Read Online By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan - Free Book Online Page A

hearth fire, unvarnished wood floors, and piles of books on a pine table. Serero pulled a coarse, bark-colored curtain to close off the area where his wife and children were sleeping, and led Santángel to his worktable. “What brings so illustrious a visitor to our modest home?” he asked, low.
    “It’s your accounts,” replied the chancellor, mindful not to wake the children. “You owe the king seventeen maravedís . Look here.”
    He produced Serero’s accounting sheet and showed him his own. As he studied them, Serero placed his hand on the table, beside Santángel’s. The chancellor observed the scribe’s hand, ink-stained and raw, and his own beside it, gloved in the finest calfskin.
    Serero looked up. “Is that all?”
    He did not address Santángel by his title. This scribe clearly had a great deal to learn about the standards of hierarchy and proper behavior.
    “Is there anything else?” repeated Serero.
    “Why, yes. You mentioned the Zinillo family.”
    The scribe gestured for him to sit down and took the chair opposite. “What about them?”
    “What do you know about them?”
    “Of course, you’re curious. To be cut off from your history, your family, your roots. Not to know where you come from.” He shook his head.
    “If you please, Señor Serero.”
    “The Zinillos were cloth merchants, lawyers, and moneylenders. Most of them lived not here, but in Valencia. Surely you know that. A respectable enough family, until … until one of them, the most ambitious, some would say—but others would argue, the least courageous—decided that his world, the world of the judería, was too small.”
    “The least courageous?” echoed the chancellor. “Do you not mean, perhaps, the one who cared most about his wife, his children, grandchildren? The least selfish, perhaps? The one with the strength to elevate himself, to flee this … this …” He waved his hand at the pocked, stained old table, the shabby curtains, the disjointed floor planks.
    “If you already know all you need to know, Chancellor, why did you come here?”
    No one, certainly no commoner, dared speak to the chancellor with such effrontery. “Why, indeed?” Santángel crossed the room, stopped short of the door, and turned around. He had not found what he had been seeking. He would leave when he was ready to leave. “One more question.”
    “As many as you’d like.” Serero smiled.
    “Were they devout in their faith?”
    “When a man turns his back on his people, Señor de Santángel, there will always be those who wonder how sincere he ever was.”
    “Perhaps, but before his conversion?”
    Serero finally joined his guest at the threshold. “Before, I’m sure no one thought much about your grandfather’s—my great uncle’s—beliefs.”
    Santángel crossed his arms. He scrutinized the man’s face, looking for a resemblance and finding none. “You claim, then, Señor Serero, that you and I are cousins?”
    “I do not merely claim it. The synagogue in Valencia has records.”
    Santángel could hardly fathom Serero’s recklessness. “Now I understand why they sent you. What do you intend to do about those seventeen maravedís?”
    “I shall do what’s expected of me.”
    “I appreciate that, and so will the king. Good night.”
    “Good night, Chancellor.” Serero opened the door. A cold breeze blew in.

     
    Holding a candle, Abram Serero climbed the tiny, twisted staircase to his refuge, a work nook on the second floor. He sat at his desk. A collection of rare books, some dating from the time of his great-great-grandfather, clothed the plaster walls around him.
    He resumed copying the words of a Hebrew Bible letter by letter, using the special inks and instruments prescribed in ancient times. His writing tool was a quill. No Hebrew copyist used iron, copper, gold, or silver in this work for fear that someone might later melt such bits of metal into instruments of death.
    As Serero wrote each word, he pronounced it