and He deserved my thanks.
Rachel’s Jewish observance was neglected too. She wore a silver cross to reassure the curious and deflect suspicion. My mother had done the same, although I could remember her grimace of distaste each morning as she put it on before going to the market. Rachel had no such qualms. As we rode along, she chattered freely about the sisters in the convent, the daily round of worship, and her friends among the other girls, some there to become nuns in time and others to be schooled to piety and virtue before their marriages. Rachel showed no sign of applying any of it to herself, neither the Christian religion nor the piety and virtue.
As we traveled deeper into my native Andalusia, the air grew warmer. The season progressed almost before our eyes from the pale shoots and plowed earth of early spring to spring at its height, lush with a thousand shades of green. We passed orchards of apple, plum, and apricot, trees heavy with clouds of pink and white blossom, as well as the deep, brilliant rose of quince and starlike orange and lemon blossoms that lent the air as sweet a scent as that of Hispaniola. Kestrels and falcons circled above. The songs of thrushes and warblers rose all around us, above them the high, sweet tones of larks. It seemed to me that the very manure on the fields smelled sweet, as if the cows that supplied it grazed on flowers.
Now, even with another perilous voyage ahead, I remembered that Andalusia was home. My spirits rose higher every day until they almost matched Rachel’s. How could I, who had crossed the uncharted Ocean Sea on a frail cockleshell of a boat and reached the Indies, fail to believe that anything was possible?
And so we came to Cordoba. The city, once ruled by the Moors, now harbored a tribunal of the Inquisition. I would have preferred to skirt it for that reason. But I could not call attention to our private adherence to Judaism. To Esteban and Hernan, the men at arms, we passed as Christians. Furthermore, Rachel clamored to see the sights of Cordoba, which she had never visited. These included the magnificent cathedral, once a mosque, with its forest of columns topped with arches composed of broad stripes of red and golden-white stone.
Under the Caliphs, Cordoba had been a great center of learning, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived at peace. Our own Great Eagle, the philosopher Maimonides, had been born there, as had his fellow, the Arab Averroes. But the Reconquista had changed that. Cordoba’s Alcazar was named the Palace of Christian Kings, and the sights available to travelers included the abandoned Jewish quarter and a slave market. This last I passed with eyes averted, fearing to see Jewish slaves among the wretched Africans and Moors.
Having risen early and broken our fast with nothing more than water and some elderly lumps of bread, we decided to visit the great market in the arcades of the Plaza de la Corredera before seeking lodging. The plaza was thronged with people and animals. Produce spilled out of carts and baskets ranged beneath cloth awnings rigged to offer shade as the day grew hotter. Bawling calves, chickens squawking until cut off by the wringing of their necks, and vendors crying wares of indescribable variety made speech impossible. From the baking earth underfoot rose the smells of rotting vegetables, frying meat, fresh dung, jasmine and orange blossom, and the sour sweat and garlic breath of many human bodies crushed together.
I helped the men at arms rope all seven mules together, so we could lead them in a string. Hernan and Esteban strode beside the two pack mules, eyes alert and hands on the hilts of their sheathed swords. Not only would pickpockets and cutpurses abound in such a crowd, but gypsies or seeming beggars might seek to distract us while their fellows made off with our packs, if not the mules themselves.
“Don’t let go of Rosa’s bridle,” I admonished Rachel, for so she had named her mule. “If
Rachel’s Jewish observance was neglected too. She wore a silver cross to reassure the curious and deflect suspicion. My mother had done the same, although I could remember her grimace of distaste each morning as she put it on before going to the market. Rachel had no such qualms. As we rode along, she chattered freely about the sisters in the convent, the daily round of worship, and her friends among the other girls, some there to become nuns in time and others to be schooled to piety and virtue before their marriages. Rachel showed no sign of applying any of it to herself, neither the Christian religion nor the piety and virtue.
As we traveled deeper into my native Andalusia, the air grew warmer. The season progressed almost before our eyes from the pale shoots and plowed earth of early spring to spring at its height, lush with a thousand shades of green. We passed orchards of apple, plum, and apricot, trees heavy with clouds of pink and white blossom, as well as the deep, brilliant rose of quince and starlike orange and lemon blossoms that lent the air as sweet a scent as that of Hispaniola. Kestrels and falcons circled above. The songs of thrushes and warblers rose all around us, above them the high, sweet tones of larks. It seemed to me that the very manure on the fields smelled sweet, as if the cows that supplied it grazed on flowers.
Now, even with another perilous voyage ahead, I remembered that Andalusia was home. My spirits rose higher every day until they almost matched Rachel’s. How could I, who had crossed the uncharted Ocean Sea on a frail cockleshell of a boat and reached the Indies, fail to believe that anything was possible?
And so we came to Cordoba. The city, once ruled by the Moors, now harbored a tribunal of the Inquisition. I would have preferred to skirt it for that reason. But I could not call attention to our private adherence to Judaism. To Esteban and Hernan, the men at arms, we passed as Christians. Furthermore, Rachel clamored to see the sights of Cordoba, which she had never visited. These included the magnificent cathedral, once a mosque, with its forest of columns topped with arches composed of broad stripes of red and golden-white stone.
Under the Caliphs, Cordoba had been a great center of learning, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived at peace. Our own Great Eagle, the philosopher Maimonides, had been born there, as had his fellow, the Arab Averroes. But the Reconquista had changed that. Cordoba’s Alcazar was named the Palace of Christian Kings, and the sights available to travelers included the abandoned Jewish quarter and a slave market. This last I passed with eyes averted, fearing to see Jewish slaves among the wretched Africans and Moors.
Having risen early and broken our fast with nothing more than water and some elderly lumps of bread, we decided to visit the great market in the arcades of the Plaza de la Corredera before seeking lodging. The plaza was thronged with people and animals. Produce spilled out of carts and baskets ranged beneath cloth awnings rigged to offer shade as the day grew hotter. Bawling calves, chickens squawking until cut off by the wringing of their necks, and vendors crying wares of indescribable variety made speech impossible. From the baking earth underfoot rose the smells of rotting vegetables, frying meat, fresh dung, jasmine and orange blossom, and the sour sweat and garlic breath of many human bodies crushed together.
I helped the men at arms rope all seven mules together, so we could lead them in a string. Hernan and Esteban strode beside the two pack mules, eyes alert and hands on the hilts of their sheathed swords. Not only would pickpockets and cutpurses abound in such a crowd, but gypsies or seeming beggars might seek to distract us while their fellows made off with our packs, if not the mules themselves.
“Don’t let go of Rosa’s bridle,” I admonished Rachel, for so she had named her mule. “If
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