VOYAGE OF STRANGERS (8 page)

“Ssst!
Gadjo
boy!”

I looked around, but saw no one. The sharp hiss came again.

“Ssst! Come!”

Now I saw him, a wiry figure crouching in the shadow of a pillar. He grinned at me, his teeth stained and broken but his black eyes bright in a swarthy face. His clothes were dingy and tattered, like a sailor’s after a month at sea. But the pair of steel daggers at his waist were bright, not new, but carefully tended.

“Come,” he repeated. “I take you to your sister.”

“What! Where is she?” I crossed the distance between us at a single bound and clutched at his arms. “What have you done with her?”

I could feel his muscles harden, but he made no attempt to free himself.

“She is with the Roma. Safe. She save our
chavi
, we save yours.”

“You must take us to her at once!”

I started to hail my aunt and the men at arms, but he seized my elbow and stopped me.

“No soldiers,” he said. 

“They are not soldiers,” I said, shaking him off. “They are my aunt’s men. They will do you no harm. We must all come, else my aunt will go mad with worry. Where is my sister?”

“Only you,” he insisted.

I didn’t like the prospect of going off alone with the gypsy, but I must reach Rachel as soon as possible. I had only his word that she was safe. Perhaps he and his fellows held her for ransom and would like to add me to the tally. He could see our well-fed mules and well-filled saddlebags and no doubt guessed that we had gold enough.

Doña Marina bore down on us, Hernan and Esteban in her wake. Each kept a hand on his sword, but neither drew, though their posture betrayed their readiness to spring forward if need be.

“Who have we here?” Doña Marina demanded. “Have you news of my niece?”

She waved the men at arms back a pace. I stood close enough to tackle the gypsy if he attempted to flee. But he didn’t . He gave my imposing aunt the same impudent grin.

“She is safe with the Roma.”

Behind her, Esteban exclaimed, “The two gypsy girls!”

“What happened?” My fingers itched to shake the story out of him. “Did the soldiers have her?”

“I told you. She save our Drina, we save her. You and you,” he nodded to me and to my aunt, “come get her. No
churara
.” He flicked a hand at the men at arms and their swords. “Too many
gadjo
.”

Doña Marina remained calm. She would have made a good ship’s master.

“My nephew and I will accompany you. Diego, you will lead Raquel’s mule. Hernan, you will take the remaining mules to the inn.”

She nodded at the laden pack mules. If the gypsy led us someplace where he and his fellows could rob us, they would not get our gold.

“Esteban will come with us.”

The gypsy scowled and shook his head vigorously.

“He will leave his sword behind.”

“My lady!” Esteban protested.

I regarded her with admiration. She knew we must find Rachel, so she negotiated. She would have made an admiral. The gypsy shrugged. He turned and motioned to us to follow.

“You have knives, Esteban,” she said. “So has he. But he will not betray us.”

The gypsy grinned again.

“I bring you to your
chavi
,” he said. “Rachel. Our Drina call her sparkling girl.”

That didn’t sound as if Rachel were a frightened prisoner.

“
Chavi
?” I said. “Drina?”

I had heard the gypsy language in snatches on market days. They worked as itinerant farm laborers during spring planting and at the harvest, but did not settle in towns and stayed nowhere for long. They made baskets for sale and were said to read one’s destiny in the fall of cards or the lines in one’s palm, if one were credulous enough to believe they could foretell the future.

“
Chavi
is girl in our tongue, Romani. Drina the name of your sister’s new friend.”

“Drina,” I repeated. “Are you her brother?”

He laughed.

“Her
nano
, uncle. I am Shandor.” He cocked his head in inquiry.

“Diego,” I said. “Are you taking us to the gypsy camp?”

“Not gypsy!” Shandor spat. “We are Roma!” He struck his chest with his fist. “I am Rom. We are an ancient people.”

“Roma, then,” I said. “Rachel is at your camp? You take us there now? If you don’t let my sister go, I will fight you all. If she has been harmed, I will kill you.”

Shandor laughed.

“With what?” He gestured contemptuously at my knife. “I am best knife thrower of us all, except Marko, father of Drina. Four soldiers have Drina and Rachel. We get them back, soldiers never even see us. But have no fear for Rachel, she has honor among us.” He laughed again. “Your sister say you worry too much.”

Chapter Ten

Outside Cordoba, April 26, 1493

The gypsies were encamped in a sunny meadow, their gaily painted wagons grouped like dwellings in a village. Several open fires ringed with stones served for cooking and as gathering places. One man, seated on a log, was engaged in mending a tin pot. Women stirred pots that bubbled on the fires. Mothers called out to infants and toddlers who crawled, rolled, and chased each other through the grass. Older children curried mules that, while not as well-bred as ours, looked sturdy enough to pull the wagons fully laden. The women and girls all wore long, full, brightly colored skirts. Both men and women were decked with jewelry that flashed in the sun. The air smelled pleasantly of wood smoke and stewed rabbit.

The whole encampment hummed with music. One woman, gnarled and squat as an olive stump, with long iron-gray hair streaming down her back, carried herself like a beauty as she stretched out her arms and sang in a husky, plaintive wail that reminded me of Moorish music. A man who looked even older danced facing her. He strutted and stamped, arms upraised, back as straight as a soldier’s and the pride of a grandee in his bearing. Several musicians accompanied them. Three of the men played small lute-like instruments whose pairs of strings they struck with their fingers to create a bold flurry of sound. Women shook jingling tambourines or snapped a pair of wooden shells in either hand to create a clacking rhythm. Others, both men and women, clapped in rhythmic patterns and occasionally contributed a line, delivered with great passion, to the song.

In our circuitous journey past the outskirts of Cordoba, through woods and along winding tracks off the main road, I had learned that the Roma regarded what they called
gadjo
, anyone not a Rom, much as we Jews did gentiles: folk of whom one did well to be wary. They would never understand our ways and might turn on us at any moment. When the Roma in the camp caught sight of us emerging from the trees at Shandor’s back, all activity stopped. But their stillness lasted only a moment, then they surged forward with cries of welcome and perhaps curiosity.

A young woman stirring something in a great black iron kettle, with a little girl crouching at her side and chattering at her, I took to be a Rom mother with her child until she whirled and revealed herself as Rachel. Dropping the long-handled spoon, she ran toward us with outstretched arms, her face indeed sparkling with excitement and enthusiasm. A small, disheveled dog bounded at her heels, barking loudly.

“Diego, Diego! Is it not splendid? The Roma saved me, and I am learning to speak Romani and make rabbit stew. Come and meet my friend Drina, she is little but very quick and bright. You know Shandor, but you must greet Drina’s father, Marko, and her mother, Tshilaba. Tshilaba is not much older than you, but she has Drina and two babies and another coming, and when she heard what happened she kissed my hand and said, '
Gestena!
' That is 'thank you' in Romani, and you must say it to all of them, to Shandor and Marko and Tshilaba, for she skinned the rabbits, and Drina too, for I would never have run in time if she had not taken my hand. Oh, and Marko snared the rabbits, and here is Drina’s dog. His name is Baxtalo, it means Lucky, and I
wish
I could have a dog of my own, but I know you would say no.”

I caught her up in my arms, laughing and shedding a tear or two that I hoped nobody noticed, even as I scolded her.

“Rachel, you are
never
to run off in a crowd like that! You must promise to be more mindful. I could never have faced Papa and Mama again if I had lost you, as I feared I had.”

“I am perfectly safe,” she said, hugging me fiercely before she sprang down and danced lightly around me, too excited to stand still. “All the Roma have been very kind to me. You worry too much.”

“So I gather you have told the whole tribe,” I said drily.

I let her lead me off to meet Drina and eat wild strawberries the two girls had picked themselves, as I might have known from the scarlet stains on their mouths and fingers, had I not been too dizzy with relief at getting Rachel back to note such details. We spent the rest of the day with the Roma in feasting and much needed rest. Doña Marina was ceremoniously greeted by an old woman, wrinkled and bent but radiating authority, who Rachel whispered was their queen and Drina’s great-grandmother. Esteban, of whom the men were exceedingly wary, won them over by almost matching them at knife throwing, beating them at archery, and losing a pocketful of coin to them at dice. He laughingly refused to wager on whether he could guess the location of a dried pea under three shells, which disappointed them but won their further respect.

As I would surely have lost, I did not compete, but I spent some time talking with Drina’s father.

“You
gadjo
think all Roma are thieves,” Marko said. “How can we earn when they will not let us work, but drive us away if we seek to settle among them and learn new trades?”

“Thus the Jews became bankers,” I told him, “for they would not allow us in their guilds. And so we grew rich and aroused their greed and envy.”

“That fate, at least, will not befall the Roma,” Marko said. “Nor need I have the gift of foretelling to say so.”

The children, both boys and girls, were not restrained by Jewish or Christian notions of manners. They had already adopted Rachel as one of them, chattering to her and Drina as they converged on me and patted every part of me they could reach. Their curious hands explored my skin, my garments, and my hair. The younger women, equally interested, hovered nearby and giggled.

“They look as if they would like to pat you too,” Rachel said, giggling herself.

“Women don’t touch a young man!” Drina said, scandalized.

As evening fell, more and more of the Roma took to dancing around the fire, their movements both fierce and fluid. They beckoned to me to join them. As I shook my head, a stick tapped my shoulder. I looked up to find the old woman, the queen of the Roma, regarding me. I leaped up from the log on which I had perched and bowed low, which amused her.

“Sit,” she said.

When I had done so, she settled herself beside me, leaning but lightly on her knotty wooden walking stick. She sat the log with as straight a back as Doña Marina on her mule.

“Why do you wander?” I asked. “Why do you not settle in towns and villages like othe
r folk and make a home there?” We Jews had been wandering for close to two thousand years, but we had never done so by choice.

“The rabbit who has only one hole is soon caught,” she said. “A saying of the Roma.”

“My people would have done well to remember that,” I said. “We allowed ourselves to believe Spain was our home. Now they have driven us out and taken all our possessions. They may do the same to you.”

“All you can see, you possess. Another saying of the Roma.” She lifted her face to the sky, then flung her arms wide in an expansive gesture that took in the meadow, the woods beyond, and the ground at our feet. “You see the earth, the sky. Who can take these from you? Who can steal from you the lark on the wing, the flower in the meadow, the rabbit in the grass, the strawberry hiding under the leaf, the open road?”

I thought Cristobal would like her.

“I read your hand.” she said.

“You wish to tell my fortune?” I could not entirely keep my skepticism out of my voice.

She spat on the ground.

“The cards, lines in the palm, they reveal wisdom to those who know how to read,” she said. “No man or woman can tell the future. Give me your hand.”

She held out her hand, palm up.  At her nod, I laid mine upon it. She squinted over my palm and traced its lines and creases with one finger. 

“Ha! Like us, you are a wanderer. Every home is no home. Family is the heart, not the hearth alone.”

“The Jews are the people of the Book,” I said.

“As Roma people of the road,” she replied.

“We also name ourselves the Chosen People,” I said, not sure why I told her this.

“Chosen? By whom?”

To that, I knew the answer.

“By God.”

“Ha! And for what?”

“Truly,” I said, “it often seems that we are chosen but for misfortune and death.” I had not dared admit as much to another soul since I bade my parents farewell a year ago.

She leaned forward and patted my shoulder. Then she seized a bundle of dry sticks from a stack lying ready for the fire. With a quick, wringing motion, she snapped the faggot in two and tossed it into the flames. She raised her hands, fingers fluttering, and followed the path of the sparks upward. I felt a chill prickle my neck.

“You
gadjo
, but a good boy,” she said. “You find another way. You and your sister green wood—bend, not snap.”

I wished I could ask her how to find that way, but I doubted she would or could have told me. As she said, her art was not fortunetelling, but wisdom. 

Chapter Eleven

On the road to Seville, April 27-29, 1493

After spending one night with the Roma, we bade them farewell and made our way as quickly as possible to the inn where Hernan awaited us, fretting with anxiety as he wondered whether to set out in search of us, though Shandor had been careful not to reveal before Hernan left us in which direction the camp lay. Since we had to reenter Cordoba to reach the inn, Doña Marina made Rachel put on her best dress, sadly wrinkled from the pack in which it had lain since our departure from Barcelona. Further, she lent her a lace veil to cover her hair and mask her face, so that if we came upon anyone who had seen her during the altercation with the soldiers, it would not cross their minds that she might be the elder “gypsy girl.”