The Last Jew (50 page)

Padre Sebbo came to the sickroom each day and didn't hurry away, to Yonah's pleasure, for he had come to like the old priest. He noted with interest that the old man's hand were as work-hardened as those of any field peón.

'Padre Sebbo, tell me about yourself.'

'There is nothing of interest, señor.'

'I think you are a very interesting man. Tell me, Padre, why do you not dress like other priests?'

'Once I wore ill-fitting vanity and ambition, along with black habits beautifully tailored to my body. But I failed in my responsibility and angered my superiors, and as punishment they sent me out to become a mendicant, to preach the word of God and beg for my daily bread.

'I felt they had doomed me, and I went forth in horror to take my punishment. I didn't know where to go, I simply moved my feet and allowed them to take me where they would. At first I was too proud and arrogant to beg. I ate berries in the woods. Though I was a man of God, I stole from gardens. But people can be kind, and some of the poorest gave of their meager fare and kept me alive.

'In time my black habit rotted and fell away, and I wandered ragged and unshorn. I lived and worked with the poor, who prayed with me and shared their bread and water, and I inherited their garments, sometimes from men who had died. For the first time I began to understand Saint Francis, though I didn't go into the world naked as he did, nor go blind, nor did stigmatas appear on my body. I am just a simple and baffled man, but I have been smiled upon, and for many years now I have been God's vagabond.'

'But if you work with the poor, why are you here, in a castle?'

'I have been drawn here from time to time. I stay long enough to hear the confessions of the servants and the soldiers of the guard, and to give Communion, and then I move on. This time Padre Guzmán has asked me to stay until the count has died.'

'Padre Sebbo, I have never heard your given name,' Yonah said, and the priest smiled.

'Sebbo is not my patronymic. It is what the people began to call me in affection, a shortening of my given name, which is Sebastián. I am Sebastián Alvarez.'

Yonah sat still but didn't jump to conclusions; there were men who shared the same name, after all. He studied the face, trying to see into the past. 'Padre, what was your churchly duty before you became a wandering priest?'

'I seldom think on it, for it seems to me that it was another man, in another existence. I was the head of the Priory of the Assumption, in Toledo,' the old man said.

That night as Yonah sat alone by the count's bedside he thought back to the time before his brother Meir was killed, the days before his father had started fashioning the ciborium for the Priory of the Assumption, but was making preliminary drawings. Yonah had seen the prior only twice, each time when he had accompanied his father to meet with Padre Alvarez at the priory. He remembered an autocratic, impatient cleric, and marveled now at the transformation that had taken place.

He was certain Padre Sebbo was drawn back to the castle because he knew, as Yonah knew, that Fernán Vasca had been behind the thefts of the ciborium and the relic of Santa Ana.

He continued talking to the count in the hope that he might engage him into consciousness. He grew tired of his own voice speaking to an apparently somnolent Fernán Vasca. If Vasca could hear him, doubtless he, too, was bored by the droning voice; Yonah had talked of the weather, about the outlook for crops in the next harvest, about seeing a hawk floating high in the sky, a speck against the clouds.

He tried a different tack.

'Count Vasca, it is time for us to consider my fee,' he said. 'In fairness, it should be balanced by what we have owed each other in the past. Ten years ago I visited this place to deliver a wonderful suit of armor to you, and you gave me ten maravedíes for my trouble. But we have had other dealings, for I told you of a saint's relics in a cave on the southern coast, and in return you ended the lives of two men who would have taken mine.'

He saw a movement behind the closed eyelids.

'I sent two men to their deaths in a hermit's cave. And you rid yourself of rivals and gained relics. Do you recall?'

The eyes opened slowly, and Yonah saw, something in them he had not seen before.

Interest.

'The world is strange, for now I am not an armor maker but your physician who wishes to help you. You must work with me.'

He had given thought to how he would proceed if able to engage the count's conscious mind.

'It is difficult having no speech. But there is a way in which we may talk with each other. I will ask you a question. You will blink your eyes once for yes and twice for no. Keep your eyes closed for a moment with each blink, so I will know it for an answer.

'Once for yes, twice for no. Do you comprehend?'

But Vasca only looked at him.

'Blink once for yes, and twice for no. Do you understand, Count Vasca?'

A single blink!

'Good. That is very good, Count Vasca, you are doing well. Do you have feelings in your legs or feet?'

Two blinks.

'In your head?'

A single blink.

'Do you have pain or discomfort somewhere in the region of your head?'

Yes.

'In your mouth or jaw?'

No.

'Your nose?'

No

'Eyes?'

Vasca blinked once.

'So. The eyes. Is it a sharp pain?'

No.

'An itching?'

One blink, the eyes held closed for a moment, as if for emphasis.

Yonah was exhilarated. He bathed the eyes gently with warmed water and sent a rider to the apothecary's for an eye ointment.

The countess came to the sickroom late in the morning, and when Yonah took her into the corridor outside the chamber and told her what had happened, she grew pale with excitement. 'Does it mean he is getting well?'

Yonah didn't think so. 'It may be a temporary time of consciousness, or perhaps his mind has always been aware in that frozen body.'

'But we may hope and pray,' she said.

'We must always hope and pray, my lady. But...' He left unspoken his belief that at any time Vasca might have another attack that would bring the end.

She went to the bedside and held one of the large hands that was still wrapped onto the piece of wood that guarded Vasca from deformity. His eyes were closed.

'Perhaps he sleeps,' Yonah said, but she was not to be denied.

'My lord husband,' she said.

And again, and yet again.

'My husband ...'

'Ah, God, Fernán, open your eyes, look at me for Christ's own sweet sake!'

He did awake.

She bent close and fixed her eyes with his. 'My lord,' she said. 'Are you my love?'

Vasca blinked once, and Yonah left them to their privacy.

That night in the prison of Yonah's own sleeplessness it occurred to him that perhaps the shock of more aggressive questioning might bring greater stimulation to Vasca's consciousness than had been achieved by gentle nursing. The following morning he spent a time questioning Vasca about his condition, the blinking revealing that the pain from Vasca's bedsores was eased, his eyes were more comfortable, but there was a deep ache in the ball of his left foot, which Yonah was able to massage away.

Yonah leaned over his face again. 'Count Vasca, do you recall Helkias Toledano, who was a silversmith in Toledo?'

Vasca gazed up at him.

'You owned a number of objects he had made. For example, a remarkable rose made of gold and silver. I would dearly like to see some of the things Toledano fashioned. Do you know where they are kept?'

He received no answers. Vasca continued to look at him. There were a few random blinks, natural reflexes and not answers to his questions, and presently Vasca closed his eyes.

'Damnation. Count Vasca? Hola?'

The eyes stayed closed.

'Helkias was a Jew. He was my father. I am still a Jew. The physician who tends you and tries to bring you back to life is a Jew, my lord.'

The lids flew open. The eyes had turned so hard! Vasca searched his face, and Yonah felt the emotions of a lifetime as they spilled out of him.

'The work of my father's hand, your fucking lordship,' he said savagely. 'Three large bowls. Four small silver mirrors and two large. A gold flower with a silver stem. Eight short combs and a long comb. And a dozen goblets of silver and electrum, not to mention his ciborium. Where are my father's works?'

Vasca continued to look at him. The ruined mouth seemed to turn up; it was difficult to tell, but Yonah sensed amusement in Fernán Vasca's eyes, just before they closed.

The following morning the count responded to his wife's questioning for a time, but then his eyes closed against her, also.

As she sat bleakly in her seat next to the bed, Yonah saw two fresh bruises on her left cheek.

'Countess ... Is there something with which you need help?'

It was clumsily put, and she became cold and distant. 'No, thank you, señor.'

But early the following morning, a servant woke him and told him the physician was required in the countess's apartment. He found her lying across her bed with a bloodied rag to her face. There was an ugly two-inch gash in her left cheek, where the bruises had been.

'Was this made by his ring?'

She didn't reply. Tapia must have hit her with his open hand, Yonah reasoned, because if his fist had been closed there would be more tearing from the ring. He took waxed thread and a fine needle from his bag. Before he closed the cut he had her drink a dram of coñac. Still, she winced and grunted, but he took his time and sewed with small stitches. He poured a splash of wine on a cloth and held it against the wound.

When he was finished she started to thank him but then fell back, sobbing soundlessly.

'Countess ...' She wore a silk sleeping gown that revealed whatever there was to be seen of her, and he forced his eyes away as she sat and dried her eyes with the back of her hands, like a child.

He remembered what Padre Espina had told him about her father's wealth and power in Madrid.

'Señora, I believe your husband will soon die,' he said gently. 'If that should happen, have you considered going to the protection of your family?'

'Tapia says if I run he will come after me. And kill me.'

Yonah sighed. Tapia could not be that stupid. He told himself that perhaps he could talk reason into the man, or maybe Padre Sebbo or Padre Espina could do it.

'Let me see what can be done,' he said uncomfortably. But to his further discomfort he began to hear more about Tapia and the countess than he wanted to know.

'It is my fault,' she said. 'He had been looking at me for a long time. I didn't discourage him, but rather enjoyed keeping the hunger in his eyes, to be true about it. I felt completely safe, because Tapia was afraid of my lord and never would have tried to take his wife.

'Daniel Tapia has worked for my husband for many years, as a buyer of sacred relics. Fernán knows people in the religious communities and was able to arrange the sale of many of the things Tapia bought.'

Yonah waited in silence.

'After my husband became ill, I was fearful. I am a woman who needs the comfort of someone's arms, and I went to Tapia one night,' she said, and Yonah was silent, admiring her honesty.

'But it did not turn out as I hoped. He is a beastly man, and he means to marry me when that is possible. There are no heirs to the count's title, and when I die the property will revert to the monarchy. But Daniel Tapia will see that I live a long life,' she said bitterly. 'He wants the money.

'There is something else,' she said. 'He is convinced that Fernán has hidden something here, something of very great value. I think he finally believes I don't know anything that will help him, but he searches for it constantly.'

For a moment Yonah didn't dare to speak. 'Is it a relic?' he asked.

'I don't know. I hope you will not add your own questioning to my torment, señor,' she said.

She stood shakily, and reached up and touched her face. 'Will there be a scar?'

'Yes. A small one. It will be red at first, but it will fade. I hope it will be as white as your skin,' he said, and he took his bag and went to tend her husband.

44

Springtime

That very day, when he went searching again after Padre Sebbo relieved him in the sickroom, he had evidence that his memory of his father's work had not been faulty.

In a cellar closet filled with dusty picture frames and broken chairs, on a shelf he found a double row of heavy dark cups.

When he took one out of the closet and to a window, he saw it was a goblet made by his father. There was no doubt. The color was almost black because the silver had tarnished thickly over years of neglect, but when he turned it over, the HT mark was legible in the bottom. Placed there by his father's hands.