John Masters (19 page)

The captured scouts ran to open the center gate, and the army marched in, though at the last moment the squire carrying Ponce de Leon's banner galloped ahead so that he was the first to enter the town. Once inside, Manuel Barrachina, his face dark with anger, sent the duke's horsemen galloping pell-mell through the narrow streets toward the castle. The other knights followed, and in a moment the alcalde and his fifty men, the king's standard over them, were left alone.

"Folly!" the alcalde muttered as he marched steadily on. When Judah reached the castle wall at the alcalde's side, the knights and horsemen were riding up and down outside, flourishing their swords and shouting war cries, but the gate was closed, the drawbridge raised. A few Moors peered down from the battlements, and a trumpet was sounding from inside. Don Carlos Fuentes muttered, "Treachery! A great host is hidden inside, preparing to rush out upon us...

The alcalde ignored him and advanced with the king's standard to the edge of the fosse. There he cried up, "In the name of Don Enrique, King of Castile, I call upon you to surrender."

An old man with a bright turban appeared in an embrasure, and Ali el Curro said, "That is Mohammed Caba, the only knight left here."

The alcalde repeated his call to surrender, and old Mohammed Caba quavered, "We have no choice. I have but forty men-at-arms here. But the people will need four days to take out what they can carry."

"Take it by storm!" young Ponce de Leon said. "Why should we wait four days?"

For once Manuel Barrachina agreed with him, and a new clamor arose, while the old Moor looked down with amazement from the embrasure. Then the alcalde raised his voice and shouted sternly, "Silence! I speak for the king! ... Come down, Messer Moor, and we will settle the details. Meantime, I grant an armistice."

Then the gate creaked and slowly opened, the drawbridge clattered down on its chains, and the old Moor tottered out, bent and slow, unarmed. As he came, Judah, a little to one side, heard Ponce de Leon muttering to Manuel Barrachina, "Now is the moment! Don't heed the alcalde. What honor will there be for us in a tame surrender?" Manuel nodded, and they looked around and caught the eyes of their soldiers and horsemen. Suddenly Manuel shouted, "For God and Guzman!" and Don Fernando cried, "Arcos! Arcos!" and both charged toward the drawbridge with many of their followers. Judah drew his dagger and ran to stop them, and the alcalde cried, "Stop! Shame, shame!" but all would have been in vain except for Pedro Santangel. He must have heard the whisperings too, for when the hotheads charged, he was already there, defending the narrow bridge. They ran at him, and he pierced Don Fernando through the liver, wounded Manuel Barrachina in the arm, and stepped back, sword flickering. They surged on, and he killed another knight and a man-at-arms. Slowly the Moors inside lowered the heavy gate behind him. Slowly the alcalde's soldiers overcame and forced back the assailants.

The gate closed, and the attempt was over. The attackers slunk away, and the alcalde said sternly to Manuel Barrachina, "When I have given the king's word, to break it is high treason. The king shall hear of this. And you, Messer Santangel, you shall go to the king as soon as the fortress is in our hands, with my dispatch."

Judah clapped his friend on the back, laughing with pleasure. The man chosen to convey such tidings would certainly be knighted and perhaps given greater honors. Here in Gibraltar Pedro had won the prize he wanted in life; now there was no limit to what he and his descendants might become—marquis, grandee, count, cardinal.

But for himself, he wanted another prize, and now was the time to seize it. He said, "Alcalde, I have private business to attend to. May I take four soldiers with me?"

"Not for looting, I trust," the alcalde said.

"No, senor. For persuasion."

He started up the hill outside the wall, the four men-at-arms following. Near the house of Suleiman Qureshi he looked back. The alcalde, Ah el Curro, and Mohammed Caba had disappeared. The alcalde's soldiers blocked the way to the closed gate. Other horsemen and soldiers and knights stood in small groups, talking, gesticulating. The Christian banners were in disarray, some propped against the castle wall, some on the ground. The green and black of King Muley Hassan still flew from the tower. The box containing the body of Enrique de Guzman, father of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, still dangled from its chains below.

Judah turned and walked faster toward the tall house at the head of Gully Steps. He rapped loudly with the handle of his dagger and called "Open!" The sun was high, and birds chattered in the trees overhanging the garden wall.

"Shall we break in the door, master?" a soldier asked eagerly, unlimbering a heavy battle ax.

"No," Judah said. "This will soon be my property." He raised the dagger to knock again, when the door suddenly opened. The Negro bowed low. Behind him four more, half naked, prostrated themselves and beat their heads on the floor.

The Negro said, "Enter, lord. We are men of peace."

Judah pushed through to the fountain patio and looked up at the tiers of balconies. Veiled women watched from the upper one, half a dozen servants stood bowing on the lower. The tame partridge suddenly chattered, making him jump.

"Bring me the lady Tova Hassan," he said.

No one spoke. He felt cold, and his hand began to tremble. He drew his dagger and turned slowly on the Negro. The soldier with the battle ax cried eagerly, "Shall I have his head off, sir?"

The Negro flung himself to the floor, grasping Judah's ankles. "Lord, she is not here. My master took her."

Judah grabbed the man by his hair, jerked him upright, and thrust the point of his dagger into the skin just below the ear.
"Where
has he taken her?"

"I don't ... d-d-don't know," the Negro sobbed. "No one knows."

"It is true," a voice called down from the second balcony. Judah looked up. A fat middle-aged Moorish woman, her veil thrown back, said, "The master aroused us at dawn when a lookout reported that the Christians were entering the city. He took Tova and Raza, the head eunuch."

"Where?" Judah called.

The Negro answered, "No one knows, lord. He loaded Raza with bags of gold and jewels and himself with other bags, some full of food, and left by the garden, ordering none to follow."

Judah looked slowly around the circles of faces—down here by the plashing fountains, on the balconies above. He turned to the soldiers. "Search the house. Every cupboard, every hole and corner. Show them," he called to the men.

He went quickly upstairs, past girls pressing themselves against the wall, past bowing servants, to the roof. From there he could see the harbor. No ship was sailing or making ready to sail, so Qureshi must have gone southward or to another house in Gibraltar.

"Lord..." It was the Negro, beside him. "If I may speak ... I think he is hiding in a cave, expecting your attack to be beaten off or bought off. Then he will return." Something in the man's voice made Judah turn quickly. "You know!" he grated. "Where are they? Tell me, or I swear I'll throw you off this roof." He grabbed the man's throat and bent him back over the parapet.

"I followed... but Raza turned and saw me. I fled." Judah released his grip. "How far did you go?"

"To the flat land at the foot of the southern cliffs. They were crossing it, heading east."

"East? To the back of the Rock? Are there caves on that side?"

"Many, lord. From sea level to the topmost crags. Small and large, some easy to see, some quite hidden."

Judah groaned. "Come with me, then. Show me where you turned back." He hurried down the stairs, found a soldier, and said, "Ask the alcalde to see that no one leaves Gibraltar by land or sea until I return. Run! ... You three, come with me."

He ran into the street calling impatiently to the Negro, "Which way now? ... Hurry, hurry!"

They stumbled along the side of the mountain, past several groups of startled monkeys, until they reached the flat above the bay the Spanish called Caleta Laudero, where the six ships of the invasion fleet were now anchored off shore. "I turned here," the Negro said, "close by this old heathen stone. They were going that way." He pointed east, where after another hundred yards the plateau ended in a sharp line. Judah moved forward, his heart sinking. The slope was very steep down to the sea. To the left the Rock rose in buttress and crag, tower and cliff, to the sky.

In that direction a goat track led along narrow ledges between great precipices. With the soldiers at his back, he hurried along it, past a dangerous beak-nosed projection of the cliff, until it ended at a big cave; but the cave was empty.

Back at the flat place he thought despairingly, I might pass close to her and she see me, but she would not dare to cry out.

To the right the flat place ended in a low cliff, then there was another flat place, the brazier of the light beacon, a few houses, a shrine, and the point. Nothing there.

Straight ahead, the flat place ended in a steep drop to the east. He went forward carefully. There was no path here, only the jagged rock curving over and then the sea, two hundred feet below. No one could have gone down there.

As he turned away, despair gripping him, something moved on the slope he had just been looking down. He stared—it was a woman, nothing like Tova—short, redhaired, quite naked. He gasped, for she was running up the steep, straight at him. her mouth wide in a scream. She passed, and he whipped around, but she was gone. "Where did she go?" he asked the soldiers.

"Who, sir?"

"The woman—the naked woman!"

"What woman, sir?"

He stared at them, and they at each other. He muttered a prayer and turned back. If the woman could come up, where he had thought it impossible, there must be a way down. He started cautiously on down and after a few minutes found a tiny piece of green cloth caught in a projecting thorn bush. His excitement mounting, he signaled to the soldiers to follow and went on. Ten minutes later the four of them stood on a narrow strip of sand at the foot of the cliffs. The sea rolled in, in small waves, behind them. In front a vast overhanging arch led back and up, the base a steeply rising floor of sand, into the Rock. There were fresh footprints in the sand, two pairs large and one small. They started up, abreast. As the light grew dimmer, where the slope flattened and a strange, shiny column of stone joined floor to ceiling, a man sprang out of the shadows on the left and struck downward with a scimitar. Judah hurled himself sideways, putting up his arm to protect himself. The blow struck his left wrist, severing the hand instantly. His missing hand throbbed, but there was no pain, and one of the soldiers, thrusting from behind him, stuck his sword into their assailants' leg. He fell, and the soldier with the battle ax shouted, "At last!" and clove his chest in two.

Judah moved forward, his left wrist raised above his head to lessen the bleeding.

A voice grated, "Stop!"

He saw, dim in the last recess of the cave, figures—Tova, unveiled, the Star of David at her forehead, her ankles bound; Suleiman Qureshi beside her, his dagger at her throat. Leather and canvas bags were stacked behind.

Wearily Judah leaned on his sword. He held out his arm to a soldier and said, "Bind this.... Let her go, Suleiman. I guarantee your life."

The merchant laughed without mirth. "What use is life without money?"

"You can keep your gold, too ... except for a hundred dinars to each of these soldiers. In return I want the keys of your house. We have taken Gibraltar."

Suleiman Qureshi said, "And you, a Jew, helped the Christians do it? Ah, they will reward you well." His knife still hovered at Tova's bare throat. Her eyes glowed with a dark green fire. Judah felt dizzy.

"Come," he said. "Free her."

The merchant's hand moved, the blade sliced, her ropes fell to the sand. She came forward slowly, and Judah waited for her. When she reached him, he said, "I brought something for you ... gift..." He dropped his sword, fumbled in his inner pocket and brought out the carved woman he had found the monkeys playing with. The light was fading, growing before his eyes.... "A charm, to make you fertile..." he said thickly. She took the figurine from him and looked at it, smiling. He said, "Fertile, because ... will you be my wife, daughter of Israel?"

She said,
"Verastech li leolam."

His knees buckled and his strength ebbed, but her eyes were over him and her arms, suddenly strong, supporting him as he sank to the sand.

The Jewish years 5222—5465

AUC 2215—2457

A.D. 1462-1704

A.H. 866—1116