CHAPTER SEVEN
THE DATE OF DEPARTURE
Yonah knew many people who were already leaving. On the road outside of Toledo first a few travelers were seen and then a trickle, and then there was a flood of Jews night and day, a multitude of strangers from afar, going west toward Portugal or east toward the ships. The noise of their passing was heard in the city. They rode on horses and burros, they sat on sacks of their belongings in wagons pulled by cows, they walked under the hot sun bearing heavy loads, some stumbling, some falling. Sometimes women and boys sang and beat drums and tambourines as they walked, to keep their spirits up.
Women gave birth by the side of the road, and people died. The Toledo Council of Thirty allowed travelers to bury their dead in the Jewish cemetery but often could offer no other help, not even a minyan to say the Kaddish. In other times travelers in distress would have been given aid and hospitality, but now the Jews of Toledo were themselves leaving or preparing to leave and were struggling with their own problems.
The Dominican and Franciscan orders, pleased to see the expulsion for which they had worked and preached, set about energetically to harvest as many Jewish souls as possible. Some in Toledo who had been friends of Yonah’s family for a very long time entered the city’s churches and declared themselves Christians—children, their parents and their grandparents, with whom the Toledanos had broken bread, with whom they had prayed in the synagogue, with whom they had cursed the need to wear the yellow badge of a shunned people. Almost one-third of the Jews became conversos because they feared the terrible dangers of travel, or out of love for a Christian, or because they had achieved position and comfort they couldn’t bring themselves to renounce, or because they had had enough of being despised.
Jews in high positions were pressured and coerced into conversion. One evening Yonah’s uncle Aron came to Helkias with shocking news.
“Rabbi Abraham Seneor, his son-in-law Rabbi Meir Melamed, and their families have become Catholics.”
Queen Isabella had not been able to bear the prospect of being without the two men who had accomplished so much for her, and it was rumored that she had threatened them with reprisals against the Jews if they refused to convert. It was known that the sovereigns had personally arranged and attended the public conversion ceremonies and had served as godparents at the baptism.
Rabbi Seneor had changed his name to Fernando Nuñez Coronel, and Rabbi Melamed had changed his name to Fernando Pérez Coronel.
A few days later Seneor was appointed governor of Segovia, a member of the royal council, and chief financial administrator to the crown prince. Melamed was appointed chief royal accountant and he too became a permanent member of the royal council.
Isaac Abravanel refused to convert. He and his brothers Joseph and Jacob renounced the large debts owed to them by the king and the queen, and in exchange they were allowed to leave the country, taking with them one thousand gold ducats and some valuable belongings made of gold and silver.
* * *
Helkias and Aron were less fortunate, like the vast majority of the Jews struggling with calamity. The Jewish multitude was told that no one was allowed to take gold, silver, money, or precious stones from the realm. They were advised by the throne to sell everything they owned and use the proceeds for “common goods” which they could sell when they reached their new homelands. But almost immediately King Ferdinand declared that in Aragon some of the Jewish land, homes, and chattels should be seized because of revenues “owed” the Crown.
Jews in Toledo rushed to sell their property before a similar move by the monarchs would make it impossible to do so, but the process was a charade. Their Christian neighbors, knowing that the property must be abandoned or the Jews would die, ground prices down mercilessly, offering a few sueldos for real estate that should have sold for many maravedíes, or even many reales. A donkey or a vineyard changed hands for a piece of common cloth.
Aron Toledano, offered almost nothing for his goat farm, turned to his older brother for advice. “I don’t know what to do,” he said helplessly.
Helkias had been a prosperous and sought-after artisan all his life, but the bad times had come when he was in a financial trough. He had been paid only a deposit on the reliquary. When it had been stolen before delivery no more money was forthcoming, although to make the ciborium he had invested heavily in the purest silver and gold. A number of wealthy patrons now held back their payments for objects delivered, sensing that events might make it unnecessary for them to settle their debts.
“I don’t know what to do, either,” he admitted. He was in desperate straits, but he was saved because of the efforts and tender heart of an old and devoted friend.
* * *
Benito Martín was an Old Christian, a goldsmith who lacked the creative genius that had earned Helkias his reputation as a worker of silver. Most of Martín’s work was simple gilding and repair. Both of them were young men when Benito had discovered that in his own city of Toledo a Jew created things of wonder out of precious metals.
He sought out the Jewish artisan and spent as much time with him as he could without becoming a nuisance, learning new ways to design silver and gold and spurred to extend his vision of the work of his own hands.
In the process of relearning his craft, Benito Martín had discovered a man.
Helkias had welcomed him and invited a sharing of skills and human experiences. Benito’s admiration gradually had ripened into a true and certain friendship, so deep that during better times Martín had brought his children to the synagogue to visit the Toledano family at Passover, and to the sukkah during the Feast of Tabernacles. His daughter Lucía had become Yonah’s best friend, and his son Enrique was Eleazar’s most frequent playmate.
Now Benito was ashamed of the injustice rampant in Toledo, and he came to walk with Helkias one evening, early enough so they were able to stroll along the cliff top and greet the coming of night.
“Your house is sited so wonderfully, and your workshop has been planned so sensibly it invites good results. I have long coveted them.”
Helkias was silent.
When Benito named his offer, the silversmith stopped walking.
“I know it is very low, but…”
It would have been a very low offer in ordinary times, but the times were not ordinary. Helkias knew it was all Benito could afford, and it was far more than the rapacious offers made by speculators.
He went to the other man and kissed his shaven Christian cheek and embraced him for a long time.
* * *
Yonah noticed that the dullness was gone from his father’s eyes. Helkias sat with Aron and contemplated how they could save their family. The emergency was immediate, and Helkias was responding by rising to meet it with all his energy and attention.
“Ordinarily, the trip to Valencia would take ten days. Now, with the roads thick with people seeking early arrival, the same trip will take them twenty days, requiring twice as much food and doubling the dangers of travel. So we must leave Toledo as late as possible, when once again there will be fewer travelers.”
On their farm Aron kept two pack burros and a pair of fine horses that he and his wife, Juana, would ride. Benito Martín had acted for Helkias, purchasing two additional horses and a pair of burros for far less than a Jew would have been charged, and Helkias was paying his neighbor Marcelo Troca exorbitantly to keep the four animals in his nearby field.
Helkias told his brother they must find a way to get more capital. “When we reach the port, sea captains will not be charitable to us. It will take a great deal of money to pay for our passage. And when we reach a land of haven, we must have money to sustain us until we can again work for our daily bread.”
The only possible source of money was the unpaid debts of Helkias’s clients, and Yonah sat with his father and made a careful list of those customers and the amounts each owed.
The largest debt was sixty-nine reales and sixteen maravedíes owed by Count Fernán Vasca of Tembleque. “He is an arrogant noble, summoning me as though he were king, describing each thing he wished me to make, yet slow to pay me even a single sueldo of his debt. If I can collect this debt we shall have more than enough.”
Yonah rode with his father on a bright July day to Tembleque, a village outside Toledo. He was unaccustomed to riding a horse, but their mounts were tractable, and he sat in the battered saddle as proudly as any knight. The countryside was beautiful, and though Helkias was weighed down with heavy thoughts, still he was able to burst into song as they rode. He sang a song of peace.
“‘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.…’”
Yonah loved to listen to the deep voice singing the sonorous lines. This is how it will be when we ride to Valencia, he thought with pleasure.
Presently as they rode Helkias told his son that when he had first been summoned to Tembleque by Count Vasca, he had confided in his friend, Rabbi Ortega. “The rabbi said to me, ‘Let me tell you about this nobleman.’”
Rabbi Ortega had a nephew, a young scholar named Asher ben Yair, learned in several languages as well as in Torah. “It is hard for a scholar to earn a living.” Helkias said, “and one day Asher heard that a nobleman in Tembleque was seeking to employ a clerk, and he rode out to Tembleque and offered his services.”
The count of Tembleque was proud of his martial skills, Yonah’s father told him. He had fought against the Moors and had traveled far and wide to participate in jousting tourneys, many of which he had won. But he was always alert for novelty, and in the spring of 1486 he had heard of a different kind of contest, a literary tourney in which the contestants fought with poems instead of lances and swords.
The contest was the Jocs Florals—the Flower Games. They had begun in France late in the fourteenth century, when some young nobles of Toulouse decided to invite poets to recite their works, the winner to receive, as the first prize, a violet fashioned of gold.
The contest was held in France periodically, until Violante de Bar, queen of Cataluña and Aragon and wife of King Joan I, brought the poetry competition and some of its French judges to Barcelona in 1388. The Spanish court soon officially adopted the Jocs Florals and celebrated them each year with great pomp. By the time they came to Count Vasca’s attention the annual poetry competitions were judged by the royal court. The silver violet was now given as the third prize. Second prize was a rose fashioned of gold. The first prize, with a typical Catalan touch, was a single real rose, on the theory that nothing made by humans could surpass a flower made by God.
Vasca thought it would be splendid to be summoned to the court to receive such an honor, and he made plans to enter the Jocs Florals. The fact that he was illiterate didn’t deter him, for he had the wealth to employ someone with writing skills, and he hired Asher ben Yair and told him that he must write a poem. In a discussion about subject matter Vasca said the poem should be about a great and noble soldier, and after a very brief time the count and the clerk agreed that Count Fernán Vasca himself was the warrior most suitable for description in such a work.
When the poem was completed and read to the count it didn’t offend his ear. It was sufficient that his bravery and warrior skills were treated with reverence and no little exaggeration, and Count Vasca sent a copy to Barcelona.
The Vasca poem failed to impress the judges of the court. By the time news reached the count that three others won the prizes, Asher ben Yair had said good-bye to his uncle, Rabbi Ortega, and had wisely departed for the island of Sicilia, where he believed he could become a teacher of young Jews.
Count Vasca had sent for Helkias Toledano, a Jew who was reputed to be a remarkable worker of precious metals. When Helkias had gone to Tembleque he had found Vasca still enraged that he had been snubbed by a group of effete versifiers. He told Helkias about the Jocs Florals and its imaginative prizes, and then revealed that he had decided to sponsor a more manly contest, a true jousting tourney, with a first prize far more remarkable and magnificent than any given in Barcelona.
“I wish you to fashion a rose of gold, with a silver stem.”
Yonah’s father had nodded thoughtfully.
“Listen to me with care: it must be fully as beautiful as a natural rose.”
Helkias had smiled. “Well, but—”
The count had held up a hand—Helkias believed he was unwilling to abide very long discussions with a Jew. Vasca had turned away. “Just go and do this thing. It will be required after Easter next.” And Helkias had been dismissed.
Helkias was accustomed to the unreasonable demands of difficult patrons, though the particular situation was made more difficult by the fact that Count Vasca had a reputation for brutalizing those who displeased him. He started to work, sitting before rose bushes for many hours, making drawings. When he had a depiction that satisfied him, he began to beat gold and silver with a hammer. After four days he had something very much in the shape of a rose, but it was disappointing, and he broke it apart and melted the metal.
He tried again and again, each time gaining small victories but meeting defeat in the aggregate effect. Two months passed from the day of his meeting with Vasca, and still he wasn’t close to fulfilling his commission.
But he kept trying, studying the rose as if it were the Talmud, drinking in its scent and beauty, picking roses apart petal by petal to note the construction of the whole, noting how stems turned and bent and grew toward the sun, observing the way buds were born and ripened and tenderly unfolded and opened. With each attempt to reproduce the simple and stunning beauty of the flower he began to sense the essence and spirit of the rose, and in the attempts and failures gradually he evolved from the craftsman he had been into the artist he would be.
Finally, he had created a flower of glowing gold. Its petals curled with a fresh softness that was perceived by the eye instead of being sensed through touching. It was a believable flower, as if a master horticulturist had achieved a natural rose of a perfect golden color. Below the flower was a single golden bud. The stem and twigs and thorns and leaves were of bright silver, spoiling the illusion, but Helkias had five months until the date of delivery demanded by Count Vasca, and he allowed time to do its work. The gold retained its color but the silver darkened with tarnish until it took on color characteristics that made the flower believable.
Count Vasca was visibly surprised and pleased when he saw what Helkias had wrought. “I will not give this away as a prize. I have a better purpose for it,” he said.
Instead of paying Helkias he gave him a large order for more objects, and then still a third order. Ultimately he became Helkias’s largest debtor, and when the Jews were ordered to leave Spain the Vasca debt had led to their present grave difficulty.
* * *
The castle was large and forbidding as Yonah and Helkias approached it. The bars of the great gate to the keep were down. Helkias and Yonah stared up at the sentry station atop the high stone wall.
“Halloo the guard!” Helkias called, and presently a helmeted head appeared.
“I am Helkias Toledano, silversmith. I wish to speak with His Excellency the Count Vasca.”
The head withdrew but in a brief time it reappeared.
“His Excellency the count is not here. You must go away.”
Yonah stifled a groan, but his father persevered. “I come on a matter of important business. If the count is not here, I must speak with his steward.”
Once more the sentry went away. Yonah and his father sat on their horses and waited.
Finally, with a squeal and then a groaning, the barred gate was lifted, and they rode into the castle yard.
The steward was a slender man who was feeding strips of meat to a caged falcon. The meat had been a white cat. Yonah could see the tail, which was still whole.
The man scarcely looked at them. “The count is hunting in the north,” he said in an irritated voice.
“I seek payment for articles which I made on order and delivered to him,” Helkias said, and the steward cast him a glance.
“I pay no one unless the count commands it.”
“When shall he return?”
“When he wishes.” Then the man relented, perhaps to rid himself of them. “If I were you, I should come again in six days time.”
As they directed the horses back to Toledo, Helkias was quiet, lost in troubled thought. Yonah tried to recapture some of the pleasantness of the earlier ride.
“‘Oh, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb…’” he sang, but his father took no notice, and they rode the rest of the way mostly in silence.
* * *
Six days later Helkias made the trip again, by himself, and this time the functionary said the count wouldn’t return until fourteen days hence, the twenty-sixth day of the month.
“It is too late,” Aron said in despair when Helkias told him.
“Yes, it is too late,” Helkias said.
But the following day there were tidings that the monarchs in their mercy had granted one extra day for the Jews to leave Spain, moving the final date from the first day of August to the second day.
“Do you think?… Aron asked.
“Yes, we can do it! I shall be waiting at the castle when he arrives. We can leave as soon as I am paid,” Helkias said.
“But to make the trip to Valencia in seven days!”
“It is not that we have choice, Aron,” Helkias said. “Without money, we are doomed.”
When Aron sighed, Helkias placed his hand on his brother’s arm. “We shall do it. We shall push ourselves and the beasts, and we will find our way.”
But even as he spoke, he was considering the uneasy fact that August the second was the ninth day of the Jewish month of Ab, an infamous date and perhaps a bad omen, for the ninth of Ab was the date of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, when large numbers of Jews were forced to begin wandering the world.