The Last Jew (51 page)

He brought each of the cups out to the window, one at a time. They were simple, heavy goblets made beautifully out of massy silver, with bases of electrum. Two of the cups were badly dented and scratched, as if someone had hurled them in a rage. He remembered that the count had owed his father for a full set of twelve drinking vessels, but though he searched the closet diligently, removing chairs and frames and feeling in all the dark corners, there were only ten cups.

For the next two days he made his way to the closet and held the cups again simply to enjoy their solidity and weight in his hands. But the third time he went there he found Daniel Tapia, who had obviously been searching. Objects from the closet were strewn on the floor. Tapia stared at Yonah. 'What is it you want?'

'I want nothing, señor,' Yonah said easily. 'I am simply admiring the castle's beauty so that someday I may describe it to my children.'

'Is the count going to die?'

'I believe so, señor.'

'When?'

Yonah shrugged and looked at him calmly.

Since their marriage, Adriana had unburdened herself to Yonah about the mistreatment she had suffered from her first husband. Over time, he had seen the pain leave his wife's eyes, but he couldn't abide the thought of men who beat women. 'Recently I have had to treat Count Vasca's wife ... I trust the countess will suffer no additional injury,' he said deliberately.

Tapia's glance held disbelief that the physician should feel free to talk to him in that way. 'Injuries often occur, and none of us is immune,' he said. 'For example, if I were you I should not walk about this castle without escort, lest someone mistake you for a thief, señor, and kill you.'

'It would be a pity if someone were to try, for it is a long time since I was unable to take care of myself against cutthroats,' Yonah said, and wandered away, making certain he moved slowly.

*

Indeed, the threat acted only to spur him on in his search of the castle, for obviously Tapia thought something so precious was hidden there that he wanted no one else to stumble on it. Yonah hunted diligently, even reaching into every wall niche on the chance that it had been used the way the niche in his own home hid his Hebrew manuscripts, but he pulled nothing from the dark places save a nest of mice and a variety of spidered webs, and soon he found he was back in rooms where he had searched before.

In the storeroom he stood in front of the great stone casket, a coffin worthy of a prince, and again studied the inscription carved in the stone.

CVM MATRE MATRIS SALVVS.

His Latin was almost nonexistent, but on his way back to the sickroom he passed the steward overseeing workmen making a repair to a balustrade on the stairway.

'Padre Guzmán,' he said. 'Do you have a knowledge of Latin?'

'Of course I do,' Padre Guzmán said importantly.

'The inscription on the stone casket that awaits the count, "Cum Matre Matris Salvus." What does it mean?'

'It declares that after death, for eternity he will be with the Virgin Mary,' Padre Guzmán said.

So why could Yonah not sleep that night?

Early the following morning, as a spring cloudburst drummed against the thin alabaster windowpane, he arose and took a torch from the sconce, carrying it to the storeroom, where he held it high as he studied the casket by its flickering light.

By midmorning, when Padre Sebbo appeared in the sickroom, Yonah was awaiting him anxiously. 'Padre, how is your grasp of Latin?'

Padre Sebbo grinned. 'It has been a lifelong temptation for sinful pride.'

'"Cum Matre Matris Salvus."'

The priest's smile disappeared. 'Here, now,' he said roughly.

'What does it mean?'

'Where did you get those ... particular words?'

'Padre, we have not known each other long, you and I. But you must ask yourself if you can trust me.'

Sebbo looked at him and sighed. 'I can. I must. It means, "Safe with the Mother's Mother."'

Yonah saw that the ruddiness was gone from the old priest's face. 'I know what you have been missing for so many years, Padre Sebastián, and I believe we have found it,' he said.

The two of them went over the casket carefully. The great stone lid, which leaned against the wall at the top of the coffin, was a solid, single piece of stone. So were the sections that made up the bottom of the stone box, and three of its sides.

'But see here,' Yonah said. The fourth side of the casket was different, wider than the wall at the casket's other end. The panel with the Latin inscription was set into the top of that side.

Yonah tapped it so Padre Sebbo could hear that it was hollow. 'We must remove the panel.'

The priest agreed but counseled caution. 'The storeroom is too close to the sleeping chambers. And not far from the dining room. People pass at odd times of day, and the soldiers of the guard are quickly summoned. We must wait for a time when the attention of others in the castle has been diverted,' he said.

Yet events robbed them of the luxury of waiting, for early the next morning Yonah was summoned out of sleep by a woman servant who had been sitting by Vasca's bed during the night. The count was wracked by a fresh attack. His face drooped more alarmingly and his eyes no longer were on an even plane, the left eye lower than the right. His pulse was full and rapid, his respirations slow and snoring. Yonah heard a new rattling sigh and recognized the finality of the sound.

'Hurry and fetch the countess and then the priests,' Yonah told the woman.

The countess and the priests arrived together, the dying man's wife disheveled and saying her beads silently, Padre Guzmán wearing his death robes -- purple cassock and surplice -- and come so hastily that Padre Sebbo was still trying to adjust the purple stole about the younger priest's neck as they entered the door.

The count, eyes bulging, was gasping his last; his appearance reminded Yonah of a description of impending death by Hippocrates: 'The nose sharp, the temples fallen in, the ears cold and drawn and their lobes distorted, the skin of the face hard, stretched and dry, the color of the face dusky.'

Padre Sebbo opened the small gold bottle containing the Oil of the Sick. He wetted Father Guzmán's splayed right thumb with chrism, and the priest anointed Vasca's eyes, ears, hands and feet. The air was filled with the scent of the heavy balm and the spice of the scented oil, as the fourteenth and last count of Tembleque exhaled for the last time, a long and strangled sighing.

'He is shriven,' Padre Guzmán said, 'and even now he is meeting our Lord.'

Padre Sebbo and Yonah exchanged a long look, for each was aware that now it would not be long before the stone casket was placed deep in the earth.

'We must tell the staff and soldiers of the passing of their lord and maestro and conduct a memorial Mass with them, in the courtyard,' Padre Sebbo said to Padre Guzmán.

Guzmán frowned. 'Do you believe so? There is so much that now needs to be done.'

'This should be done first,' the older priest said firmly. 'I will assist, but you must give the message following the Mass, for you speak so much better than I.'

'Ah, it is not true,' Padre Guzmán said modestly, but he was obviously pleased by the compliment and agreed to give the message.

'In the meantime,' Padre Sebastián said, 'the physician must wash the deceased and prepare him for interment,' and Yonah nodded.

He made certain he was not finished with the task until he could hear that the Mass had begun in the courtyard below. When he was able to make out the low droning of Padre Sebastián's voice and the higher chanting of Padre Guzmán, and the sonorous response of the worshipers, he hurried to the storeroom.

Using a surgical probe, he began to scrape the mortar from around the engraved panel in the casket. It was a usage that Manuel Fierro had never imagined for the instrument when he had fashioned it, yet it worked very well. Yonah had finished removing the mortar from two sides of the panel before he heard the voice behind him.

'What is it you are doing, healer?'

Daniel Tapia's eyes were on the panel in the casket as he stepped into the room.

'I am making certain everything is all right.'

'Of course you are.' Tapia said. 'So you believe something is in there? I hope you are correct.'

He pulled his knife from its sheath and moved towards Yonah.

Yonah saw at once that Tapia was not interested in raising an alarm and summoning soldiers, meaning to complete the pilfering himself. He was as tall as Yonah and far heavier; obviously he thought he was competent to take care of an unarmed physician with his knife. Yonah feinted with the tiny probe and leaped to one side as the knife made a wide sweep meant to lay him open.

It was a close thing; the blade missed his body by the thickness of cloth. The point caught on the fabric of his tunic, slicing it open but snagging for a brief moment that allowed Yonah to grasp the arm behind the knife.

He yanked, more by reflex than design, and Tapia lost his balance and sprawled forward over the open casket. He was fast for a big man and still held the knife, but instinctively Yonah grasped the casket lid that rested against the wall. It was so heavy that moving it required all his strength, but the top of the stone casket cover came away from the wall and its great weight carried it forward. Tapia had started to raise himself, but the ponderous lid came down on him like a trap claiming an animal. His body muffled much of the noise; instead of the clatter of stone on stone there was a thud.

Still, the ugly sound was loud enough, and Yonah froze, listening. But the responsive voices raised in prayer continued without pause.

Tapia's hand still was clenched on the knife, which Yonah had to pry from his fingers. He raised the stone lid gingerly, but there was no need for caution.

'Tapia?'

There was no breathing. 'No, ah, damnation.' He saw that the man's spine was broken, and that he was dead. Yonah had no time for regrets. He carried Tapia to the chamber next to his own and placed him on the bed. Then he removed Tapia's outer clothing and closed his eyes. He shut the door as he left.

Now when he returned to the storeroom he was desperate to hurry, for he could hear that the Mass was over and the nasal voice of Padre Guzmán was extolling the life of Fernán Vasca.

When he finished removing the thin layer of grout, he lifted the stone panel free and discovered a space.

He reached inside with trepidation and felt a nest of rags. Cushioned in the nest, like a large and precious egg, was an object wrapped in linen, and beneath the linen was a bag of embroidered silk. Yonah trembled as he removed the bag, for within it he found what had brought death and destruction to his family.

That afternoon Countess María del Mar Cano went to Tapia's room and found him dead. The physician and the priests were summoned at once.

Twice before, Yonah had caused death; he had long since wrestled with the demons of conscience and decided it was justifiable to protect himself when someone tried to kill him. But now the physician had the unsettling experience of having to declare someone dead whom he had killed, and it troubled him to use his profession shabbily and in a manner he would not have wished to disclose to Nuño Fierro.

'He died at once,' he said, which was true. Adding, 'In his sleep,' which was not.

'Is it a pestilence that could affect us all?' Padre Guzmán asked fearfully. Yonah told him it wasn't, and that it was coincidence that the count and Tapia had died on the same day. He was conscious of the countess's white face turned toward him.

'Daniel Tapia had no living relatives,' she said. She had quickly composed herself after the shock of discovery. 'His rites must not interfere with the count's,' she said firmly.

So Tapia was wrapped in the blanket on which he lay, and carried out onto the plain, where a grave was dug and he was buried quickly with prayers from Padre Sebastián. Yonah attended and uttered amens, and two troopers of the guard dug the grave and filled it in.

Meanwhile, work had continued in the castle. By dusk the count's funeral had been readied to his widow's satisfaction and all night he lay in the castle's great room, surrounded by a profusion of candles and waked by a group of women of the staff, who sat and conversed in hushed tones until daylight brought the castle to life once more.

Midmorning the casket was lifted by twelve strong men-at-arms and carried outside, to the centre of the courtyard. Soon a slow parade of servants and soldiers filed past it. If investigating hands had probed the thin cracks surrounding the stone panel inscribed with the Latin benison, they would have found that the panel's edges were held in place by a thin coat of luteous eye salve mixed with grains of pulverized stone grout, the mixture forced back into place and hurriedly smoothed. But no gaze noted such details, for all eyes were on the figure laid out within the sarcophagus. Fernán Vasca, count of Tembleque, lay in knightly splendor, his soldier's hands folded in peace. He was dressed in the full glory of his armor. The beautiful sword made by Paco Parmiento was at one side, his helmet at the other. The midday sun emblazoned the burnished steel until the count appeared to be a sleeping saint engulfed in fire.