VOYAGE OF STRANGERS (6 page)

As we consumed the fresh bread and eggs I had predicted along with ale and a sharp but tasty cheese, I considered the new turn of events. Doña Marina’s presence would relieve me of a great part of the burden of responsibility for Rachel. She could chaperone my wilful, enthusiastic sister and keep her from running wild as I could not. And her men at arms would assure our safety. But was her desire to protect us sincere?  I would hold my full judgment in reserve. Rachel chattered freely as we ate, taking our aunt’s cooperation at face value. With Hernan and Esteban, the men at arms, Rachel was as friendly as a puppy, treating them with the same respect she would an older brother: in short, with none.

“Will Don Rodrigo not pursue us?” I gulped the last mouthful of ale and wiped crumbs from my lips.

“I don’t believe so,” she said. “He will be very angry that the bird he sought to pluck for his son has flown. As for me, my absence must cool his ardor. As time passes, he will give up and seek easier prey.” She stood. “I am ready to depart.”

“I will not be easy,” I said, “until I have spoken with the Admiral. If I may take one of your mules, I can seek him out now. Once I have his permission, I will rejoin you on the road.”

“He was ever very fond of your father,” Aunt Marina said.

She led the way around the house, where seven sturdy mules awaited us, five saddled and the other two laden with bulging packs. 

“When we heard my brother had drowned at sea,” she said, “I cried until I became ill. Then, when we had mourned for months, he showed up at our door, ragged and thin but alive, with Columbus at his side. Each declared he would have been dead if not for the other. He had no kin nearer than Genoa, so he became quite one of the family.”

“I cannot imagine the Admiral as a youth,” I admitted.

“He had a mop of hair as red as carrots,” my aunt said, “though I believe it turned white when he was no more than thirty.”

“Will you tell the Admiral about me?” Rachel asked, as I flung a leg over my mule.

“I will tell him,” I said, “that I have but now learned of your presence in Barcelona. I shall say that I must escort you to Seville, where family friends have promised to take you in until we can find a way to send you to Firenze to join our parents.”   

“I don’t want—” Rachel began.

My glare silenced her. Now was not the time to argue. I kissed her and bowed over my aunt’s hand, kissing the air above it as Columbus had before the Queen. I turned the mule’s head toward the city. As I urged it to a trot and then to a canter that was its most rapid pace, a soft wash of color, pink, pale gold, and pearl, suffused the sky above the wakening city, heralding a new day.

Chapter Six

On the road to Seville, April 19-23, 1493

Once we were on the road, Rachel threw off the oppressive spirits in which Don Rodrigo’s attack had left her, trusting to me, Doña Marina, and the two stout men at arms to keep her safe. I restrained her with difficulty from demanding to wear her boy’s garments, of which our aunt knew nothing, the better to sit her mule. Worse, I feared she would repeat to Doña Marina her mad proposal to accompany me to the Indies. While she held her peace on that particular matter, she drove me mad demanding endless details of life on shipboard, the Taino, and the isle of Hispaniola where the Spanish settlement lay.

“It is the only sensible solution,” she grumbled when our aunt was out of earshot, no less dignified atop a mule than she would be in Alcazar or cathedral. “Why should I not wish to follow the fortunes of the man you yourself most admire?”

“It is more work than you imagine to be a seaman, or even a gromet,” I said. “Worse, in fact, for the boys must answer to any who choose to give them an order, not only to the ship’s master or the pilot.”

“I can work,” Rachel said. “I am strong, and I would much prefer it to becoming a young lady, whether in Spain or in Italy.”

“You can't imagine how it is on board a ship, Rachel.”

“Then tell me, so I can contrive a way to manage.”

“You don’t understand.”

My sister was an innocent. I could not tell her that the ship’s boys held pissing contests over the rails, or that sailors, so often denied the company of women, could quickly become consumed with lust when one was available.

“You would be profoundly uncomfortable,” I said.

Rachel snorted and tossed her head. Her mule did the same. She whipped it to a gallop, its hooves sending spurts of dust up from the road. To my chagrin, the fastest of the mules had taken a fancy to her and would allow no other rider on its back. She loved to ride so far ahead that we would not overtake her until we reached the next village. There we would find her, gossiping with the village women at the well, having already made friends with every child, dog, and chicken in the place. Her unreserved trust in all she met troubled me. So had the Taino been when we first encountered them: unstinting in their friendliness and expecting nothing but good in return.

Doña Marina, whose mule dared not exceed a sedate trot no matter what the others did, reined in beside me. Knowing I could not catch up with Rachel, I had allowed mine to pause and crop the grass at the side of the road.

“Your father must find a husband for her when she reaches Italy,” she said. “That will settle her down.”

“She is not yet thirteen years old,” I protested. “Rachel is not an
infanta
, a princess, to be married off as a child.”

“She will be old enough by the time it is arranged.” She clucked expertly at her mule, which raised its head and ambled forward.

I gathered up my reins and persuaded own mount to keep pace with hers. We were passing a grove of cherry trees in full bloom, and the balky creature had decided they were good to munch. No doubt we would find Rachel garlanded with pink blossoms when we reached the next village.

“Aunt,” I said on impulse, “why in truth did you leave your ordered life to keep us company?”

Doña Marina sniffed.

“It is evident you have never had sole charge of a girl of Raquel’s age.”

“I am already aware of my deficiencies in the matter,” I said. “But why?”

“I was growing weary of the sameness of my days,” she said. “Raquel is an enlivening companion.”

I dared to laugh at that, and she permitted herself a rusty smile.

“Too much so, as I know too well,” I said. “Had you no intention of accepting Don Rodrigo’s suit, had the complication of our presence not arisen?” 

“Never,” she said. “I don’t mean for him or any other man to take my inheritance from Torres—or my liberty. A widow can be her own woman as a wife or maiden cannot.”

“That is what galls Rachel so,” I said. “She has an independent spirit.”

“She reminds me of myself in my youth,” Doña Marina said.

I tried to conceal my astonishment, evidently without success.

“Do you not think,” she said, “that I must have been a rebellious girl? How else could I have turned my back on my father’s faith and the life of a good Jewish wife that he intended for me."

I said nothing, hoping to hear more.

"I was lucky,” she said. “I married an old man. He was both kind and generous, and he didn’t  live long. Since then, I have lived as I wanted.” She turned on me a smile that reached her eyes. “Except for a regrettable absence of adventure until now.”

“And Don Rodrigo?” I ventured.

“Soon enough,” she said, “his fancy will light on another rich widow.”

“The cousin Don Rodrigo mentioned,” I said, “he who sailed with us on the Santa Maria and yet remains in the Indies, was reputed to be an informer for the Inquisition.”

“I had not heard of him before,” she said. “It doesn’t  seem as if they were close companions. Has he influence?”

“At Court, you mean?” I shook my head. “None at all. He is a low fellow and not what one would expect of a family like the Maldonados.”

“Every family has at least one relative to embarrass them,” she said. “I myself was an embarrassment to the Mendozas when I chose to embrace Christ.”

“Papa did the same.” 

“But in his heart, he didn’t mean it. He never understood my choice.”

Nor did I. But at that moment, a sow wandering across the road signaled our arrival in the village. Hairy, brown as dirt, and of an impressive size, she ignored us as she grunted encouragement to the half dozen piglets that followed her. The men at arms, who had followed us all day at a discreet distance so as not to intrude on our talk, caught up with us as we waited for the porcine procession to pass.

Rachel was not at the well, though all the village women gathered there were crowned with cherry blossoms. They laughed and pointed toward the biggest cottage at the end of the dusty street.

“The
alcalde
’s wife invited her to dinner.” Evidently, no one refused the mayor’s wife. “They await your arrival.”

We found Rachel sitting in the doorway of the cottage, shelling peas. She held the bowl in her lap, knees wide to make a net of her long skirt. The posture was disgraceful, but considering she had spent hours astride a mule every day for the past week, I decided it would do no good to scold her. Doña Marina’s snort signified more amusement than disapproval, if I was not mistaken.

“What took you so long?” Rachel shouted as we approached. Her braids were coming down, and her cheeks were as rosy as her crown of blossoms, which sat askew so that she looked like a tipsy wood nymph. “They have killed a kid for our dinner, and I was allowed to milk the nanny goat. Watch out for the billy, though. He doesn’t like mules.”

Chapter Seven

Cordoba, April 26, 1493

As the journey continued, we did not always feast on roasted kid. Nor were we always offered the mayor’s own bed, with his children turned out to sleep on hay in a shed alongside my aunt’s men at arms. In the towns along the way, Doña Marina would lay out gold for a chamber in a well-kept inn for herself and Rachel, though the guards and I made do with benches in the common room. I didn’t  mind, except that I never had enough privacy to don my
talit
and
t’fillin
for prayer. Ha’shem’s hand had certainly been under us so far, and He deserved my thanks.

Rachel’s Jewish observance was neglected too. She wore a silver cross to reassure the curious and deflect suspicion. My mother had done the same, although I could remember her grimace of distaste each morning as she put it on before going to the market. Rachel had no such qualms. As we rode along, she chattered freely about the sisters in the convent, the daily round of worship, and her friends among the other girls, some there to become nuns in time and others to be schooled to piety and virtue before their marriages. Rachel showed no sign of applying any of it to herself, neither the Christian religion nor the piety and virtue.

As we traveled deeper into my native Andalusia, the air grew warmer. The season progressed almost before our eyes from the pale shoots and plowed earth of early spring to spring at its height, lush with a thousand shades of green. We passed orchards of apple, plum, and apricot, trees heavy with clouds of pink and white blossom, as well as the deep, brilliant rose of quince and starlike orange and lemon blossoms that lent the air as sweet a scent as that of Hispaniola. Kestrels and falcons circled above. The songs of thrushes and warblers rose all around us, above them the high, sweet tones of larks. It seemed to me that the very manure on the fields smelled sweet, as if the cows that supplied it grazed on flowers.

Now, even with another perilous voyage ahead, I remembered that Andalusia was home.  My spirits rose higher every day until they almost matched Rachel’s. How could I, who had crossed the uncharted Ocean Sea on a frail cockleshell of a boat and reached the Indies, fail to believe that anything was possible?

And so we came to Cordoba. The city, once ruled by the Moors, now harbored a tribunal of the Inquisition. I would have preferred to skirt it for that reason. But I could not call attention to our private adherence to Judaism. To Esteban and Hernan, the men at arms, we passed as Christians. Furthermore, Rachel clamored to see the sights of Cordoba, which she had never visited. These included the magnificent cathedral, once a mosque, with its forest of columns topped with arches composed of broad stripes of red and golden-white stone. 

Under the Caliphs, Cordoba had been a great center of learning, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived at peace. Our own Great Eagle, the philosopher Maimonides, had been born there, as had his fellow, the Arab Averroes. But the
Reconquista
had changed that. Cordoba’s Alcazar was named the Palace of Christian Kings, and the sights available to travelers included the abandoned Jewish quarter and a slave market. This last I passed with eyes averted, fearing to see Jewish slaves among the wretched Africans and Moors.

Having risen early and broken our fast with nothing more than water and some elderly lumps of bread, we decided to visit the great market in the arcades of the Plaza de la Corredera before seeking lodging. The plaza was thronged with people and animals. Produce spilled out of carts and baskets ranged beneath cloth awnings rigged to offer shade as the day grew hotter. Bawling calves, chickens squawking until cut off by the wringing of their necks, and vendors crying wares of indescribable variety made speech impossible. From the baking earth underfoot rose the smells of rotting vegetables, frying meat, fresh dung, jasmine and orange blossom, and the sour sweat and garlic breath of many human bodies crushed together.