by Shirl Henke
“And as are we,” Magdalena said with a sigh. “I am sorry, Aaron. Tis not the Colons fault, nor is it yours. Someone wants our settlement to fail. It's not difficult to think why. We live, marry and work with the Tainos. Our hatos prosper in this valley and we keep out all greedy Spaniards who would despoil the Tainos or enslave them.”
“We have made many enemies over the years. I have been thinking lately that our alliance with the Colon family may be part of the reason for this past year's sudden violence. Naught else explains why thirty years of scorn and vituperation now turn to thievery and sabotage, even murder.”
Magdalena considered his words. “You mean the men who recalled the viceroy have attacked us merely because we are his friends?”
He shrugged. “I know, it appears farfetched. Yet if twere merely Indian-hating Spaniards wanting to destroy us we would have been beset the day we planted our first crop. We've lived in peace and prospered for so long, mostly ignored in our isolated paradise...until now.”
Magdalena watched his expression grow pensive. “Do not trouble over it. We have joyous news to give the children tonight—and Guacanagari. You must send word to him that Navaro will be restored to us soon.”
“Benjamin says he is his mirror image, only darker. I cannot imagine it—a likeness so great they recognized each other instantly,” Aaron murmured.
She chuckled as she looked into his piercing blue eyes. “Consider how Benjamin favors you, Aaron—he is you eight and twenty years ago. In spite of swarthy skin and black hair, Navaro must be the same. Benjamin says he has the Torres eyes. Devil's blue eyes,” she whispered merrily, letting go of her misgivings as she wrapped her arms about Aaron and kissed him. “Luisa will not serve dinner for several hours yet...”
He swept her into his arms and carried her to the large velvet couch in the far corner of the room. “Only let me latch the door so we are not interrupted,” he said huskily as he lay her down.
* * * *
Marseilles, October 1524
Miriam sat before the mirror in her apartments staring disconsolately at her reflection. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles from sleepless nights. Every time she closed her eyes she was transported back to that dark, musty room where she had lost her virginity...and her soul. “I cannot stop thinking about him. He is the very devil incarnate. Never again will I scoff at the Christians and their demons,” she whispered in the empty room. She had dismissed her maid after the woman had dressed her hair.
“I never again need give thought to catching any man's fancy,” she said bitterly, eyeing her reflection one last time. Her honor gone, she would never wed. If Judah tried to force the match with DuBay... She shuddered at the thought of leaving her beloved father, yet rather than wed Richard, she would live on the small fees paid her by her patients.
“I could even start casting urine.” Such a useless diagnostic practice was done with great pomp and show by many learned physicians. But her professors at Padua disdained it as quackery and Miriam knew no matter how desperate she became, she would not dishonor her profession. Now that her honor as a woman was gone, that of a doctor was all she had left.
Placing a small vial filled with black hellebore in her satchel she strapped it closed. Today she would ride outside the city to visit a patient named Sophie Mirade.
The Mirade villa was on a stark hillside overlooking the sea. Wind-gnarled pines clung tenaciously to the edge of the cliffs. Below, the sea foamed against sharp rocks. The day was lovely, sunny and bright, casting the waters of the Golfe du Lion a sparkling shade of green. Normally she enjoyed this peaceful time to contemplate her day's activities, considering what herbs she might gather on an excursion in the countryside, soaking up the last warm sun of autumn. Not so today. She stared sightlessly at the beauty of the wind-whipped gulf as one of her grooms cautioned her not to ride too close to the edge of the steep trail. Never had the future loomed so bleakly before her.
Sophie was crotchety and whining as usual, sharp with her Jewish doctoress yet eager to have the attention from one of her rare visitors. Each week she grew weaker, her skin more translucent and dry, her bones more brittle. She watched Miriam steep black hellebore in boiling water.
“Art trying some new witchery on me? What is that stuff?” she asked, her voice cracking as she ran her gnarled fingers nervously over the velvet coverlet of her Roman divan.
Tis not a fountain of youth, Miriam wanted to snap. “You have gained too much weight, Madam, while I was unable to visit you during the siege.”
“Those barbarians of the emperor fair terrorized us. Thanks be to the Blessed Virgin they did not sack my home as they did those all around me,” she said with a pious sigh. “All I could do was stay indoors and eat what provisions we had at hand.”
“And drink far too much red wine,” Miriam remonstrated. ”I have told you it is bad for you.”
“I needed a tonic for my fright,” Sophie replied indignantly. “Now I suppose you will tell me to cease eating pork pastries and to drink nothing but well water.” She shuddered at the prospect.
“For now, drink this. Tis to cleanse the blood,” she replied. The old crone persisted in ignoring Miriam's admonitions. Observing the way her patient had deteriorated during the siege, Miriam concluded it was amazing Sophie Mirade was alive at four score years!
“This is hideous swill,” Sophie rasped as she swallowed the hellebore with a shuddering grimace. “Tis poison, I tell you.”
“I will instruct your maid how to steep it. You must drink a cup each day and eat the foods I have listed.”
Miriam left the old woman as soon as she was paid her fee, feeling exceedingly short of temper. Sophie's angry cries echoed through the villa as she walked outdoors.
“You Jewish witch! You will starve me, I say! Poison! You poison me because I am a good Christian!”
“A good Christian indeed!” Miriam muttered, recalling the tales about all the old noblewoman's lovers. Until a scant decade ago she had still paid young men to come to her bed. Miriam ignored the hostile glare from Harve, Sophie's steward, whom she suspected of tempting the venal old woman with wine and pastries to hasten her demise. Did he hope to inherit a portion from the childless widow?
Jean, the head stableman, sent one of the houseboys to fetch her grooms. “You have been most abrupt with Madam, Jewess,” he said nastily when they were alone. Once he had tried to put his hands on her. She had drawn a scalpel from her bag and nicked him sufficiently to deter his amorous advances.
Miriam ignored him as if he were an insect, but then Harve and a couple of kitchen wenches ran out the door. “You poisoned the mistress,” the fat one said.
Her thin companion sneered, “Jewish viper. That old hag is crazed to let you treat her.”
“Get you gone and do not return. We will fetch a Christian physician, a man who is truly skilled, to cure madam,” Harve said stiffly.
“If he can cure her of old age and obesity I should like to meet him,” Miriam said coolly, looking for her grooms with the horses. A crowd of servants was beginning to congregate, some from the adjacent fields and orchards, all glad of respite from their toils to bait the unnatural creature, a woman physician who was a Jewess in the bargain.
“Yer grooms ain't coming, yer ladyship,” one stableman said with a sly wink. He was a burly brute with blackened, rotting teeth. He exchanged a look with Jean that caused an icy chill to race down Miriam's spine.
She stood her ground and showed no fear. If I bolt or plead they will be on me like slavering hounds on a wounded deer. “It would be most stupid to harm my men.”
“We ain't hurt 'em too bad. Just tapped 'em in th' head.”
“My father is well respected by the council leaders of the city. Your punishment if you harm me would be ghastly,” she said, hoping against hope that sanity would prevail.
But Jean and Harve both had grudges of long standing against her. She had seen them talking last week when she had called on Sophie. Now she was
alone here, at their mercy. Fool, I was a fool to return!
Chapter Eight
Rigo had ridden for over an hour on the cliff road outside the city. The feel of sun and wind on his body was familiar and invigorating. At last he was healed, strong enough to leave for Italy. He slowed the big black stallion and patted his neck. “I shall buy you from Isaac Torres,” he murmured.
After riding half a dozen of the best horses in the Torres stables with an eye to purchasing one of them for his journey, he had selected the black. Of course his newly acquired family would doubtless raise a fuss, insisting as a Torres himself he should not pay. But Rigo still considered himself a Las Casas. He would always be alien to their faith and their Provencal manner of living. He was Spanish and he was a soldier. Time to return to the real world and shake off this indolent ease.
As he reined in the black, his eyes swept the starkly beautiful coastline, dotted here and there with country villas of the rich Marseillaise. Then he heard the growl of a mob. Wheeling the black around, Rigo searched for the source of the ugly, familiar sound, then followed it.
When he rounded a low rise on the road and looked inland, he could see a group of people, men and a few women in rough work clothes, surrounding one lone figure, yelling and brandishing fists and pitchforks. The words witch and harlot rang out, then Jewess! He spurred the black down the hill, recognizing the tall, slim figure with the bronze-brown hair. Miriam! What by all the saints was she doing here, alone, at the mercy of this farm rabble? He unsheathed his sword as he neared the crowd, counting about a dozen men and three women.
Miriam stood surrounded now, her heart thudding as she debated attempting to unlatch her instrument satchel and extract a scalpel. Before she could even complete her thought Jean seized the leather bag roughly from her and shoved her into Harve's arms.
“No, not again. The witchery and knives in here will do you no good this time, Jewess,” he sneered.
“Filthy murderer, heathen!” Two of the women hurled viler religious epithets at her than did the men, who were more concerned with her being a woman usurping a man's position.
She employed her elbow to good effect against Harve's ribs, feeling one crack as she leaped free of his grasp. When Jean seized a fistful of her hair and pulled, a yelp of pain escaped her lips. She twisted, kicking with her riding boot at her tormentor's shins as he closed on her, seizing her about the waist and squeezing the breath from her.
Miriam had only one arm free, but she used it to claw a red furrow down the side of Jean's ugly bearded face. He slapped her as several of the onlookers cautioned him about her witch's powers. Just then the sound of pounding hoofbeats caused the crowd to part. Men cursed and women screamed as the swarthy rider on the great black beast came charging directly into their midst.
“Tis Satan himself!” a kitchen maid screeched, falling in a dead faint.
When one of the stablemen raised his pitchfork, Rigo kicked it from his hand and then slashed at a knife-wielding peasant, leaving his arm flapping limply at his side as he screamed and sank to the ground. The mob quickly scattered as Rigo wheeled the big black around. His blade flashed in all directions as he kept his eyes partially on Miriam, who was still struggling with a filthy, hulking stableman.
“Let me free, you madman, else he will sever your head from your body,” she gasped. Jean tried to keep her as a shield between him and the advancing horseman. As soon as she saw his ploy to drag her inside the villa where Rigo would have to dismount to reach her, she reacted.
Jean suddenly felt the hellion in his arms go limp in a faint. The sudden dead weight threw him off balance. The moment he loosed his hold, Miriam twisted free and Rigo struck, running his blade cleanly through the big brawny chest and quickly withdrawing it.
He stretched out one hand to her, scooping her up onto the black. No one tried to stop them as they raced down the road and vanished over the hill toward the cliff road.
Rigo could feel her tremble even though the black was pounding the earth in a hard gallop. After a few moments he slowed the horse. “No one is giving chase. We are safe now,” he said quietly.
She shuddered convulsively, then realized she was clinging to him, her arms about his waist and her face buried against his chest. He was dressed, as often took his fancy, in black. Releasing her death grip on him, she reached up and brushed her tangled, unplaited hair from her face. “I owe you my deepest gratitude, Don Rodrigo,” she said formally.
He scowled down at her, noting her pale yet composed expression. “Does nothing rattle you for more than a trice? You were nearly killed by that rabble. What by the twenty-four balls of the twelve apostles were you doing alone in the countryside?”
“I was not alone. I rode out with two grooms—to treat the mistress of the household. She was a patient of mine.”
“Did you leech her to death? Why were her people set to rip you limb from limb?”
Her face hardened and unreasoning fury welled up inside her. “I was set upon for the unpardonable sin of being a Jew—and a woman who dared to practice medicine. Madam Mirade was hurling invectives at me when I quit her chamber. As to that wretch Jean,” she closed her eyes and again saw the reddening stain on his shirt front, “he tried to attack me over a year ago. I but nicked him then. You completed my surgery.”
“Women should not ride outside the city walls without proper escort. Two cowardly grooms cannot provide such,” he replied, dismissing the men he had killed.
“Do you not understand anything? I have been set upon in the streets of Marseilles as well—and lest you say women should not walk about unescorted, my father and even your uncle have been attacked by rock-throwing mobs. We are Jews, Spaniard! That is why we are hounded. I will not cower inside my house and let lickspittles such as those rule the streets.”
He could feel the anger, bottomless and bitter, radiating from deep inside her and he understood it. He had lived with it all his life. A mirthless laugh escaped his lips. “And I am now joined to your defiant cause by a bond of blood, as if my dark Indian face did not already brand me enough!”
“You dress to fit your image of yourself—head to toe in black, astride this great ebony beast. Small wonder those ignorant peasants thought you to be the devil. You enjoy the part. You like the killing, do you not, Don Rodrigo?” Her voice had lost its edge of anger now. She sensed the brooding pain he hid.
“I chose the only life open to one of my kind and I have done well at it,” he replied defensively.
“You need no longer live by the sword, yet you return to Italy instead of going with Benjamin.” She had heard Isaac and Judah talking but a few nights ago and worried that the brothers had quarreled over her.
“I have no wish to meet my sire, nor will I become a rich man's lapdog,” he said harshly.
“Your father offers you your birthright as eldest son, not the position of curiosity as were Columbus' Indians at the Spanish court,” she replied, amazed at his stubbornness.
“So says my brother. I feel otherwise. Let it lie, Miriam.”
They rode for several moments in silence, each lost in thought, lonely and bitter. As they neared the city and could see its cannon-blasted walls rise up in the distance, Rigo turned the black off the road and headed toward a copse of pines on a slight rise. When he crested the hill and rode into the shallow, grassy meadow below it, she could see a small stream running by a shepherd's hovel, long deserted from the look of it.
“You will not want to return to your home looking as if that stableman had attacked you,” he said, sliding from the horse and then lifting her down.
She stiffened as he swung her effortlessly to the ground directly in front of him. His hands on her reminded her all too readily of that fateful night when the course of her life had changed forever.
Rigo sensed her wariness and cursed the surge of predatorial hunger that fired his blood. He had never answered Patrice's notes after that night. Now he wished he had done so. “I will not ravish you, my
lady,” he said softly.
“I do not fear you, Don Rodrigo,” she said, knowing she lied and knowing he knew it as well. She turned on trembling legs and walked toward the stream to wash her face and straighten her hair as best she could.
He watched her retreat, her carriage straight and head held high. She wore another of her inelegant work dresses, this one high-necked and dark green. The soft cotton molded to her long legs as the wind whipped it and her glorious hair flew like a banner behind her. He wanted to bury his hands and face in it, to smell her fragrance, to touch the silk of her skin. Cursing his weakness, he followed her through the field of wildflowers and billowing grasses.
Miriam knelt by the stream and splashed her face with cold, clear water, then dried her hands and face on her skirts and began to unsnarl her hair, but the wind whipped it all the worse.
‘The hut will provide shelter from the wind,” he said. The voice of reasonableness.
The voice of madness. A warning bell sounded in her mind but she stood up and followed him, daring him silently to touch her. Once inside the hut, he turned and reached for her hair. 'Tis caught. Let me untangle it,” he said softly.
Miriam felt like a rabbit in a snare as his strong dark fingers deftly worked the knotted hair free. To lead her mind from where it strayed she asked, “Why were you riding this far from the city? And how came you to know of this hut and the stream?” Another trysting place for you and Patrice Farrier?
“I have been riding the Torres horses for the past week, deciding which to buy. As to this place,” he shrugged, “the other day I chanced upon it.”
“How soon will you depart for Italy?” she asked as he freed the last of her hair and combed his fingers through it, fanning it about her shoulders. “Please, Rigo, do not—”
“Again tis Rigo, not Don Rodrigo. Do you warm to me, Miriam?”