Hammer of Witches (4 page)

So I did the only thing I could do. I said, “You’re right, Gonzalo.”

Whatever reaction Gonzalo had been expecting from me, it clearly wasn’t this one. “What did you say?” he said, inching closer to me.

I reached back for the closest wall and rose painfully from my spot in the puddle. “I said you’re right, Gonzalo. I
am
a coward. I’m nothing more than a Foolish Cohen.”

My words had the effect I’d desired. Gonzalo loosened his fist and scrunched up his eyes. Around us the chants of “coward” fizzled to nothing. I wiped the dirt from my chin with my sleeve and forced a swollen, wretched smile.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the story of Foolish Cohen,” I willed myself to say. “It’s about Cohen, a Jew, so of course he wants some money. So Cohen sneaks over to his neighbor’s yard and steals a goat so he can sell some milk. Later that day,
Bang! Bang!
The neighbor’s banging like crazy on Foolish Cohen’s door. The neighbor screams, ‘Where’s my goat, Cohen? Where’s my goat?’ Cohen says, ‘Goat? What goat? I haven’t seen any goat.’ The neighbor screams, ‘You know damn well, you dirty Jew! Now bring her out here before I shove my fist down your throat! And trust me, my fist ain’t kosher!’”

Gonzalo and his gang shared a few snickers. I forced myself down on all-fours in the mud.

“Just then the goat pops his head out Cohen’s window, braying,
‘MAAA! MAAA!
’” I shot to my feet. “The neighbor takes Cohen by the collar, screaming, ‘I knew it! You treacherous swine! I knew you had her all along!’

“And can you believe it? What does Foolish Cohen do? He says, ‘Now who are you going to believe? Me or a goat?’”

I stretched another fake smile across my face as Gonzalo’s gang hollered, and I tried to ignore the pain I felt when I saw my own friends hiding their own laughter. But I couldn’t blame them for laughing, not really. Everyone always laughed at my stories and howled when I made a fool of myself. That was my role, after all — the Jewish jester.

Gonzalo crossed his bulky arms and shook his head at me. “All right, Infante. This I want to hear. What does any of this have to do with Elena Hernández?”

I smiled wider, feeling my lips rip at the corners. “You said it yourself, Gonzalo. Me and Foolish Cohen? We’ve got the same blood. I knew Elena Hernández would never go for someone like that. I only tried to kiss her as a joke.”

A joke. Gonzalo’s jaw relaxed as the idea took hold of him. “And you should have seen it!” I went on. “I move in real close — romantic, like this. And
bam!
She cracks me right across the face! She screams, ‘Ew, get off me, Baltasar! Like I’d want to kiss some big-nose like you!’ Luis was there. Tell him, Luis.”

Luis avoided my gaze but got the idea. “That’s what happened, Gonzalo. It was . . . it was pretty funny.”

Gonzalo’s crew muttered to one another, not sure what to believe. I put a muddy arm around their leader. “Come on, Gonzalo! You know I’d never
really
go after your girl. I swear on the name of my foolish Jewish God.”

Gonzalo considered me, the muddy Marrano standing next to him, as the facts of my case clicked together in his head. Finally a wry grin formed between his jowls, and he choked me in the crook of his elbow.

“I should have known.” I flinched as Gonzalo gave me a playful punch in the stomach. “You dumb bastard! Did you actually think she’d kiss you back? I mean, if the stories didn’t scare her off, your ugly mug would!”

“Exactly,” I said. I put my hand out in a symbol of truce and waited. “Friends?”

Gonzalo took my hand, and I knew I was forgiven. Behind him, Luis gathered up the coins Gonzalo had thrown at me — the coins Gonzalo had stolen from him earlier. And Gonzalo said to me, “You’re mad, you know that, Marrano?”

I just nodded and smiled like a fool.

When I entered my house, I marched straight into my room and slammed the door behind me. The scent of my aunt’s eggplant and onion stew followed me inside. As nice as it smelled, I couldn’t deal with her kitchen lectures now. Thinking of the fuss she’d make when she saw my bruised face, I buried it into my pillow and hoped sleep would take me soon.

No such luck. The sound of a door opening and closing told me my uncle had entered the kitchen. “Was that Baltasar?” I heard him say with some urgency.

“Hmph,” was Aunt Serena’s answer. “Sounded more like the Behemoth with all that stomping.”

“But he’s home,” Diego said, relieved. Then, “Stomping? What happened? Is something wrong?”

“Why don’t you go ask him?”

Bracing myself for my uncle’s inevitable entrance, I tossed myself onto my side and crossed my arms at the open window. Even someone as old and scatterbrained as Diego could understand that signal.

Or maybe not. Before long I heard the door to my room open. Soon a muffled creak told me that my uncle had settled on the stool next to my bed, the one he used to sit on to tell me stories.

“Bali, I told you not to leave the house.” I winced as he pressed a finger against my bruised face. “Another fight with Gonzalo, I see. What did he say about your parents this time?”

“Nothing.”

“I know it’s hard, Bali, but you mustn’t be ashamed of them! Your parents were heroes! They died for what they believed in.”

Frowning out the window, I toyed idly with the cross hanging from my neck. My parents. Not long after I was born they’d converted and changed their name from Mizrahi to Infante, hoping to protect me from Palos’s anti-Jewish mobs. Then King Fernando and Queen Isabel introduced a new inquisition meant to free their kingdoms of false Christian converts. My aunt and uncle thankfully escaped trial and execution, but my parents were not so lucky. The Inquisition tried them and put them to death after they refused to publicly renounce their Jewish beliefs.

According to Diego that refusal made them heroes. Heroes. The word always put me in a silent fury. If my parents were heroes, they would have forsworn their faith, gone to church on Sundays like they were supposed to! Heroes didn’t leave their children orphans. Heroes didn’t die.

Diego and I were quiet for some time, and eventually I thought he might leave without saying anything more. But then he raised a bent finger and said the words I’d been dreading most: “You know, Bali, I know exactly what you need. A golem.”

I moaned, knowing it was no use. Once my uncle started a story, it was unstoppable, like a volcano or a flood.

“‘What is a golem?’ you might ask. One of my favorite stories. It’s a wonder I didn’t tell you about him sooner. The golem is a giant beast made out of clay. But the best part of the golem — to an old bookmaker, anyway — is that he comes to life through the power of the written word. Must have been an invention of bookmakers. They’re creative fellows, you know. Philosopher kings, if they wanted the power —”

“But moving on,” I grumbled.

“Now, to give a golem life, you write the word truth, which is
ameth
, like this.” With a finger, my uncle traced out some invisible runes on my quilt. “You write it on a tablet and put it into the creature’s mouth. And to stop the golem, simple enough. You erase the first letter.” My uncle covered the first invisible symbol with a veiny hand. “Now it says
meth
, which means death, and voilà — the golem stops.”

“Please, Uncle. No more stories.”

“But I haven’t even gotten to the point of it yet. You see, Bali, the golem is a protector. Brute strength, pure loyalty. In fact, he is the Jewish people’s greatest protector —”

My uncle couldn’t have known that was the exact wrong thing to say, but he must have realized when I jumped up so our noses nearly touched. “I said
enough,
Uncle! You don’t know when to stop! I’ve had enough of you, enough of your Jews, and enough of your boring old stories! They aren’t real! They are a complete waste of time!”

“Bali.”

No. I didn’t want to hear it. I pushed my uncle away and stormed out of my room, past my aunt, and out the door.

“Baltasar, come back!” my uncle yelled after me, and I heard his footsteps as he tried to follow me outside. But I was too fast for him. I ran up the hill that led into the lonely streets of Palos.

I spent the rest of the afternoon storming through town, trying to force Gonzalo’s insults and my own shameful story out of my head.
Coward. Traitor. Christ-killer. Foolish Cohen.
No matter how much I walked I couldn’t escape those words.

Eventually I returned to my friends’ hangout by Amir al-Katib’s house. Except for a few dragonflies, it was empty. A ceramic bottle lay on a barrel, dripping a small puddle of wine. Not enough, though. Not if I wanted to forget.

The sun was starting to set now; the candle in the iron lamp on the wall beside me had already been lit. Fog was filtering up from the cobblestones, covering them with an eerie golden mist. I paced back and forth through it, feeling my insides burn.

Damn Diego, damn Gonzalo, damn my parents, damn the Jews! And damn myself most of all. I sat on the nearest barrel and and banged a fist lightly against my knee. A crumpled piece of paper stuck with mud to the sole of my shoe. It was a copy of the Alhambra Decree, signed by the king and queen in March of this year. “Knowing they are trying to subvert our Catholic faith,” one of its paragraphs began, “it is resolved that all Jews and Jewesses leave our kingdoms under penalty of death.”

I crushed the page into a ball and chucked it at the nearest wall. Then I bent my head into my hands.

Two shadows, long from dusk, spread over the golden puddles in front of me. “Good evening,” said a man’s voice, lean, dark, and oddly amused. I removed my hands from my head. Two figures waited in the entrance to the alley, blanketed by the shade of Amir al-Katib’s house. A cowl hid the face of the first man. A helmet hid the face of the other. The second man was decked in armor, and he carried a shining spear. Agents of the Inquisition, maybe. I didn’t want to wait to find out.

Slowly I rose from my barrel. “We are looking for someone,” the cloaked man said. “A Baltasar Infante of Palos.”

My fingers twitched at the sound of my own name. “I don’t know any Infante. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

I held back the tremors ready to race across my body so I could push my way past the two men. But the soldier swung
his spear in front of me, and I danced back to avoid its shining edge.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated somewhat breathlessly. “But I really don’t know who you’re talking about! Listen, this is all some big misunderstanding!”

“That is correct,” the cloaked man replied. “We know you are Baltasar Infante. And you will be coming with us. Now.”

My horrified reflection stared back at me, warped in the soldier’s tarnished helmet. The cloaked man made a quick motion at the soldier, and I tried to make a run for it. The cloaked man caught me from behind by both arms. With all my strength I stomped on his foot and tried to wrest myself out of his grip. The man cursed but held on. The soldier swung the flat of his spear across the side of my skull. With stars in my eyes, I doubled over. The soldier rammed the dull end of his spear into my back, and I fell into endless darkness.

My body was pitched
forward. I tasted some animal’s mane. Rain pattered against my back, reins rattled, and hooves clopped in my ears. Although it took my bashed brain some time to fit the pieces together, soon enough I understood.

The men had put me on a horse.

The top half of my body was slumped forward in a twisted position that squished my face up against the horse’s head. When I tried to move my arms, I found they’d been tied behind my back with a thick and splintery rope. “No need to struggle,” the cloaked man said behind me. He snapped our horse’s reins above my shoulders. “You’re not going anywhere, so you may as well enjoy the ride.”

I was in no state to argue, so I lifted my aching head off the horse’s and squinted through the downpour. Already the landscape around us had changed. The sunny skylines of Palos and nearby Huelva had given way to barren, storm-swept marshes covered in unending night. Rain whipped down on
us, strict and blinding, but I could distinguish the outlines of pines twisting toward the sky on either side of us. Every so often our horses would slosh through shallow black water, and tall, creeping reeds would brush against their haunches. In daytime, maybe, this land would be beautiful. But now, in darkness and rain, it was a world of nightmare.

At last the cloaked man pulled our horse to a whinnying stop, and the soldier slowed his own horse beside us. In the distance we could see a jagged, moss-covered building that appeared to have grown out of the black hill in front of us.

“Strange place to have an interrogation,” the cloaked man behind me said. “What is it? Some kind of old monastery?” When the soldier didn’t answer, the cloaked man snorted. “And here I’d thought the Inquisition was flush with coin. Didn’t they just build a fancy new courthouse up in Cuenca?”

The soldier answered gruffly in his helmet. “The Inquisition and Malleus Maleficarum are no long affiliated. And if you want to keep working for us, you’ll keep your questions to yourself.”

Rain plinked against the soldier’s helmet as he dismounted his horse. He trudged up to us through the mud, pulled me off my horse by my tunic, and hurled me to the ground. I had only a moment to shiver in the dirt before he lugged me to my feet. Then he shoved me into the wooden mouth of the monastery door and down a spiral staircase.