VOYAGE OF STRANGERS (9 page)

We slept at the inn that night, a night’s slumber on the ground on top of a week’s travel having left Doña Marina with a fierce desire for a hot bath. Between her commanding presence and a quantity of silver coin, she persuaded the innkeeper’s wife to carry many buckets of boiling water to the chamber she shared with Rachel. She offered to make the woman fill a tub for me, but I declined, as did the men at arms. We made do with cold water at the pump in the inn yard. Indeed, the men at arms professed themselves amazed when I stripped off my clothing and poured a bucket over my whole body.

“I bathe my body as Christmas and Easter,” Hernan declared, “and that’s good enough for me.”

“Do you not have fleas?” I asked.

“What has that to say in the matter?” Hernan scratched beneath his tunic, looking puzzled by my question. “So does every Christian man in Spain.”

Thus he confirmed my mother’s opinion of the gentiles. I said no more.

The next day, we moved on. Through the heat of the day I dozed, slumped in the saddle. My mule clopped along, head hanging and nose brushing the earth as if it too would be glad of a
siesta
. As always, Doña Marina’s straight back and her mule’s gliding walk gave credence to the claim of a muleteer at the inn in Cordoba that mules had a smoother gait than many a horse. Or perhaps, given my aunt’s strength of will, her mount simply knew better than to jounce or bob with her aboard.

That evening, rather than squandering more of our coin in a town or even a village inn, we stopped to camp in the ruins of a castle, most likely destroyed in the centuries of warfare against the Moors. The men at arms were disappointed. Knowing sailors, if not soldiers, I guessed they favored the towns because these offered strong drink and
female companionship. I didn’t mind. I still felt safer away from people. The broken stone, with here and there an arch or carving that had survived, was beautiful in its wild way. We saw not a soul and heard no sound but the twittering of birds preparing to sleep and the homely lowing of cattle in a nearby field.

“The sunset promises to be well worth seeing,” Doña Marina said, “painted on such a vast open sky. I seldom see the like within the walls of Barcelona. I shall take a walk and enjoy the evening air. You need not worry for my safety, for the men will accompany me with a lantern. If you need more light before my return, there are candles in the second pack mule’s lefthand saddlebag.”

Rachel and I watched them out of sight, sitting on stones that had tumbled from the main arch of the castle gateway.

“Have you kept count of the days?” I asked. “I have. It is Friday night. She is giving us an opportunity to celebrate Shabbat.” 

“Shh, I know.” Rachel spoke more softly than was her wont. She took my hand and laced her fingers through mine. “Let us watch the sun go down.”

Only quiet fields lay before us. Even the mules seemed to sense the peace of the moment. The fiery ball of the sun, more brilliant than the largest of Queen Isabella’s rubies, sank below the horizon, then flared up into clouds that appeared in a clear sky as if for no other purpose than to reflect back the dying rays in pink, gold, and lavender splendor. As the display faded to a deep red and then to the dark blue of evening, Rachel leaned over and kissed my cheek.

“
Shabbat shalom
,” she said. May the peace of the Sabbath be upon you.

“
Shabbat shalom
.”

As I drew her toward me and kissed her cheek in turn, she giggled.

“Your beard is scratchy. You have truly become a man, my brother.” She gave me an impulsive hug.

“And you are still not quite a woman, my sister,” I retorted. “But in this place, you are the woman of the house. Do you remember the
b’rucha
over the candles?”

“Of course!” she said. “Wait, I have a clean kerchief for my head in my pack. I will get it while you find the candles. And I must take this thing off.” She tugged the silver cross on its chain, which I had mended, over her head.

“Remember to put it back on, after,” I said.

“I will not make that mistake twice,” she said. “Although I didn’t  remove it, Diego. You know the chain broke—”

“Hush,” I said. “Let us light the candles.”

I lit one candle from the small fire the men had built in the stone hearth of a hall that still had most of its walls. I dripped wax onto the paving stones. 

“Let me, let me,” Rachel cried. “It is my task to light the candles.”

I handed her the candles, managing not to tell her to be careful, though her braid swung close to the flame. She lit the second candle with the first, then pressed both candles into the still melted wax so they would stand upright. The white kerchief tied around her hair, much like those my mother wore on Shabbat, made her look older. She cupped her hands around the two small, brave flames and closed her eyes.

“
B’ruch atah Adonai Elohenu melech ha’olam....
”

Chapter Twelve

Seville, May 4 - June 1, 1493

We entered Seville at dusk, Rachel drooping with fatigue, both the pack mules limping, and even Doña Marina’s face showing the strain of keeping her back erect. As night fell, we made our way along the Calle Sierpes, still bustling even at that hour. We avoided the Jewish quarter. Although a few
conversos
remained in Seville, we were bound for the home of Christian friends of Doña Marina.

The Espinosas lived not far from the Plaza de San Francisco in a mansion so fine that I wondered what these grand folk would make of such unprepossessing travelers.  But I need not have worried. When the massive wooden door opened to Esteban’s knock, light spilled out and what seemed like dozens of people drew us in with cries of welcome.

The hospitable Espinosas quickly made us feel at home. Don Francisco, the head of the family, had a jutting chin, a mane of silver hair, and a commanding presence that was mitigated by the twinkle in his eye. His wife, Doña Beatriz, was plump and pretty.  Adelina, the eldest, had her Papa’s forceful chin. Graciela and Eulalia resembled their mama. Eulalia had recently become betrothed to a neighbor’s son. According to her sisters, she went about looking like a cat that had fallen into the cream bucket. Aldonza, the youngest, was sickly, subject to occasional shortness of breath and easily fatigued. She was sweet and gentle, and the whole household doted on her. The girls fell on Rachel with cries of delight, insisted on replenishing her wardrobe from their own abundant stores of gowns, shawls, ribbons, and lace, and immediately took to calling her “little sister.”

The sons welcomed me with equal enthusiasm. There were four of them: Paquito, named for his father, Horacio, Faustino, and Leon. A fifth, Valerio, was a soldier. He had taken part in the fighting at Arras between Duke Maximilian of Burgundy and the French the year before. Our Sovereigns were allies of the Duke, and Valerio’s company were among the troops that occupied the town. The family had not received news of him in some time, but as far as they knew, he was still there, making sure the townspeople didn’t 
help the French to take it back.

The Espinosas talked incessantly of soap. Like many of the lesser nobles of Seville, they had mercantile interests as well. These included a manufactory, and Don Francisco had made sure that all his sons had a grasp of how this lucrative product was made and sold. My head whirled with the constant discussion of saponification, the virtue of various woods to produce the wood ash that yielded lye, the superiority of pure olive oil in providing the finest grade of soap for merchants’ ladies as well as the nobility, and whether the cultivation of flowers to add fragrance to their soaps might not allow them to seize more of the market not only from their rivals among the soapmakers of Seville but also from the masters of the art in Marseille, in faraway Provence.

The brothers’ cheerful company suited me. With them, I visited the manufactory across the river in Triana. Believing me a newcomer to Seville, they insisted I must at least once cross the wooden bridge that floated on a string of bobbing boats. I came back from Triana laden with fragrant soaps that they had pressed on me, saying I might present them as gifts to Rachel and Doña Marina or, if I preferred, save them to win some young lady’s favor, if one I fancied should catch my eye. The excursion was marred for me only by the proximity of the fortress where the Holy Inquisition had its headquarters.

“That is where we burn the heretics,” Horacio said, with a wave of his hand as we passed the grim gray tower.

“You lie, brother,” Paquito said, cuffing him playfully on the ear. “The interrogations take place here, but the burnings are in the Plaza, in front of the Cathedral.”

Then they turned the conversation once again to soap. But as we passed, I imagined I could hear the cries of innocents tortured for keeping faith with Adonai and see their tears running from the dank stone walls.

The only shadow on the Espinosas’ sunny family life was their Moorish slave, Amir. A slim, brown-skinned boy with delicate features, he said little and kept his eyes cast down as he poured coffee, the bracing beverage that the Moors had brought to Andalusia, held the horses’ bridles when the men prepared to ride out, and swept up leaves in the pretty courtyard, set about with orange and lemon trees in tubs and graced in its center by a fine fountain. We had seen many of his kind in Seville since the fall of Granada, cried through the streets as if they were melons or artichokes.

Rachel lost no time in befriending him.

“I hear him crying in the night, Diego,” she said. “His father was a scholar and a man of means, but he died in the fighting last year. Amir saw his brothers killed and his mother and sisters stripped naked and sold to strangers before they brought him to Seville in chains and sold him.”

“He could have fallen to a far worse master than Don Francisco,” I said. “At least he is not beaten or ill used.”

“That is not worthy of you!” Rachel cried. “Would the absence of such ill use reconcile you to the loss of your own freedom?”

“I did not mean to say that I condone it, Rachel. Papa once said to me, ‘In the tent of Abraham, there were both slave and free—but we have progressed a little since then.'"

“That is what I meant,” she said.

Besides the manufactory, the Espinosas held lands, both farmlands leased for their revenue and groves devoted to the growing of olives, both for use in soap production and for trade. I rode out with them to see the rows of sturdy trees with their gnarled trunks, silvery leaves tossing in the wind, and taste both the useful fruit itself and various grades of oil. The first pressings, yielding the purest and most flavorful oil, were exported all over Europe. Later pressings supplied the oil for the soaps. All the sons were knowledgeable, their upbringing having combined the industry of merchants with the courtesy of nobles.

I asked many questions, for I did not mean to be a sailor all my life. While I had not much interest in soap, I learned all I could about olives. Whether I made my home in Italy or in Hispaniola, should our settlements there take hold, I meant to have a trade that I could carry anywhere, whether as a farmer, an artisan, or a merchant. I had not seen olives in the Indies, but neither had I seen much gold, yet all swore it was there in abundance. Besides, the climate was so mild and the lands we had discovered so fertile that surely no plant would refuse to grow there.

“The olive tree doesn’t
like wet feet,” Paquito warned me.

“Then I shall not situate my groves in the
mangue
swamps,” I said.

Then they plied me with questions about these curious trees of the Indies that lived in water, their roots forming thickets that rose into the air and entwined so closely that even the Taino’s smallest
canoa
or dugout boat had difficulty passing through them.

“Don’t any of you wish to visit the Indies?” I asked. “For there will be work aplenty for both merchants and farmers, as well as gold for all, and surely the settlers will be in need of soap.”

But they laughed and said that they were well content with their ancestral lands and their existing trade routes, save only for Valerio, who had been mad for fighting since earliest childhood and was now getting his fill.

The Espinosas insisted on lending me a horse, a fine gray mare whose gait I suspected had more to do with her own inclination than with the pressure of my heels on her flanks or my hands upon the reins. This varied from a shambling walk to a bone-jarring trot to a reckless gallop. The Espinosas laughed at me and swore that I must show her who was master, and then she would go as sweetly as any other mount in their stables. I offered instead to accompany them on the mule on which I had arrived in Seville, but they laughed and said it would shame their horses to be seen in company with such a companion. There was no malice in their teasing, so I kicked the mare a little harder and made the most of more congenial companionship than I had had since leaving my boyhood home.

Rachel was much put out not to be invited to view either the olive groves or the soap manufactory. Nor was she offered a horse. Nonetheless, she was well entertained. In the company of the Espinosa daughters, she enjoyed many excursions within the city, bringing home ribbons and trinkets from the fairs and markets, for the sisters had full purses and constantly pressed gifts on her which she was bound by politeness as well as inclination to accept. In return, she sang, told stories by the hour, and sought any occasion she could find to run errands for Doña Beatriz.  She spent much time with young Aldonza, whose fits of wheezing sometimes kept her from joining in their walks or forced her to return early to the house. Rachel found she could persuade the others to continue if she offered to accompany Aldonza home, after sitting in the shade with her until she recovered enough to walk.