By Fire, By Water

  “But what, if I may,” asked Felipe, “is the official position of the Jewish Church?”

  “There is no official position. On angels or any other matter.”

  “How can that be? It is a religion, no? Not just a collection of opinions.”

  “There’s the Pentateuch,” conceded Serero. “What you Christians call the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That is certainly official, if you want to use that term. But in many ways its meaning is not clear. So there’s the Talmud, a guide to help us interpret the Torah. But the Talmud itself is full of disagreement. Rabbis do their best to make sense of it all. But where you have three rabbis, you have five opinions. And sometimes, in those rare instances when the majority of rabbis do agree on something, it turns out they’re all wrong.”

  “I came here to get answers,” Felipe told Serero. “And all I’m getting are more questions.”

  “If you want answers, don’t look to Judaism. The entire edifice, beautiful and convoluted as it is, is built not of answers, but of questions. That, in any case, is my opinion. Others would disagree.” Serero smiled.

  Felipe insisted: “Is there anything at all you can tell me about angels?”

  “Of course. You have the angel that wrestles with Jacob. The two angels Lot invites into his home. The three angels who announce the birth of Isaac to Abraham. None have eyes on their wings. None even has wings. As far as we know, none sings in a choir.”

  “Then what makes them angels?”

  “They’re messengers from heaven. But they look like men. Like you. Like me.”

  “So angels look like people?”

  “Some of them. But there are other angels. The cherubim who guard Eden. The ‘messenger’ who appears to Moses in a burning bush. Ezekiel’s vision. These angels, if you want to call them that, don’t resemble us at all.”

  “If I wasn’t utterly confused before,” said Felipe, “I am now.”

  “What makes them angels isn’t their appearance. It isn’t any magical powers they may or may not possess. It’s the role they play in people’s lives.”

  Felipe leaned forward. “What, then, is their role? How do they perform their mission?”

  “Let me tell you one of these stories. The story of Jacob, a man whose memory we cherish. One of the fathers of our people. But until he wrestles with that angel, the Torah is quite clear, he’s not a good person. At his birth, he grabs his brother Esau’s heel, trying to pull himself into the world before him. Later, he tricks his father into giving him a blessing meant for his brother. He steals his brother’s birthright. Why do we revere such a man?”

  “Why, indeed?” asked Felipe.

  “We certainly don’t revere him for his moral failures,” said Serero. “We revere him for whatever good he did, despite his moral failures. The same applies to King David, and even to Moses.”

  “If you compare any of them to Jesus,” said Santángel, “it’s hard to see them as great leaders, let alone as founders of an ethical religion.”

  Serero turned to him. “Only if you believe Jesus was morally perfect. The Jewish view is, we’re all flawed. What matters is the struggle. That’s what the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel tells us. The struggle transforms Jacob. The angel gives him a new name, Israel, which means, ‘one who struggles with God.’”

  “That transformation, that struggle,” said Felipe. “I want to understand it.”

  “That is why we’re here, Señor de Almazón,” said the scribe. “That is why we’re all here.”

  The Ninth Meeting

  ABRAM SERERO MADE A REQUEST. “A friend of mine, a learned Jew, has cordial relations with Monsignor Pedro de Monterubio.”

  Felipe de Almazón frowned. “How is that possible?”

  “It hardly surprises me,” said Luis de Santángel, remembering the frail old churchman he had seen speaking with Pedro de Arbués on the day of his return from Rome. He asked Serero, “But why are you mentioning this?”

  “A priest in the monsignor’s office asked my friend for instruction. My friend has too many students.”

  “A priest?”

  “Not just any priest. The monsignor’s personal secretary. This man studied Hebrew in the seminary. And Jewish mysticism, which is not my specialty.”

  Felipe de Almazón shook his head. “We needn’t take more risks.”

  “This particular risk, I don’t think is so serious,” said the scribe.

  Both looked to Santángel for a decision. “To have a churchman in our midst,” the chancellor reflected. “Someone close to the monsignor, no less. It might bring a certain legitimacy to our group. To our pursuit. Pedro de Arbués would hesitate before pursuing the monsignor’s personal secretary. But we need more information.”

  Luis de Santángel spent two weeks discreetly inquiring after the priest’s background. Raimundo Díaz de Cáceres had studied at the University of Salamanca, a community of intellects famous for casting a wide net, encompassing the great thinkers of all faiths, in their pursuit of Truth. His teacher at Salamanca had been none other than Hernando de Talavera, a cleric renowned for his knowledge of Judaism and Islam. Many observers of the Church in Castile regarded Talavera as Tomás de Torquemada’s ideological adversary.

  Father Cáceres made his first appearance the week after Santángel consented. He wore not the habiliments of his calling, but a simple gray smock. His queries challenged; his manner bristled with perplexity. During those first meetings, he posed a number of questions about that most forbidden of topics, the Jewish understanding of Jesus Christ’s messianic mission.

  “Christ’s mission, Father Cáceres, is beyond our scope,” explained the scribe.

  “I understand,” conceded the priest in his reedy voice. “But what about the concept of the messiah in general? The divinity of the messiah. His purpose.”

  “Suppose Señor Serero were to explain his people’s position on this subject,” asked Felipe. “Suppose he were to defend that position to a Christian, and in a secret meeting, no less. It would amount to a capital crime.”

  “Forgive me,” said the priest. “I intend no disrespect.” He ran his hand over his bald pate.

  Serero nodded.

  Cáceres challenged him again. “What about His disciples? What does Judaism say about them? Were they liars?”

  “Please, Father,” Felipe protested.

  “I am not going to claim these subjects are never broached,” the scribe admitted. “But those texts—the most ancient of them, the most authoritative—don’t get circulated much.”

  “Why not?”

  “They could be seen as provocative. You know that, Father.”

  “All of them?” asked the priest.

  “Some of them,” said Serero.

  Cáceres pushed relentlessly. “What about the Jewish God? The God of justice and wrath. Why do some people find the Jewish God more to their liking than the Christian God, the God of mercy and love?”

  For once, Serero seemed flustered. “Father Cáceres, the Christian understanding of my faith is like a blind man’s description of a beautiful valley, from the edge of a cliff: all darkness and danger.”

  The priest took a deep breath.

  Luis de Santángel intervened. “Please. This discussion is over.”

  Even Santángel could not help wondering whether this priest was not, after all, one of Pedro de Arbués’s spies, attempting to collect damning evidence of heretical thought, of clandestine conversions. Why was Abram Serero deliberately ignoring this danger?

  After the meeting, Felipe lingered. “Chancellor, my wife and I would like to invite you and your son for dinner.”

  The invitation surprised Santángel. None of his subordinates had ever violated the social distance between them in this manner. But neither had Santángel discussed the nature of angels with them, or entertained the notion that Jesus Christ was not morally perfect.

  “Please thank your wife, Señor de Almazón. I shall be happy t
o accept your invitation.”

  “Friday evening, then. At sunset.”

  The chancellor nodded, placed a hand on his aide’s back, and ushered him outside.

  Felipe de Almazón and his family dwelled two streets from Santángel, in a stone house slightly less impressive than the chancellor’s. His wife, Catalina, with a pale complexion, umber hair, and hazel eyes, greeted Luis and Gabriel warmly—an elegant, vivacious woman clearly at ease entertaining men of wealth and distinction.

  “Chancellor. What an honor. In more ways than you know, you’ve been like a father to my husband.”

  Gabriel glanced at his father. Santángel answered him with his eyes, then turned back to his hostess. “It is my privilege, madam,” he told Catalina.

  “We’ve sent the servants away,” Catalina ushered them down a hallway, “so we can spend the evening alone together, just your family and ours.”

  The chancellor thought this peculiar. When they entered the next room, he understood.

  Before them stood a long table, clothed in white linen. Two brass candlesticks and a jug of wine rose from a jumble of silver plates and goblets. A loaf of bread sat beside the wine, braided in the unmistakable manner of the Jews.

  To celebrate the Jewish Sabbath openly, to engage in Jewish ritual in one’s home, with one’s family, was a far riskier and less ambiguous undertaking than merely to discuss the fine points of theology with friends in one’s private study. The chancellor’s instinct was to walk out at once, and perhaps find a way to distance himself from his aide, but to do so would serve no purpose. Felipe de Almazón knew too much.

  Once again an image from his past, liquid and turbid, seeped into Santángel’s mind. As a child, in his parents’ home, on rare but resonant occasions, he had seen this very room, this tablecloth, these candles, this bread, this wine, these pulled curtains.

  Despite his better judgment and muted irritation, he stayed. Felipe clapped his hands together. Two young children, a boy and a girl, both fair haired, dutifully took their places. Gabriel stood rigidly beside his father, pressing his eyes closed. Felipe uttered prayers, carefully enunciating each syllable of transliterated Hebrew from a battered leather book. He broke the bread and sipped the wine, then sent the children upstairs to eat and play. The three adults sat down to share an elaborate meal.

  “I appreciate your cordiality,” said Santángel. “But this,” he glanced at the candlesticks, the loaf, the goblet, “is perhaps overdoing it.”

  “How so?” asked Felipe.

  “In weighing any proposition, one must consider the risks.”

  “Chancellor,” his aide assured him. “I would never endanger you or your son.”

  “You may already have done so.”

  “Zaragoza is not Sevilla,” insisted Felipe. “The New Inquisition hasn’t made a single arrest in our kingdom.”

  “Why tempt them?”

  “That is not our intent.”

  “What is your intent, then?” It was all Santángel could do not to raise his voice.

  Felipe took the battered Hebrew prayer book from the table, leafed through a few pages, read something to himself, and placed it back on the table. He looked the chancellor in the eye and replied, “I should have thought you’d guessed.”

  Upstairs, Gabriel half-heartedly played hide-and-seek with Felipe’s children. Midway through their game, he found himself in Felipe’s woodworking studio. In the trembling brown light of his small candle, the faces of incomplete seraphim and cherubim scowled, leered, and glared. Certainly a frightening place, but like most frightening places, also magical.

  At the rear of the room, Gabriel discovered a closet with a key in its door, full of trinkets and books. He crept inside.

  He saw volumes in Latin, a silver cross dangling on a chain, rosaries made of gold and rubies. Tucked behind them, other books, with strange writing on their spines. Scattered on the shelves, brass stars, silver hands and eyes, candelabras. An oval wooden spice box, adorned with miniature carved lions. Gabriel gazed at these anomalous objects, disturbed and transfixed. The giggle of Felipe’s daughter broke the spell.

  “I’m going to find you! I know you’re here.”

  Breathing audibly, Gabriel reached out and took hold of a small, silver hamsa hand. An amulet, terrifying and beguiling, in the shape of a flat upturned palm, with a lapis eye in its center. He wondered, was this the work of the devil? Of an angel? He felt an icy coldness.

  “I can smell you,” said Felipe’s daughter, just outside. She giggled again.

  Gabriel could not remain in this place, holding this strange object. He knew he should put it back.

  He had heard of amulets that could make a man wealthy, a field fertile, or a knight courageous. He did not know whether this was such a talisman, but he was sure it had special powers. There were so many strange objects in this room. He doubted anyone would notice, or care, if this one disappeared. He slipped it into the pocket of his jerkin.

  “Here I am!” he announced, throwing open the door, wearing a smile to hide the turmoil in his heart.

  “I got you!” The dimpled, blue-eyed little girl grabbed his arm and pushed the door closed behind him. Its lock made a small clicking sound as it fell into place.

  As his father tucked him into bed that night, Gabriel asked, “What was that about, Papa? That … that gibberish before dinner, that book, those prayers. Was that … Are they …?”

  “Just a tradition in their family.” Santángel stroked his son’s hair. “Señor de Almazón may come from a distant land, with different customs.”

  “What if they’re heretics?”

  “Who spoke to you of heresy?”

  “Brother Pablo.” One of Gabriel’s tutors. “He said we’re all guards in the lookout tower of our faith.”

  “And what are we watching for?”

  “Secret prayers. Strange foods. Statues. Magical rings, necklaces, cups.” He frowned, remembering the hamsa hand he had pocketed, worried but also excited to possess such an object. “Were those people heretics, Father?”

  Luis let out a forced laugh. “Felipe? He’s as Catholic as any of us. Now go to sleep.” Santángel kissed his son on the forehead.

  Gabriel closed his eyes, shuddering inwardly. His father seemed not to take his concerns seriously. He found something troubling, frightening, dishonest in that dismissive chuckle. After Luis left his bedroom, Gabriel silently uttered a prayer. Having been raised as much by his seminarian tutors as by his father, having absorbed more of their conviction than of his father’s confusion, Gabriel prayed as he had never prayed before. He asked God whether contact with these unusual people and their frightful customs had tainted him or his father, and begged Him to cleanse their hearts if it had.

  The Tenth Meeting

  ABRAM SERERO BROUGHT the leather envelope that Cristóbal Colón had foisted upon Santángel. The chancellor was about to object, but Serero stopped him. “Please, Chancellor. There’s no cause for concern.” This confused Santángel, but he allowed Serero to continue.

  The scribe addressed Father Cáceres. “You wanted to see texts that discuss the Messiah. Some of these texts do just that. Others deal with travel to places like the Garden of Eden and the Holy Land.”

  Now the chancellor understood Colón’s interest in these documents. As Serero spread the leaves upon the table, Santángel leaned forward to steal another glimpse at the ancient, precious writings.

  Serero described each document. The first was a commentary on Abraham’s passage from the city of Ur to the Holy Land. “But it wasn’t only a journey through those lands. This is the point.” Serero’s finger came to rest on one of the Hebrew phrases: “It was a journey of Abraham’s soul, from a state of unholiness toward a state of holiness.”

  Cáceres, who had studied Hebrew, leaned over the text, his bald head reflecting the candle flame.

  Serero showed them another. “This one … This concerns the journey of the Jews back to the Holy Land, after the coming
of the Messiah.” And another: “This describes some of the conditions surrounding his coming.”

  “What are those conditions?” asked Cáceres.

  “Let me ask you something, Father,” returned Serero. “Why do we have rainbows?”

  “To remind us of the Flood. Of God’s agreement with Noah. That He’ll never again destroy most of the life on earth.”

  “Well, according to this text, when the Messiah comes, the rainbow will be fresh again, as fresh as a woman just married, entering the bridal chamber.” Serero smiled mischievously. “Of course, Father, that’s something you may not have had the good fortune to experience firsthand.”

  The priest, usually so somber, responded to the jab with a chuckle.

  “And on that day,” Serero concluded, “God’s promise to man will be renewed.”

  Cáceres examined the text, stopping at one of the words. “What is this? Is this not Roma?”

  Serero looked where he was pointing. “So it is.”

  “And the city of Rome will crumble,” Cáceres translated. Clearly, if his reading was correct, these words amounted to a warning, an evil slur against the Holy Church.

  “That is what it is saying, Father,” admitted Serero, following his index.

  “Rome will grow dissolute.” The priest’s voice dipped as he continued. “And will collapse.”

  “It is happening,” observed Santángel, “in our day.”

  “How so?” asked Cáceres, raising his eyes from the text.

  “Graft, harlotry, illegal commerce. The usual signs of decay.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I spent a month there. I saw enough.”

  Cáceres read on: “There will be a war against the people of Israel. But in the end, they will be delivered.”

  “Where will this Messiah come from?” asked Felipe.

  “Some say his soul resides in the Garden of Eden,” said Serero.

  “Where is that?” asked Santángel, again thinking of his conversation with Colón.