been planned so sensibly it invites good results. I have long coveted them.'
Helkias was silent.
When Benito named his offer, the silversmith stopped walking.
'I know it is very low, but ...'
It would have been a very low offer in ordinary times, but the times were not ordinary. Helkias knew it was all Benito could afford, and it was far more than the rapacious offers made by speculators.
He went to the other man and kissed his shaven Christian cheek and embraced him for a long time.
Yonah noticed that the dullness was gone from his father's eyes. Helkias sat with Aron and contemplated how they could save their family. The emergency was immediate, and Helkias was responding by rising to meet it with all his energy and attention.
'Ordinarily, the trip to Valencia would take ten days. Now, with the roads thick with people seeking early arrival, the same trip will take them twenty days, requiring twice as much food and doubling the dangers of travel. So we must leave Toledo as late as possible, when once again there will be fewer travelers.'
On their farm Aron kept two pack burros and a pair of fine horses that he and his wife, Juana, would ride. Benito Martín had acted for Helkias, purchasing two additional horses and a pair of burros for far less than a Jew would have been charged, and Helkias was paying his neighbor Marcelo Troca exorbitantly to keep the four animals in his nearby field.
Helkias told his brother they must find a way to get more capital. 'When we reach the port, sea captains will not be charitable to us. It will take a great deal of money to pay for our passage. And when we reach a land of haven, we must have money to sustain us until we can again work for our daily bread.'
The only possible source of money was the unpaid debts of Helkias's clients, and Yonah sat with his father and made a careful list of those customers and the amounts each owed.
The largest debt was sixty-nine reales and sixteen maravedíes owed by Count Fernán Vasca of Tembleque. 'He is an arrogant noble, summoning me as though he were king, describing each thing he wished me to make, yet slow to pay me even a single sueldo of his debt. If I can collect this debt we shall have more than enough.'
Yonah rode with his father on a bright July day to Tembleque, a village outside Toledo. He was unaccustomed to riding a horse, but their mounts were tractable, and he sat in the battered saddle as proudly as any knight. The countryside was beautiful, and though Helkias was weighed down with heavy thoughts, still he was able to burst into song as they rode. He sang a song of peace.
'Oh, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard shall lie with the kid,
And the cow and the bear shall feed,
While the lion eats straw like the ox ...'
Yonah loved to listen to the deep voice singing the sonorous lines. This is how it will be when we ride to Valencia, he thought with pleasure.
Presently as they rode Helkias told his son that when he had first been summoned to Tembleque by Count Vasca, he had confided in his friend, Rabbi Ortega. 'The rabbi said to me, "Let me tell you about this nobleman."'
Rabbi Ortega had a nephew, a young scholar named Asher ben Yair, learned in several languages as well as in Torah. 'It is hard for a scholar to earn a living,' Helkias said, 'and one day Asher heard that a nobleman in Tembleque was seeking to employ a clerk, and he rode out to Tembleque and offered his services.'
The count of Tembleque was proud of his martial skills, Yonah's father told him. He had fought against the Moors and had traveled far and wide to participate in jousting tourneys, many of which he had won. But he was always alert for novelty, and in the spring of 1486 he had heard of a different kind of contest, a literary tourney in which the contestants fought with poems instead of lances and swords.
The contest was the Jocs Florals -- the Flower Games. They had begun in France late in the fourteenth century, when some young
Helkias was silent.
When Benito named his offer, the silversmith stopped walking.
'I know it is very low, but ...'
It would have been a very low offer in ordinary times, but the times were not ordinary. Helkias knew it was all Benito could afford, and it was far more than the rapacious offers made by speculators.
He went to the other man and kissed his shaven Christian cheek and embraced him for a long time.
Yonah noticed that the dullness was gone from his father's eyes. Helkias sat with Aron and contemplated how they could save their family. The emergency was immediate, and Helkias was responding by rising to meet it with all his energy and attention.
'Ordinarily, the trip to Valencia would take ten days. Now, with the roads thick with people seeking early arrival, the same trip will take them twenty days, requiring twice as much food and doubling the dangers of travel. So we must leave Toledo as late as possible, when once again there will be fewer travelers.'
On their farm Aron kept two pack burros and a pair of fine horses that he and his wife, Juana, would ride. Benito Martín had acted for Helkias, purchasing two additional horses and a pair of burros for far less than a Jew would have been charged, and Helkias was paying his neighbor Marcelo Troca exorbitantly to keep the four animals in his nearby field.
Helkias told his brother they must find a way to get more capital. 'When we reach the port, sea captains will not be charitable to us. It will take a great deal of money to pay for our passage. And when we reach a land of haven, we must have money to sustain us until we can again work for our daily bread.'
The only possible source of money was the unpaid debts of Helkias's clients, and Yonah sat with his father and made a careful list of those customers and the amounts each owed.
The largest debt was sixty-nine reales and sixteen maravedíes owed by Count Fernán Vasca of Tembleque. 'He is an arrogant noble, summoning me as though he were king, describing each thing he wished me to make, yet slow to pay me even a single sueldo of his debt. If I can collect this debt we shall have more than enough.'
Yonah rode with his father on a bright July day to Tembleque, a village outside Toledo. He was unaccustomed to riding a horse, but their mounts were tractable, and he sat in the battered saddle as proudly as any knight. The countryside was beautiful, and though Helkias was weighed down with heavy thoughts, still he was able to burst into song as they rode. He sang a song of peace.
'Oh, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard shall lie with the kid,
And the cow and the bear shall feed,
While the lion eats straw like the ox ...'
Yonah loved to listen to the deep voice singing the sonorous lines. This is how it will be when we ride to Valencia, he thought with pleasure.
Presently as they rode Helkias told his son that when he had first been summoned to Tembleque by Count Vasca, he had confided in his friend, Rabbi Ortega. 'The rabbi said to me, "Let me tell you about this nobleman."'
Rabbi Ortega had a nephew, a young scholar named Asher ben Yair, learned in several languages as well as in Torah. 'It is hard for a scholar to earn a living,' Helkias said, 'and one day Asher heard that a nobleman in Tembleque was seeking to employ a clerk, and he rode out to Tembleque and offered his services.'
The count of Tembleque was proud of his martial skills, Yonah's father told him. He had fought against the Moors and had traveled far and wide to participate in jousting tourneys, many of which he had won. But he was always alert for novelty, and in the spring of 1486 he had heard of a different kind of contest, a literary tourney in which the contestants fought with poems instead of lances and swords.
The contest was the Jocs Florals -- the Flower Games. They had begun in France late in the fourteenth century, when some young
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