VOYAGE OF STRANGERS (7 page)

I helped the men at arms rope all seven mules together, so we could lead them in a string. Hernan and Esteban strode beside the two pack mules, eyes alert and hands on the hilts of their sheathed swords. Not only would pickpockets and cutpurses abound in such a crowd, but gypsies or seeming beggars might seek to distract us while their fellows made off with our packs, if not the mules themselves.

“Don’t let go of Rosa’s bridle,” I admonished Rachel, for so she had named her mule. “If you get lost in this crowd, we will be hard put to it to find you.”

“I itch!” Rachel said. “Can we not rest in the shade before going on? My skin is prickling with the heat.” She tugged at the neck of her gown. Her cheeks were flushed dark red, and damp tendrils of hair lay plastered against her brow.

“Where would you have us rest?” I gestured at the packed plaza, in which it would have been hard to insert so much as a wooden staff between one person and the next.

“We must find a well,” Doña Marina said. Even she had dismounted. She picked her way through the crowd with dignity, one hand raising her skirts above the dust and the other resting lightly on her mule’s neck. “We must refill our water skins, or we will find ourselves fainting in this heat.” She patted delicately at her neck, cheeks, and forehead with a handkerchief trimmed with Flemish lace.

“Oh, yes!” Rachel said. “Water is what I wish for most, although I am hungry as well. Hernan, you are the tallest of us. Can you see a well? Look, over there. Is that not a fountain? I am sure I see the glint of spray rising in the sun.”

As all of us stopped and craned our necks, Rachel gave a cry of excitement, let go her mule’s bridle, and darted away from us into the crowd.

“Raquel!”

“Rachel, stop!”

As I started forward to run after her, something glittered at my feet. I bent and picked it up. It was Rachel’s silver cross, its chain broken. When I looked up, she had disappeared.

Chapter Eight

Cordoba, April 26, 1493

Rachel plunged forward, forgetting everything but her thirst. A plaza this big must surely have a great stone fountain, built atop a well, from which folk could draw water at any time. She was sure that she had seen the sparkle of spray. But when she had pushed past a multitude of people, none of them inclined to give way to her, she could see nothing resembling a fountain, only a vast sea of heads bobbing like ocean waves, interspersed with the canvas awnings of market carts like sails upon the sea. She must tell the others she had been mistaken. But when she turned, ready to retrace her steps, she could see no sign of Diego, Doña Marina, or the men.

To her right, a mule brayed and another answered. But when she elbowed her way through to them, she saw that they belonged to strangers. Then the sunlight glittered on a pair of metal helmets, but her hope that their wearers would prove to be Hernan and Esteban was dashed when she got close enough to see their faces. She stood still while the crowd eddied around her, biting her lip and trying not to cry. Diego would be so angry! She would endure any scolding he might give her for the sight of his face. How would he ever find her? There must be hundreds of people in the market. She didn’t  know her way around Cordoba, not even in what direction the road to Seville lay. In any case, they would surely not continue their journey without making every effort to find her. If only they had chosen an inn first! She could have found someone to tell her how to get there. But they had not.

Perhaps she would spy the hoods and tunics of the
hermandad
. Surely a city as big as Cordoba maintained a company of the brothers to keep order. With luck, they had a central station where anyone who had lost some person or possession might ask if whom or what they searched for had been found. Or a troop of soldiers, at least one with a respectable captain, might be kind to a Christian girl. Rachel’s hand reached up to finger the silver cross she always wore. It was gone! She had dropped it somewhere in this teeming place, and she would never find it. That meant she could not ask any soldier for assistance, as he might serve the Inquisition. With it, she appeared a Christian, not worth a second glance.  Without it, her olive skin, dark hair, and long, slender nose proclaimed the Jew. To be a Jew in Spain meant death. Neither youth nor pleading would save her.

She heard shouts and the tramp of booted feet. A troop of soldiers marched directly toward her, helmets flashing with a blinding brilliance, lances held high, their fluttering pennons snapping in the breeze. The crowd parted readily, many, in fact, diving out of their way so as not to be trampled. She stared, paralyzed by fear like any hunted creature. A commotion arose, both men and women shouting.

“Stop!”

“Don’t let her get away!”

In too great a panic to wonder how either soldiers or mob could have identified her as their quarry, she stood frozen until she saw a short figure hurtle toward her in a confusion of jingling chains and bracelets and ragged but colorful skirts. The child, for it was a little girl, cannoned into her so hard that she nearly lost her footing. Reflexively, she threw her arms around the child to keep her balance. The little girl, in turn, wrapped her skinny brown arms around Rachel and clung to her, whimpering damply into Rachel’s skirt as the soldiers came pounding up and ground to a halt surrounding them.

A stout market woman in apron and kerchief pushed past the soldiers. Two hulking youths followed her, shouting and brandishing cudgels. Rachel panted like an animal at bay.

“That’s her!” the market woman cried. “She stole an orange and knocked over my cart, the dirty little gypsy!”

“We don’t need her kind,” yelled one of the youths, “stealing from respectable folk.”

“Beat them and lock them up!” shouted the other. “Or drive them out of town! We don’t want them here!”

At this, the child, who looked to be no more than six or seven, lifted her tearstained face from Rachel’s skirt.

“I didn’t steal!” Her black eyes flashed, and her small hands formed claws as if she would have flown at her accusers and scratched them.

The leader of the soldiers dipped the tip of his lance toward her. The child shrank back against Rachel.

“Liar!” screamed the woman. “We know them gypsies’ thieving ways! And who knocked over my cart?”

“It was an accident!” the little girl screamed back. “I didn’t steal your fruit, you fat, cross-eyed
gadjo
!”

“Then what’s this?” the woman cried. She plunged her hand into the neck of the child’s ragged bodice and held up an orange, her eyes glittering with triumph.

“I offered to pay!” the child cried.

“With lies!” the woman countered. “Search her well,” she challenged the soldiers, “and you’ll find not a coin upon her, unless she’s been thieving from others than me this day.”

The little girl tugged at Rachel’s sleeve. When Rachel bent down, she said in a low voice, “I offered to read her palm. It was a fair trade, and I was hungry and thirsty, but she would have none of it. You must believe me!”

Rachel patted her shoulder.

“I will help you explain to the soldiers. Surely we can make them understand.” She caught the leader’s eye and opened her mouth to speak.

“They’re in it together!” the market woman bawled. “Look at them, two dirty gypsies, alike as two peas. Arrest them both! My sons and I will bear witness.”

“But I am not—” Rachel began.

The soldier nodded, and four of his men stepped forward and clapped an iron grip on Rachel’s arms and the little girl’s.

“You can tell it to my captain at the guardhouse,” he said. “I’m just the sergeant. It’s my job to bring in anyone who makes a disturbance, and you’ve done that all right.”

“But I didn’t —”

“Save it for the captain. Forward, march!”

Rachel looked around wildly. This would be a good time for Doña Marina, with her unfailing air of authority, to appear. Diego and the men at arms would be welcome too, though she supposed that they could not challenge a troop of soldiers without being overcome and arrested themselves. The little girl appeared to be more angry than cowed,   kicking and spitting. The two soldiers who held her had to carry her at arm’s length, with her body twisting to get free and her feet still kicking well above the ground.

The child caught Rachel’s eye and mouthed a few words that she didn’t understand. She shook her head very slightly, hoping not to attract the guard’s attention. The girl frowned and moved her lips silently once again.

“Wait. Be ready,” she mouthed. Her gaze darted around the crowd, scanning it in all directions, then back to Rachel.

Rachel cast a puzzled look about. All the faces she could see looked hostile: some angry, some gleeful to see gypsies taken into custody. 

The child hissed at her and repeated, “Wait. Be ready.”

The daggers seemed to fly out of nowhere, one hitting the steel helmet of one of Rachel’s captors with a loud
ping
, another piercing the leather corselet of one of the child’s jailors high in the shoulder. Yet another dagger grazed the cheek of the third, while a volley of stones rattled against the helmet of the fourth, two or three striking him in the face so that he cursed. All of them dropped their prisoners’ arms, while the rest of the soldiers whirled and drew their swords, though their enemy remained invisible. The onlookers, who had crowded close to enjoy the spectacle of somebody else in trouble, now started screaming and trampling one another in their haste to get away from a fracas in which they might actually get hurt.

The little girl landed neatly on her feet and grabbed Rachel’s hand as tightly as the soldiers had held her arms.

“Run!” she said.

She suited the action to the word, pulling Rachel along at a pace that left her gasping. As they fled through the panicked crowd, the girl gave a piercing whistle, followed by a stream of words in a language Rachel didn’t  recognize. Both were answered, and the child changed course to pull Rachel in that direction, zigzagging to throw off pursuit. When Rachel threw a quick look over her shoulder, the uproar seemed no more than the normal hubbub of the market, and the soldiers had been swallowed up in the sea of folk going about their business.

Chapter Nine

Cordoba, April 26, 1493

We combed the market for over an hour without finding Rachel. We did find a well, in the opposite direction from where Rachel had claimed to see water spouting. But even filling a water skin and pouring its entire contents over my head didn’t  refresh me. Imagining what might have happened to her made sweat break out on my forehead again a moment later.

“We must inquire of both the soldiers and the
hermandad
,” Doña Marina said. We had seen small bands of both these bodies going about their business. The men at arms took up this idea with enthusiasm.

“It stands to reason she would seek their help,” Esteban said.

“If not, they might at least have seen her,” Hernan said.

Their broad, kind faces looked worried, for they had grown fond of Rachel, who treated them like indulgent uncles. I could not tell them that it would be folly for Rachel to attract the attention of either the civil guards or the military, especially without a cross about her neck. Doña Marina intervened.

“Esteban, can you find a station to which these men must return?”

“That’ll be the guardhouse, my lady. It’s easily found, for they are usually located near the quarter where—”

He broke off, redfaced, by which I deduced that he would search first in the quarter where men might seek the company of loose women. That brought to my mind another horror to add to my dire imaginings of what might befall Rachel if we failed to find her.

“Do so, then,” Doña Marina said. “Make inquiries there. You, Hernan, must seek out a decent inn, for we will not leave Cordoba until Raquel is found. You and I, Diego, will remain here in the shade until they return.” She cast a sharp but not unkind look at me. “Don’t despair: it accomplishes nothing. If Raquel is wandering lost, it is likely she will think to seek us here, where she last saw us.”

I could not deny the good sense of her words, though the knowledge that worrying would not help didn’t prevent me from doing it. The men at arms departed on their errands. Doña Marina sat straight-backed on a saddlebag and took out her embroidery, plying her needle as if she took her ease in her own home. I slumped against a column, too dejected to move my legs out of the sun’s heat as it rode across the sky, changing the pattern of shadow in the arcade.

I must have drowsed, for I jumped at the sound of Esteban’s rough voice.

“No luck, my lady. They said they’d taken up no damsel in distress today, nor even any miscreants or heretics, save for two dirty gypsy girls.”

I stood, shaking sleep out of my eyes and wrinkles out of my garments in an attempt to face whatever came next like a man and not a sloven. If we removed ourselves from the great plaza, within which the vendors, their wares sold, were even now disassembling their stalls and making ready to depart, how would Rachel ever find us? I wished Papa were here. I would gladly face his wrath at me for losing Rachel for the sake of his strength and wisdom.

A shout heralded Hernan’s arrival. No doubt he had secured lodging where we might rest. As if I could! Doña Marina laid her hand on Esteban’s arm, and they went to meet him.