CHAPTER 3
Abel Zakuto’s Workshop
Abel quietly let himself through his gate, and crossed the court to the workshop. A little breathless from the last few stairs, he sat down and reviewed this morning’s work.
It had been just another fruitless search for some clue to the Girl. He could think of nothing more to do, and he had to own himself completely baffled. Presently Ruth would come in to inquire if he had any news. He could hear her moving about in the further end of the house. Whatever she was doing, he knew she was near the Girl, for from the first she had watched over her with a fierce tenderness that amazed, while it touched, Abel. Later, perhaps, Ferdinand would drop in, with some light on the mystery.
Meanwhile—the whole of a golden afternoon with his tools and his instruments, and the blossoming court lovingly watching him through the open door!
He looked about the room like a boy who has successfully manoeuvred an afternoon for play—triumphant, but a little guilty; for, after his morning’s search, he had deliberately come home instead of going to business. A feeling of happy seclusion and security stole over him. It was like a fortress, this room of his, high above streets and noise, and the wide outlook from its windows gave him a sense of command. Beneath him lay Lisbon’s hills, and, in the blue bowl of a harbour that the widening Tagus had made at their feet, he could even distinguish the flags of the crowded shipping. He could, too, look directly down on Manoel’s palace; on the massive wings and the huge colonnaded quadrangle open on the south to the river front.
He never gazed through his windows without recalling his friends’ comments and Ruth’s protests at his choice of large panes of clear glass in face of the fashion for mullions. He had let them talk. But he had gone on fitting those panes into casements that ran the width of the workshop—for one of Abel Zakuto’s necessities was a view.
They’d laughed a little, too, when he’d made such a huge lamp to hang over the table. But when he’d got it done—a sturdy column of wrought iron and glass—they’d all admitted that it made studying the maps at night as easy as by day. “A regular lighthouse” someone had laughingly dubbed it—and the name had stuck.
But he must get to work; before he knew it, midday would be afternoon. There was so much to do…the astrolabe…the compass box. He opened a cupboard, and stood looking at two plates of copper within. Gently he took one up—almost as if it were alive—turned it in his hands. No, not that today; too much else to be done. Besides, before he could cut the copper into the proper discs, he must first put on paper the design that he had pretty well in mind. Already he could see in its completeness the new instrument that he had in mind: a metal astrolabe like those the Arabs had used for centuries, but as yet unknown to western navigation. This was Abel’s newest and most precious secret, and that was why his fingers trembled a little, as he put the plate back into the cupboard.
He’d better go on with the compass box, he decided, since it was begun; but the piece of mahogany on which he’d started was so hard that first he must sharpen his saw.
As he began filing, he had a mental picture of Ruth—Ruth as she would presently stand, in the doorway, fix him with her bright, black eyes, and say—he knew well enough what she would say: “The time you waste in this workshop of yours, Abel!… Think of the money you could be making!”
Ruth had a heart of gold, he reflected, but when it came to imagination, one had to be patient with her. Besides, to do her justice, she wasn’t alone in her opinion; for he knew it was said, here in Lisbon, that Abel Zakuto’s astuteness could have made him rich even in this city whose Jews were known over Europe for their sagacity.
“Rich!” Abel snorted contemptuously. “Money!” What money could buy the wealth of this room? Poor enough it might look to some with its bare table and plain chairs. But think of the men who’d sat around that table!…
Diego Cam, with his first glowing tales of how he’d seen the Congo’s vast flood rush far into the sea, of how he’d set up at its mouth the stone pillar of Portugal; Christopher Columbus and John Cabot, who’d come here, sad and disheartened by King John’s indifference, but who’d gone away fired with the courage that they’d found here in the workshop; and Pero d’Alemquer, chief pilot of the Diaz expedition to the Cape; and Martin Behaim, the German. Conceited Martin was, Abel reflected, but such charts as he had made, with such German thoroughness! Would these men have gathered in his workshop, if he’d been only a money maker? Would Bartholomew Diaz come here night after night, if he, Abel Zakuto, had been merely a rich man?
He laid down the sharpened saw, and stood up to reach a partly worked piece of mahogany. He lingered to survey a row of shelves on which were ranged delicate tools and packets of metal and blocks of fine-grained wood. There was one shelf that ran entirely to compasses. Mentally Abel contrasted them with the unwieldy “Genoese Needle”6—and gave a sigh of content.… Not but what he could improve on his present workmanship—and would! “Getting money,” he mused, “when one could be making instruments to help find new worlds!”
His eyes roved to a niche in the wall, and lovingly dwelt there—his precious, even if tiny, library! What wealth would tempt from him those parchment treatises on astronomy and geometry, or that volume of Marco Polo’s Travels transcribed from the very copy once owned by the Great Navigator,7 and bound by Abel’s own hands in boards half-covered with sheepskin.
He sat down at his carpenter’s bench and made fast the mahogany block. This was to be a compass larger than those on the shelf, and in his mind it had already been dedicated to a certain enterprise—another of his secrets. By and by, he ran on to himself, when he had finished it and the astrolabe, then, then—he was going to make maps.… Maps!
He sawed on, till the severed block fell to the floor. Then he laid down his work, slid open the table drawer and began to lean over his copies of maps, inscribed with such signatures as Giovanni Leardo, Fra Mauro, Cadamosto. One of these days, he promised himself, he, too, would make maps—not, as these other chaps made them, as they fancied or hoped the earth was—but as it really was; but for that, of course, he would have to wait till Diaz put the final link in the sea route to India, and could give him facts.
He closed the drawer and went on with his sawing. Then—as he had foreseen—Ruth stood in the doorway.
“Abel—”
When Ruth began that way, and then paused, it was a sign that her mind must be unloaded.
“Yes, Ruth?”
She came into the workshop, and sat down, without so much as a glance at the litter of sawdust to which she usually objected. “Abel—I’m worried about that child. Why doesn’t she talk?”
Abel took up a chisel and ran his thumb over its edge. Vaguely he was wondering at Ruth’s silence about the sawdust. He stole a look at her. Her face was anxious, softer than he remembered.
“Shouldn’t you think she’d talk,” she continued, “and tell us what frightened her?”
“No, I shouldn’t. Just think of the terror that was in her poor face; that still is. The child is simply beyond speech.”
“Beyond speech, Abel? You don’t mean—”
“Oh, nothing but what’ll right itself,” he hastily assured her. “By and by, when she feels at home with us—” He was absorbed, as he applied the chisel to an uneven edge.
Ruth watched him in silence. “I wonder,” he heard her say, as if she were talking to herself, “I wonder what her voice will sound like.” And not waiting for him to comment, she left the room.
What would the Girl’s voice sound like? Abel pondered. If Ruth hadn’t suggested it, he would never have thought of such a thing, but now he began to feel a growing curiosity to hear it. Perhaps if he approached her, spoke to her very gently… But so far she had persistently clung to Ruth, and had shrunk from him.
As he worked, his mind alternated between ways to persuade her to speak, and the mystery that so completely wrapped her. There was a last possibility that Ferdinand might have got ho
ld of some clue.
But when Ferdinand finally appeared, late that afternoon, Abel saw at a glance that he had been no more successful than himself.
“That girl must have got here on wings,” the boy declared, “for I was down at the docks first thing the morning after, and there wasn’t a sign of anything like a slave cargo. I made sure of that: I got the name of every craft that had tied up here, where she hailed from, what stops she’d made, and what she was carrying. After that I inquired at the inns to find out who’d come in to town in the last day or two.”
Abel nodded. “Just what I did.”
“I saw something odd while I was hunting a clue down on the quay,” Ferdinand continued. “Some merchant had just found a shortage in a consignment that a Venetian galleon had brought, and he was cursing Venice and Venetians for cheats and thieves, when, from behind him, up comes a young fellow with blood in his eye; says he’s a Venetian and wants to know what the man means.” Ferdinand stopped to laugh at the recollection. “In another minute I expected to see fists fly, when, all of a sudden, I noticed the young chap smile to himself, and pull out his wallet. ‘I’ll stand your loss, sir,’ says he, and then there was some more about his being a friend of the captain who was responsible for the cargo. Well, you should have seen the merchant back water: money was nothing to him—it was just the ‘principle’ of the thing!”
“Nevertheless, he took the money?” Abel drily insinuated.
“Oh, of course! And then he couldn’t do enough for the Venetian chap, told him where to find an inn, and so on.”
“That young man has brains,” Abel admiringly observed.
Ferdinand nodded. “At first glance you’d think him a bit of a dandy, from his pointed shoes and the gold button on his cap and the fur collar of his cloak, but when you saw the swell of his chest under his doublet, and the buttons of his hose all strained out at the calf… And he’s plucky, too. I met him afterward—in The Green Window, you know—and he told me he had left Venice because he believed Portugal was going to have it all her way with trade.”
“Oh, so?” Abel exclaimed, with fresh interest. “That’s the kind of citizens we need. Bring him here some time, Ferdinand. Did you get his name?”
“Nicolo Conti. Of course he’s anxious to meet Master Diaz.”
“Conti… Conti…” Abel mused aloud. “I wonder if he’s any connection of the Venetian traveller of that name.”
They returned to the search for the Girl, and Ferdinand admitted he was at a standstill.
“If she would only talk!” said Abel.
The boy laughed. “One of these days she will—being a woman!”
“But suppose she doesn’t know our language?”
Ruth came into the room in time to catch Abel’s last words. “If she wanted to tell us about herself, she’d find a way even if it was only by signs. My guess is that she’s hiding from someone who’s so crazed her with fear that she doesn’t dare tell anything to anyone.”
“There’s no doubt that she was trying to hide, and meant to disguise herself,” Ferdinand agreed. “I took her for a boy, myself, until I saw her long hair.”
Ruth nodded reminiscently. “Those eyes of hers are just the same as they were that first night—they stare and stare into space as if they were looking at ghosts. But the rest of her is different, I can tell you, in the new dress I’ve made her! You know, Ferdinand”—she became confidential—“I hunted the shops over till I found the right stuff, all shimmery and gauzy, like…like moonlight on a misty night…or like those lilies, out there at dusk.”
Abel shot an astonished glance at her. Was Ruth, the practical, turning poet? Was there, after all, a love of beauty, hidden deep within her, that had welled at last to this sweet outlet?
“Anyway,” Ruth pursued, “she’s as lovely a sight as you’ll ever see!”
Ferdinand’s face lighted with sudden mischief. “Let me see her, Aunt Ruth—I’ll get her to talk!” He sprang up and pretended to make a dash for the next room.
“You young jackanapes!” She caught his sleeve and pulled him back. “You’d frighten her so, she’d never open her lips!”
“Then I’ll be going.” He pretended to sulk, while he winked at Abel behind Ruth’s back.
“She’ll talk,” Abel comfortably observed, “when she feels at home with us—feels that she’s safe.” But to himself he wondered what would have happened if they had taken the lad at his word and had let him see the Girl!
Ferdinand lingered in the door for a last word. “Your cousin, Master Abraham Zakuto, said he and Gama would be up here tonight.”
“Good!” Abel was genuinely pleased. “I haven’t seen Abraham in some time. How is he?”
“Oh, Manoel and he are thick as thieves—Manoel’s always consulting him.”
“I’m glad Gama’s coming—if for nothing more than to lend Abraham an arm up the stairs. On any account, though, I’m glad—I think a great deal of Vasco.”
“I’d like him more,” Ferdinand rejoined, “if he were keener on exploration—seeing as his father was to have commanded an expedition to India, if he hadn’t died. Another thing: Gama’s as stubborn as a mule—never gives you an inch in an argument.”
Abel laughed indulgently. “Why should he, if the argument’s worth anything? No—I like him for standing his ground.”
“Well—have it your way,” the boy retorted. “But when I’m his age,” he shot back from the gate, “you won’t see me content to dawdle around Manoel. Not while there’s seas to sail and lands to be found!”
From the door of the workshop Abel’s eyes affectionately followed him. “What should we do, Ruth, without that lad running in and out all the time?”
She came and stood beside him. “The saucy rascal!” she laughed. “Talking about the King and his court with no more respect than if they were common human beings!”
Abel chuckled. “Perhaps you’d do no better if you lived with Manoel day in and day out as Ferdinand does!”
She gave him a searching look: “I sometimes think, Abel, you haven’t much of an opinion of Manoel.”
“He seems to be treating Abraham as well as we could wish,” he replied, evasively.
“You hit it just right,” she declared, “when you thought of getting Abraham in as court astronomer.”
“I doubt if I could have manoeuvred it without the help of Manoel’s physician. It’s lucky he and I are old friends, for Manoel will do anything he advises.”
“Poor old Abraham!” Ruth sighed. “Thank God he’s sure of peace and safety here as long as he lives.” A look of suffering crossed her face, and Abel knew she was thinking of those days of horror when they had seen thousands of Jews, driven from Spain and fleeing into Lisbon, starved, crazed creatures ravaged by disease. It had been months before Ruth could nurse Abraham back to even a semblance of himself.
“There’s something unforgivable in persecuting an intellect like Abraham’s, let alone his body,” Abel sombrely mused.
“I can’t bear to think of what our people have gone through,” Ruth burst out. “It was wicked—wicked! Oh, Abel—” she turned troubled eyes to him—” what if King Manoel should drive us out of Portugal?”
“He won’t, my dear, he won’t.”
She murmured something about supper, and left the room. Slowly Abel’s eyes roved between workshop and court. Suppose that which had happened to his people in Spain should suddenly happen here, and he should be torn from this house, where he had brought Ruth a bride; from this court that together they had planted and set out.
He felt his heart contract; then, what a fool he was to borrow trouble, he sharply told himself, for hadn’t Manoel always been friendly with his Jewish subjects? Hadn’t he sought their advice and openly laid the country’s commercial prosperity to the Jewish financiers? No, Manoel wasn’t the man wantonly to drain his kingdom of the very sources of that prosperity. Spain had done exactly that, when she had driven out her Jews and Moors; but then, Ferdinand
and Isabella were religion-mad, and Manoel wasn’t, at least, that.
Rage surged through Abel at the thought of the paupered exiles, which Spain had made of her most useful subjects. Paupered, they who had made Spain rich! Homeless, who had made it famous for its learning and its scholars! It was hard to think calmly of them as wanderers, as cold and hungry, these people who had been so open-handed to encourage their country’s progress. No one had had to urge them, he recalled, to give—and generously—to Columbus’ first expedition. His face hardened as he remembered how the second expedition—after their expulsion—had been financed: from confiscated Jewish estates!
He became aware of a growing coolness in the air. The sun had set, and dusk was falling, while he had let his thoughts run away with him! He turned from the doorway, and began to put away his work. Shavings and sawdust were no matter, but a tool out of place—never!
It was dark enough now to light the great lamp, but Abel decided to wait till after supper. He liked to sit, quietly, by himself, in the half light, his chair tilted against the wall.
He found himself thinking of that strange night that the Girl had come. He was gazing out into the court, as he was now, he recalled, when, like a phantom, she had flashed on the square of darkness framed in the doorway.
It had always pleased his fancy that it was the workshop where she had first appeared—where the talk was always of the undiscovered and of the unknown. In a curious, mystical sense she seemed to fit the spirit of this room. She, who was as baffling as anything that had ever been discussed around the big table and over the maps! If only, Abel whimsically mused, some chart might be found to reveal her mystery! By heaven—as that idea suggested another—that might work!
His tilted chair came down on all fours. He would send a message to Ferdinand by Abraham or Gama.
Yes, that might work!
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