John Masters (17 page)

The captain of the Gaditana lashed down the tiller and looked at his owner. "Start unloading at once, Judah?" he said. Judah nodded, glancing at the sun; it was past noon, and they would have to make haste to be finished when the gate closed for the night. Well, they could finish tomorrow—the Moors were not very strict about Christian boats staying overnight these days.

He went forward to his two passengers and put an arm round each, for they were also his friends, all three of an age—between twenty-five and thirty—and had grown up together in Tarifa. "There," he said,
"el Penon,
the Rock." At the end of the jetty the town wall began, pierced by the Water Gate. Behind, roofs and minarets, thickly jammed together, rose to the towers of the castle, aflutter with the green and black flags of the Kingdom of Granada.

Above the castle the slope steepened, gray rock gleamed in great tilted slabs, and far above, a gray cloud hid the crest.

Manuel Barrachina said, "I wish we could take that box down from the tower. I think the Duke would reward any servant of his well who brought him the remains of his father for proper burial." Manuel was slight and stooped and fair-skinned; he was clerk to the Duke of Medina Sidonia's agent in Tarifa.

Pedro Santangel said, "I wish we could put the flag of Castile up there instead of the Moorish banner. I think the king would knight a man who did that...." He was tall and fair, with dark eyes, willowy, swooning handsome to the girls. His father was trying to make him follow the practice of the law, but all his desire was to be a knight and fight for Castile, King Enrique, and the Holy Catholic Chinch.

Judah said, "I wish it were settled one way or the other, so that we know where we are. Sometimes you can bring a cargo in here peacefully, sometimes they fire a cannon at you. Sometimes you can wander all over the town, sometimes guards prevent you stepping off your ship. For trade we need peace and security." He was short and square, with a wide mouth, a broken beak nose, and two fingers gone from his left hand; big ears and hands, thick curly black hair, and startling blue eyes. He had run his own ship out of Tarifa since he was twenty, and now owned three, which plied in trade along the coast, up the Guadalquivir, and, when conditions allowed, over to Africa. He was a Jew. In 1399 his grandfather's sister, Beulah Conquy, had married a young man called Jacob Azayal in Cordoba; the following year Jacob Azayal was converted to Christianity and became Luis Santangel—grandfather of the eager young would-be knight of the Church now at Judah's side; Pedro Santangel was therefore a
marrano,
a New Christian, and Judah's second cousin—a fact which both knew but never mentioned.

"Can we go ashore now?" Manuel Barrachina asked. "I must get to the Governor's audience as soon as possible."

Judah let down the gangplank. The sweating sailors were already passing sacks of wheat up from the hold to the deck, and Moorish laborers were waiting to take them ashore. At the Water Gate the Berber guard was talking to a fat, turbaned merchant and did not look up. The young men passed into the city of Gibraltar and, at once, into Africa. Donkeys loaded with brass jars trotted down the narrow alley toward the harbor, to load there with oil and wine from the ships. In the gutter lusty-voiced women sold fruit by the single stem, spices by the pinch, sherbet by the thimbleful. In all the shop fronts the merchants sat, with carpets and baskets and bolts of cloth and mounds of flour. Cobblers banged on their lasts, blacksmiths on their anvils, tinkers on pots, beggars on drums. The knife grinder made tunes on a bamboo pipe, and from the minaret of the mosque the muezzin chanted the call to prayer.

Manuel Barrachina left them to go to the castle, for his business was to deliver a note from the duke's agent informing the governor that a fishing boat from Gibraltar had been taken poaching off Tarif a and would be released on payment of the fine.

The levanter made the day close, and Judah and Pedro walked slowly, left hands resting on the hilts of their daggers. Judah had no business—his captain was in charge of the unloading—but had come because he wanted a change of air. Pedro only wanted to see Gibraltar while it was possible. So they strolled together toward the square block of the castle and then southward along shelflike streets. They paused where a flight of steps crossed, going down toward the harbor, and looked out over the bay and pointed out to each other the new aspects of hills and valleys which they knew well from the landward side. As they turned to walk on, Judah bumped into someone, hard. It was a Moorish woman, and he knocked her over. As she fell, the black veil dropped from her face, and Judah looked into startled dark green eyes under strong, straight black brows. On her forehead hung a silver ornament in the shape of the Star of David. Her lips were thin, but perfectly curved in an oval face. Judah's jaw dropped. He had never seen anything so beautiful. He stared into the green eyes, stunned. The girl lowered her lids, and he recovered his wits. He knelt quickly beside her, muttering, "Are you a Jewess?" She was fumbling for her veil. "Yes," she whispered.

"Woman!" an old voice was yelling in Berber, "What doest thou, shameless?"

"It's the duenna," Pedro said, laughing. "Shall I hold her off?"

The girl was slight, her skin like an olive's, her hair blue-black—and she was pulling her veil up now, rising to her feet. The green eyes glowed above the black cloth. "Are you a slave?" Judah whispered. The old woman panted up, screeching. The girl nodded. The old woman grabbed her by the wrist, pulled her away. "I shall find you," Judah said in Ladino, the Hebrew-tinged Spanish which was the
lingua franca
of the Sephardim. Then she was gone, hurrying down the steps beside the old scold, the black robe fluttering behind her.

"Let's follow them!" Pedro said, still chuckling. They started down the steps but had not taken three strides when heavy hands fell on their shoulders and a deep voice growled, "Slow, there." Three large Negroes, naked from the waist, curved scimitars stuck in their sashes, fell in beside them. "Do you think our master sends out his women without protection?" one said. "Such as they are not for Christian dogs... They were passing a large stable, and without warning the three seized them, threw them inside, and slammed the door shut. They heard the scrape of the bolts and the Negroes go on laughing down the steps.

They scrambled out of the dung-littered straw and leaped at the window—but it was barred. They began to batter at the door with their fists. At last an old man came, mumbling, and let them out—but by then the steps were empty, and when they ran down to the street next below, so was that.

Pedro took Judah's arm and led him into a coffee shop. "Sit down, friend," he said. "You look as if you've been hit on the head with a mace."

Judah sat sipping his coffee, staring at the wall, seeing only those green eyes. He'd traversed the Mediterranean three times, gone once to England, and knew the stews of every port from Cadaques to Pasajes. He'd enjoyed scores of women of every color, size, and quality, but he had never fallen in love. And now, at first sight! It was impossible, he told himself. Worse, it was ridiculous. But it was so. There was no escape from it.

"I shall find and buy her," he said at last, "even if I have to come and live here and become a subject of the King of Granada."

"I guessed somehow you wanted to see more of her," Pedro Santangel said dryly. "If she weren't a Jewess, I might challenge you myself—"

"I'll kill you if you do," Judah said.

"—but she is, and, well... for such as me, that makes her impossible. But I have an idea...

An hour later a burly, broken-nosed man passed slowly along the street below the wall of the castle. He wore a dirty old brown djellabah with the hood up and a pair of battered Moorish slippers. A big basket of green vegetables hung on his left arm, and as he shambled along he seemed to be chanting his wares; but in truth the tune that he sang was a phrase from the Song of Songs;

"Shuvee, shuvee Hashulamit

Shuvee, shuvee v'necheze bach.

Return, return, O Shulamite,

Return, return, that we may look upon thee."

There were a few Jews in Gibraltar—one, indeed, the banker Chaim Uziel, was a distant relative of the Santangels; but though they would understand what he was singing, they would be unlikely to betray him. Judah trudged on.

"
Return, return, O Shulamite...

It was hotter than ever inside this accursed stinking garment, he thought. Pedro Santangel, back on the ship, must be ill with laughing.

Up and down, along and across, all through the city Judah passed; and even into the fortress to cry his vegetables in the empty square under the Tower of Homage until a sleepy soldier came, cursing, to drive him out. The walls of the narrow streets seemed to give off heat like ovens. On the south walls the awnings were out to keep the glare from the barred windows, and under the north walls dogs slept and men snored. Judah tramped on, chanting:

"
Return, return, that we may look upon thee...."

His sweat soaked the djellabah. From the houses now and then a voice cried angrily, "In the name of Allah, hold your tongue now, and let us sleep." Once a woman came to her door and spent five minutes picking over his wares; fortunately she did not buy, as he had no idea what price to ask.

He reached the height of the town, above and to the south of the castle. Half a dozen apes played, dozed, and scratched each other for fleas nearby. He picked a cabbage out of his basket and threw it at them, crying, "Lead me to her, shameless ones!" An old dog ape grabbed the cabbage and retreated with it. All the others dropped what they were doing and followed him. Judah's shoulder throbbed, and he thought his left arm would drop off. She'd never hear him, or if she did, she'd only laugh. What would she want of a thirty-year-old man with half his fingers gone, broken nose, big ears...?

He got up, hitched the basket into place, and started along the path. Something white gleamed at his feet, and he stooped to pick it up. He turned it over curiously—an ivory statuette of a naked woman, her hair piled up to form a hole so it could be worn as an ornament; but what Moorish woman would wear a naked woman, her slit clearly showing, dangling round her neck? Still, it was well made. The apes must have been playing with it. He put it into the inner pocket of the djellabah and started back down the nearest flight of steps.

"
Return, return, O Shulamite..."

Almost at once a girl's voice answered with a cradle song that he remembered his mother singing to his youngest sister.

He listened, pressed close under the wall. The singer was inside a three-storied house, with a walled garden below and the open mountain above. The tower of the castle was a quarter of a mile to the north and at the same level. Steep steps, interspersed with sections of ramp, led down on either side of a deep gutter and water channel into the town, houses becoming thicker all the way.

Then he saw her at an upper window, behind bars. He called softly, "What is your name?"

"Tova is my name. Tova Hassan they call me," she answered in the lilt of the song.

"I will buy you. I am not really a seller of vegetables."

"I did not think so."

"I love you," he said.

"How do I know what love is?" she sang. Her voice faded as she moved away from the window. Judah stared longingly for a moment more, then called, "I will be back soon," hitched the basket higher on his arm, and hurried down the steps.

The sun was sinking over the mountains across the bay when Judah presented himself again at the house on the hill, this time at the main door. He wore a richly embroidered Moorish robe of blue and gold, with a thick gold waistband and blue silk turban. He had never worn Muslim clothes before, but nothing else of quality was available in Gibraltar. Pedro Santangel stalked ceremoniously at his side, elegant as always, with a sword added to his costume.

Judah knocked on the door with the hilt of his dagger. Two minutes later it opened suddenly, and one of the large Negroes who had thrown them into the stable appeared. Judah spoke in his sailor's Berber. "I am Messer Judah Conquy of Tarifa. Is your master, the honorable Suleiman Qureshi, in?"