Work Text:
April 14, 1607
"Shm... Samuel!" she calls, moderating her voice when she realizes her near mistake. "We need to leave for Church now."
The house is clothed in beauty, decorated with goods from all over the Christian world, but it's the things it's missing that Malca Palache feels. There are two tapers, but they mark out positions on opposite sides of the room rather than sitting beside each other as they should. Each illuminates a Moroccan tapestry telling an Old Testament story.
On one wall, the Binding of Isaac. Her glib husband had justified it to the King's agent by telling how it prefigures the sacrifice of God's son. Samuel had laughed afterard. It made no difference to him whether he was drawing exegesis from Rashi or St. Augustine. Malca looks at that tapestry sometimes when she's alone in her home and stares at Abraham's arm raised above his head, knife in hand like a butcher more than a shepherd. She prays for the same salvation God offered Abraham, as one father to another.
On the other wall, the Splitting of the Red Sea. Her husband had explained it as a celebration of the Great Deliverance of the Lord, who gave his son to us to bring the final Deliverance. Today it was Easter and Samuel would be accepted into the communion of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Splitting of the Sea. The original rock and a hard place.
Señor Samuel Palache steps between the two tapestries into the middle of the room. He is middle aged and handsome, Malca thinks, as she glides forward to adjust the white ruff at his neck. His tight doublet shows off the hardness of his chest, the rugged sailor's body. His calm smile irritates her. He's such a good liar. Not that he can fool her, but the fakery of it all gets to her.
Attentive to her frustration, he strokes her arm. "Dodi," he whispers, "Ani ohev otach." Their private language, the language of Solomon the wise. The language of lovers. "Everything is going to be good." She wishes she could believe him. She wishes he could believe it. She pulls away from his embrace.
"It's time for us to leave for Church." He nods and takes the lead. They slip through the doorway and Malca locks the door behind her, jiggling it back and forth to test its security. It doesn't budge, but she doesn't feel any safer.
As they walk toward La Capilla del Obispo, Samuel a half-step ahead of Malca, she almost coos back at him, "V'ani ohevet ot'cha," but restrains herself. We are Spanish now, she repeats in her head, not Judíos. We are Spanish now. Malca is not the liar her husband is.
At the church's entrance, Malca hears the familiar, grating whine of "Hola, Señor Samuel, Señora Reina!" It's Doña Catalina de la Cerda, with her husband the Duke of Lerma trailing behind. The Duke's ruffle contains twice as many folds as her husband's. The ruffle sets his elongated face apart from the rest of his body, focusing the eye on the bushy brown mustache that sits below his narrow nose. The Duchess's dark, patterned dress, imported from the East, must cost a thousand pesos. It is unflattering on her saggy body. Malca is grateful her husband is with her to act as a buffer.
His smile brightens, the way it does when he goes chameleon. "Hola, Don Francisco," he says. He performs a subservient bow as he turns next to the Queen's lady in the waiting. "Buenas noches, Doña Catalina." Snakes, both of them, but Malca is able to offer appropriate greetings, though not as fluently as her husband. Somehow she doesn't think it's an accident that their arrival at the chapel matched the Palaches to the minute. She can believe the Lord created the World in seven days, but she can't believe that was a coincidence. She can allow no slip-ups tonight. Not with those four eyes watching.
They make their way off the moonlit street into the dim church together, finding pews near the front. Of course it's perfectly natural for the Duke to sit next to Shmuel and his wife to sit next to her. She wishes she could hold her husband's hand for support now, but they're out in public and she must stand on her own.
When the church is full and the time right, the Bishop and Grand Inquisitor Juan Batista de Acevedo lights the Paschal Candle, its flickering light spraying out to illuminate the faces of the worshippers. It has been explained to her that the light symbolizes the Light of Christ that brought salvation to the people of the covenant, but Malca remembers that the Passover was initiated with blood and darkness. In her mind the candle is the fire of havdalah she should be lighting now, and the lights of a dozen Sabbaths she should not have missed.
"Lumen Christi," the Bishop chants, and she joins the congregants in responding, "Deo Gratias," the Latin syllables sounding antiquated and false on her tongue. A priest lights a candle from the Bishop's and moves through the crowd, lighting each worshipper's candle and proceeding to the next. Soon the room is bathed in the sultry glow of candle light.
When all the candles are lit, the service continues. "In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram," the Bishop intones, and even though the language is wrong, Malca feels comforted by the discovery of common ground. This is safe territory for her to tread on. She relaxes her guard.
The liturgy continues, its stories echoing the tapestries on Malca's walls. For a time, she is enraptured in the word of the Lord, the world of her ancestors, though she struggles at points to convert the words from her limited Latin to the more familiar Hebrew version in her head. When the recitation reaches "Cantemus Domino gloriose enim magnificatus est equum et ascensorem deiecit in mare," she almost can't resist the unconscious impulse to sing along in Hebrew, so taken is she with this oration of the might of the Lord. Around her, the candles burn and the liturgy switches to the Book of Isaiah. Malca slips a quick peek at hers to make sure the wax isn't dripping on the floor, then returns her attention to the Bishop.
When she stood under the chupah with Shmuel, she'd known she wasn't just marrying the firstborn son of Rabbi Palache. Despite an unimpeachable pedigree, traced back through generations of brilliant Rabbis, Shmuel ben Yitzhak was no catch. He was regarded by the shadchanim as a project at best, a sad example of a talented youth gone to waste. To Malca, though, he wasn't a project but an adventure. As the tallit was placed over their heads, Malca looked ahead and saw years a hair short of being an agunah, years where the only thing sustaining her was the prayer that her husband would return. She saw years of living by the whims of the sword and the south wind. She did not enter into their marriage under false pretenses. And she had not been disappointed.
Now she's off on one of his adventures instead of waiting back on shore for him. She should be terrified, but the part of her brain that had been terrified just a few minutes earlier is now exhilarated. This moment, in the belly of the whale, in the den of the lion, in the lair of the demon Juan Batista de Acevedo, is part of why she married Shmuel Palache. It's partially the adrenaline, but it's also the rite she's participating in, which is glorious and electrifying in a way her old Kehillah back in Fez has never rivalled.
In a clear tenor the Bishop sings "Glória in excélsis Deo..." as the organ provides a steady and tuneful bass line. Malca closes her eyes and listens to the beautiful prayer and tries to pretend it isn't idolatrous. In a way, it isn't hard. The weeks of rhetoric have made their mark on her. It's a shallow mark, though. Throughout the soaring declaration of faith, a different song hums counterpoint. "Shema Yisroel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad." Nothing she's heard tonight can pierce that armor.
When it's time for the baptism, Malca and her husband join his brother José near the chapel's entrance, where the font is sited. The trio kneels in front of the font, as they had been coached, while the Bishop stands over them. She can feel the eyes of the congregation on her back, and the Duke's piercing gaze in particular.
The bishop crosses himself in front of Samuel, beginning the process of exorcism that will expel any demons inhabiting their bodies. When Malca learned that this was part of the service, she'd scoffed at the idea that a religion as young as Christianity could deal with demons who had been around since the beginning of time. Samuel had agreed, laughing heartily. "It took wise King Solomon a year to rid himself of the demon Ashmedai. This ignorant priest thinks he can do outsmart the demons with a hand gesture and a Latin formula?"
When this is completed, she watches from her knees as Samuel is escorted to the font. He removes his ruffle and readies himself to be baptized. The bishop places a hand at the back of Samuel's head and forces it down beneath the water, then lifts it up. One. Samuel gasps for air, then gets control of himself and nods to the Bishop, who performs the same ritual again. Two. When Samuel is ready again, he dips his head underneath the water again. Three. The procedure is complete. Samuel has been baptized. The bishop takes a vial of oil and anoints his forehead. Samuel turns around, grinning broadly, the water dripping down from his hair onto his bare shoulders.
The same procedure is repeated for José, who takes it all a lot more solemnly than his brother. Then it is time for Malca. She ties her hair behind her head with a blue ribbon and approaches the font. Out of respect for her modesty, the men in the chapel turn away as she partially removes her dress from her shoulders. Respect for her modesty will not protect her from the bishop grasping the back of her head, though. He will be the first man to touch her who isn't her father or husband or brother.
His fingers tap her hair and she starts, but she remembers Samuel's example and recovers her wits. With his hand guiding, her head dips beneath the water first once, then again, and then again a third time. She doesn't hesitate, just accepts the immersion and its accompanying sensation of initiation. Her baptism is complete.
She feels... clean. Renewed. Over in Morocco her 5 year old son, her sister-in-law, and her sister-in-law's three sons try to eke out a life in the middle of a disastrous civil war. Her parents are regularly tested on their loyalty to one of two men, two sons of the old Sultan who both hate Jews. Squads of Morisco soldiers roam the countryside, ostensibly fighting for one of the two claimants to the throne but really just looking for the next Jewish family they can rob to sate their lusty appetites. Spain is not better, really, but maybe if they give it a chance it will be. Maybe it's worth what they have to sacrifice, if she can get her little Yitzhak out of Tetouan and over to Madrid.
It's not quite welcoming Jesus into her heart, she knows. That's just the fantasy they sold to the King of Spain. Too many Saturday mornings listening to Rabbi Yitzhak Palache have shaped her heart's faith. But with time and patience, perhaps Isaac Palache will have the chance she never had, to be an insider living among his own people, without the threat of the sword constantly over his head. Maybe he'll have the chance to fulfill her life with the laughter his name promises. For that, throwing aside the God of her ancestors is a fair price.
When the vigil is finally over, the taste of the chametz host leaving a bitter knot in her throat, everybody swarms to congratulate the Palaches. One of the many hands extended to congratulate her slips a piece of paper into it. She palms it over to Samuel behind her back while accepting the fawning of some court painter's wife.
"Oh, it's wonderful that you're now one of us," she simpers, though Malca knows that conversos like her face an insurmountable social obstacle that can never be mentioned. She would never be one of them, no matter how hard she tried, which admittedly softened her resolve to try. The farce is scarcely worth her time. It takes them about forty minutes to shed the crowd and head back toward their home. It's near midnight and the gibbous moon is above them. Malca's heart is full and slowly waning. The night air, normally putrid with the odor of recently emptied chamber pots, also carries a whiff of kerosene.
When they reach their home, Malca locks the door behind her before she lets Samuel look at the note. He lights a candle and starts to laugh.
"What is it, honey?"
"The note's in Latin. Our informant's idea of a joke."
She smiles. "Perhaps he figured the priests wouldn't be able to read it."
"It says `Viros qui venerunt ad te et ingressi sunt domum tuam'. It's from the Book of Joshua." He translates it into Hebrew for her benefit, "`Hotzi'i ha'anashim haba'im alayich...'. The story of Rahab."
Malca sucks in her breath, her mind racing through all the preparations they'll need to leave Madrid. "We've been found out." His calloused hand brushes against her arm.
The unwary confidence never leaves Samuel's face. "Yes. It's time to get out of here." This is the part of the adventure they warned her about, the reason it was better to stay home and cook Shabbat meals and wait for her husband to come home. But he needed her for this and she had to be here for him. This was their chance at safety, away from the firepit of Tetouan, and safety for their son Yitzhak. And now Samuel's bravura is keeping her head in the right place. For the first time in recent memory, she finds herself buying his lines.
They can't pack much, but they didn't expect to be able to carry much when they had to flee. Their home is a mirage, made to look lived in without them actually leaving a footprint. Malca rolls the tapestries up carefully and throws them in her canvas sack. She also packs some of her dresses, but she's going to have to leave most of her clothing here. She lifts her grandmother's candlesticks, kissing each one, wraps them in a handkerchief, and adds them to her bag. It's funny how relieved she is that they are back together now.
Last, she carefully removes the false back from a drawer and pulls out the matzot she baked a few days ago. She places them in a cloth bag and puts the bag into her big sack. She doesn't fancy the prospect of having to bake more on her back.
In all, the packing doesn't take more than fifteen minutes and they are out the back window of their home and quietly running down a dusty alley. Jews are used to packing light. Samuel carries their bags so that Malca can run faster. He is barely slowed down.
When they've passed two houses, they can hear the noisy rumble of a crowd behind them, but all Shmuel has to do is call out "Lot's wife," and she can resist the urge to turn back. Amidst the din she can hear the word Inquisición quite clearly. She keeps running, her forty year old lungs working at full power.
Their path is bumpy, hilly, and crooked. Houses in Madrid are laid out wherever they're most convenient, with the navigability of their streets a negligible concern. She can't get into any running rhythm. If she subordinated any part of this to muscle memory she'd slam into a building or trip over a misplaced cobblestone before she could react. She is quite aware when her husband slows down ahead of her, anticipating their approach of a main avenue. She slows down with him. He turns around to quiet her, but it's unnecessary. She is still as Gibraltar while he creeps toward the avenue.
A pair of men are standing on the corner, carrying rapiers that gleam in the moonlight. The taller one holds a lantern in his off hand. Shmuel silently walks up behind him and stabs him in the back with a dagger. He topples with a cry of agony. The shorter man, whose handsome mustache Malca can make out clearly as the lantern falls to the ground, moves to intercept. A broad roundhouse punch greets him before he can raise his sword. He too collapses.
Shmuel looks over his handiwork and signals back to Malca. "Come! We're only a quarter mile from the Ambassador's house."
The consequences of tonight finally sinking in, she asks, "What about Yosef?" He can only shrug and start leading her again. She takes off after him. She imagines scenes in a phantasmagorical torture chamber, her brother-in-law blindfolded and gagged, suspended by his wrists from some dungeon ceiling. El strappado, as Shmuel once described it to her. Hooded men demanding that he confess, adding weights to his legs the longer he refuses to cooperate. Days without food or water, until he is so weak he welcomes el strappado as a chance to get off his feet.
It's another quarter of a mile, at full gallop, before they reach their destination. Malca wraps a kerchief around her head like she were a beggarwoman and climbs up to the front door of the manse, while Shmuel hides in the shadows. She pounds the door three times, in a steady cadence, not caring that it's past three in the morning. After a wait that is long enough for her to go through half of "Echad Mi Yodea" in her head, a servant opens the door, haphazardly clothed. He scowls with disdain.
"Hola, señor," she says, barely above a whisper. "I am Reina Palache, the wife of your master's friend Samuel Palache. I must speak to your master." The servant, sleepy but obviously used to surreptitious meetings, nods and turns away from her.
She is up to "Tisha ani yodea" by the time the French Ambassador to Spain is at the door, dressed in an elegant brown silk robe that is a little bit too long. His thin face is ornamented with a rakish black mustachio that nicely complements the eyebrows he is raising at the moment.
He half-bows toward her with a jerkiness that conveys clearly both his frustration with this late night awakening and his unrepressed eagerness to learn her purpose.
"Señor Embajador, my husband requests your aid. His enemies pursue him, rightly fearing the threat he poses to the Spanish crown. He needs the protection that your master the King of France can offer. My husband has knowledge that your government can use, updates to the naval records he's already supplied you, inside information about Spanish treaties, and maybe a few other... surprises." The speech is easy to deliver- it's almost identical to the one she told the Duke of Lerma two weeks ago.
Emery de Jaubert, count de Barrault, is as sharp as the Duke, and as decisive. By the time she's done speaking, he is nodding in agreement. "Bieno," he says, his first word to her sounding as foreign to her as her Fez-bred Spanish must sound to her neighbors... former neighbors. "Send for your husband."
She turns around and signals to him and is surprised to find two men illuminated by the candlelight emanating from the Ambassador's foyer. Beside her husband stands his brother. She wraps him in an expansive hug and the quartet moves inside to continue their discussions more privately.
They sit around a large square table in a small, windowless room. Across town in their home, Malca would have loved to have a windowless room, a place she could be herself without having to perform the role of Reina. But they couldn't afford that luxury. In order to appear above suspicion, they had to open their lives to their neighbors. Here, that very luxury is a curse. There's no way to tell what's going on outside the room, what enemies may be creeping up on them.
The Ambassador is clever, with bright eyes that seem to miss no detail. He speaks a few words, gives a command or asks a direct question, and then is silent as he listens to the answer. Her brother-in-law is the same way. Samu- it's now okay to call him Shmuel again, she realizes. They're not going to have to play Christians any longer. Shmuel takes the lead in answering the Ambassador's questions, filling his deliberate silences with an abundance of words. Malca keeps glancing over at Yosef, giggling in relief that he is still alive.
"Yes, yes," Shmuel says, "Of course I have maps. Not all of them are with me, you understand... I had to leave quickly, with the Inquisition on our tail, so I didn't get the opportunity to settle my affairs. Some of my papers have been hidden with associates across Madrid. If you'll let us stay here for a few weeks, I can have all of those materials delivered here to me." This is at least half-true. Some of the materials will have to be fabricated by his associates for delivery. The Sultan wants the French to have this information about Spain's defenses, but he doesn't want to disrupt the balance of power too far. And he wants some of the information to be only his. And in any case, the longer Shmuel can prolong his service to the French ambassador, the safer he'll be while he's figuring out how to get out of his godforsaken country and back to Tetouan.
"And the treaties your wife mentioned?"
He chuckles in self-deprecation. "Well, you must understand I'm not in the inner circle of King Philip, and I don't have too much insight you don't have. I don't want you to think I've oversold the information I deliver. I'm sure your own spies have told you plenty about the negotiations between King Philip and the Pasha?" He pauses, deadpan. "They haven't? Well, then, the paltry rumors I can share with you will have at least the virtue of novelty. Though who can say what their value is?" Another deadpan pause. "At least 200 pesos, yes?" Yosef and Malca laugh nervously.
The Ambassador studies Samuel for a moment, then eyes Yosef and then Malca with equal acuity. His lips purse, then open in a smile. "Gentlemen, Lady Reina, I think we have a deal. My King will be delighted to have this information. My servant Jorge will show you where you'll be sleeping. I'm sure you'd appreciate a bed." They nod in eager agreement. Shmuel laughs in relief.
Through their bedroom window, they can make out the blurry glow of the sun beginning to rise in the East. Shmuel quips, "Our Masters! The time has come for reciting the morning Shema!" He wraps his thick arms around Malca and they drift off to sleep in the heart of Madrid, city of their enemies.