah found comforting.

“Yes, why not?”

“But you must take them away from here.”

“Don Emilio doesn’t like his sheep?”

Fernando smiled. They were alone in the field, but he leaned forward and whispered.

“Don Emilio doesn’t like anything,” he said.

*   *   *

He was to spend thirty-four months virtually alone with the flock, becoming so familiar with it that he knew the ewes and the rams as individuals, which of them were calm and tractable and which were stubborn or mean, which were healthy and which were ailing. They were large, stupid sheep with a long, fine white wool that covered everything save their black noses and placid eyes. He thought them beautiful. Whenever the weather was kind he moved them through a mountain stream to wash away some of the dirt that clung to the greasy white wool, yellowing it.

Fernando gave him some rough provisions and a dagger that was not very good, the blade being made of poor steel. Yonah was allowed to bring the sheep anywhere grass could be found, so long as he returned them to Don Emilio’s farm in the spring for shearing and in the fall for castration and the slaughter of some of the young rams. He took them into the foothills of the Sierra de Gredos, riding sedately at the flock’s slow pace. Uncle Aron had had a brindle dog to help with the herding, but Yonah had Moise. With each passing day the little burro became more adept at keeping the sheep in sight. At first Yonah spent hours on the burro’s back, but soon Moise was acting on his own, clattering after strays like a sheep dog and braying them back to the flock.

Each time he brought the sheep back to the farm young Adolfo, Fernando’s son, took him into his charge and taught him about sheep. Yonah learned to shear, although he never became fast or adept, like Fernando and his boys. He could castrate and slaughter, but when it came to skinning he was not much better with the knife than he was with the shears.

“Don’t be concerned. It all comes with practice,” Adolfo said. Whenever Yonah brought the sheep back to the farm, Adolfo carried a jar of wine out to the far field where the flock was kept, and he and Yonah sat and talked of the problems encountered in sheep herding, the lack of women, the loneliness, and the threat of wolves—Adolfo recommended singing at night to keep them away.

Herding was an ideal occupation for a fugitive. Villages in the sierra were sparse and Yonah avoided them, also giving wide berth to the occasional small farm. He grazed the sheep in the grassy clearings that dotted the lower slopes of deserted mountains, and the occasional human who met him saw only an unsavory young hermit shepherd.

Even bad men avoided him for he was large and rugged, with a wild strength in his eyes. His chestnut hair hung long and his beard had come in full and wide. During the heat of summer he went almost naked, because his clothing, bought used to replace garments he had outgrown, was worn thin. When a sheep met with a fatal accident he skinned it badly and dined with great enjoyment on lamb or mutton until the meat went high, which happened almost at once in the summer. When raw winds blew in wintertime, he tied sheepskins around his arms and legs to ward off the chill. He was comfortable in the hills. At night when he was on a crest he moved intimately under the large, bright stars.

The crook he had inherited from Geronimo Pico was a poor thing, and one morning he cut a long piece from a nut tree, a branch with a natural crook at the end. He carefully peeled it of bark and carved on it a pattern imitating a geometric design Moorish craftsmen had used in the Toledo synagogue. Then he ran his hand through the wool of the sheep until his fingers were rich with their grease and rubbed it into the wood long hours at a time, until the supple staff took on a dark patina.

At times he felt like an animal of the wild, but deep within himself he clung to his more gentle origins, saying morning and evening prayers and trying to keep track of the calendar in order to honor the holy days. Sometimes he managed to bathe before welcoming the Sabbath. It was easy during the summer heat, because anyone coming upon him immersed in a stream or a river would believe he splashed for coolness instead of religion. When the weather wasn’t warm he bathed with a wet rag, shivering, but during the coldest part of winter he allowed himself to stink; after all, it was not as if he were a woman, forbidden to take her husband unto herself until she had visited the mikvah.

He wished he could immerse himself and wash clean his soul, for he was in thrall to the pleasures of the flesh. It was difficult to find a woman he trusted sufficiently. There was a tavern trull from whom he bought wine, and twice he gave her a coin to open her legs for him in her dark, odorous chamber. On occasion while the animals cropped without interest he surrendered himself to lewd pleasure and spilled his own seed, committing the sin for which the Lord took the life of Onan.

Sometimes he imagined how different his existence would have been without the catastrophes that had driven him from his father’s house. By now he would have been a journeyman silversmith, married to a woman of good family, perhaps already a father himself.

Instead, although he had tried valiantly to remain a person, occasionally he felt he was becoming something low and bestial, not only the last Jew in Spain but the last human creature in the world, a concept that several times led him to take foolish chances. Sitting before a fire at night, with the animals gathered near him, he warned wolves away, bawling snatches of remembered words, sending old prayers into the black sky along with the sparks that rose from the snapping wood. Any inquisitor or denouncer drawn toward the light of his fire would have heard his reckless voice flinging forth words of Hebrew or Ladino. But no one ever came.

He tried to be reasonable about the things he prayed for. He never asked God to send the archangel Michael, the guardian of Israel, to sweep down from Paradise and slay those who murdered and did evil. But he asked god to allow him, Yonah ben Helkias Toledano, to serve the archangel. He told himself, and God, and the beasts on the silent hills, that he wanted another opportunity to become the archangel’s strong right arm, killer of the killers, murderer of the murderers, slayer of those who destroyed.

*   *   *

The third time Yonah drove the sheep back to the farm in the autumn season, he found the family of Fernando Ruiz in mourning. The overseer, although he wasn’t old, had dropped dead without warning one afternoon as he walked to inspect a picked field. The farm was in turmoil. Don Emilio de Valladolid had no idea how to run the place himself and had not been able to choose a new overseer. He was in bad humor and shouted a lot.

Yonah thought the death of Fernando Ruiz was a sign that it was time for him to move on. He drank wine in the sheep pasture with Adolfo for the last time.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He knew what it was to lose a father, and Fernando had been a very good man.

He told Adolfo he was leaving. “Who will take over the care of the sheep?”

“I will be the shepherd,” Adolfo said.

“Shall I talk to Don Emilio?”

“I’ll tell him. He won’t care, so long as I keep the sheep away from his delicate nose.”

Yonah embraced Adolfo, and handed over the handsome shepherd’s crook he had made, as well as the flock. Then he mounted Moise and directed the burro away from the farm and Plasencia.

That night he awoke in the dark and listened because he thought he heard something. Then he realized it was the absence of sound that had alarmed him, the fact that there were no quiet noises of sheep, and he rolled over and went back to sleep.