The Jerusalem Diamond (25 page)

“
Why is the boy gagged
?”

“
He is an unrepentant sinner, señor, who they fear would spoil the Act of Faith with blasphemy
.”

Inquisition guards, uniformed in black and white and carrying a green Cross covered with black crepe, made up the end of the procession. The crowd swept after them
.

In the square, a wooden stand and a scaffold had been erected. The Dominicans mounted the stand and began at once to conduct a Mass. The people continued to fill the square, some joining in the prayer and others stopping in the marketplace to buy food or drink
.

When the service was done, the names of the lesser criminals were read. As each name was called, its owner raised high an unlighted candle in acknowledgment of his or her public shame
.

The three condemned were led to the scaffold and bound to the stakes while an Inquisitor read their crimes. Teresa and Gil de Lanuza were mother and son, relapsed heretics who had been convicted of conspiring to arrange the circumcision of a child. The woman had confessed, while her son had not. The other man was Bernardo Ferrer, a convicted sodomist
.

A murmur swept the crowd. An executioner behind Teresa de Lanuza had passed a
garrotta
around her neck and strangled her. The woman's face diffused and contorted and then she was dead. Three Dominicans left their stand and climbed the scaffold, carrying lighted torches. Each stood close to Gil de Lanuza in turn, speaking earnestly to him and then passing the flame of the torch close to his face
.

“
They seek to convert him,” the soldier murmured. “They show him what the flames are like
.”

A tremor, visible from where Vidal watched, shook the heretic's body. A priest removed the gag from the youth's mouth and the boy gasped something. The priest turned and raised his hand to silence the crowd. “My son, what did you say
?”

“
I convert myself to the true faith
.”

A shudder of joy swept the onlookers. Next to Vidal a woman frightened the child in her arms, who joined in her loud weeping
.

“
Praise be to God on high,” the soldier said huskily
.

The Dominicans were kneeling. “My son,” the priest said, “to what true faith do you convert? In what law do you die
?”

“
Father, I die in the faith of Jesus Christ
.”

The Dominicans rose and embraced the youth. “You are our brother,” the priest cried. “Our beloved brother
.”

The youth's eyes were wide with excitement. His mouth was tremulous. The executioner behind the stake strangled him
.

The coal merchants began to carry up bundles of brush, wood and charcoal. They handled their materials easily, stacking them around the staked figures and under the floor
.

Then they were finished
.

Everyone watched the last living condemned. Bernardo Ferrer's eyes were clenched against reality
.

“
Is he given no chance to repent?” Vidal asked
.

The soldier glanced delicately at the woman holding the child. “His is a crime for which there is no forgiveness, señor
.”

An inquisitor nodded and an executioner came forward with a lighted torch. When he touched it, the pyre leaped into flame. The dry wood crackled and made soft little explosions as it burned
.

Vidal tried to flee but the backed bodies hemmed him in. He watched the living victim
.

Ferrer hung from his ropes, as if trying to meet the fire
.

Smoke rose. The heat made the three figures on the stakes appear to shimmer and dance
.

Flames flickered though the cracks in the floor and fed on the branches stacked around the people. A snake of fire wriggled through the piled brush and crawled onto the hem of the
sanbenito.
Ferrer was screaming something, but his voice was lost
.

His hair burst like a halo
.

His cords burned through, and he fell. Moments later, the floor collapsed under him in a shower of sparks
.

So little time to burn a man
?

Vidal was finishing the prayer for the dead. Next to him the woman hugged her child. The soldier crossed himself, and people began to go home
.

It was curious. When he returned to the diamond—perhaps because he had seen the worst men could do—he was no longer afraid.

He picked up the hammer and chisel and made two strong taps. The
ugly shoulders were too thin to cleave cleanly. They splintered, but what remained could be worked. It was what he wanted, rounder and graceful, a shape with possibilities
.

From his bags he took the parts of a small, foot-powered grinding wheel and assembled it. A vial contained diamond dust, always carefully swept up and gathered after each cutting or polishing. He shook some into a cup and added olive oil to mix a thick paste that he smeared on a copper disc called a lap, the grinding wheel's cutting piece
.

He went to the door. “I want candles. All the candles you can find
.”

He placed them all about the room. Their combined flames scarcely gave the kind of light he needed for the final work, but they would enable him to do the bruting, the first shallow outlining of the larger facets
.

He set the wheel to spinning, then for the first time he held the stone to the whirling lap. In a few minutes, the pressure he applied had caused the diamond powder in the sludge to become imbedded in the soft copper of the disc, turning it into an efficient file
.

This was all there was to the secret Lodewyck had discovered and which the family now guarded: nothing cuts diamond but diamond
.

Throughout the night he hunched over the wheel, grinding
.

By morning he had marked out the major facets and at dawn he waited impatiently for the sun to rise so he could see well enough to begin the more delicate cutting. In the first light he began to work in painful tolerances on the larger facets and to cut smaller ones around the outer edges of the diamond so they formed a design Lodewyck had called briolette
.

The stone was a gray and metallic-looking lump
.

At noon a servant knocked at the door with food but Vidal sent him away. He worked steadily, able to visualize now what must be done
.

When the light failed, he stopped, having reached a point where perfect illumination would be crucial for the rest of the cutting. He sent for food, and for water with which to bathe, and then he fell across the bed still hungry and unwashed and slept in his clothes until the daylight in his eyes woke him
.

That morning someone tried the lock and hammered on the door
.

“
Go away
.”

“
It is I. I wish to see my diamond
.”

“
It is not ready
.”

“
Open the door at once
.”

“
I am sorry, my Lord. It is too soon
.”

“
You Jew, you filth, I shall break it down. You will be
…”

“
My Lord, that will not save the Pope's diamond. I must work undisturbed,” he said, aware that only success would allow him to leave this place alive
.

De Costa went away furiously
.

There were great dangers. The stone had to be ground with the grain, as a piece of wood is planed, to avoid injury both to the diamond and the grinding disc. He could wear diamond away but he couldn't put it back, therefore he had to guard constantly against excessive cutting. And he had to stop the wheel from time to time, to allow both diamond and lap to cool, for if the friction caused the stone to overheat, its surface would shiver into what Lodewyck called “icy flakes
.”

Nevertheless, it took shape
.

Gradually, the metallic grayness of the surface turned into yellow stone
.

And the yellow stone cleared
.

On the morning of the fourth day, he finished the last facet. From another vial he took the finest bone ash, and for the rest of the day he polished the diamond by hand
.

That evening he stood for a long time and looked at it. Then he said
Hagomel,
the prayer of thanksgiving. For the first time in his life he knew that Lodewyck had made the proper choices. Manasseh could not have done this
.

The grindings were gathered with a feather, down to the last mote. He disassembled the wheel, then he bathed and dressed for travel. When everything was in the saddlebags, he unlocked the door
.

De Costa had been drinking sullenly for two days. Suddenly he saw the Jew standing before him, holding the diamond
.

The Count took it. When he was able to focus on it he began to laugh for joy. “What do you want? A virgin? The most skillful whore in Spain
?”

Even drunk and in his excitement, there was careful avoidance of the payment of money
.

“
I am happy to have served. Now I shall go home, Lord
.”

“
First we must celebrate
.”

Servants carried in more bottles. De Costa set the diamond in front of the candles. He turned it this way and that
.

“
You have made me, you Jew
.”

He began talking feverishly. “I was not always noble. Even now, there are those who scoff at my blood, but I shall be twice noble, at least Knight of Malta. The Spanish Pope has made lay cardinals for less
.”

Vidal sat, at first glumly and then with growing apprehension. It would be easy for De Costa to order the death of someone to whom he had spoken too freely
.

The man was already close to insensibility. He filled De Costa's cup. “By your leave, my Lord. To your health and happiness
.”

It took a great deal of pouring. The Count could remain on the same level of drunkenness for an astonishing time. Another bottle was almost empty when finally he slid from his chair
.

Vidal got up and stood over him in disgust. “Swine,” he said
.

There were no guards. His hand went to the Toledo dagger
.

He told himself he was a fool. At last he was free to run. Was it worth risking his life
?

He looked at the diamond under the candles. In the velvet yellow of each of the facets he had made, a body seemed to burn
.

He took out the knife and bent over the recumbent man. The Count moved once. He moaned softly and lay still. Noble or not, his blood was on Vidal's hands
.

It was morning before a soldier discovered him. The man stood as if rooted to the floor. At first he thought an animal had been feeding on his commander. He cried out
.

Estabán de Costa stirred and licked his lips with a dry tongue
.

He remembered the diamond and looked in alarm to see whether it was gone, but it was near the burned-out candles. He reached for it, and pain such as he had never known seemed to split his body
.

When he looked down, his screams joined those of the guard. But his bloody member looked far worse than it was; he had been circumcised, not castrated
.

He found the note only later, when some of the shock had subsided, even if the pain had not
.

Here is another one for your saddle.

Julio Vidal

Vidal had ridden hard, all night and into the morning, choosing to go to Ferrol in the belief that any pursuit would be launched toward Bilbao and Gijón, the closer ports.

If there was no ship, he planned to turn back and hide in the mountains.

But there was a Weavers Guild barque with two masts, taking on Spanish wool to be made into Flemish cloth. He bought his passage and then waited aboard, watching the highway to the east until the anchor was hauled and they sailed straight out.

When they had lost the land he sank to the deck, afflicted by sudden weakness.

He stared up at a sail as round and taut as Anna's belly.

Which would be flat by now.

He lay against a stinking bale of greasy wool and watched the pregnant sails carry him toward the new child.

Part III
SEEKING

15

MEA SHE'ARIM

A woman answered the phone in Leslau's office and told him the professor wasn't in.

“I must talk with him. This is Harry Hopeman.”

“Harry who?”

“Hopeman.”

“Ah,
kayn
.” Obviously the name meant nothing to her.

“Can he be reached at another number?”

“He doesn't have a telephone at home.”

“He's working at home? Give me the address, please.”

There was a pause.

“I assure you, he'll consider it important.”