and loved ones. In the end, I fear that it had less to do with their religion than with whichever soldiers pillaged their houses. We heard that it was Manuel Urtigo and his men who sacked your father’s house.” Venturing to step forward again, Gamito renewed his grip on Felipe’s arm. “This Manuel Urtigo is said to be a mercenary, almost a bandit, though fighting that campaign with Isabel’s army. Old friend, I am sorry. I grieve with you. They were a second family to me.”
“Manuel?” The name seemed to strike a flash of some grotesque half-memory—Serafina naked and screaming beneath a bloodstained ruffian, while another man shouted, “Bravissimo, Manuel!” Where the image had come from, Felipe could not think. Perhaps some shard of fear-born fantasy engendered by the earliest news, this past Lent, of the Catholic monarchs wresting his native Alhama de Karnattah from Moorish rule. He had been schooled in the caution necessary when dealing with visions and fancied visions, whether they came from God, Satan, or the fevered human brain; yet this impossible glimpse of his sister lying in her own blood, once remembered, was a sword to his soul. “Manuel,” he repeated. “Manuel Urtigo. Urtigo. Manuel Urtigo. I will remember the name.”
* * * *
After some moments, Gamaliel poured Felipe a cup of wine. Accepting it from his friend’s hand, the priest found a chair and sat. “But you, Gamito?” he asked. “Your family?”
A spasm passed through Gamito’s face, but when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “My married sister must have died with her husband and children in the sacking of their house. I saw its ruins as I was led with other prisoners through the streets. The house of my father had the blessed fortune to be taken by Pedro Alçon de Córdoba, an honorable captain who forbade his men to harm their prisoners, or even to pluck from their persons anything except gold, silver, and jewels. But later, when the men of Karnattah tried to retake the city, they stopped up most of its springs outside the wall. That was when the Castilians hoarded whatever water they could get for their horses and fighting men, and many of us prisoners died of thirst. Among them Yousef Ben Yeshu, my father. Later still, more Castilians came to drive away our would-be rescuers and destroy all hope that the Moors might recapture Alhama. Yet this proved a blessing to the surviving members of my family, for Pedro Alçon de Córdoba permitted our cousins in the city of Karnattah to ransom us. My mother is with them still, and my unmarried sister to help nurse her. My brother took his wife and fled to Rome. I came here.”
“To bring me the news? Old friend, I thank you.” Don Felipe laid one hand on Gamito’s shoulder. “And I grieve for your own losses, and rejoice that they were not even worse. As mine to you, yours was a second family to me.”
Gamaliel covered Felipe’s hand with his own. For a moment, one man seated, the other standing, both heads slightly bowed, they remained in silence.
At length, Don Felipe spoke again. “But your clothes, Gamito? Has the ransom left your family so impoverished? Your beard? The sidelocks? And…the hated yellow badge? Was all this necessary?”
After refilling his guest’s cup and pouring wine for himself, Gamaliel drew up another chair and sat.
“Afoot or on shipboard, I call it safer to travel through these most Catholic realms as the unbaptized Jew I am than to risk being mistaken for a relapsed converso. Better to be spat upon than court the flames. They say there have already been burnings in Castile.”
Don Felipe nodded. “At Seville, after the Act of Faith a year ago this February just past. But, by our information, the conspiracy there had been actual, my friend. Not the mere bag of wind and empty rumors that most such plots dissolve into at a sufficiently forceful touch. Unfortunately, it has enabled the people to find new conspiracies in every shadow.”
“Is it true that plague struck the day after the burnings?”
“I have heard that the first cases appeared before the Act, but who, now, can say for sure? Certainly plague struck at about the same time, and the people saw it as God’s judgment on the conspirators. Even though one of the inquisitors was among its earliest victims,” Don Felipe added wryly, “which some graceless wits might have seen as divine judgment on the other party, had the general wrath burned less fiercely against the victims of the stake.”
“How is it that you have such clear news of these matters?”
Felipe almost winked. “Is it not in my interest to know as much as possible about this new, half-legal Inquisition their Majesties are trying to plant? Do you suppose I am eager to see Fernando bring it here to Aragon? where folk have done very well with the true old Inquisition since the days of the Albigensians. Do you think that I, as secular priest and bishop’s Ordinary, care for the thought of these hot new hounds of Torquemada’s replacing our sleepy old Fra Guillaume? who regards me as invigorating new blood!”
“Old friend, old friend,” Gamaliel replied, shaking his head, “their Majesties may succeed. All my way here, I heard the sailors talk as if they panted for Queen Isabel’s Inquisition as we prisoners in the mosques of Alhama had panted for water and food.”
“Perhaps. But what is true of Castile may not hold true of Aragon. I have found that the people here take fierce pride in their own will, their own ancient fueros, privileges, and liberties. Each Aragonese noble holds himself fully equal with his king, whom he serves of his own free will, only as long as it pleases himself to do so—and when it does not, he appeals to the Justicia of Aragon and his court! As long as your people guard themselves in prudence and avoid following the example of Seville, I think you may find our Old Christians of Aragon your strongest allies in keeping this new Inquisition out of Fernando’s kingdom. But as for you yourself, Gamito…I hope and believe that we shall preserve Aragon relatively safe, but…” Don Felipe thought of the new law restricting the children of Israel to their own quarters of the cities. “…were I you, I should join your brother’s family in Rome, and bring your mother there from Karnattah as soon as she can bear the journey, along with your sister and cousins.”
“Do you think that I have not thought of all this? Every step of the way to port, every rise and fall of the ship, as I saw, and felt in my own person, how the Castilians treat us, not only in siege and war, but… But no, my friend.” Gamaliel shook his head. “I believe that the Lord calls me to remain here and do everything in my power to help my people in the times that lie ahead.”
“I know you were studying to be a rabbi.”
“It is a longer study, perhaps, for us than for you,” Gamaliel replied with a smile that touched soft irony. “But I have also been schooled in the trials of Alhama de Karnattah.”
“And so you plan to remain here with us?” Felipe raised his cup in salute to his boyhood companion. “It cheers me already to have you near.”
For a time they sipped in silence, as if all the new things had been said and it was as yet too painful to reminisce about the old. Eventually, however, his wine three-quarters drunk, Felipe asked, “And Hamet and his family? Are they still in the city of Karnattah, where they went…was it in ’70?”
“In 1471. Yes. I saw them twice, the time I spent in that city after we were ransomed. They have done well, as well as possible in these days.” After a pause, Gamito added, “He told me that his sister Morayma is happy with her Moorish husband.”
The priest replied with a fatalistic nod and the comment, “It is enough.”
Why, after all, should she not be happy in her marriage?
Chapter 3
Morayma
The
