The Jerusalem Diamond (22 page)

“
No. You have already cut a diamond worn by three Popes
.”

Vidal shook his head. “I was a youth, still learning my craft. I drew where my cousin told me to draw. I cut where my uncle told me to cut. To finish a stone such as the one described by Count De Costa's factors requires the skill of a Van Berquem
.”

“
Lodewyck van Berquem is dead
.”

“
His son Robert, my cousin and mentor, is alive
.”

“
In London, as you well know, performing a jeweler's services for Henry VII The English have cast these lowlands into a spell. They use your products and artisans as their own,” the monk said dourly
.

“
Wait until he has finished King Henry's work,” Vidal advised
.

“
There is no time. Pope Alexander was born in Valencia, and he is old and ill. The gift must be given while a Spaniard is yet pontiff.” Fray
Diego shook his head. “Are you not anxious to leave this place, Senor? You are from our lovely Toledo, is it not so
?”

“
Now I am from here.” He removed a framed parchment from the wall and held it for the monk to read. Signed by Philip of Austria, it placed the protection of both Hapsburg and Burgundy over Julius Vidal, along with his family, his possessions and his heirs
.

The friar studied it, visibly impressed. “Was not your father Luis Vidal, a tanner by trade in Toledo
?”

“
My father is dead. He was a leather merchant who employed a score of tanners.” To make a leather Spaniards have not seen since they banished the Jews, he wanted to add
.

“
And his father was Isaac Vidal, a wool merchant of Toledo
…?”

Julius said nothing. He grew watchful
.

“
… Whose father was one Isaac ben Yaacov Vitallo, Chief Rabbi of Genoa
?”

They looked at one another. Vidal's skin began to prickle
.

The cleric pressed. “Is it true that your great-grandfather was Isaac Vitallo, chief rabbi in Genoa
?”

“
And what of that
?”

“
Do you know the full name of my Prior at Segovia
?”

Vidal shrugged
.

“
He is Fray Tomás de Torquemada
.”

“
The Grand Inquisitor
?”

“
Ah. The same. Who instructs me to tell you that Don José Paternoy de Mariana is held in a gaol in León
.”

Vidal shook his head
.

“
The name means nothing to you
?”

“
What should it mean
?”

“
A former professor of botany and the philosophy of science at the university in Salamanca
?”

“
So?” Vidal growled. He had had enough of this priest
.

“
A great-grandson of one Isaac ben Yaacov Vitallo, Chief Rabbi in Genoa
?”

Vidal laughed. “Your Inquisition will have to do better than me for a witness,” he said. “I never heard of this … kinsman. But if I knew him, I would tell you nothing
.”

Fray Diego smiled. “I do not come seeking a testimony. There is sufficient evidence
.”

“
Of what?” Vidal asked
.

“
He is a
converso
who is a lapsed Christian
.”

“
A Judaizer?” he asked dryly
.

The friar nodded. “The first time, he was stripped of professorial position and sentenced to wear the penitential robe, the
sanbenito,
for eighteen months. This is a second offense. He will doubtless be relaxed by fire in an Act of Faith
.”

Vidal struggled for control. “You travel all this way to tell me you will burn another Jew
?”

“
We do not burn Jews. We burn Christians who doom themselves by behaving like Jews. I am instructed to inform you that …” The friar chose his words carefully. “If you will cut the Pope's stone, a special leniency will be shown
.”

Vidal glared. “Be damned. He is not my kinsman
.”

Fray Diego's face warned that he didn't enjoy being talked to in such a way by a Jew. “Don José Paternoy de Mariana was the son of Fray Anton Montoro de Mariana, who before his conversion to Christianity and subsequent ordination was Rabbi Feliz Vitallo of Castile. Fray Anton was the son of Abrahem Vitallo, wool merchant of Aragon. Who was the son of Isaac ben Yaacov Vitallo, chief rabbi of Genoa
.”

“
I will not go!
”

Fray Diego shrugged. He took a parchment from his pouch and set it on the table. “Nevertheless. I am ordered to turn over to you this safe conduct through Spain, signed by Fray Tomás himself, and to wait a reasonable period while you consider the message. I shall return, Señor
.”

When he had gone, Vidal stood before the fire. During Lodewyck van Berquem's final illness someone had asked him the state of his health. Julius remembered what his uncle had answered
. A Jew still breathes and feels. Therefore, there is hope.

He carried outside the two cans the friar had left and emptied them. The Spanish wine looked like blood on the snow
.

Anna came from the rear of the house
.

He sighed. When he put his arms around her, his future butted him
in the groin. “I must go to Antwerp and see Manasseh,” he said into her hair
.

“
Clearly, it's out of the question,” his brother said
.

Relief swept him. He nodded
.

“
Still, I wish it were in our power to help this De Mariana
.”

“
What can anyone do for anyone?” he said bitterly. “Doubtless the damned Dominican lies. If De Mariana were truly kin to us, we should know it
.”

“
You don't recall him?” Manasseh said quietly
.

“
… Do you
?”

“
His father. I remembering hearing our father curse a cousin, once a rabbi, who had become a priest after the butchery of 1467, when so many converted in order to live
.”

They sat in the small synagogue without speaking
.

An old woman came in carrying a plucked chicken in a reed basket. She showed Manasseh the spleen and waited anxiously while he considered whether or not the roaster was kosher
.

Julius watched with resentment. He was the elder brother. He should remember things that Manasseh couldn't. Their reversed roles reinforced his awareness of his own slow mind
.

In a little while the woman hobbled off, pleased
.

Manasseh sighed as he sat down again. “In Spain she would be burned for inquiring whether the bird is clean enough to eat
.”

“
We would not be alive if a kinsman hadn't acted for us. If he has our blood
…”

They looked at one another. Manasseh took his hand and held it, something he hadn't done since they were boys. Julius saw with terror that the Rabbi of Antwerp was badly frightened
.

“
About Anna and my Isaakel
…”

“
They'll stay here, with us
.”

He patted his brother's hand
.

A snowfall that cushioned the rutted roads enabled him to move Anna to Antwerp by sled with a minimum of discomfort. She spoke with forced brightness. When the moment came for him to go she clung and then
pushed away from him. He watched her hurry from the room as quickly as her swollen body would allow. He knew she dreaded bearing the child while he was far off
.

On that bleak thought he rode down Jodenstraat, away from Manasseh's house. His horse was a strong gelding. He always kept a good mount because he was a
mohel
as well as a diamond cutter, and he traveled the countryside to perform the good deed of circumcision for any Jewish family with a new manchild
.

His knives were in the saddlebags along with the instruments of his diamond trade, and by prearrangement he stopped in Aalte for the night, at the home of a cheese merchant whose wife had borne him a son seven days before. Next morning Vidal lifted the fine, fat babe from the chair set aside for the prophet Elijah at every circumsion ceremony, and placed him in the lap of his godfather for the surgery. As he performed the act of
periah,
pushing back the skin of the tiny organ to expose the glans, the godfather's lap trembled
.

“
Steady!” he growled. His knife accomplished the Covenant of Abraham and the baby howled in shock as he lost his foreskin. Vidal dipped his finger in the cup and gave the child wine to suck, reciting the blessing as the boy received the name of his dead grandfather, Reuven
.

The relatives wept and shouted
Mazal tov!
Julius was heartened. Because of his two vocations, people referred to him as
Der Schneider,
the cutter. Manasseh always insisted that he took more care with a circumcision than with the most costly diamond. And why not? He knew as he wrapped the tiny penis in clean linen that the mothers of these children were well aware which were the most precious gems
Der Schneider
cut
.

He rode into the port of Ostend by midafternoon. It was easy to find the Lisboa, an ill-kept Portuguese galley with lateen sails. His heart sank as he watched the wild-looking crew loading cargo. But there was no other craft bound for San Sebastian, and the overland route, through innumerable small and warlike baronies, was unthinkable
.

To his further dismay, after he had paid and boarded he found that Fray Diego, whose company he had hoped to avoid, had also booked passage. There were three other passengers, Spanish knights who were already drunk, by turns bellicose and shouting sexual invitations at the sailors
.

He tied the gelding's bridle to a stanchion and settled himself on the deck in a bed of straw, preferring the horse's company. The
Lisboa
left with the tide. The icy spray of the North Sea soon made it impossible for him to sleep on the deck. He waited as long as he could stand the bitter cold, then he piled straw around the animal and made his way to the tiny aftercabin, already occupied by the others. When he opened the door, he gagged. He stayed as far from the knights as possible, pushing himself next to the friar, who cursed. Turning his face to the wall, Vidal went to sleep
.

He was a good traveler on the sea but in the morning the retching of the others soon made him ill. For the next three days the ship rode the greasy swells through the English Channel and they were a sorry company. The meals were bad salted fish and spoiled bread. He liked the raw red wine of the Portuguese, but he observed that the knights' distress deepened after they drank it, so he ate what he could of the bread and contented himself with sips of the water that tasted of the casks
.

When they rounded the Channel Islands the wind died. The distress of the passengers was eased as the travail of the oarsmen began. They bent their backs, moving the craft over the flattened seas by human strength alone
.

Fray Diego had disclosed to the knights that Julius was a Jew. They spoke loudly of being Old Christians, and of the importance of
limpieza,
purity of blood lines. Despite the fact that they stank like cattle, when he entered the cabin they held their hands to their noses against
Foetor Judaicus, “
the Jewish stench.” One of them told an interminable tale of a Hebrew who had stolen some consecrated wafers from a church. The scoundrel had taken the hosts to his synagogue, where he had placed one on the altar and stabbed it with a sharp knife. Blood had welled and dripped from the wafer! When the frightened thief had thrust the remaining hosts into the oven to rid himself of the evidence, the form of a child drifted to heaven, whereupon the Jew had confessed to the authorities. He was first torn by glowing pincers and then burned
.

Vidal tried to ignore them. Some of the crew had coins of the Spanish realm. He traded with them, and maravedis and dineros replaced the copper deniers in his saddlebags. On the fourth night the wind returned. Driven from the cabin by the foulness of the air, he went on deck to find
one of the knights, the story teller, removing his bags from the straw
.

He thought of the unborn child
.

The man drew his sword. His left hand mockingly dangled over the deck rail the saddlebag containing the precious instruments
.

“
Drop them into the sea,” Vidal said, beyond despair, “then explain it to Torquemada
.”

Fray Diego brushed past him, speaking rapidly. The ashen knight returned the saddlebags, suddenly sober
.

After that it was better. They no longer jeered when he stood on the deck and prayed. They avoided him. The Dominican told him again and again how they would have killed him and thrown him overboard but for the intervention of his good and faithful friend, Fray Diego, for whom a word of praise to the proper ears would be appreciated. The friar was worse than the seasickness
.

The wind held. On the ninth morning the galley came to the southern limit of the great Bay of Biscay and they made landfall at San Sebastian in a driving Spanish rain
.

Fray Diego darted from the aftercabin long enough to tell him that the galley would also put in at Gijón. “Stay aboard until then. It is closer to León
.”

He said nothing. He led the gelding down the cargo plank to land and they walked away from the sea. The horse had survived the voyage well. When the firm earth stopped swaying underfoot Vidal swung into the saddle. The air was spicier and gentler than the cold of Ghent
.

He bought two onions from a sour-faced peasant with mean eyes. When he came to a little pine woods on a hill he dismounted and sat with his back to a tree, where he could see a meadow full of cattle, a wheat field and an olive grove
.