The Last Jew (37 page)

'I have heard that a new inquisitor has been assigned to Saragossa, and he will be looking for trouble. In testifying, I shall alienate a powerful Saragossa family. As we both know, physicians can be denounced anonymously to the Inquisition. I am not eager to make enemies of the Rodas.'

Reyna nodded. 'Yet you do not dare ignore an order from the alguacil.'

'No. And there is a question of justice that must be settled. It leaves me with one alternative.'

'What is that?' Reyna asked, soaping an arm.

'To make my appearance and tell the truth,' Yonah said.

The hearing was held in the small meeting hall on the upper story of the municipal building, which was already crowded when Yonah arrived.

José Pita and his wife, Rosa Menendez, looked straight at Yonah when he entered the room. They had come to him soon after their son had been charged, and he had told them the truth as he saw it.

The boy Oliverio Pita sat alone, his eyes large, facing the unsmiling and businesslike magistrate who began the proceedings without delay by rapping his great ring of office against the tabletop.

Alberto Porreño, the monarch's prosecutor, with whom Yonah had a greeting acquaintance, was a short man with a head enlarged by a great mane of black hair. For his first witness he called Ramiro de Roda.

'Señor Roda, your son, Guillermo de Roda, age fourteen years, expired on the fourteenth day of February, the year of Our Lord 1502?'

'Yes, señor.'

'Of what did he die, Señor Roda?'

'He was struck on the head by a rock hurled at him in anger, the murderous injury leading to a terrible illness that carried him off.' He looked over to where Yonah was sitting. 'The physician could not save Guillermo, my only son.'

'Who threw the rock?'

'He.' He extended his arm and pointed a finger. 'Oliverio Pita.' The Pita boy, very pale, stared at the table in front of him.

'How do you know this?'

'It was seen by a mutual neighbor, Señor Rodrigo Zurita.'

'Is Señor Zurita present?' the prosecutor asked, and when a skinny, white-bearded man raised his hand, the prosecutor moved to him.

'How did you come to see the boys throwing stones at one another?'

'I was sitting by my house, warming my bones in the sun. I saw the whole thing.'

'What did you see?'

'I saw José Pita's son, the boy over there, throw the stone that struck poor Guillermo, that good lad.'

'You saw where it hit him?'

'Yes. It struck him on the head,' he said, pointing to his forehead, between his eyes. 'I saw it clearly. He was struck so cruelly, I saw blood and pus come from the wound.'

'Thank you, señor.'

Señor Porreño now approached Yonah. 'Señor Callicó, you treated the boy following the incident?'

'I did, señor.'

'And what did you find?'

'He could not have been struck squarely by the stone,' Yonah said uncomfortably. 'Rather, it had grazed him in the region of the right temple, just above and in front of the right ear.'

'Not ... here?' The prosecutor touched his finger to the centre of Yonah's forehead.

'No, señor. Here,' Yonah said, and touched his temple.

'Could you tell anything else from the wound.'

'It was a minor wound. More of a scratch. I washed the dried blood from his face and from the scratch. Such scrapes and scratches usually do well when they are bathed in wine, so I soaked a cloth with wine and wiped the wound, but otherwise I left it alone.

'At the time,' Yonah said, 'I could not help but feel that Guillermo was a fortunate youth, because if the stone had struck him just a bit to the left his injury would have been far more serious.'

'Is it not a serious injury when blood and pus appear from a wound?'

Within himself, Yonah sighed; but there was no escape from the truth.

'There was no pus.' He saw Señor Zurita's furious eyes. 'Pus is not something that exists within the skin of humans, to ooze free when the skin is punctured. Pus often appears after the injury, engendered when a breakage of the skin allows an open wound to come under the influence of putrid scents in the air, the stink of such things as ordure or rotting flesh. There was no pus in the wound when first I saw it, and there was no discharge of any sort when I saw Guillermo three weeks later. By then the scratch had developed a scab. It was cool to the touch, it was not angry looking. I considered him almost healed.'

'Yet two weeks later he was dead,' the prosecutor said.

'Yes. But not of the slight injury to his head.'

'Of what then, señor?'

'Of a ragged coughing and mucus in the lungs that brought on his final fever.'

'And what caused the malady?'

'I do not know, señor. Would that I knew. A physician sees such illness with discouraging regularity, and some of the afflicted die.'

'You are certain that the stone thrown by Oliverio Pita did not cause the death of Guillermo de Roda?'

'I am certain.'

'Will you take your oath on it, Señor Physician?'

'I shall.'

When the town-owned bible was brought, Yonah placed his hand on it and swore that his testimony had been true.

The prosecutor nodded and instructed the accused to rise. The magistrate warned the youth that he would face swift and severe punishment if any of his actions should bring him back to stand before the bar of justice. Rapping the table a final time with his heavy ring, he declared Oliverio Pita to be free.

'Señor,' José Pita said. He was still embracing his weeping son. 'We are in your debt for all time.'

'I merely testified to what is true,' Yonah said.

He made his escape at once and soon rode from the center of town, trying to forget the cold dislike he had seen in Ramiro de Roda's eyes. He knew the Roda family and their friends would die still believing that young Guillermo had been slain by a thrown stone, but he had testified truly and was glad to be done with it.

From the other end of the street, three horsemen were riding towards him. As they drew nearer, Yonah could see two men-at-arms and a cleric in black habit.

A friar. Tall, even as he rode.

Dear God, no.

But as the distance between them closed, Yonah knew who it was. When they drew abreast he saw that in middle age the friar had put on flesh. There were dark veins in his nose and his unruly hair was cut in a tonsure that showed gray.

'A good day to you,' Yonah said politely to the group as they passed and the friar gave a small nod of his head.

But before Yonah's horse had taken half a dozen steps, he heard the voice.

'Señor!'

He turned the gray Arab and went back.

'I seem to know you, señor.'

'Yes, Fray Bonestruca. We met some years ago in Toledo.'

Bonestruca waved his hand. 'Yes, in Toledo. But ... your name ...?'

'Ramón Callicó. I had come to Toledo in order to deliver a suit of armor to the count of Tembleque.'

'Yes, by my faith, the armorer's apprentice from Gibraltar! I have admired Count Vasca's fine armor, of which he is rightfully proud. Are you in Saragossa on a similar errand?'

'No, I reside here. My maestro and uncle, the armorer Manuel Fierro, passed on, and I came to Saragossa to apprentice with his brother, Nuño, a physician.'

Bonestruca nodded with interest. 'I would say you have been rich in uncles.'

'And I would agree with you. Sadly, Nuño has gone to his rest as well, and now I am the physician of this place.'

'The physician ... Well, then we shall see one another from time to time, for I am come here to stay.'

'Then I trust Saragossa will please you, for it is a town of good people.'

'Indeed? Truly good people are treasures beyond price. But I have long since discovered that often beneath an appearance of rectitude there is something darker and far less benign than goodness.'

'I am certain that is true.'

'It is good to discover an acquaintance when one is uprooted and transferred to a new location. We must meet again, Señor Callicó.'

'We must indeed.'

'For now, Christ be with you.'

'Christ be with you, Fray Bonestruca.'

Yonah was numb as he rode away, lost in thought. Halfway home the reins dropped from his hands and the Arab horse moved to the side o£ the track and began to graze in the shade of a tree while his rider sat in the saddle, unheeding. Yonah had failed to kill Bonestruca once before, in his youth, when opportunity had presented itself. And then he had used the friar to rid himself of enemies who would have killed him.

And now the inquisitor was going to be in close proximity to him. Every day.

He realized, almost with surprise, that he would never again attempt to kill Bonestruca. He had become a healer, ruined for work as an assassin. If he committed murder, even if no one else knew about it, it would change him, spoil him as a doctor. Somewhere during his apprenticeship to Nuño Fierro he had crossed an important line. Being a physician -- fighting death -- was the most important part of him, the tether that anchored him to the earth. It was a priesthood that had taken the place of religion, culture, and family, and it far outweighed any dry and bitter satisfaction to be found in a revenge that could not bring back his loved ones.

Yet he hated Bonestruca and Count Vasca and had no forgiveness in his heart for the men who had been involved in the deaths of his father and his brother. He told himself that if Bonestruca was to be in close proximity, he would keep a watch on him, in the hope that circumstances might yet permit him to bring this rogue friar to justice.

Comforted and resolute, he picked up the reins again and directed the Arabian back onto the road that took them home.

34

The Friar's House

Fray Lorenzo de Bonestruca had not been transferred to Saragossa as a reward or a promotion, but rather as a rebuke and a punishment. The sources of his troubles had been the late queen, Isabella of Spain, and Archbishop Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros. When Cisneros had become archbishop of Toledo in 1495, he recruited the queen to join him in a campaign to reform the Spanish clergy, which had fallen into a period of vice and corruption. Clerics had grown accustomed to an opulent style of living; they had vast land holdings under their private ownership, as well as servants, mistresses, and the trappings of wealth.

Cisneros and Isabella divided the units of the Church between them. She traveled to convents, where she used her position and persuasive powers, cajoling and threatening the nuns until they agreed to return to the simple living style that had characterized the early Church. The archbishop, dressed in a simple brown habit and leading a mule, visited each priory and monastery, cataloguing its wealth and urging its friars and monks to donate to the poor anything not essential to their daily existence. Archbishop Cisneros reinstituted the requirement for tonsure. He had emended Bonestruca's head with his own hands, shaving off all hair but a close-cropped ring to form St. Peter's tonsure, representing the crown of thorns worn by Jesus.

Fray Bonestruca had been caught in the web of reform.

He had spent only four years as a celibate friar. Once his body experienced the sweetness of fusing with female flesh, he had succumbed to sexual passion easily and often. For the past ten years he had kept as mistress a woman named María Juana Salazar, on whom he had sired five children. One died at birth, another after six weeks of life. Maria was his wife in every way save name, and he had not tried to keep her presence in his life a great secret; there had been no need, for he was doing only what so many others did. But a number of people knew about Fray Bonestruca and María Juana Salazar. First the elderly priest who had been his confessor for years was recruited to warn him that the days of laxness were over, and that contrition and genuine change were the keys to survival. When Bonestruca had ignored the warning, he was summoned to the chancery for an interview with the archbishop. Cisneros had wasted no time on idle talk.

'You must rid yourself of her. You must do it at once. If you do not, you shall feel my wrath.'

Now Bonestruca decided to try secrecy and subterfuge. He moved María Juana and the children to another village, midway between Toledo and Tembleque, and told no one. He behaved discreetly when he visited, and sometimes he stayed away from them for weeks. In this way he had gained six additional years in which he had enjoyed his little family.

Still, one day he received word that the chancery had called for him again. But this time when he went there he was met by a Dominican priest who told him that because of his disobedience he had been transferred to the office of the Inquisition in the town of Saragossa. He was ordered to depart for Saragossa at once.

'And alone,' the priest had said sardonically.

He had obeyed, but by the time he had finished the long journey, he understood that what others had considered a punishment for him was in fact an opportunity to achieve the privacy he required.