CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE CHOSEN
The following Sunday morning, Yonah took the gray Arabian horse from the stables in the gloom of dawn, departing the compound before the other workers had stirred. In the beginning he tried only to accustom himself to the act of being on the creature’s back. It took him three weeks more to work up the courage to drop the reins. The maestro had told him it was not enough simply to retain his seat in the saddle; he must learn to give directions to the horse without the use of reins or bit. When he wanted the horse to gallop, a kick of his heels. A single pressure of both knees to direct the animal to stop. A series of quick pressures from the knees to cause the horse to walk backward.
To his delight he found that the horse had been well trained to obey these very instructions. Yonah practiced again and again, learning to float with the rise and fall of the gallop, to anticipate the quick stop, to retreat at a walk.
He felt like a squire in training to become a knight.
* * *
Yonah had been an apprentice through the late summer, the fall, and the winter. This far south, spring came early. On a day of sunshine and soft air, Manuel Fierro examined each piece of the Count Vasca armor and instructed Luis Planas to assemble it.
It stood in the courtyard next to a fine sword made by Paco Parmiente, and the sun turned the burnished metal into a blaze of glory. The maestro said he planned to send a party of men to deliver the armor to the nobleman in Tembleque, but it could not leave until other urgently needed work had been completed.
So the armory banged and clanked with the renewed energy of the metalworkers. Both the completing of projects and the coming of spring energized Fierro, and he announced that before the departure of the delivery party there would be another game.
On the next two Sunday mornings, Yonah rode out into a deserted field and practiced riding with the lance firmly held at the ready, its balled point steadily directed as the Arab horse galloped toward a bush that served as target.
* * *
On several different evenings Vicente came very late to the hut, where he dropped to his pallet and at once snored in a drunken stupor. In the chandlery shop Tadeo Deza spoke scornfully of his cousin Vicente. “He grows drunk quickly and unpleasantly, rewarding with the wildest stories those who ply him with the cheapest drink.”
“What manner of wild stories?” Yonah asked.
“Claims to be one of God’s chosen. Says he has found the bones of a saint. Says soon he will make a generous donation to Holy Mother Church, yet never has he money even to pay for his wine.”
“Ah, well,” Yonah said uncomfortably. “He harms no one save perhaps himself.”
“I believe in the end my cousin Vicente will kill himself with strong drink,” Tadeo said.
* * *
Manuel Fierro asked Yonah if he would participate in the new game, again to face Angel Costa on horseback. Even as Yonah agreed, he wondered if perhaps the maestro wished to see if he had profited from being allowed to practice with the Arab horse.
So two days later, in the coolness of morning Paco Parmiente helped him into the battered test armor once again, while at the far end of the jousting pit Luis laughed as he played squire and groom, dressing Costa.
“Ah, Luis!” Costa cried, pointing at Yonah in mock alarm. “See his size? Alas, he is a giant. Oh, woe! What shall we do?” And shook with laughter when Luis Plana placed his palms together and raised them to the sky as if praying for mercy.
Parmiento’s usually placid face glowed with anger. “They are scum,” he said.
Each of the contestants had help in mounting. Costa had done it before and seated his horse in a few moments. Yonah was clumsier; he found it hard to raise his leg to throw it across the gray Arabian and made a mental note to describe the difficulty to the maestro, although perhaps that was unnecessary, for Fierro watched as he stood with the workers, and usually he noted a great deal.
When they were mounted, the two combatants turned their horses to face each other. Yonah took care to appear nervous, clutching the reins in his left hand and holding the lance loosely in his right, its balled point waggling to the side.
But when the maestro let his kerchief fall to start the game, Yonah dropped the reins and took a firm grip on the lance as the Arab horse lunged forward. He had become accustomed to riding at a target and it was unnerving to see the target hurtling toward him, but he kept the lance pointed at the oncoming horseman. His balled tip found the very center of Angel’s breastplate. Costa’s lance slid harmlessly off his shoulder and for one brief moment Yonah was certain he had won, but his lance bowed and snapped, and Costa kept his seat as they moved past one another at a gallop.
Both of them turned their horses at the end of the wall. The maestro shoed no sign of declaring the tourney over, so Yonah threw away the stub of the broken lance and rode weaponless to meet Angel.
The tip of Costa’s lance grew larger as they rode at one another, but when Costa was two hoofbeats away, Yonah pressed his knees into the gray Arab’s sides, and the horse stopped at once.
The lance missed Yonah only by a span, close enough to allow him to grasp it and jerk hard, even as his knees were signaling the good horse to move backward. Angel Costa was pulled almost out of the saddle, retaining his seat only because he let go of the lance as his horse continued to move past. Yonah retained a tight grip on the captured lance as he rode away. Now when they turned to face each other it was he who was armed and Angel who was defenseless.
The cheers of the workers were welcome music to him, but his exultation was quenched when the maestro signaled an end to the tourney.
“You did well. Wonderfully well!” Paco said as he helped Yonah out of his armor. “I think maestro stopped it to save his champion from humiliation.”
Yonah looked across the pit to where Luis was disencumbering Angel. Costa was no longer laughing. Luis was protesting to the maestro, who stood and regarded him coolly.
“Oh, it is a bad day for our master-at-arms,” Paco said softly.
“Why? He was not unseated. The game ended with no winner.”
“It is why he is angry, Ramón Callicó. To a savage bastard such as Angel Costa, not to win is to lose. He will bear you no love for this day’s work,” the swordmaker said.
* * *
No one was in Yonah’s hut when he returned. He was disappointed, because he hadn’t seen Vicente among those who witnessed the tourney, and he wanted the enjoyment of talking about it in detail.
The wearing of armor and the tension of combat had drained him, and weariness pulled him into sleep as soon as he lay on his pallet. He didn’t wake until morning. He was still alone, and it appeared to him that Vicente hadn’t been there during the night.
Paco and Manuel Fierro were already at work when he reached the swordmaker’s shed.
“It was done well, yesterday,” the maestro said, and smiled at him.
“Thank you, señor,” Yonah said with pleasure.
He was put to work sharpening dirks. “Have you seen Vicente?” he asked.
Both men shook their heads.
“He did not come to our hut to sleep.”
“He is a drinker, no doubt deep in a drunkard’s sleep behind some bush or tree,” Paco said. He broke off, doubtless remembering that the old man was a favorite of Fierro’s.
“I hope his illness has not returned, and that he has not met with some other misfortune,” Fierro said.
Yonah nodded, troubled.
“I would like to be informed when next you see him,” the maestro said, and Yonah and Paco said they would do so.
* * *
If Fierro had not run out of ink powder while working on the armory’s accounts, Yonah would not have been in the village when Vicente was found. He was approaching the chandler’s shop when a hue and a cry was raised from the wharf below the main street.
“A drowned man! A drowned man!”
Yonah joined those running to the wharf and arrived to see them raising Vicente from the strait, water pouring from him.
His thin hair was plastered, revealing an old man’s scalp and a gash on the side of his head. His eyes stared sightlessly.
“His face is so bruised,” Yonah said.
“No doubt he has been bumping against rocks and the wharves,” José Gripo said gently.
Tadeo Deza came from the chandlery to see what the noise was about. He sank to his knees next to the body and cradled Vicente’s wet head against his chest. “My cousin … my cousin…”
“Where shall we take him?” Yonah asked.
“Maestro Fierro liked him,” Gripo said. “Perhaps he will allow Vicente to be buried on the property behind the armory.”
Yonah walked with Gripo and Tadeo behind the body as Vicente was borne away. Tadeo was shaken. “We were playmates as boys. We were inseparable friends.… As a man he had faults but his heart was good.” Vicente’s cousin, who had spoken so badly of him when he was alive, burst into tears.
* * *
Gripo had guessed correctly that in Fierro’s kindness toward Vicente the maestro would agree to a final act of charity. Vicente was buried in a small grassy place behind the sword maker’s shack. Workers were released from their duties long enough to gather together in the hot sun and see the body interred and hear the funeral blessings of Padre Vasquez. Then everyone returned to work.
Death cast its pall. The hut where Yonah slept was empty and silent with Vicente gone. For several nights Yonah slept fitfully, waking to lie in the dark and listen to the scratching of mice.
Everyone in the armory worked hard, seeking to finish whatever orders could be fulfilled before the delivery party would leave to bring Count Vasca’s new sword and armor to Tembleque. It was why Manuel Fierro frowned when a boy came with a message that a kinsman of Ramón Callicó had arrived in Gibraltar and desired Señor Callicó to come to the tavern in the village.
“You must go, of course,” Fierro told Yonah, who was edging swords. “But mind that you return at once after you have seen him.”
Yonah thanked him numbly and left. He walked toward the village with extra slowness, his mind in turmoil. The man who waited was not Uncle Aron, that was clear. Ramón Callicó was an invented name Yonah had pulled from his mind when a name was needed. Could it be that there was a Ramón Callicó somewhere nearby, and that Yonah Toledano was about to meet that man’s kinsman?
Two men waited in front of the tavern with the boy who had brought the message. Yonah saw the boy point him out to the men and then accept a coin and scamper away.
As he walked up to them he noted that one was dressed like a gentleman, in a mail vest and clothing of quality. He had a small spade beard, carefully tended. The other man had a scraggly beard and rougher clothing, but he wore a sword, too. A pair of fine horses were tied to the tavern’s postern gate.
“Señor Callicó?” the man with the spade beard said.
“Yes.”
“Let us walk a bit while we converse, for we are saddle weary.”
“What are your names, señor? And which of you is my kinsman?”
The man smiled. “All men under God are as kinsmen, is it not so?”
Yonah watched them.
“I am Anselmo Lavera.”
Yonah remembered the name. Mingo had spoken of Lavera as the man who controlled the sale of stolen relics in southern Spain.
Lavera didn’t introduce the other man, who remained silent. “We were asked by Señor Vicente Deza to see you.”
“Vicente Deza is dead.”
“How unfortunate. An accident?”
“He drowned and was recently buried.”
“So unfortunate. He had told us you know the whereabouts of a certain cave.”
Yonah knew with certainty that they had killed Vicente. “You seek one of the caves in the Gibraltar rock?” he said.
“It is not in the rock. We are certain from what Deza said that it is somewhere away from Gibraltar.”
“I don’t know of such a cave, señor.”
“Ah, I understand, it is sometimes difficult to remember. But we shall encourage you to remember. And we shall handsomely reward your remembering.”
“If Vicente gave you my name, why did he not give you the directions you seek?”
“As I said, his death was unfortunate. He was being encouraged to remember, and the encouragement was clumsy and too enthusiastic.”
Yonah was chilled by the fact that Lavera could make such a terrible admission so calmly.
“I was not there, you understand. I would have been better at it. By the time Vicente was willing to give the directions, he was unable. But when he was encouraged to tell who else might help us, he uttered your name at once.”
“I shall enquire to see if anyone else has knowledge of a cave Vicente knew,” Yonah said.
The man with the short beard nodded. “Did you have opportunity to see Vicente before he was buried?”
“Yes.”
“Poor drowned fellow. Was he badly used?”
“Yes.”
“Terrible. The sea has no pity.”
Anselmo Lavera looked at Yonah. “We are needed elsewhere quickly, but we will pass here again in ten days. Think about rewards, and what poor Vicente would want you to do.”
Yonah was aware he would have to be far from Gibraltar when they returned. He knew if he didn’t reveal the location of the saint’s cave they would kill him, and if he did, they would kill him because he could bear witness against them.
It saddened him, because for the first time since leaving Toledo, he liked where he was and what he was doing. Fierro was a good and kind man, the sort of master who was extremely rare.
“We wish you to ponder, so you will remember what we must learn. Is it agreed, my friend?”
Lavera’s voice had never been less than pleasant, but Yonah was recalling the wound in Vicente’s head and the terrible condition of his face and his body.
“I shall do my best to remember, señor,” he said politely.
* * *
“Did you meet with your kinsman?” Fierro asked when Yonah returned.
“Yes, maestro. A distant relative on my mother’s side.”
“Family is important. It is good he came at this moment, for in a few days you will be gone from here.” He said he had decided to send Paco Parmiento, Luis Planas, Angel Costa, and Ramón Callicó to deliver Count Vasca’s armor. “Paco and Luis can use their skills to make any adjustment in the armor that may be needed after it is delivered. Angel will serve as commander of your little caravan.”
Fierro said he wanted Ramón Callicó to make the presentation of the armor to the count, “because you speak a purer Spanish than the others, and because you can read and write. I wish written confirmation of the receipt of the armor by the count of Tembleque. Is it understood?”
Yonah took an extra moment to answer, because he was saying a prayer of thanks.
“Yes, señor, it is understood,” he said.
* * *
Despite Yonah’s relief at being far from Gibraltar when Anselmo Lavera would return, he was made apprehensive by the thought of returning to the Toledo district. Yet he told himself he had left Toledo as a boy and was returning as a large man, his features altered by growth, maturity and a broken nose, his beard full and his hair long, and his identity changed and established.
Fierro brought the four members of the party together and spoke plainly when he gave them his instructions. “It is dangerous to travel to strange places, and I order you to work in concert and not in opposition to one another. Angel is the leader on the journey, in charge of defense and responsible to me for the safety of each of you. Luis and Paco are responsible for the condition of the armor and the sword. Ramón Callicó will turn over the armor to Count Vasca, make certain he is content with it before you depart from him, and receive and bring back a written receipt of delivery.”
One by one, he asked each of them if all of his instructions were understood, and each answered in the affirmative.
Fierro oversaw their careful preparations for the trip. For food they would take only a few sacks of dried peas and hard biscuit. “Angel must hunt along the way to give you fresh meat,” the maestro said.
Each of the four men in the party was assigned a horse. Count Vasca’s armor would be transported by four pack mules. So that Fierro would not be shamed by the appearance of his workers they were given new clothing, along with stern instructions that it should not be worn until they were approaching Tembleque. All four were issued swords, and Costa and Yonah were given vests of mail. Costa strapped large, rusty spurs to his boots and packed a longbow and several bundles of arrows.
Paco smiled. “Angel wears the permanent scowl that marks him as a leader of men,” he whispered to Yonah, who was grateful that Paco would be on the trail with him as well as the other two.
* * *
When all was ready the four travelers led their beasts up the gangway of the first coastal ship to put into Gibraltar, which to Yonah’s surprise turned out to be La Lleona. The ship’s maestro greeted each passenger with a warm word.
“Hola! It is you,” the captain said to Yonah. Although he had never spoken to Yonah once while he was a member of the crew, the captain bowed to him now and smiled. “You are welcome back to the Lleona, señor.” Paco, Angel, and Luis watched with surprise as other members of the crew greeted him.
The animals were tethered to the rails on the afterdeck, and as the apprentice it was Yonah’s chore to carry up hay from the hold each day and feed them.
Two days out of Gibraltar the sea turned choppy, and Luis became queasy and then vomited often. Angel and Paco were unperturbed by the ship’s motion and to Yonah’s surprise and pleasure, so was he. When the mate called out an order to furl sail, on impulse he ran to the rope ladder at the mainmast and climbed, and soon he was helping the sailors haul in the sail and make it fast. When he reached deck again the crewman named Josep, whose injury had given Yonah opportunity to join the deck crew, grinned at him and slapped his back. Thinking about it, after the fact, Yonah realized that if he had fallen into the sea the mail vest would have helped carry him deep, and for the rest of the trip he remembered he was a passenger.
For the four passengers from Gibraltar, the days under sail were filled with tedium. Early on the morning of the third day, Angel unpacked his longbow and a bundle of arrows and prepared to shoot birds.
The others settled down to watch. “Angel is as good with the bow as a damned Inglés,” Paco said to Yonah. “He came from a little village in Andalusia known for its fine bowmen, and he went to his first fighting as an archer in militia.”
But Gaspar Gatuelles, the mate, hurried over to Costa. “What are you doing, señor?”
“I shall kill a few seabirds,” Angel said easily, notching an arrow.
The mate was aghast. “No, señor. No, you shall kill no seabirds on the Lleona, for to do so would bring certain disaster upon the ship and upon us.”
Costa scowled at Gatuelles, but Paco hurried over and placated him. “Soon we shall be on land, Angel, and you will have plenty of hunting. Your skill will be needed to keep us in meat.” To the general relief, Costa unstrung the bow and put it away.
The passengers sat together and watched the sea and the sky. “Tell us of war, Angel,” Luis said. Costa was still glowering and sulky, but Luis urged until he agreed. At first the other three men listened avidly to his memories of soldiering, for none had been to war. But soon they tired of tales of bloodshed and butchery, of villages put to the torch, of cattle slaughtered and women forced. They had had enough long before Angel finished talking.
* * *
The four passengers were aboard nine days. The sameness of their days wore on them and sometimes tempers shortened and frayed. By unspoken agreement each man began to keep to himself for long hours at a time. Yonah kept turning a problem over and over in his mind. If he should return to Gibraltar, he was certain Anselmo Lavera would kill him. Yet Costa’s confrontation with Gaspar Gatuelles had caused him to begin to see his problem in a new way. Angel’s authority had been overcome by the greater shipboard authority of the mate. One force had been held in check by a greater force.
Yonah told himself that he needed to find some greater force than Anselmo Lavera, a strength that could eradicate the threat of the relic thief. At first this seemed preposterous, but as he sat and watched the sea hour after hour, slowly a plan began to take shape in his mind.
* * *
Whenever the ship made port and was tied to a dock, the four men brought their animals down the gangway and exercised them, and when finally La Lleona nosed into the harbor at Valencia, the horses and pack mules were in good health.
Yonah had heard terrible stories of the Valencia harbor during the days of the expulsion. How the harbor had been crowded with ships, some of them in great disrepair and outfitted with sail solely to reap the bonanza of fares from the dislocated. How men, women, and children had been crammed into each hold. How, when sickness broke out, stricken passengers had been marooned on uninhabited islands and left to die. How, as soon as they were out of sight of land, some crews had killed passengers and dumped their bodies into the sea.
Yet on the day Angel led the procession from La Lleona, the sun was shining and the Valencia harbor was peaceful and quiet.
Yonah knew that his aunt and uncle and small brother would have come to a small seaside town nearby, seeking passage. Perhaps they had set sail and were now on foreign soil. He knew in his heart he would never see them again, yet each time he rode past a boy of the proper age, he stared, searching for Eleazar’s familiar features. His brother would have thirteen years by now. If he was alive and still a Jew, he would be counted among the men of the minyan.
But Yonah saw only strange faces.
* * *
They rode westward, leaving Valencia behind. None of the horses could compare with the Arab stallion Yonah had ridden in the tourneys. His mount was a large dun mare with flat ears and a thin tail drooping between huge equine buttocks. The mare didn’t make him a dashing figure but she was tireless and an easy ride, for which Yonah was grateful.
Angel rode first, followed by Paco leading two of the mules and Luis leading the other two. Yonah rode at rear guard, which suited him perfectly. Each of them developed his own trail style. Angel burst into tuneless sound from time to time, as apt to sing a sacred hymn as a bawdy tune. Paco joined in any hymns with a booming bass voice. Luis dozed in the saddle, while Yonah passed the time thinking of many things. Sometimes he dwelt on what must be done to carry out his plan against Anselmo Lavera. Somewhere near Toledo there were men who dealt in stolen relics, competing with Lavera for that illicit trade. He clung to the thought that if he could convince them to eliminate Lavera, he would be safe.
Often he passed the hours trying to remember Hebrew passages he had forgotten, the rich language that had fled his mind, the words and the melodies that had abandoned him after a few short years.
He was able to recapture some small remnant, and he repeated those fragments in imperfect silence, again and again. He could recall one short tractate of Genesis xxii in pristine perfection, since it was the passage he had chanted when he was first permitted to read from the Torah as a newly made man. “And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built the altar there, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.” The passage had frightened him then and it frightened him now. How could Abraham have ordered his son to cut wood for a burnt offering and then prepare to kill Isaac and burn his body? Why had Abraham not questioned God, even argued with him? Abba would not have sacrificed a son; Abba had sacrificed himself in order that his son could live.
But Yonah was chilled by another thought. If God was a righteous God, why was he sacrificing the Jews of Iberia?
He knew what his father and Rabbi Ortega would say to such a question. They would say that man could not question God’s motives because man could not see God’s larger design. But when the design included human beings used as burnt offerings, Yonah questioned God. It was not for such a God that he forced himself to play the dangerous game of being Ramón Callicó, day after day. It was for Abba and the others, for the good things he had learned in Torah, visions of a merciful and comforting God, a God that forced people to wander into exile but delivered them finally into land that had been promised.
If he closed his eyes he was able to imagine himself part of the caravan in the wilderness, one of a host of Jews, a multitude of Jews. Seeing them pause in the desert each evening to erect the tents of the host, hearing them praying together before the sanctuary of the ark and the sacred testimony …
Yonah’s reveries were interrupted when lengthening shadows told Angel it was time to halt. They tethered the eight animals under some trees and the four men took time to piss and fart and walk off their saddle stiffness. Then they searched for wood and built a fire, and as their evening gruel began to bubble, Angel dropped to his knees and ordered them to do likewise so they might recite the Paternoster and the Ave María.
Yonah was the last to comply. Before the fierce glare of the master-at-arms he knelt in the dust and added his mumbling to the tired, murmured words of Paco and Luis and the loud, brusque prayers of Angel Costa.
* * *
In the morning Costa was out at first light with his bow. By the time they had packed the mules he was back with four doves and two partridges that they plucked as they rode slowly, leaving a trail of feathers before they stopped to gut the birds and roast them over a fire on green sticks.
Costa hunted every morning all along the route, sometimes bringing a hare or two with a variety of birdlife, so they never lacked food. They traveled constantly and when they stopped were careful to avoid rancor, as Fierro had ordered them to do.
They were eleven days in the saddle before, one evening as they made camp, they glimpsed from afar the walls of Tembleque, fading into the night. Next morning while it was still dark, Yonah left the fireside and bathed in a tiny stream before dressing in the new garments Fierro had given them, thinking grimly that no maiden ever protected her genitals from sight with more care than he. When the others awoke, they chaffed him for his eagerness to don finery.
He remembered riding to this castle with his father.
Now when they rode to the gate, Angel answered the sentry’s loud challenge with equally loud and confident tones.
“We are artisans of the Gibraltar armorworks of Manuel Fierro, arrived with the new sword and armor of Count Fernán Vasca.”
When they were given entry, Yonah saw that the steward was not the same man who had been there years before, but the message he gave had a familiar ring.
“Count Vasca is off hunting in the forests of the north.”
“When will he be seen here again?” Angel asked.
“The count returns when he returns,” the man said sourly. When he saw what was in Angel’s eyes, he glanced quickly to the reassurance of his own armed soldiers on the wall. “I do not believe he will tarry many days,” he said grudgingly.
Costa withdrew to confer with the men from Gibraltar. “They now know that our mules carry precious goods. If we leave here with the sword and armor we may be fallen on and killed by these or other whoresons in number, and the armor and sword stolen.” The others agreed, and Yonah went to the steward.
“We have orders that if the Count Vasca should not be here at our arrival, we must leave the sword and armor in his treasury and receive written receipt attesting to its safe delivery,” he said.
The steward frowned, not happy to take orders from strangers.
“I am certain the count has been waiting impatiently for the armor made by Maestro Fierro,” Yonah said. He did not have to add, If it should be lost on your account …
The steward led them into a stronghold, unlocked ponderous doors whose hinges cried out for oil, showed them where to place the armor, where to place the sword. Yonah wrote out the writ of receipt but the steward was barely literate, and it took a long time to help him read the note. Paco and Luis stared, impressed, and Angel looked away. “Hurry on, hurry on,” he muttered, resenting Yonah’s ability.
Finally the steward scrawled his mark.
* * *
The men from Gibraltar found an inn nearby, their spirits lightened by the fact that their responsibility had been turned over to the castle of Tembleque. “God’s thanks, we brought it here safely,” Paco said, and the relief in his voice spoke for all of them.
“Now I want sleep in comfort,” Luis said.
“Now I want drink!” Costa declared, slamming his hand to the table, where they fell to drinking a bitter, biting wine served by a short and heavy woman with tired eyes. While she filled their cups Angel brushed the back of his hand on the stained apron covering her full thighs and rear, and when there was no objection his hand became bolder.
“Ah, you’re comely,” he said, and she made herself smile. She was accustomed to men who came to the inn after long weeks of travel without women. In a short time she and Angel removed themselves from the other men and held a consultation nearby, feverish bargaining followed by a nod.
Before Angel left with her, he returned to the other three men. “So we must meet here at the inn in three days to determine whether the count had returned,” he said, and then hurried back to the woman.