CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE CITY OF TOLEDO

Paco and Luis were content to take pallets at the inn and attempt to sleep away the tiredness of a long journey. So it happened that Yonah ben Helkias Toledano, of late called Ramón Callicó, found himself riding alone through the late morning sunlight, as though in a dream.

Down the road between Tembleque and Toledo. Remembering and singing as his father had sung.

“‘Oh, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

And the leopard shall lie with the kid,

And the cow and the bear shall feed,

While the lion eats straw like the ox.…’”

When he approached Toledo, each new glimpse was a gladness and a pain. Here was where sometimes he had walked from the city with other youths to have grave, grown-up discussions—of Talmud lessons, and of the true nature and variety of the sexual act, and of what they would be when they were men, and of the reasons for the various shapes of female breasts.

There was the rock where, only two days before he was murdered, his brother Meir, may his soul rest in peace, had sat with Yonah and taken turns playing his Moorish guitar.

There was the path to the house where once lived Bernardo Espina, former physician of Toledo, may God also grant perfect rest to his Catholic soul.

There was the path to the place where Meir was killed.

Here was where Yonah had sometimes tended the flock of his uncle Aron the cheese maker. There was the farmhouse where Aron and Juana had lived, with unfamiliar children now playing by the door.

Yonah clattered across the Rio Tagus as sunlight glinted hard on the water, hurting his eyes, the mare’s hooves exploding through the bright, clear shallows, wetting his legs.

Then he was riding up the cliff trail to the height, the trail that Moise the burro had descended so surely in the dark of night, and which now the poor mare climbed clumsily and nervously in full daylight.

At the top, nothing had changed.

My God, he thought, You have scattered and destroyed us and You have left this place exactly the same as it was.

He rode slowly down the narrow way that ran near the cliff. The houses matched his memories of them. The old neighbor, Marcelo Troca, was still alive, there he was, grubbing in his garden while near him another burro was listlessly eating his garbage.

The Toledano house was still standing. There was a stench in the air; the closer Yonah came, the stronger was the stench. The house had been repaired. Only … if you knew where to look and then searched very carefully, it was still possible to see the faint signs of a past fire.

Yonah stopped the horse and dismounted.

The house was occupied. A man of middle years came through the door and was startled to see him standing there holding the horse’s reins.

“Buenos días, señor. Is there a thing you wish of me?”

“No, señor, but I feel a dizziness, a touch of the sun. Will you permit me to go to the shade behind your house and rest for a moment?”

The man studied him uneasily, noting the horse, the mail vest, Mingo’s knife, the sword hanging from his left side, the bearded stranger’s hard edge. “You may seek out our shade,” he said reluctantly. “I have cool water. I will bring you drink.”

*   *   *

Behind the house, things were the same and yet vastly different. Yonah went at once to the secret place, searching for the loose stone behind which he had left the message for his brother Eleazar. There was no longer a loose stone. The place had been tightly plastered.

The odor came from behind what had been his father’s workshop. There were hides and animal skins, some soaking in vats before they could be scraped, others drying in the air. He tried to identify the exact spot where his father was buried and saw that an oak tree grew from it, already almost as tall as Yonah.

The householder returned with a wooden cup and Yonah drained it of water despite the fact that it was as if he took in the heavy smell when he swallowed.

“You are a tanner, I see.”

“I bind books and make my own leathers,” the man said, watching him closely.

“May I sit for another moment?”

“As you wish, señor.” But the man remained, watchful—lest Yonah should purloin a wet and stinking skin? More likely he was fearful for valuable books in the workshop, or perhaps he had gold. Yonah closed his eyes and silently recited the Kaddish. Despairing, he knew he would never remove his father’s body from this stinking and unmarked place.

I shall never stop being a Jew. I swear it, Abba.

When he opened his eyes, the bookbinder still stood there. Yonah saw that when he had gone inside for the water he had placed a tool in his belt, a wicked hooked knife doubtless meant to trim leather. Yonah had no quarrel with the man. Clambering to his feet, he thanked the bookbinder for his kindness. Then he returned to his horse and rode away from the house where once he had lived.

*   *   *

The synagogue looked much the same but now it was a church with a tall wooden cross rising from the peak of the roof.

The Jewish cemetery was gone. All the stone memorial markers had been taken away. In several areas of Spain he had seen gravestones with Hebrew inscriptions used to build walls and roadways. The cemetery had been transformed into a grazing meadow. Without markers, he knew only the approximate area of his family graves, and he went there, aware that he made a strange picture as he stood among the sheep and goats and said the prayer for the dead.

*   *   *

Riding toward the center of the city he came to the communal ovens, where a group of women were hectoring the baker for burning their bread. Yonah knew the ovens well. Once, they had been kosher. As a boy, each Friday he had brought the family bread there for baking. In those days the ovens were run by a Jew named Vidal, but now the baker was a hapless fat man with no means of defense.

“You are a lazy, dirty man, and a fool,” one of the women said. She was young and comely, if somewhat fleshy. As Yonah watched, she took one of the ruined breads from her basket and shook it under the baker’s nose, insulting him with a vengeance. “You think I come here to see my good bread turned into dog shit? You should be made to eat it, dumb ox!”

As she turned, Yonah saw that she was Lucía Martín, whom he had loved as a boy.

Her glance slid over him, and past, and then back to him again. But she didn’t pause in her departure, trudging away with her basket of burned bread.

He rode slowly down the narrow street, not wishing to overtake her. But he had ridden scarcely beyond the houses and prying eyes when she stepped from behind a tree where she had been waiting.

“Truly, is it you?” she said.

She walked to the horse and gazed up at him.

What he must do, he knew, was deny that he knew her, smile over a mistaken identity, bid her a polite farewell, and ride away. But he dismounted.

“How has it been for you, Lucía?”

She seized his hand, her eyes widening in a kind of triumph. “Oh, Yonah. It is beyond belief that it is you. Where did you vanish, and why, when you might have been my father’s son? Brother to me?”

This was the first female he had seen naked. She had been a sweet girl, he remembered, and the memory made his body stir. “I had no wish to be your brother.”

She had been married these three years, she told him quickly, retaining a fierce grip on his hand. “To Tomás Cabrerizo whose family owns vineyards across the river. Do you not recall Tomás Cabrerizo?”

Yonah had the vaguest memory of a sullen, rock-throwing youth who had taunted Jews.

“I have two little daughters and am with child yet again. I pray to the Blessed Mother for a son,” she said. She looked at him with wonder, noting his horse, his clothing and arms. “Yonah. Yonah! Yonah, where did you go, how do you live?”

“Best you do not ask,” he said gently, and moved the subject. “Your father is well?”

“My father is gone these two years. He was full of health, then one morning he was dead.”

“Ah. May he rest,” Yonah said with regret. Benito Martín had ever shown him kindness.

“May his soul rest with the Savior,” she said, crossing herself. Her brother Enrique had entered the order of Dominicans, she told him with evident pride.

“And your mother?”

“My mother lives on. Never go to her, Yonah. She would denounce you.”

Her piety had made him fearful. “And you shall not denounce me?”

“Never then nor now!” Her eyes filled, but she stared at him angrily.

He succumbed to the need to flee. “Go with the Lord, Lucía.”

“With the Lord, my childhood friend.”

He freed his hand but could not resist turning back to a final question. “My brother Eleazar. Have you ever seen him here again?”

“Never.”

“You have never received a word as to his whereabouts or fate?”

She shook her head. “No word of Eleazar. No word of any of them. You are the only Jew to return here, Yonah Toledano.”

*   *   *

He knew what he must do now, and whom he must find, if he was to save himself from Lavera.

He rode slowly through the central part of the city. The wall about the Jewish Quarter still stood but the gates were opened wide, and Christians lived in all the houses. The cathedral of Toledo loomed over everything.

So many people.

Surely someone here in the Plaza Mayor behind the cathedral might recognize him as Lucía had done. Thinking of her, he realized that already she might have betrayed him. By now, the cruel fingers of the Inquisition might be reaching for him as a man reaches to snare a fly. There were soldiers in the plaza, and members of the guard. Yonah forced himself to ride by them slowly, but no one gave him more than a passing glance.

He promised a coin to a gap-toothed boy if he would watch the mare.

The entrance he took into the cathedral was called the Door of Joy. As a boy he had wondered whether it fulfilled the promise of its name, but now he felt no rapture. In front of him, a ragged man dipped his hand into a font and genuflected. Yonah waited until no one was in sight and then slipped into the cathedral.

The space was vast, with a high, vaulted ceiling supported by the stone columns that divided the floor into five separate aisles. The interior looked almost empty because it was so large, but there were a lot of people scattered through the cathedral and many black-robed clerics, and the merged sound of their prayers echoed as it rose to the heights. Yonah wondered whether all the combined voices lifted to God in cathedrals and churches throughout Spain drowned out his own frightened voice when he spoke to God.

It took him a long time to make his way through the main body of the cathedral, but he didn’t see the person he was seeking.

When he emerged, blinking in the bright light, he gave the boy the promised coin and asked if he knew a friar named Bonestruca.

The boy’s smile disappeared. “Yes.”

“Where might I find him?”

The boy shrugged. “Lots of them at the Dominican house.” Grimy fingers closed upon the coin, and he ran as if pursued.

*   *   *

At a rude drinking place—three boards set upon casks—Yonah sat and sipped sour wine, watching the house of the Dominican order, across the way. Eventually a friar left the house and, after a long time, a pair of fiercely arguing priests.

When Fray Lorenzo de Bonestruca appeared, he was approaching the house instead of leaving it. Yonah saw the tall figure coming from far down the street yet knew him at once.

He entered the order house and remained long enough so Yonah had to ask the proprietor to add wine to his cup, which he left gladly after the friar emerged from the house and walked down the street. Yonah followed slowly on the horse, keeping Bonestruca in view but staying well behind.

Bonestruca finally turned into the doorway of a small taberna, a workingman’s place. By the time Yonah tethered the mare and entered the dark little cellar, the friar had seated himself in the rear and already was in the midst of an argument with the proprietor.

“Perhaps you may pay a small amount toward the debt?”

“How dare you? You miserable little bastard!”

The proprietor was more than cowed, Yonah saw. He was in terror, unable to look at the inquisitor.

“I beg you, Friar, take no offense,” the man said desperately, “your wine will be served, of course. I meant no impertinence.”

“You are a dung worm.”

Bonestruca had put on flesh, yet his features were as beautiful as Yonah remembered: an aristocratic brow, high cheekbones, a long, thin nose, a wide, full-lipped mouth over a firm and chiseled jaw. The face was betrayed by the eyes, large and gray, full of chilly dislike for the world.

The proprietor had scurried away, returning with a cup he set down in front of Bonestruca before turning to Yonah.

“A cup of wine for myself. And another cup for the good friar.”

“Yes, señor.”

Bonestruca’s stony eyes made Yonah their object. “Jesus bless you,” he muttered, paying for the drink with the benison.

“Thank you. May I have your permission to join you?” he asked, and Bonestruca nodded indifferently.

Yonah went and sat at the table of the man who had caused the deaths of his father and his brother and Bernardo Espina, and doubtless many more.

“I am Ramón Callicó.”

“Fray Lorenzo de Bonestruca.”

The friar obviously had a thirst. He emptied his cup of wine quickly, and the one Yonah had bought, and nodded when Yonah ordered two more. “Bowls, this time, señor!

“I have had the pleasure of praying in the cathedral, of which Toledo must be very proud,” Yonah ventured, and Bonestruca nodded with the reluctance of one who resents it when uninvited words interrupt his privacy.

The bowls were served.

“What is the nature of the work being done on the cathedral structure?”

Bonestruca shrugged wearily. “I know something is being done to the doors.”

“Do you do the Lord’s work on the cathedral staff, good Friar?”

“No. I do the Lord’s work elsewhere,” the friar said, and drank so deeply that Yonah was forced to wonder whether the coins in his purse would be equal to this man’s thirst. Yet it was money well spent, for even as he watched, the friar became more voluble, his eyes took on new life, and his body relaxed like a flower unfolding after a rain.

“And have you served God long, señor?”

“Since I was a boy.”

His tongue warmed and loosened, the friar began to talk about hereditary grace. He told Yonah matter-of-factly that he was the second son of an aristocratic family in Madrid. “Bonestruca is a Catalan name. Many generations ago, my family came to Madrid from Barcelona. My heritage is very old, no pig’s blood in us, understand, limpieza de sangre, purest of bloodlines.” He had been sent to the Dominicans when he was twelve. “Fortunate for me I was not sent to the puling Franciscans, whom I now cannot abide. My sainted mother had a brother who was with the Franciscans in Barcelona, but my father had Dominican friars among his kin.” The penetrating gray eyes Yonah remembered were locked onto his face. Now it was Yonah who felt terror, certain that Bonestruca could see his secrets and transgressions.

“And what of you? From where do you come?”

“I come from the South. I am apprenticed to Manuel Fierro, the armorer of Gibraltar.”

“Gibraltar! By the passion, you come a distance, armor maker.” He leaned forward. “Have you then carried here the armor so eagerly awaited these four years by a fine nobleman hereabouts? And shall I guess his name?”

Yonah didn’t confirm that the friar had guessed correctly, but sent his message by not denying it, choosing to sip his wine and smile. “I am here with a party of men,” he said politely.

Bonestruca shrugged and brought a long finger to touch his nose mockingly, amused by Yonah’s reticence.

It was time, Yonah told himself, to shoot an arrow into the air and see where it would fall. “I am seeking to find a churchly man willing to give me counsel.”

The friar appeared bored. He remained stolidly silent, evidently mistaking the overture as a prelude to another of the everyday confessions of conscience that some clerics pounce on while other clerics come to view them as a plague.

“If a person were to discover … that is, something of great sacred worth … Well, where should he bring such a thing? In order to … to see that it will receive its proper importance and place in the world?”

The gray eyes were wide awake and looking straight at him. “A relic?”

“Well. Yes. A relic,” Yonah said cautiously.

“I suppose it is not a portion of the true Cross?” the friar said, mocking him.

“No.”

“Well, then, why should it interest anyone?” Bonestruca said—a little joke—and for the first time gave a small, chill smile.

Yonah smiled back and glanced away. “Señor,” he called, and ordered two more bowls of wine.

“Let me suppose it is the bone of someone you believe was holy,” the friar said. “So let me tell you that if it is the bone of a hand, almost certainly it is the hand bone of some poor murdered whoreson, a sinner who was perhaps a coachman or a pig farmer. And if it is the bone of a foot, likely it is the foot bone of some departed blackguard, a whoremaster who was in no way a Christian martyr.”

“That is possible, good Friar,” Yonah said humbly.

Bonestruca snorted. “More than possible. Likely.”

The new bowls came and Bonestruca continued to drink. He was the sort of drinker that remained sober and dangerous, showing little effect from the wine. Yet it must dull his reactions, Yonah thought; it would be easier to kill him now, this murdering friar. But Yonah was thinking clearly, and he knew that Bonestruca must live if he himself were to return to Gibraltar without meeting his death there.

He told the proprietor to give him an accounting. After they settled the debt, the man served a gift dish of bread and olives in oil, and Yonah remarked on the kindness to the friar.

Bonestruca still smoldered at the host. “He is a backsliding Christian who shall taste justice,” he muttered. “He is a swine of a monstrous Jew.”

Yonah carried the terrible weight of those words as he walked the mare through the sleeping streets.