VOYAGE OF STRANGERS (3 page)

I felt him slump against me. He had understood. He would wait. Only then did I hear Fernando’s voice among others bellowing for me to let the savages be and get back to my oar, or there’d be no gold left in Cibao by the time we got there.

As our oars raked the water and the sails of the caravel billowed ever greater as they filled with wind, I looked back once more and found Cabrera’s eyes upon me.

“I’ll see you in hell, boy!” he bellowed, brandishing his gourd.

“If such a place exists, you will surely get there before me,” I murmured as the boat pulled into the shadow of the Niña and we prepared to climb aboard.

Part Two: SPAIN

Chapter One

Barcelona, April 17, 1493

“They’re gone,” the old serving woman called out, “and they won’t be coming back.” She swept her broom across the doorstep of the neighboring house with vigor.

I stood before my cousins’ house. The door hung ajar, half off its hinges, its wooden surface pitted and splintered as if it had been rammed with clubs or soldiers’ spears. The ground before the house was littered with broken crockery and clothing that had been trampled into the dirt. One tattered, grimy cloth was a
tallit
, the fringed shawl we wear when we pray.

“Is it bad news, Diego?” Cristobal asked. I had become fond of Hutia's father on the voyage. The little Taino, twice my age and half my height, tugged at my sleeve. “This great
caney
looks as if the Canibale had raided.” 

“Good riddance to them, the swine!” The old woman spat and crossed herself.

“What is that she called them?” Cristobal asked. He had learned much Spanish on the voyage from the Indies, but no one had spoken of the recently banished Jews.

“
Marranos
.” I spoke softly, averting my head from the old serving woman’s avid gaze. “Pigs.”

“Spain is truly a Christian country now, thanks to our blessed King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella,” the old woman said. Piety and malice blended in her tone. 

“They owed me money,” I lied.

“Your bad luck, young sir.” The old woman cackled. “Too bad it wasn’t the other way around. No Jews, no need to repay their loans.”
             

“I hoped to find my sister here,” I muttered, teeth and fists clenched as I strove to keep my face impassive while the spiteful old woman watched.

My family in Seville had fled the prospect of the Inquisition’s grim tribunal last year, on the very day we sailed to the Indies. But my youngest sister Rachel had been sent to Barcelona for safety months before the expulsion. Now dread of what might have happened to her knifed through me.

“Were they arrested?” I asked.

“No, the sly creatures got away,” the serving woman said. “They brazened it out, see? We thought they was good Christians. But the swine have one of their heathen parties this time of year. The soldiers came the night of the blood moon.”

Two weeks gone, then. On Passover, our most holy festival, the moon had turned red as blood. We had seen it as we made our way across Spain toward Barcelona. The Admiral, ever one to read a marvel as a sign of his greatness, had made much of it.

The old woman leaned on her broom.

“They don’t light the fire during their sacrifices and such. Sounds crazy, don’t it? But who knows why Jews do anything? The soldiers spotted the cold chimney and figured they’d catch them out. But they must have gotten wind of it somehow. They were already gone.”

“Nothing to stay for, then.” I shrugged. “I don’t suppose they left my gold lying around. Come, Cristobal.”

The old woman snorted.

“If they did, the soldiers have diced it away by now.” Her cackle followed us as we retreated down the street.

Cristobal had to trot to keep up with me. All the people of the Indies were short of stature, with golden skin and thick black hair, coarse as a horse’s mane. 

“What now?” He wrapped himself more securely in his woolen cloak.

“I must seek out my Aunt Marina. She is a courtier’s widow of some influence. I pray she may have news of my sister. But you need not come with me, if you are cold.”

“In this wrapping, I am well enough,” Cristobal said. “I am but tired of being stared at and pinched by every fool in Spain.”

“I am sorry for that and glad of your company.”

One might call Cristobal
marrano
himself. The baptism on which Admiral Columbus had insisted was merely a thin veneer over the true beliefs of all the captive Taino. But only I knew that, having had more interest than the rest in learning the Taino language.

“These are fine dwellings,” he said as we turned into a street of stone buildings and heavy oak doors. “They would defy the winds of Juracán, did the god of storms ever visit Spain.”

“Indeed.”

My aunt had prospered since converting in her youth. My father called her stubborn as a runaway mule. At best, she might have taken Rachel in.

“Look!” Cristobal squinted down the street. “Is that the dwelling we seek? Who are those men? They are dressed as if for raiding.”

The Taino had no word for war. Nor had they seen metal, except for soft gold, until we reached their shores. But he was right. A band of soldiers, steel helmets glinting in the sun, stood at attention before Doña Marina’s door.

The Inquisition! My heart thumped in my chest. How could it be? The family had always believed my aunt a sincere
converso
and devout Christian, her position unassailable even since her husband’s death. We had also been assured, before sending Rachel north to Barcelona, that the Inquisition had as yet no headquarters there, unlike most great Spanish cities, including our own Seville. I saw no hooded priests, but the faces under the helmets seemed grim and pitiless. If Rachel had indeed found shelter here, had they found her out and come to take her away?

I swallowed my fear, straightened my shoulders, and greeted them courteously.

“Good day. I have come to call on my kinswoman, Doña Marina Torres y Mendes. Is this not her home? And may I ask what you do here?” 

             
To my surprise, the soldiers’ rigid posture relaxed. Leaning on his lance, the man who seemed to be the captain grinned.

“We are the men at arms of Don Rodrigo Maldonado. This is indeed the home of Doña Marina. Our master is within. He’s come a-courting.”

Courting? This was no Inquisitorial party, then, but the entourage of a noble suitor of my aunt's.

“Are you one of Admiral Columbus’s men, sir, that crossed the Ocean Sea with him?” he asked. “Is that fellow not one of the savages?”

With a murmur of interest, the soldiers surged forward, a few with hands stretched out to touch Cristobal if they could. All Barcelona had seen us at a distance when we entered the city, and as Cristobal had complained, everyone wanted a better look. The captain called them back to order with a sharp command.

“He is a man like you, sir,” I said, keeping my tone courteous. “I pray you treat him with respect.”

“Of course, of course. Our master takes a special interest in the Admiral’s expedition, see. He’s got a cousin that sailed with you. One Juan Cabrera. You must know him.”

“Indeed.” I kept my voice calm, although my stomach turned a somersault, and my pulse pounded in my ears. “He remains in the Indies with the garrison of our fort, La Navidad.”

“Don Rodrigo will be most interested to talk with you,” the captain said. “His brother, too. The elder Maldonado, Don Melchior, plans to join the new expedition as a gentleman volunteer. Will you sail with the Admiral again, sir?”

I could not help smiling back at him.

“I would not miss it for a fortune.”

“They say all who go will make their fortune in the Indies, sir,” another soldier said. “Have you seen the savages’ store of gold?”

“I have, though less than Barcelona rumor would have it. I am not acquainted with the Maldonados.”

Although Cabrera was merely a coarse sailor given a little power and quick to abuse it, these Maldonados were evidently gentlemen.

“Oh, Don Melchior is a great man, a royal envoy to the Pope. But our master, Don Rodrigo, is an up and coming man.” He leaned close enough that I could smell the garlic on his breath and spoke in an undervoice. “He’s got friends in the Inquisition, see. He’s met that Torquemada, that they say could beat the Pope at chess.”

At this point, the door creaked open, and an elderly major domo appeared to bow me in and escort me into the presence of Doña Marina and her suitor. I had learned much. As one of the Admiral’s followers, I appeared to be safe in any company, at least for now, from suspicion regarding my secret faith. But no matter how inclined to help my aunt might prove to be, I could not leave Rachel with her for long.

Chapter Two

Barcelona, April 18, 1493

How hard could it be to be a boy? Rachel shook out the wrinkled shirt and tunic, fraying pair of hose, and oversized woolen cap that her friend Constanza had stuffed in among her petticoats in the flurry of packing. They belonged to Constanza’s brother. With her curly brown hair stuffed into the cap and her drab cloak flung over the whole, she would have but to put a swagger in her walk and smear some grime across her face; no one would guess her true identity.

She had been so excited when Diego arrived at the convent where her aunt had placed her. She had not been unhappy there, though she had had to remember every second that she was Raquel Mendes, not Rachel Mendoza, and pretend to Christian piety. But to see her brother returned from the dead! Everyone in Barcelona had believed Columbus and his crew were doomed. But Diego had come back a hero. Both of them had cried as they embraced. She had not realized he would make her stay with stuffy old Aunt Marina and plan to send her off to Italy as soon as he could find suitable passage. Surely, if she could pass for one of the ship’s boys when the Admiral assembled his new fleet, Diego would
have
to take her with him.

Her window gave onto the rear of the house, above the kitchen garden. Rachel could see the wooden door, so low that a grown person would have to stoop to pass, in the stone wall at the far end of the garden. That door was her gate to freedom.

The inviting branches of an apple tree, just coming into bloom, stretched toward the window. Once dressed, she found that she could squeeze through the narrow opening. She had to stretch to reach a branch sturdy enough to bear her weight. But that was child’s play in boy’s garb. 

Rachel swung and scrambled from branch to crotch to trunk and dropped lightly to the ground. She inched around the gnarled tree trunk to stand with her back pressed up against it on the side away from the house. She peered around it. She must make sure no one observed her. Her heart thumped as she spied a face at the window. It was Pepe, the younger footman. Had he seen her? To her relief, he turned away. She could not be sure if she had seen him wink.

The Alcazar was not too far to walk. She had made Diego describe the route the procession would take. Then she had only to gain entrance to the palace. She would pretend she was one of the ship’s boys with a message for the Admiral. Better, perhaps, for one of his men. They might deem the Admiral too important to be disturbed. But her errand must be to anyone but Diego. Once she had been admitted, her most crucial task was to keep her brother from seeing her.

Up to a point, all fell out as she had planned. She aroused no interest as she wriggled through the ranks of assembled courtiers. There was not much to see, as the broad backs of halberdiers standing at attention blocked her view of the Taino. She caught the flash of gold and the red of a parrot’s wing, but she would not call it a good look. The King and Queen, not handsome but richly garbed, sat apart talking in low voices to a white-haired man in a disappointingly drab brown cloak who must be the Admiral. There was Diego, towering over the colorful Taino. She looked away, afraid her regard, even staring at his back, would somehow make him aware of her.

Perhaps she could see better from the side. Stone arches formed a shadowed arcade, much like the cloister at the convent, around the sides of the great hall. Ducking her head and murmuring apologies in as gruff a voice as she could muster, she reached the shelter of the colonnade on the side away from Diego. At that moment, the mass of courtiers stirred and shifted. A trumpet sounded a fanfare, and the King and Queen rose to their feet. The whole crowd streamed forward, while Rachel tried to maintain her position, not willing to follow without knowing more.

She caught the arm of a page no older than herself.

“What happens now?” she asked.

             
“Have you never been to Court before?” the boy said scornfully. “Their Majesties lead the way to the Chapel Royal, where a Te Deum will be sung. Are you coming?” 

Rachel shook her head.

“Want an apple? I have two.” As Rachel looked up, he added, “Catch.”

Rachel caught the apple, thinking with some pride that she would like to see Constanza try to do the same. The boy departed without ceremony. Biting into the apple, Rachel stood watching another young sailor motion to Diego to follow the Taino. He started forward, but then turned back for a moment. When he caught sight of Rachel, his face went white with shock.