Читать книгу The Velvet Doublet - James Howell Street - Страница 4

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The little dog rose of Andalusia was fading and birds were winging from the reeds along the Guadalquivir River that autumn morning when my father and I walked from Triana across the bridge into Seville for my submission to the Friars Preachers of St. Dominic, the learned and grim order of the midnight office, of perpetual abstinence from meat, of poverty, and long fasts.

I gave all appearance of befitting passiveness and pious meditation, but, and may God forgive me, my mind was on worldly things: the ships in port, the smell of hemp and tar, an orange peel floating down the river, and the heat prickling under my doublet.

The streets were well-nigh deserted, for it was Faggot Day and two heretics were being burned in the first meadow beyond the city. The populace was there and that wisp of smoke to the south was the heraldry of old Quemadero, as the stake was called. I did not know the names of the doomed and, the truth pulls like the deep roots of a rotten tooth, I did not care.

Triana, squirming in squalor and stench, was my home but Seville was my city, and my heart rejoiced my pride as we walked her streets; my father tall and of long strides and I in the manly elegance of my velvet doublet. The court of the saintly Isabel and the rapacious Ferdinand was in Seville that season, she to pester her mind with details of the latest Inquisition while he studied the Moorish defenses over in Granada and schemed against his turbulent nobles for the autocratic centralization of his realm.

But royalty meant nothing to me that day. The city was my queen, her age reckoned in centuries and her strength in her rivers, the Guadalquivir that tides that far inland, fifty-four miles from Cadiz and the sea, and the tributaries that feed her and send her flooding almost every year.

My city was guarding her rivers in the days of the prophets and long before the Miracle of Jesus. Here came Phoenicians for pottery clay, then Greeks for cork, and Caesar with his legions. We gave the Emperors Hadrian and Trajan to Rome, and Rome gave us the Cross; and Seville unsheathed the sword that drove the Moors from Andalusia more than two hundred years ago.

The Alcazar brooded its memories that morning as my father and I walked near the wall that had enclosed it until Christian iron breached the rampart to the glory of Spain’s own St. James and the renown of Seville’s patron saints, Justa and Rufiana, who were potters like my father. The minaret of San Marcos needled into the sky and workmen mortised the cathedral to Santa Maria de la Sede. They had been working on it for eighty years and the nave was not yet complete. Already, however, it was the most beautiful cathedral in the world. Perhaps not as large as St. Peter’s, but unquestionably superior.

The monastery where the friars met in college was between the cathedral and the river and was under the priorate of Alphonso de Hojeda, who bravely had opposed Isabel’s Inquisition on the issue of whether Rome, whom he supported, or the Spanish Crown would name the Inquisitors. Isabel had won, as usual, and now Alphonso de Hojeda was daring have Benjamin Marino, an orthodox Jew, lecture to the college on geography and map making. There was talk that the prior himself was a converso, a Jew converted to the Cross.

My father turned down an alley where sewage drained into the cobblestones and tugged a bell rope at the side door of the monastery. There was no answer and my father yanked the rope impatiently, for nothing daunted my father.

The friar who opened the door, in his own good time, was as gaunt as a caravel’s mainmast with bonnets and course furled tight, and his breath reeked of his breakfast onions and wine. Over his greasy white habit was the black mantle that gave his order the name of Black Friars, and his right hand was full of dried beans that he tossed into his mouth, one at a time, and chewed with a revolving motion of his long jaw.

My father presented himself and said with firm pride, “This is my son Rodrigo about whom I spake to the prior, my esteemed friend Alphonso de Hojeda of holy works and envious intellect.”

The friar turned his face to me and I saw that his gray eyes were flecked with yellow and that the veins coursed blue under his poxed skin. For a long time he looked at me and I stood straight and resolute. Then he returned his melancholy gaze to my father and mumbled, “I am Juan Ruiz de Medina.”

My courage wavered for an instant and there was a quick nauseous surge in my stomach. Juan Ruiz de Medina! This specter was one of the Queen’s Inquisitors, as powerful in Seville as the inscrutable Torquemada and even more punctilious.

He gave us his back and led the way into the monastery, his bare feet trudging the worn stones of the cloister. My father patted my shoulder in reassurance and we followed him to a chamber that was bare except for a bench, a table, and a Crucifix. Friar Juan sat down and indicated that my father was to sit beside him. I remained standing and gulped my heart back into place, and folded my arms behind me, my nails biting into the sweaty palms of my hands.

“Who is your patron saint?” They were his first words and my astonishment seized my tongue and bound it, for his tone was as soft as the velvet of my doublet, as melodious as vesper bells.

“St. Christopher,” I stammered, and the words brought back my composure.

Friar Juan stroked his chin and the stubble rasped under his fingers. “What of this St. Christopher?”

“A martyr,” I said with alacrity and was proud of my knowledge. “He bore the Babe across a bridgeless river and is the patron of ferrymen.”

“Naturally you know your saint’s breviary.” He tossed a bean into his mouth, crunching the morsel as he looked up at the ceiling where the damp oozed from the stones.

I was filled with trepidation and my pride melted, but I found comfort that my father was near. “Not yet,” I confessed.

The friar’s tone changed into stringent austerity and his face was hard. “Then speak not his name for mortal ears until you have informed yourself. See to it!”

My father’s head came up quickly as though he would speak out, but he did not and the Dominican gave him no heed whatsoever. Instead he peered at me and demanded, “Your Latin?”

“It is no credit to my father’s efforts.” A rebellious urge was upon me and there was no humility in my demeanor. “Or to the prayerful endeavor of my Aunt Ronda Bermejo of Lepe.”

Father Juan grunted and spat out the hull of a bean, and he began speaking Latin with diction so simple and distinct that, to my happy relief, I understood every word. “How long is a league?”

“Four Italian nautical miles.” I answered in kind, stumbling through the sentence.

Again he grunted and I knew it not for disdain or pleasure, but my father was smiling and thereby nourished my confidence.

“Name the North Star.” Friar Juan glared at me like a hungry falcon.

“Polaris.” I did not hesitate.

“And the guards?”

“The Little Bear, Father. Kochab is the brightest.”

He stopped chewing and his lips were thin and were wrinkled at the corners. Then he closed his hand into a gnarled fist and asked, “How many beans have I in my hand?”

“I do not know, for I cannot see.”

His stare was as penetrating as the needle of conscience, as sharp as the briers of remorse. “Take off the doublet.”

My father forsook his silence at that moment and spoke out clearly. “The doublet is a gift from me.”

“Now it will be a gift to God.” Friar Juan Ruiz de Medina delivered his will, nodding his head in confirmation of his judgment. “It will be sold and the money will be given to the Crown for the wars against the infidels in Granada.”

Slowly my father got to his feet and addressed his protest to the Inquisitor without fear or trembling. “Are the orders of the gentle Dominic so harsh that a boy is forbidden a gift from his own father? May not a father express his pride in his only son by clothing him in raiment of merit?” He stood tall and valiant as behooves an Andalusian. “Am I a lesser breed than Abraham who loved Isaac?”

The friar arose also and was taller even than my father. “Vicente Bermejo! You have brought your son to us from breast and bed. Our knowledge we will share with him, Dei gratia, but we will not moderate our discipline one cedilla.” He looked down at me like a vulture from a lofty limb, his long neck stretched and his repellent eyes smoldering the fire of his zeal. “Vincit qui se vincit! Your doublet is vanity. Take it off!”

I looked to my father for guidance and he turned his face from me, and mortification and loneliness tugged my heart. I jerked the doublet over my head to hide the tears that betrayed my manliness, and when the anguish had seeped from my eyes into my soul I removed the doublet and handed it to my tormentor. My shoulders were naked and I shivered in the damp gloom of my prison.

Friar Juan hurled my proudest possession into a corner as though it were filth and gave himself to bitter eloquence. “Raiment of pride and arrogance! Scourge your soul, Christian seed, instead of pampering your flesh with soft garments. Seek not to exalt yourself above your fellows.” He rested his hands on the table and enjoined me to contrition. “Never again, Rodrigo of Triana, will you wear a velvet doublet until you have earned it by homage to God or charity to your brothers. This day your back will be bare. Now come with me.”

I embraced my father and yearned to dry his tears on the fulfillment of his hopes for me, and then I followed my mentor down a long passage to my chamber, a musty cubicle of one tiny window, a straw pile in a corner, and a bench.

The friar nudged the straw with his foot and examined it for lice and other vermin. It was clean and he nodded approval. “Hereafter you will see to your own straw,” he said. “And now your shoes, little brother.”

I took off my sandals and gave them to him. “Meditation is my first instruction.” His voice was gentle, even soothing. “You will close your door when I am gone, for never will I close a door to any man.” He looked at me as though he might speak further, and then a scowl passed his face and he turned and went away.

The door closed easily and I sat on the bench, and the chill damp of the floor seeped into my bare feet. I slipped to my knees in prayer, but the words were hollow and surely not pleasing to the Mistress of Heaven, whose intervention I implored, or to my own St. Christopher, whose advocacy I beseeched.

Soon my knees were raw and the blue cold pimpled my flesh, driving all moods of prayer from my mind. No one could see me, so I got to my feet and walked to the window, and looked at the sunlight. The smoke of old Quemadero had vanished and the triumph of the faggots was done. The river below was in bloom with ships. I know not how long I stood at the window, telling my misery in doleful count. There was no food and I was hungry; and no warmth and I was cold.

The day passed and my belly was gnawing when Friar Juan opened the door and found me at the window. I expected a rebuke, but he looked at me and then at the window and said, “There are men who meditate by watching the sky. Others the ground. Always lift up thine eyes, little brother.”

He had two books under his arm, and one he laid on the bench and the other he handed to me. Its thin parchment was bound in soft leather and the feel was like the velvet of my lost doublet. “My breviary,” he said. “I copied the words while a student in Rome. This jewel will open to you the truths of St. Christopher.”

I thanked him, forcing the amenities into utterance.

“That one, now——” He pointed to the book on the bench. “That one is a ladder of jewels by which man can reach the stars. It is the written wisdom of Isidore of Seville, who lived more than eight hundred years ago.” He stooped and stroked the treasure as a shepherd strokes the lamb whose seed will build a new flock. “Guard it well, Rodrigo.”

The mystery of things hoped for filled me to abundance and there was no fear in me; only awe. “Thank you, Father,” I said and knew that my patron saint was rejoicing in my humility.

Friar Juan felt under his habit and brought forth a leather jacket and put it around my shoulders. Then he strode to the window and gazed down at the river as though his fancy, like mine, could soar out of this place and into the world of temptation. He shook his head and rubbed his long fingers over his eyes. “The river is filled with ships today,” he said. “There is a caravel. The first in many weeks.”

I wondered if I had the prerogative of disagreement, and then took it. “It is a nao, if my assertion is pardonable. Not a caravel.”

“And what is the difference?” He barked at me like a mastiff that has found a new hole to explore.

His tone dismayed me, but I dared venture farther. “A nao is a ship, Father. A true ship. High fore and aft in the manner of the carracks of Venice.” I stood close to him by the window and shared his view. “A caravel is lighter and the bow broader.”

“So-o-o.” His bold forehead was creased by wrinkles. “Are all the sprouts of Triana so learned in these matters?”

“I spent every hour along the river that I could steal from my Aunt Ronda’s lessons.” The truth, I knew, was better than subterfuge.

The darting twinkle in his eyes softened them and some of the furrows left his brow. “Know you that ship?” He pointed toward the nao.

“Yes, Father. She is La Gallega. Built in Galicia and owned by Juan de la Cosa of Santona. A heavy ship to come up-river except at flood stage.”

“Her saint?”

“Santa Maria.” The talk of ships had alleviated some of my misery and had dissipated much of my loneliness. “The sailors who know her capricious ways have nicknamed her Marigalante.”

“Frivolous Mary.” The jest brought a quick smile to his lips, but just as quickly he erased it and his demeanor was as stern as before. “The tall mast in the center is the mainmast? Eh?”

“Yes, Father.” I glanced at him, suspicious that he was making sport with me by his doltish questions. However, his face was as bland as an infant’s. “That mast carries a topsail up above the crow’s-nest. Also the main course, the biggest sail, and two bonnet sails.”

He rubbed his chin again, a gesture that indicated contemplation. “And that slanting mast at the back?”

“The mizzen. You will perceive that it is over the quarter-deck—that high structure at the stern.” It came to me that I, a mere boy, was lecturing the learned Juan Ruiz de Medina and the role was eminently satisfactory. “The mizzen sail is lateen, that is, triangular, and is the helmsman’s sweetheart, for she handles easily and fast on a break to the wind.”

“H-m-m-m.” He seemed to be enjoying the discourse as much as I and was unashamed of his ignorance. “Now the mast up front.”

“Fore.” I presumed even to correct him. “That is the foremast and carries one course.”

“The pole that sticks out in front. What is that?”

“The bowsprit. It carries the spritsail and is the pilot’s sweetheart, for it keeps her nose clean and sharp in rough weather.”

He turned from the window and sat on the bench. “Thank you, Rodrigo. Now tonight I can tell my brothers that my student is alert as to things nautical.”

The accent of the possessive surprised me because it indicated that, instead of being put into the care of a lesser tutor, I was to study with him. The intimation rekindled dire premonitions within me, and left me distraught.

I pretended not to discern his monkish subtlety and gave my attention to the leather jacket he had fetched me, pulling it into fit around my shoulders and testing the wooden buttons. I sensed that he was observing me closely, and then he picked up the book of Isidore’s wisdom and opened it at random.

The gloom of my stall defeated even his sharp eyes, and he moved back to the window and held the book in the brilliant ray of Andalusian sun that pierced into the shadows around us.

Then he read.

The sonority of his words filled the room, and the prison could not contain them and they floated free on wings of Lydian measures. The light touched his face and reflected a serene radiance, as a burning taper brightens the face of the saint it glorifies. Was this the Queen’s Inquisitor? Was that the voice that had doomed men to the faggots’ feast, into the charred embrace of old Quemadero?

I was fascinated into languor and was drawn to him as the compass needle seeks the lodestone of Polaris.

He finished a page and closed his eyes, then closed the book and handed it to me. “It is heavy going, little brother. But the brightest pearl is the one hidden deepest. The best olives are on the highest branches.”

The sun was down behind the masts of Marigalante and the sailors were gathering on the foredeck for Salve Regina. Friar Juan breathed deeply of the sweet air at the window, and stepped, perhaps reluctantly, to the door that opened on the dank corridor. “Tonight you will choose your confessor,” he said.

“May I choose you?” It was an impulsive plunge, but in my youth I was given to impulsive behavior.

He looked at me with a poignancy that wrenched my heart, and his face was contorted by an emotional intensity that passed through him like a rigor. “No student ever before has chosen me as his confessor. A queen once. Even a cardinal. But never a youth. You will attend vespers in the chapel, Rodrigo of Triana, lover of ships. Now good night, little brother, and may the blessings of heaven attend you.”

“The grace of God upon you, Father Juan, that you may dispense His mercies.” I, too, was capable of subtlety, even in my menial years.

His bare feet sounded down the passage and for the first time in my life I was alone at eventide. My only companions were two books and a little window, beyond which swayed the ships. I gave myself to deep meditation, not on things sacred, and may God forgive me, but on my own discomforts, for I was very hungry. Then the vesper bell summoned us to chapel and I dashed out of my stall and along the corridor, my impetuous haste being most unbecoming to a penitent neophyte in the ancient College of Seville.

The other students trod decorously and ignored me as though I were a flyspeck and, in the chapel, the blemished face of Friar Juan was an agreeable solace, for, at least, I knew him. I felt his gaze in the murky shadows and seemingly surrendered myself to the hour, beating my breast in contrition while my gnawing belly mocked me.

After vespers we supped on bean soup and watered wine, and the prior himself, the illustrious Alphonso de Hojeda, allowed me a second bowl after a whispered word from Friar Juan. Our prior was a red-faced Colossus, given to corpulence and a rumbling mirth that was most un-Dominican.

There was an hour of twilight between supper and darkness and it belonged to us, and we gathered in the yard. Still the other students shunned me and I was lonely and yearned to join one of the groups. They were all older than I and bestowed only disdain and suspicion on me as I walked about the yard, my head high as befits an Andalusian. I heard one say to another, “He is the chick of Monster Juan Ruiz, a page for Lucifer himself.”

I parried their insolence with hauteur, and properly so, being a Sevillano, and strolled to the center of the court and took my ease on a stone bench. Their prattling tittle-tattle plainly was audible and they talked of Benjamin Marino, whose lecture they had heard that day.

One of the students, obviously a swine herder of magnificent ignorance and no breeding, expressed himself most coarsely. “That I should come all the way from Cartagena for instruction only to find myself at the feet of a gluttonous Jew.”

“Hammer on!” His comrades encouraged him. “The stake and faggots are the proper remedies for Judaizing. And this Marino boldly proclaims himself a Talmudist.”

Their intemperate words convicted them of gross benightment, for orthodox Jews were not sent to the stake in Queen Isabel’s Inquisition. The fire was for the purification of Christians, not for Jews and Moors. This circumstance is the origin of so many false ideas, even in my lifetime, that I must pause here and expound the realities, inasmuch as the Inquisition changed my hopeful course of life into a twisted and grotesque path. Therefore, mind the roots of this narration if you will pluck the fruit, if you care to know my story of Christopher Columbus, of the Unknown Sea, of the fate that transformed Rodrigo of Triana into Mudarra the bastard Moor.

Now we begin with this true premise: the Inquisition, as a judicial instrument, had existed in Spain for many years, flaring spasmodically into terrifying fervor. The Church assumed the right to judge her children on matters of faith, but the punishment for heresy was the duty of the State. Hence, the Church judged and the Crown punished. Of course, if the Crown was remiss there always was the retaliatory weapon of excommunication.

The Jewish segment of Spanish culture and wisdom, particularly in finances and the sciences, was the seasoning in the potpourri of the New Kingdom. As powerful as this segment was, however, restrictions had been placed upon the children of Moses for centuries, and occasionally the rabble of Spain followed Christian agitators into pogroms.

These restrictions included the ghetto and had locked the door to many trades and arts and sciences. Jews could not levy taxes on their own communities or settle their internal disputes in their own courts. They could not carry arms or be Dons or trim their hair and beards. They could not leave the country or travel without permit and were compelled to wear mantles of coarse cloth. A breach of these regulations brought one hundred lashes and heavy fines, one third of which went to the informer.

To circumvent these shackles, many Jews accepted the Cross, some in holy conversion, but others as a ruse for survival. The Semitic Christians were conversos, or, more often, marranos. This word has come into polite acceptance within the past few years, but when I was a boy it meant “swine.”

Now all the converses were suspect and thus to save their skins, and thereby prosper, the faithful converts were the best informers and often were the first to point trembling fingers at their brothers, and some wailed for the privilege of lighting the faggots. The most merciless Inquisitors of the Church were conversos.

The prey were those who accepted Jesus by day and then Judaized at night behind the heavy curtains of their homes. These were the ones who, hidden from prying eyes, covered their heads with the prayer cloth and intoned the Kol Nidre, the plea which begged God to forgive them for embracing Christian ways and to release them from the vows of their people. The forbidden prayer, in effect, said to the God of Abraham, “I did not mean it, Lord. I am still a Jew.”

Hence, the Judaizing converses were old Quemadero’s fodder, while the orthodox, or public Jews, were spared legal punishment as long as they subscribed to the restrictions. These Talmudists, alas! were quarries for the depraved rabble, which, in fetid ignorance, hated them to abhorrence. The common herd of Spain, starving in mind and belly, called them pigs and filth and stench pots because they cooked their food in oil.

The basis for this hatred lay in the fact that the Jews were different and stubbornly insisted upon remaining so. And they were clannishly aggressive and argumentative, eternally espousing strange causes. Also, they were the usurers, and debtors fear creditors. Then to make bad matters infinitely worse they were the publicans who collected taxes on a structure of fees and favors.

Spain’s educated classes befriended the Jews and even leaned on them, feeling for their purses and picking their brains of knowledge and ideas. Isabel herself often sought their counsel in matters of statecraft and finance until the grinding pressure of her reign trapped her between the nether stones of Church and State, and that came to be in this manner:

Isabel and her noxious consort were in struggle against the nobles; the Crown for the unification of Spain, and the nobility for division that they might retain their power. The loyalty of the people was indispensable if they were to follow her house and the house of Ferdinand’s Aragon into a war against Moorish Granada and, if necessary, against the nobles themselves. And the people, the ragged horde, demanded an Inquisition in the hopes that God would be pleased and thereby alleviate their misery.

Reluctantly, and under compulsion of the times, Isabel released an inquisitorial spark early in her reign, and it fell on the dry grass of the rabble’s woe and burst into flames. The people even threatened pogroms against the public Jews, and Isabel, possibly to divert their savagery, turned the full force of the Inquisition on the Judaizing conversos. She spread the honey and the flies feasted, and armies came to her standard to take the Cross into Granada and smite the Moors.

Old Quemadero and his handmaidens of faggots had been back in Spanish service for three years when I came to the College of Seville, and perhaps a hundred men and women had embraced his charnal mania and three hundred more were awaiting his summons.

Thus it was that night-coming when I sat in the monastery’s yard and listened to the students grumbling their contempt for Benjamin Marino, a public Jew who refused to compromise his heritage for rewards here; or hereafter.

The darkness, once it breached the sky, closed in fast, and I went back to my dungeon and surrendered myself to doleful laments, then to my straw, and tears.