The Day of Atonement (6 page)

Hastings tugged at the lapels of his jacket. “It weren’t trouble.
Nothing out of the way, that is. The boy don’t talk much and didn’t make a nuisance of himself, which is all one can ask of children.”

“And the funds Mr. Settwell provided for you proved sufficient?” Mr. Weaver asked. His voice was full of good cheer, except there was something else there too, and it made me glad it was not me whom he addressed.

Mr. Hastings glanced at the window. “We got by tolerably, I should say. A bit of a pinch here and there, but I shan’t complain.”

Mr. Weaver looked at me. “Mr. Raposa, did you advance any of your own coin to Mr. Hastings?”

I looked away. I did not wish to say anything. I bore Hastings no ill will for the money he had taken. And this Mr. Weaver, who meant only to help, was presumably a Jew. Yes, he appeared to be a Jew of some means, but Hastings was an Englishman, and I did not want Mr. Weaver to face any difficulties on my behalf by making accusations against a Christian. I searched for the right words, but I could think of none, and so I remained mute.

Hastings, however, had no difficulties expressing his sentiments. “Just a moment,” he cried. “Boys, as is well known, are none the most truthful of creatures.”

Mr. Weaver held up a hand, and I understood that it would take considerable courage to disregard the implied threat. Mr. Hastings, the Christian and the Englishman, was silenced by the Jew. It was remarkable.

“Yes,” I now said. I was apprehensive about what all this might mean and where it might lead, but I was curious too. “Mr. Hastings asked for money to pay our expenses, and I gave it to him.”

“How much?”

I shrugged. “I did not keep accounts. I paid as he asked.”

“May I see your purse?”

I handed it to Mr. Weaver, who emptied the coins into one of his large and calloused hands. He counted the money, returned the coins to the sack, and then turned to Mr. Hastings, whose red face and
intertwining fingers betrayed his discomfort. “You have served the Factory long?”

“I am not a member, but I have worked for Factory men these five years.” Seeming to find some courage, he added, “I am well known and regarded, and I am fortunate enough to have many powerful friends.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Weaver. “A man so experienced and handsomely connected must know that fast riders are sent from Falmouth to London as soon as the packet docks. These riders dispatch their letters many days before a man traveling the same distance by coach could hope to see London. As the same packet that brought you from Lisbon also contained a letter to me from Mr. Charles Settwell, I know precisely how much money the boy ought to have in his purse, and yet quite a bit of it is unaccounted for.”

“You must speak to the boy, then,” said Mr. Hastings with a forced laugh. “I need not tell you how ill equipped they are to hang on to their coin. An indulgence or sweetmeat here and there—why, they add up quickly.”

“You suggest it was this grieving boy who spent the money?” Mr. Weaver said.

“If you think to accuse me—” But he stopped himself. Mr. Weaver’s dark eyes were fixed on him, hard and sure, and Hastings could bring himself to say not another word. I saw nothing in Mr. Weaver’s expression or posture or manner that overtly suggested violence, and yet he held himself like a predator poised to spring, like the jaws of a trap, ready to shut fast and fatally.

Hastings staggered backwards. Retrieving his own purse from his belt, he counted out some coins with unsteady fingers and handed them to Mr. Weaver.

Mr. Weaver, however, would not take them. “They’re not mine,” he said.

Unwilling to humiliate himself by giving money to a foreign child, Hastings set the coins down on the table.

Now Mr. Weaver glanced at them. “You have overpaid by seven pence, but I’ll warrant the boy shall keep the money as a token of your good wishes. Good afternoon, Mr. Hastings.”

The Englishman bowed in a clumsy and frightened spasm. “Despite any slight discrepancies in the trivial matter of accounts, I have made every effort to look after the boy. I hope you will speak kindly of me to my friends at the Factory.”

“I shall speak the truth,” said Mr. Weaver. “I see no reason to do otherwise.”

Hastings left without another word. Meanwhile, Mr. Weaver slid the coins into the purse and handed it to me. “I know a cheat when I see one, and while you are under my protection, I shall not let a man such as he have the better of you.”

For all the menace he had projected when speaking to Hastings, he now seemed to me genuinely kind. It was not the false and sugary solicitude I had endured from innkeepers’ wives and servants and Hastings’s whores. This kindness was more subtle, for it was unaffected.

Mr. Weaver invited me to sit, and I did so.

Across from me, the older man leaned forward and sighed. “Mr. Settwell has described your circumstances, so I know you have endured much. I shall ask nothing of you until you have had some time to mourn and adjust to the many changes in your circumstances. For the present, you will live here with me and my wife and my daughter. When you are ready, we shall figure out what to do with you. You are a bit old to be put out as an apprentice, but that should not signify. Every Jew of the nation will vie for the opportunity to stand as patron to a young man who has escaped the Inquisition.”

I did not wish to speak. My loss and my grief and my misery were so raw, so poorly contained, I feared even the most trivial of words might break the fragile dam I had erected, and I did not want to cry before a stranger. Nevertheless, my curiosity overcame my reluctance. “Why should the Jews wish to help me?”

The man raised his eyebrows as though the question surprised him. “This neighborhood is full of men whose families escaped the Inquisition long ago. They fled to France or the Levant or the Lowlands, as mine did, before coming to this country. These are men whose lives have not been directly touched by the Inquisition in several generations, but the anger runs deep. You defied our greatest oppressors, and that makes you a hero to them and to me.”

I looked away. I had abandoned my father in the Inquisition prison. I had left my mother alone. Survival was not, in itself, heroic. The mere suggestion made me angry, and to my surprise I found myself embracing the anger. It was the first time since I had hidden in the hold of the packet ship that I had felt anything other than fear or sadness. I wanted to hold on to that anger, to nurse it like the spark that becomes a flame, because maybe it would burn away everything else.

“Tell me,” Mr. Weaver said. “What skills have you?”

“My father is a merchant,” I said. “I have learned much of his business.”

“You can read and write? Have you a good hand? Perhaps you can be set up as a merchant’s clerk.”

I shook my head. Making money for its own sake did not appeal to me. As a New Christian, my father had been forced into a merchant’s life—trade was considered too debased for Old Christians. I would not, if given the option, choose for myself what had so long been thrust upon my family. “I will do that if it is what you wish. I must do as you say. I know that.”

“You must do as
you
wish,” Mr. Weaver told me, keeping his voice quiet and calm. “Or as near to it as we can arrange. I do not see that you need to pursue a trade that does not suit you.” He stood and put a friendly hand upon my shoulder. “Perhaps we ought not to speak of it at all. You are tired from your journey. I’ll have you shown to your room. You may sleep or rest, and when you are ready, we can discuss your future.”

I looked at Mr. Weaver’s big hand. Even at his advanced age, he
was the sort of man no one would dare to trouble. I wished to be like that. I wished to be someone other men feared. “What is your trade?” I asked.

“I am a thief taker,” he said. Seeing the look of confusion on my face, he added, “I am paid to find people and items.”

“What manner of people and items?”

“Lost or stolen items,” Mr. Weaver said. “People who are missing for reasons good or ill.”

“But you’re called ‘thief taker,’ so you must find lawless men,” I said. “Do you find people who have done bad things?”

“Yes,” Mr. Weaver said. “That is part of what I do.”

“Do you hurt such men?” I asked.

“If it cannot be helped,” Mr. Weaver admitted, somewhat abashedly, I thought. “I never seek to do violence, but I am prepared if violence is unavoidable.”

I thought about that. The idea of finding someone who had done evil—and striking him, lashing him with a whip, running him through with a blade, or firing a pistol into his chest. All of these things had an undeniable appeal. I had seen how Mr. Weaver sniffed out Hastings’s crimes and then humbled him with but words and glances. It must be a wonderful thing to feel something other than powerless. London was a strange city, where Jews walked about openly and could demand justice of Christians. I did not know if I would ever grow accustomed to it, and I told myself I did not want to, that I did not want to let go of my anger. Yet part of me understood that I had come to a place where I might find it possible to live.

Six months later I received a letter from Mr. Settwell. Illness had spread through the prisons. Many of the prisoners died, including my parents. They were gone.

I retreated to my room, and Mr. Weaver did not trouble me. I remained
alone for four days. Sometimes I ate and drank. Sometimes I did not.

On the fifth day, I appeared in Mr. Weaver’s study. I was thin and ill rested, but I set my face in determination.

“I want to be a thief taker, like you,” I said. “I want to learn to hurt people.”

“Hurting people will not change what has happened,” Mr. Weaver said.

“I know.”

“Then I will begin your training tomorrow,” he said.

Mr. Weaver proved to be correct. Hurting people never made me feel better, but sometimes, when I punched or tackled or kicked, it made me forget to feel at all, and that, at least, was some relief.

My trunks would have to be cleared through the customs house, and it might be a day or more before they were delivered. So, with my business aboard the ship complete, I took my leave.

The Tagus is massive at Lisbon. Called by locals the
Mar da Palha
, the Sea of Straw, it was perhaps a mile across to Almada. Vessels of all sizes, from titan East Indiamen to single-sail fishing boats, crowded the huge expanse of water. The quays were used primarily for unloading and loading barges, as the river was quite deep in its center, but too shallow near the shores for the great ships to dock. I took passage on a barge commissioned by the Factory and powered by a dozen hollow-eyed African galley slaves.

I kept my eyes on the water, taking in the range of mighty vessels and opulent barges with their red velvet canopies and gold tassels. They belonged to wealthy
fidalgos
, minor nobility, or perhaps even to the royal family itself. The packet had anchored directly in front of the
Terreiro do Paço
, the Palace Square, and the barge veered
westward, past the royal shipyards that rang with the pounding of hammers and the sawing of wood, to a small set of quays at the foot of Chaido Hill. It was all industry and growth and trade here, as goods from all over the world were unloaded and set on carts that rolled toward the warehouses. Silks and furs to dress the rich, and meats and cheeses and grains to feed them.

When I first arrived in England ten years before, I had been shocked to discover that the greatest men in the kingdom took pride in their farmlands. Their properties fed and clothed the nation, and while they might not soil their own hands with labor, they nevertheless understood themselves to be physically bound to the land. An English gentleman always took pride in serving the foods cultivated upon his own estates. In Portugal, a
fidalgo
would imagine himself diminished if he were to bring the fruits of his holdings to market, and so the country could offer its citizens little in the way of meat or produce. The waters were teeming with fish, and peasants and small men and ships from other nations worked them, but no gentleman would tarnish his name by being called a fisherman. I watched, as I came to shore, barrels of salted fish from England being unloaded down the quays. It was but one way in which Portuguese pride made Englishmen rich.

Without ceremony, I stepped upon the quay and began to shoulder my way through the crowd of sweat-stinking slaves and laborers. It was but a short distance to my new lodgings, the Duke’s Arms, one of a mass of inexpensive inns and taverns serving the English. I had not chosen the most reputable of such establishments, and my inquiries suggested that a man wishing to make the best possible impression would have stayed elsewhere. I, however, was not looking to make the best possible impression. Far better to appear to be a man who little knows his best interests. Far better to appear to be lost and uncertain in this dangerous city. That was what would get me closest to the Inquisitor I sought.

Naturally, I could not have predicted the day of my arrival—travel
from England ranged from as little as eight days to three weeks or longer, should bad weather or pirates intervene—but I had written ahead to tell the innkeeper of my ship’s name and its departure date. The inn would know of the packet’s arrival and ready my room accordingly.