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Inquisitor Dreams. Phyllis Ann Karr
Читать онлайн.Название Inquisitor Dreams
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isbn 9781434447210
Автор произведения Phyllis Ann Karr
Издательство Ingram
Chapter 2
The News of Alhama
“You’re wanted in the Jewry, Master,” Gubbio announced, striding into the courtyard with market basket still on his arm.
Don Felipe looked up from the idle tale of Don Florindo, survivor of Roncesvalles, and the fair Zorinda that he was penning in the shade of the colonnade. “The Jewry? I hope that they do not expect us to ape their Castilian ways and go sniffing out conspiracies among our Jews of Aragon? Bad enough that we have been commanded to bottle them up in their own quarter as if infected with the plague. Do they suppose that a bishop’s Ordinary has no other work in hand?” (Not that he had. Nothing, at least, that could not wait until tomorrow. Else he would not have been penning his romance of Florindo and Zorinda.)
“Rest easy, master. By my calculation, it concerns only you, not your office, still less his Eminence your noble bishop or Fra Guillaume, either one.” Shutting his eyes, the Italian screwed up his face as if in the throes of concentration. “One who shall be nameless approached me in the market—”
“You mean the beautiful Sarah,” Don Felipe remarked with a chuckle.
Gubbio cleared his throat. “I mean one who shall be nameless. Approached me as I stood examining these oranges—newly come from Granada, you see—to impart the information that a certain Gamaliel Ben Joseph—”
“Gamito!” The priest jumped up with a suddenness he would have scorned to display anywhere else save alone with his servant.
“Ah, so Gamaliel Ben Joseph is Gamito, is he?” Gubbio nodded, obviously unsurprised. “Who arrived in the same ship with the oranges, I would guess, and is staying at present in the house of…let me see…Nathaniel the Silversmith, if your Reverence would like a word with him.”
* * * *
Castile had boasted fierce legal restrictions on her Jews since before the memory of all save the oldest persons now alive; but in proud Aragon, the law confining them to their own district was little more than a year old and largely honored without being observed. If some Aragonese Old Christians interpreted it as commanding them to stay aloof at all times from their Israelite neighbors, others did not: Don Felipe found Juan and Estevan del Quivir, two promising sprigs of one of Daroca’s Oldest Christian trees, looking Nathaniel Ben Solomon’s wares over in search of a gift for their mother. He acknowledged them with a priestly blessing before following the silversmith’s gesture to the upper floor of the house.
It was a comfortable, but not a pretentious dwelling. The stairs led directly into a single room large enough for three beds and, on the opposite wall where it could receive the best light from the windows, a study table reasonably cluttered with bound volumes and a few scrolls.
Gamaliel Ben Joseph stood beside the table, apparently having risen and turned to face the stairs at the sound of the newcomer’s footfalls.
For a moment, the two men stood gazing at each other. Felipe felt torn between joy at beholding a friend feared dead, and pain at seeing that friend clothed in homespun so coarse that its weave was clearly visible across the length of half a room, with a yellow patch blazing on the chest and new Jewlocks framing a black beard of some half a year’s growth. It did not occur to him until afterward that Gamaliel’s hesitation might have been that of any Jew faced with the presence of any Christian priest—even a secular wearing little of the sacerdotal—especially one known to be associated in any way with the Inquisition, whether the ancient one of Aragon or the new one of Castile.
Felipe broke the pause, throwing wide his arms and softly crying, “Gamito!”
In the middle of the room, they met and embraced. Their friendship was, after all, as old as themselves, and each of them already a year or two past the quarter-century mark.
“Old friend, old friend,” Gamito began, when he could speak. “Will you still touch me, when you have heard…”
“My family?” Felipe’s grip tightened on his friend’s arms. “Gamito, what can you tell me of them?”
“Little that is certain.” Falling back half a pace, Gamaliel shook his head. “To have been there is not to know everything, but…we fear the worst. We know that they were all in the city—your good father and mother, both your brothers, the wife and child of your older brother, and your beloved sister, the gentle Serafina—when the Castilians came. Since the day Isabel’s army breached our walls…since that day, old friend, we have seen none of your family, not one. Nor have I found anyone who has. We heard that your father’s house was among those burned to the ground, but I could never return there and see for myself.”
“But…” It was natural to fear the worst for those caught in a city struck by war, yet to have the fears confirmed—to know that the home of one’s memories was no longer anything but blackened ashes, to find oneself alone and familyless in a single blow—and did not the Catholic monarchs pride themselves on the righteousness of their war? “But we were Catholic Christians!”
“Some Christians attempted to side with the invaders—although not, by all that I could learn, until after the wall was breached and the Castilians actually in our streets. Some may have saved themselves in that manner. Abou Aben Hassim spoke of glimpsing one of the Nuñez Calatravo brothers drinking with the conquerors during the days when our own men of Karnattah besieged the city, trying to relieve us, and the Castilians allowed water to their horses and soldiers alone, and none to us their prisoners. But among those Christians made prisoner were a few who dared complain of having offered to join the conquerors and been refused. Many other Christians fought with us for Alhama. Or so they claimed when held prisoner with the rest of us in the desecrated mosques, and I believe that most or all of them spoke truly. Almost all of those whom I met had lost family 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