The Last Jew (22 page)

So he polished with a will. When more than a week of faithful and hard rubbing had transformed the pieces into glowing radiance, Yonah learned he had worked on parts of the cuirass -- twin sections of breastplate. 'Each piece must be flawless,' Luis said severely. 'They are part of a magnificent suit of armor the Fierro armory has been creating for more than three years.'

'For whom is this armor being made?' Yonah asked.

'A nobleman in Tembleque. The Count Fernán Vasca by name.'

Yonah's heart thudded in his body, seemingly in a more pronounced rhythm than the blows of Luis Planas' hammer.

No matter how far he might flee, it seemed that Toledo followed!

He well remembered the debt that had been owed his father by the Count Vasca of Tembleque: sixty-nine reales and sixteen maravedíes, for a number of wrought objects of Helkias' silversmithing art, among them a remarkable and singular rose with a silver stem, a variety of silver mirrors and silver combs, a set of twelve drinking goblets ...

It was a galling indebtedness that would have made life considerably easier for Yonah ben Helkias could he have but collected it.

Which he well knew he could not.

23

Saints and Gladiators

When Fierro perceived that the new prentice appeared to be dependable in every respect, Yonah was assigned the task of chasing a design into the cuirass of Count Vasca's armor. It required him to make tiny indentations in the steel with a hammer and a punch, following guide lines barely marked on the surface of the steel by Fierro or Luis Planas. Silver was much easier to chase than steel, but the harder metal was a protection against certain errors that would have been disasters in silver. In the beginning, Yonah made a light tap to ascertain that the punch was correctly placed, followed by a hard tap to complete the indentation; but as he continued to work, his sure touch returned. Soon the quick, hard blows of his hammer revealed his confidence.

'Manuel Fierro is careful to test his armor often,' Paco Parmiento told Yonah one morning. 'So from time to time we have games. The maestro likes his workers to pretend they are knights, in order to understand what changes he must make in his designs. He wishes you to participate.'

For the first time, Angel Costa's questions made disturbing sense. 'Of course, señor,' Yonah said.

So it happened that the following day he found himself standing in a large round pit, clad in a padded fabric undergarment and regarding with unease a disassembled and somewhat rusted and ill-used suit of metal being fitted to his body by Paco Parmiento. At the other side of the pit Angel Costa was being dressed by his friend Luis, while their fellow workers were gathered at the edges of the pit like spectators at a cockfight.

'Vicente, go to the hut and ready the boy's pallet, for he will have need of it soon!' Luis called, and there were jeers and laughter.

'Don't mind that one,' Paco said. Beads of sweat ran down Parmiento's bald pate.

The cuirass was lifted over Yonah and settled, covering his chest and his back. Mail protected his arms and legs, cuissarts covered his thighs. Steel guards were placed on his shoulders, elbows and lower arms, and knees, while leg pieces covered his shins. He pushed his feet into laminated steel shoes. When the helmet was placed over his head, Paco lowered the face guard.

'I cannot breathe, nor can I see,' Yonah said. He tried to keep his voice calm.

'The perforations allow you to breathe,' Parmiento said.

'They do not.'

Paco raised the face guard crankily. 'Leave it up,' he said. 'Everyone does so.' Yonah could see why.

He was given leather gauntlets with steel guards on the fingers, and a round shield. Everything added to the great weight carried by his body.

'The sword's edges and point have been blunted and rounded for your safety in the game, until it is more a club than a sword,' Parmiento said, handing it over. The weapon felt strange in Yonah's hand, which had little flexibility within the stiff gauntlet.

Angel Costa was similarly armored, and the moment came when they shambled toward one another. Yonah was still thinking of how best to strike when he saw Costa's sword already descending toward his helmeted head, and only just managed to fling up the shield on his arm.

The arm quickly became leaden as Costa struck again and again, with such swift, repeated power that Yonah was unable to react when the sword suddenly came lower. Costa dealt him such a smashing clout to the ribs as would have cleaved his body if the blade had been sharp and the armor less sound. As it was, even though he was protected by padding and well-made steel, he felt the smash of the sword to his very bones, and it was the precursor of many other assaults as Costa rained terrible blow after terrible blow.

Yonah managed to strike Costa only twice before they were stopped by the maestro's reaching a pole between them, but it was clear to all who watched that if it had been real warfare, Angel would have killed him at once. At any time, Costa could have applied the golpe de gracia.

Yonah sat on a bench, aching and out of wind, as Paco stripped him of the heavy armor.

The maestro came to him and asked many questions. Had the armor inhibited him? Had any of the joints jammed? Did Yonah have any suggestions that might make the armor more protective and less imprisoning? Yonah answered truthfully that the experience had been so foreign to his experience that he had scarcely thought of any of those things.

The maestro had but to look at Yonah's face to be aware of his humiliation.

'You must not expect to best Angel Costa in these pursuits,' the armorer said. 'No man here is able to do so. Costa spent eighteen years tasting blood as a sergeant in constant and bitter combat with the Saracen, and now in these games of testing the steel, our master-at-arms relishes pretending that he is still fighting to the death.'

There was a large and purpled bruise on the left side of Yonah's rib cage, and he had enough achiness to wonder whether lasting damage had been done to his ribs. For several nights he had to sleep on his back only, and one midnight he suffered enough pain-filled sleeplessness to hear sounds of distress emanating from the other side of the hut.

As he arose with a stifled groan of his own, he determined that the hoarse noises came from Vicente Deza. He went and knelt by the old man's pallet in the dark.

'Vicente?'

'Peregrino ... Santo Peregrino ...'

Vicente was weeping raggedly. 'El Compasivo! Santo Peregrino el Compasivo!'

Saint Pilgrim the Merciful. What did that mean?

'Vicente,' Yonah said again, but the old man was off on a torrent of prayer, invoking God and the pilgrim saint. Yonah put out a hand and sighed when he touched the heat in Vicente's face.

When he stood, he knocked over Vicente's water bottle, which fell with a clatter.

'What the fuck?' Luis Planas asked, wakened on the other side of the room, and waking Paco Parmiento.

'What?' Paco said.

'It is Vicente. He has come down with the fever.'

'Keep him quiet or get him out of here to die,' Luis said.

At first Yonah didn't know what to do. But he remembered what Abba had done when he and Meir had had the fever. He left the hut and stumbled through the dark night to the forge, where a banked fire like a dragon's tongue cast a red glare over the tables and the tools. He lit a taper from the coals and used it to light an oil lamp, by which illumination he found a basin that he filled with water from a jug. Then he collected rags that had been cut and stacked against the time they would be needed for polishing metal.

When he was back inside the hut he set the lamp on the floor.

'Vicente,' he said.

The old man had gone to sleep fully clothed, and Yonah began to undress him. Perhaps he made more noise than he should have, or maybe the flickering light of the lamp drew Luis Planas from sleep again.

'Damn you!' Luis sat up. 'Did I tell you to remove him or not?'

Heartless bastard. Something within Yonah snapped.

'Listen--' Luis said.

Yonah turned and took a step toward him. 'Go to sleep.' He tried to keep from being disrespectful, but anger placed a burr in his voice.

Luis remained half sitting for a long moment, glaring across the room at the apprentice who would speak to him so. Finally he lay back and turned his face to the wall.

Paco also had been awakened. He had heard the exchange between Luis and Yonah and was laughing quietly on his pallet.

Vicente's body seemed composed of filthy skin over bones, the dirt caked on his feet, but Yonah forced himself to bathe him painstakingly, changing the water twice, carefully wiping his body with dry rags so he would not take a chill.

In the morning Vicente's fever had broken. Yonah went to the kitchen and asked the other Manuel to thin the breakfast gruel with hot water, taking a bowl back to the hut and spooning the gruel into the old man. In the meantime he missed his own breakfast. When he hurried to report to work in Luis's shed, he was intercepted by the maestro.

He knew that Luis must have complained to Fierro about his impertinence and he braced for trouble, but the maestro spoke to him quietly. 'How is Vicente?'

'I believe he will be well again. The fever has gone.'

'That is good. I know that sometimes it is difficult to be an apprentice. I remember when I was apprentice to Abu Adal Khira in Velez Málaga. He was one of the foremost of the Muslim armorers. He is dead now, and his armory is gone.

'Luis was an apprentice with me, and when I came to Gibraltar and opened my own armory I brought him with me. Luis is a very difficult man but he is a wondrous maker of armor. I need him in my shop. Do you understand what I am saying?'

'Yes, maestro.'

Fierro nodded. 'I made a mistake placing Vicente in the same hut as Luis Planas. You know the small shed beyond the forge?'

Yonah nodded.

'It is well constructed. It has only a few tools in it. Move the tools elsewhere and you and Vicente will live in that hut. Vicente is fortunate you were willing to help him last night, Ramón Callicó. You did well. But an apprentice would be wise to remember that gross impertinence to a master craftsman will not be tolerated twice in this armory. Is it understood?'

'Yes, señor,' Yonah said.

Luis was angry that Fierro hadn't beaten the apprentice and sent him away. He was severe and cold to Yonah for a number of days, and Yonah took care to give no cause for complaint as he polished armor unendingly. The steel suit for the count of Tembleque was in its final stage of manufacture, and Yonah worked over piece after piece until they gleamed with a soft brilliance that even Luis acknowledged could not be improved.

It was a relief when he was dispatched to collect needed supplies from the merchants of the village. Passing the time of day in the chandler's shop while Tadeo Deza filled Fierro's order, he told the elderly clerk that his cousin Vicente had been very ill with the fever.

Tadeo paused. 'Is he nearing the end?'

'No. The fever abated and then returned, abated and returned, but he appears to be recovering.'

Tadeo Deza sniffed. 'That one is too simple to die,' he said.

Yonah was leaving with his supplies when he turned back, struck by a sudden thought.

'Tadeo, do you know anything of Santo Peregrino el Compasivo?'

'Yes, a local saint.'

'Saint Pilgrim the Merciful. It is a strange name.'

'He lived in this region several hundreds of years ago. It is said he was a foreigner, perhaps from France or Germany. At any rate, he had been to Santiago de Compostela to worship at the relics of St. James. You yourself have made the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, perhaps?'

'No, señor.'

'Ah, someday you must go. James was the third apostle chosen by Our Lord. He was present at the Transfiguration, so holy that the emperor Charlemagne decreed his subjects must give water, shelter, and fire to all pilgrims traveling to visit the relics of this saint.

'At any rate, the foreign pilgrim of whom we speak was himself transformed after days of praying with the relics of the apostle. Instead of returning to the life he had led before his pilgrimage, he wandered south, ending in this region. He spent the days of his life here, tending to the needs of the ill and the poor.'

'What was his given name?'

Tadeo shrugged. 'It is not known. That is why he is called Saint Pilgrim the Merciful. Nor do we know where he is buried. Some say when he was a very old man he simply wandered away from here, in much the same way he had arrived. But others say he dwelt alone and died alone, someplace nearby, and in every generation men have made a sport of seeking to find his grave hereabouts, without success.

'Where did you hear of our local saint?' Tadeo asked.

Yonah didn't want to mention Vicente and give his cousin reason for more complaint. 'I heard somebody speak of him and I grew curious.'

Tadeo smiled. 'Someone in a tavern, no doubt, for drink often deepens a man's awareness of sin and provokes a desire for the saving grace of angels.'