The Mapmaker's Daughter (34 page)

“You found me,” I whisper. Just like they did so many years ago. Found me, took me in, and loved me.

I cast my mind over the ten years that have passed since Simona died. “I’m almost as old as you were when we buried you,” I tell her.

I feel the radiance of her smile. “You are lucky indeed to have lived so long.”

“Lucky? Here?”

Judah is standing behind me, and his laughter ruffles my hair. “There are no books where I am.”

“Or a mikveh,” Simona adds.

I gesture around the room. “I have no books or mikveh either. I have memories—nothing more.”

I am at the spring, washing the grease from my hands, racing across the beach with Chuva, climbing the green mountains of Sintra…

A tattered boy drops his coin while Diogo leers behind him…my dead child baptized while I sleep on sheets red with my blood…Susana’s bitter voice and her children’s cold eyes.

Sawwar falling…falling…

Jamil is crying, Luisa is crying, Eliana is crying, we all are crying. Suddenly tears are all I can remember, and I feel as if I could fill this room with mine.

“I want to die,” I whisper, surprised at the simplicity of it.

“Amalia,” Judah says. “Go to the window.”

The sky behind the rooftops is smeared with scarlet and orange so intense the remaining blue is tinged with green. “Can you still enjoy that?” he asks. I hear the same annoyance in his voice as when he thought one of his children was not trying hard enough to understand a lesson.

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Now shut your eyes. Which do you like better?”

There’s peace in the darkness behind my eyelids. Still, I open my eyes again, because who would not want more of that sight?

I want to sit down, but Judah’s power holds me where I stand. “You don’t want to die. You aren’t ready to say good-bye.”

“You don’t know how things are,” I say. “You haven’t had to see all the suffering…”

“Who says we haven’t been watching?”

“You’ve seen Isaac grow old before his time.”

“He would be this old if he lived in better times. My grandson is almost thirty. It’s his turn to lead now.”

Judah. Our lion. Isaac and Eliana’s first child, bursting with talent beyond that of his father and namesake grandfather, with the personality of a diplomat, the mind of a scholar, and the soul of a sage. Why was such a man born when there is no Jew left in Spain to lead?

Simona senses my question. “He’s living now because this is when he’s needed. The Holy One wants us to survive. We can’t do that here. This is the beginning of our journey home—the dead can see that.”

Our. For a moment, that sounds odd, until I realize that Judah and Simona will be leaving too. All Jews, past, present, and yet to come, will be going with the exiles out of Spain.

How could I ever have doubted that I will go too?

Instinctively, I reach for the atlas. “I’d have to leave this behind,” I say. “I can’t bear that. It’s all I have left.”

“Do you ever wonder why you have it?” Judah asks. “Why, after all these generations, it’s still in your hands? Why, despite your journeys, it has never been lost?”

“I don’t know.” I sound like a frustrated child, ready to be fed an answer or give up trying.

“Don’t ask me,” Judah says. “Maybe you should look at it again. Perhaps what you want to find out has always been there.”

QUELUZ 1483

The year that would change our lives forever begins like any other, with a family celebration of the High Holy Days at Queluz. My grandson Judah is twenty-one now and lives in the Lisbon house, near the yeshiva where he studies. Isaac writes endlessly over the course of that winter, pausing only to receive visitors like the beleaguered Duke of Braganza. Sequestered in Isaac’s study, they discuss the ugly turn João’s reign has taken, while Eliana preserves the peace in a bustling home.

At thirty-seven, she is still robust and lovely, but a few white hairs spring loose from the dark tangle of her hair. I want to pluck them, more for my sake than hers. To have a daughter old enough to go gray is a shock. Has she noticed them herself? Women as busy as her have little time to wonder how they look.

The situation in Spain grows more worrisome as well. Last year, Ferdinand and Isabella began a crusade to conquer Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in what they perceive as rightly their kingdom. I imagine Jamil and his family with a hostile army at their doorstep. What does he look like, nearing seventy? Would he choose to fight? When I lived there, I heard stories of heroes dying gloriously in battle when they were older than he is.

Isaac’s relatives write to tell us about the chaos around them in Sevilla. When the Inquisition began two years ago, conversos left in droves, abandoning so many businesses that trade was disrupted for lack of sellers or buyers. Shortly after the executions began, plague broke out in the city, and of course it was blamed on us.

Soon worse news reaches Queluz. Ferdinand and Isabella have ordered all the Jews of Andalusia into exile. Thousands of conversos in Sevilla and all over southern Spain are secret Judaizers, the Inquisitors claim, and since they say Jews encourage the baptized to return to the old ways, the only way to save new Christians is for all of us to leave.

The Sevilla Abravanels are on their way to Toledo. Isaac arranges with a business acquaintance to find them a house in the aljama and pay for it with money he owes Isaac from last year’s sale of textiles. “I told him to find the largest house he could,” Isaac says after supper one evening. “There’s no telling how crowded the aljamas all over Spain will become when the Jews start arriving. For all we know, others in our family may need to be taken in as well.”

Eliana thinks for a moment. “What problem does this solve? Don’t Ferdinand and Isabella think there are anusim practicing Judaism secretly in Toledo too?”

“They must realize that,” Isaac says. “I think they don’t really want to convert all their Jews. They couldn’t gouge us with special taxes if they succeeded. They’re still new on the throne, and they may just want to look tough.” He shrugs. “Perhaps in a few years, all the Jews will be back home. We’d best concentrate on what’s happening here. Our problems are bad enough.”

***

Bad enough indeed. When disaster strikes, Isaac is in Évora visiting with Jewish scholars before returning home from his latest business trip. It is late May, and Eliana and I are weeding rows of beans. The day is hot, and the sounds of insects buzzing around our sweating faces is so loud we don’t hear the sound of galloping hooves until a rider pulls up in front of our stables.

My grandson Judah, now twenty, is handing the reins to a groom. Dust from the courtyard swirls from his frantic arrival. Not expecting to see us yet, he does not have time to wipe the alarmed expression from his face.

“Is Father back?” He gives a hopeful look in the direction of the house.

Puzzled, Eliana studies his face. “We don’t expect him back for a week. What’s wrong?”

Judah is more agitated than I have ever seen him. “Perhaps we’d best go inside,” I say, to get him away from the curious ears of the stablehands.

Once inside the house, Judah drops onto a bench at the table. “They’ve arrested the Duke of Braganza,” he says, burying his forehead in his palms. “King João is accusing him of treason.”

“Treason?” Eliana and I gasp together.

“Spies intercepted correspondence between the duke and King Ferdinand, and João says the two are hatching a plot.”

Eliana puts a hand on the table to brace herself. “Braganza visits here all the time. What if the king thinks Isaac was involved?”

“I’ve heard talk that Father lent money to Braganza recently,” Judah says to his mother. “Is it true?”

Eliana sits down heavily. “He gave Braganza a loan about six months ago, and again just before he left for Évora…”

Her fear buzzes through the room like charged air before a lightning strike. Isaac has been tainted by his friendship with a man accused as a traitor, and it may not matter if he had nothing to do with the plot. He can’t have been involved, I tell myself. Isaac would never question whom God chose to rule. Even if he did, he would know how much suffering a Jew’s disloyalty would bring down on all of us. No, Isaac would never have plotted against King João. Never.

A week after Braganza’s arrest, the news is grim indeed. The duke is to be executed tomorrow. When his brother went to Évora to plead with João, he was stabbed to death, and some are saying the king himself wielded the knife.

A few days later, another rider appears at Queluz with a letter. Eliana recognizes Isaac’s hand and pries at the seal so frantically that the vellum rips.

“
My
beloved
wife
,” Eliana reads. “
I
was
a
day
and
a
half’s ride from home when I received a summons from João. I had not yet heard of Braganza’s arrest, but that night, people spoke of nothing else. João’s summons can only mean that he intends to move against me as well. I left my host’s home before dawn to avoid the spies, and I am now inside Spain in Segura de la Orden…
”

“Spain…” Eliana’s voice trails off. She hands the letter to me.

I read on. “
I
forsook
the
woman
whom
the
Lord
designated
for
me
and
the
children
whom
God
graciously
bestowed
upon
me, and I only pray that someday the success of my plan to rescue my family will merit your forgiveness for what now must seem a cowardly act. Many times I have considered turning myself in as a way of protecting you from João’s anger, but if I am dead, I can offer you nothing. I have decided the best course is to bargain for your safety from where I am.
”

“At least he’s safe,” I say. He is for now, but are we? I resist getting up to bolt the door, not wanting to convey my fear to my daughter.

“
You
must
immediately
begin
packing
to
leave
Queluz
,” I continue aloud. “
Leah
must
do
the
same
in
Lisbon. Her husband has been accused as a co-conspirator with Braganza, and he should leave immediately to join me here. The rest of you should wait until I can arrange safe passage or, if necessary, your escape.
”

Escape? I picture fording streams and creeping through the night across pastures and mountain passes. I can’t do that, I tell myself. I am too old.

Eliana takes the letter from me. “He says we should pack only valuables that can be easily carried and as many of his books as possible. You are to stay in Lisbon with Hadassah to wait for her new baby and leave together after we have settled in Toledo in the house he bought when his family was forced from Sevilla. When he negotiates our passage, he will hold back a final payment to João until the rest of you are safely out of Portugal.”

Eliana rarely cries, but she is dabbing her eyes as she struggles to continue reading the letter to me. “
I
fear
it
is
unavoidable
that
we
will
lose
almost
everything. My heart aches that I have seen Queluz for the last time, but we must never stop praising the One who has given us such blessings over the years and will sustain and strengthen us now. I am his servant, and your loving husband, Isaac.
”

We stare at each other without speaking. A gust of wind slams a door somewhere in the house, and we jump to our feet. It is too much for us, and we dissolve into sobs in each other’s arms.

***

The atlas is nestled among other books and carted off to Lisbon. Joseph arrives safely in Segura de la Orden, and none too soon, for the king’s police do show up at Leah’s door to arrest him. Finally word comes from Isaac that King João has granted us all safe passage, in exchange for an exorbitant sum of money. Soldiers will take Eliana and the others to the border, and from there, Isaac’s own hired guard will bring them to Segura.

João is apparently feeling magnanimous. After all, how does the loss of Isaac’s service compare to the gain of all his property? Even better, he will not have to repay Isaac the small fortune he borrowed for the latest expedition to Africa. Isaac has some letters of credit he will use to establish a modest living in Spain, and we have been busy sewing gold and small valuables into the hems and linings of our clothing to help us begin again in a country whose Jewish population is already uprooted and in despair.

Eliana and I have an unspoken agreement not to discuss our losses aloud, for fear the Holy One might interpret our commiseration as ingratitude. We agree that when we are finished at Queluz, we will walk around the house to shed all our tears at once and then go for the last time to the mikveh.

When the trunks are full, there’s nothing more to do but go to Lisbon and wait for word that it is safe to leave. There must be something more to keep us here, I think as I scan the rooms, unready to face that awful, final moment. I run my hand over the top of a cabinet, and as I look at the gray coating on my fingertips, Eliana reads my mind.

“We should clean,” she says, casting a glance at a little triangle of matted dirt in one corner of the room.