Hammer of Witches (13 page)

“It means I trust you. From now on you only have to go in that necklace when you want to. We’re a team now. Equals.”

Jinniyah’s growing smile could barely contain her joy. She put the necklace around her neck and tucked it into her shirt so no one could see it. “Of course we’re a team!” She hopped up and smothered me with another hug. “We’re the best team in the world!”

Laughing, I led her up the gangplank to the
Santa María.
“No time to dawdle, Luis!” Antonio said, coming up behind me. He was grinning like a fool — most likely he had received his bonus. “On the deck, sailor! Time for us to make history!”

I stopped on the gangplank to take one last look at my home. Palos, the village by the sea. Palos, the place where I was born.

Good-bye, Diego,
I thought.
Serena.
I would make them proud. I took a deep breath of salty air and raised my head to the sky. Above me, pink clouds were flowering in the purpling dawn. Today would be a good day to sail.

Before I knew it the anchors were raised and we were departing. Men shouted from ship to ship as gulls sang over their cries. Soon Palos was nothing more than a blurry apparition in the morning haze. The sea came up to greet us, a blanket of endless watery sky.

A voice drifted up beside me. “Uqba,” it said, and it was a moment before I realized it was Jinniyah. Her voice sounded lower than usual, solemn. “He was a warrior who traveled
farther than any living man, until finally he reached the seas on the western shore. He said, ‘Allah, if it were not for thine ocean, in thy holy name I would conquer the earth.’”

Before us the seas spread themselves into the horizon, waiting to be conquered.

The open sea. From
my spot on the deck of the
Santa María,
I could see why people used to think you could sail off the edge of it. The way that sparkling blue seemed to go on forever, you had to convince yourself that it would end somewhere or you would quickly go insane.

Taking a breath of sea air, I rested back against the starboard rail and held my gurgling stomach. Jinniyah and the other boys had gathered up on the forecastle next to me, waiting for Juan de la Cosa to assign them their duties. Six weeks, I thought. That’s what Antonio had told me. Six weeks of living on this ship and we would land in Cathay.

All right. Six weeks I could handle. The heroes in the old stories always went on journeys, always endured some minor trials before they got their happy endings. I could deal with six weeks of that if it meant getting my own holy grail. In six weeks Jinniyah and I would build new lives in the Orient, far away from the Malleus Maleficarum. In six weeks we would be free again.

I contemplated this happy future, letting the sounds of a nautical life wash over me. There was the creaking of the bow, the flaps of the sails, the ever-present
swish
of the ocean. Suddenly a gust of wind sent the deck pitching underneath me, and I heard a very different sound, a strangled voice braying,
“Look out!”

I raised my head just in time to see a gawky figure flying at me headfirst. The man crashed into me with about as much force as a cannonball, and I went stumbling backward into the rail. In fact, if I hadn’t shifted my weight just in time, I might have tumbled overboard. That sea, that sea, that infinite, sparkling sea . . .

One wrong move, and it might have been my graveyard.

“Ay, cielos.
Are you all right?” said the man who had crashed into me. It was Rodrigo Sanchez, the accountant who had annoyed Martín Pinzón back in Palos. Rodrigo’s hands were currently half-hidden under his lank brown bangs. He held his heart-shaped head and waited for the world to settle around him. “I almost killed you there, didn’t I?”

I gulped down another breath but said, “Don’t worry about it.”

The accountant squeezed one of my hands tightly with both of his. “Well, you have my deepest apologies! I’m still very much the landlubber, I’m sorry to say. Walking across a deck isn’t easy, especially when the ship is swaying to and fro. And those rails! They’re here to make you feel safe, but it’s really easy to fall over one. I did it myself, back when we were still
moored. Dislocated both of my shoulders.” The accountant fell silent for a moment, lost in the memory. I stood there awkwardly, unsure how to respond. “I’m Rodrigo Sanchez, by the way. Her Majesty’s inspector and controller.”

“Luis de Torres,” I said, massaging the knuckles of my crushed hand.

“Oh, I know! The new interpreter! Everyone’s been talking about you, how you translated those documents on the pier. They’re saying you’re a miracle, Luis. An absolute miracle!”

An image of Diego and Serena flashed across my mind — eyes glassy and blood dripping from their sides. They wouldn’t say I was a miracle, if they were here now. A miracle? A curse was more like it.

“Do you know what the men are calling you, Luis? ‘Martín Pinzón’s Miraculous Jew!’ Pretty nice, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Yes, that’s just great.”

Rodrigo jumped a little. “Ah, I was supposed to bring you to the cabin, wasn’t I? The admiral wanted to see you.”

I forced myself to gulp down my worsening nausea.
“You and I need to talk,”
the admiral had said back in Palos — and it didn’t sound like a friendly suggestion.

But it wasn’t like I had a choice in the matter. “This way, Luis,” Rodrigo said, so I adjusted the strap of my bag over my chest and followed him across the heaving deck toward the aftcastle.

We found Colón standing outside the cabin door, appearing
taller than I remembered him, and broader. While I continually had to shift my weight to keep balance on the deck, Colón seemed completely still, as if his boots were attached to the
Santa María.
Steps away from him stood a very young tawny-haired noble, speaking to him in a clipped but cultured tone.

“It was my father’s idea to bring him along, actually. Captain Pinzón said it wouldn’t be a problem. After all, we wouldn’t want to be without him if any rodents happened to stow their way aboard.”

For an instant I thought the boy was talking about me and Jinniyah. Colón directed his attention to a spot not far from his boots. “I must admit this is a first,” he said. “I’ve never had the privilege of traveling with a cat.”

In fact not far from the admiral plopped a large, goldeneyed tomcat, who seemed to be wearing the same condescending expression as his tawny-haired owner.

The admiral went on, “But when I said I was glad your father changed his mind, I wasn’t talking about your feline companion. I was talking about you, Don Terreros. Back in Granada, the count didn’t seem too eager to send his only son on a voyage to Cathay.”

The young nobleman was inspecting his fingernails. “My father had hoped that I would honor his good name by winning a victory on the field of battle. Unfortunately our kingdom is at peace for the moment, so the Terreros name will have to win glory on the seas.”

The sound of the name made Rodrigo’s muscles jolt within his skin. “Did you say ‘Terreros’?” the accountant interrupted. “But you couldn’t be one of the Terreroses from Burgos?”

That made the tawny-haired noble look up from his fingernails. “I am,” the boy said guardedly.

Rodrigo swooped in and shook the young man’s hand as if using it to paint the side of a barn. “Why, this is an honor! You must allow me to congratulate you, Don Terreros. I just heard about your sister! To win a betrothal to the Duke of Alba’s son — why, your family must feel so honored!”

Don Terreros’s face went bright scarlet. “I’m sorry, Señor . . . ?”

“Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia.” The accountant arched his lanky body over the deck in a stiff bow. “I am Her Majesty’s inspector and —”

“Yes, Señor Sanchez, and where, exactly, did you obtain the information about my sister’s impending nuptials?”

Rodrigo’s raised fingers twiddled away the question. “Oh, it’s about the biggest news in Segovia these days. Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone.” Rodrigo’s hand then snapped up to his mouth. “Oh. It wasn’t supposed to be a secret, was it?”

I didn’t think it was possible, but Don Terreros’s face seemed to grow even redder at that question. Obviously the news of his sister’s betrothal
was
supposed to be a secret.

“I must applaud your rumormongers, Señor Sanchez!” the boy said shrilly. “I did not realize how quickly news travels
these days. At this rate I am certain by the end of the month the Khan of Cathay will know all about my family’s private affairs! And it will be thanks to you, Señor Sanchez! Thanks to you, the ever-noble accountant!”

Rodrigo blanched at the outburst and even seemed to cower a bit. Terreros, though muscular, was not all that large, but I’d no doubt he could re-dislocate Rodrigo’s spindly arms out of sheer ferocity.

Fortunately Colón stepped between them. “Have you met Luis yet, Pedro?” Colón said, giving Rodrigo the opportunity to scurry away. “Luis, let me introduce Pedro Terreros, our ship’s cabin boy.”

Ah, so that’s where I’d heard the name Terreros before! This was the person Martín mentioned back in Palos, the one with the unpleasant family who had beaten me to the cabin boy job.

“Pedro,” Colón went on, “Luis here is our new interpreter. Our very gifted new interpreter, I should say.”

I inadvertently snorted at the statement. Gifted? I’d been called a lot of things in my life: coward, lukmani, Marrano. But gifted? I’d never been called that before, and never by an admiral either. Grinning dopily at the compliment, I put my hand in front of Pedro Terreros. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“A pleasure.” Pedro took my hand and gave me a good look-over, and I returned the favor. Pedro’s athletic figure was overburdened by fineries of all kinds: an emerald clasp held a
black sable-lined cape in place over one shoulder; underneath it, I saw a brocaded ochre jerkin covering a doublet of patterned forest green silk. Yes, Pedro was a nobleman if ever there was one. Or at least a nobleboy. He seemed about my age, maybe fifteen at the most. Not one curl of his tawny hair was out of place under his smart brimless hat. His delicate features, offset by thick eyebrows and a severe chin, were growing more and more crinkled by the second. He appeared to have smelled something particularly acrid — and that something, I could easily guess, was me.

“He is quite young, is he not?” Pedro said to the admiral.

“As are you,” Colón pointed out.

“I meant for an interpreter.” From the haughty way Terreros spoke to the admiral, it seemed Terreros held the senior position.

“Perhaps. But Luis here is a marvel. He can translate anything put in front of him: Italian, Portuguese. Even Aramaic and Turkish. The crew’s taken to calling him ‘The Miraculous Jew.’ Isn’t that right, Luis?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, still grinning at Colón’s compliment. For all the pain it had brought me, this Storytelling business was turning out to have its perks.

Pedro Terreros was not as impressed with me as I was with myself, however. The red-faced noble ran his gaze up and down my body once more. “But Admiral, this is absurd! This voyage is far too important to place in the hands of a child!”

In a patient tone Colón said, “What would you suggest I do, Don Terreros?”

“Return to Palos. We can find a new translator there — an educated translator. What you do with this . . . 
boy
is up to your discretion.”

As Pedro spoke I remained silent, examining Colón’s face for a clue of my fate. If Pedro’s father really was a count, he was probably funding this voyage. No, I was thinking small. For all I knew the Terreroses were related to royalty! If it came down to a choice between me and some royal, it was obvious how Colón would choose.

Or maybe not. Colón put on a fatherly tone and said, “I appreciate your suggestions, Pedro. But I cannot in good conscience abandon any member of our crew. Please trust me when I say I am certain Luis will live up to your high expectations. And who knows? I have a feeling that once you and Luis get to know each other, you two will become fast friends. But right now you must excuse me. I must see Luis in my office.”