The Edict

Prologue

Barrio de Santa Cruz, Sevilla, Spain, 1480

Diego de Susán swept his eyes around the small square facing his house, unaware the traitor he dreaded lingered inside. He waited within the frame of his front door, in Sevilla’s nearly deserted Jewish quarter, for the last of his fellow false converts to enter. Alvaro de Sepulveda limped into view, stumbling on uneven cobblestones while glancing nervously over his shoulder. Diego waved for the elderly Jew to hurry.

Diego looked behind Alvaro and let his eyes probe the old well, the corners of the square, and the shadowy passageways leading into it as far he could see—checking for anyone watching secretly. Satisfied that no one was, he following Alvaro inside. The two men joined fifteen other New Christians, or conversos as they were called, crowded together and murmuring inside a dark-paneled room in the rear.

What news have you? Diego asked impatiently as he squeezed in, bolted the thick wooden door, and looked toward Abolafia, a justice magistrate, fidgeting and perspiring in an alcove. Abolafia tugged his beard and glanced around at the others. "It cannot be known I’m here, that I am part of this. To you, I am El Perfumado."

Diego shrugged off his long coat and draped it on the back of a carved wooden chair. El Perfumado, by virtue of your position, you hear of matters others are not privy to. What is new?

El Perfumado sucked in his breath. "King Ferdinand, in concord with Queen Isabella of Castile, has ruled that Catholicism must be enforced. The Holy Tribunal is now prosecuting the Inquisition with greater fervor. None of our livelihoods, fortunes, or families are secure. Every converso is suspect; none of us is safe. Friars are searching for heretics under every tree and inside every home, pressuring neighbor to turn on neighbor and friend to accuse friend."

Pedro Fernández Benadeva gripped the long blue lapels of his coat. "Like El Perfumado, I fear nothing will halt them. From sunrise to sunrise, danger only grows. I’ve been supplying Sevilla with bread and nuts for many years. My business shrinks daily. Half my customers have stopped ordering. We’re considered vermin. They call us marranos, swine. Our devotion and loyalty are doubted more than ever."

Can we impede this tyranny before it goes much further? asked Diego.

The priests relish their power, declared Abolafia. They wield it maliciously, under the guise of judiciousness. Nothing short of insurrection will halt them. Even life-long Catholics fear challenging them or raising objections.

Gabriel de Zamora, the youngest in the room, nodded his agreement. We must find a way, not just for ourselves but for our children. I tremble thinking about what could await my young son if nothing is done.

Our families will be impoverished, Manuel Sauli added as he pulled at the tufts of his dark curly hair. "The Inquisitional courts confiscate all money and property from the accused—leaving nothing for their wives and children. They don’t wait for conviction. Denunciations are sufficient for them to take everything. They force confessions through starvation in rat-infested dungeons and torture using hot coals, strappados, racks, spiked garrotes, lashes. The friars and their confederates show no mercy."

Only to be followed by a horrific and humiliating execution, said Diego. But what can be done?

The sharp bang of a heavy doorknocker jolted the room. The men tightened their lips and stared at each other with widened eyes.

The clattering of steps on the staircase broke the tense silence and the door creaked open.

Papa, it’s Cristobal, sang out Susona, Diego’s eighteen-year-old daughter. We’ll be strolling along the river.

Diego held his breath until he heard the outside door latch shut. "Cristobal is the current señor vying for Susona’s affection. Her beauty attracts many men, and he is one of a long string. She likes his family’s high position."

Cristobal is pompous and lazy, declared Pedro. Like his father, he wants everything without working for it, believing he can win the good graces of others by flaunting the family’s wealth.

He’s a passing fancy for Susona.

SUSONA FLUNG BACK HER long hair as she and Cristobal reached the Guadalquivir River. The wind streamed her dark wavy locks. She fluttered her eyelashes and coupled her arm with his. I’ve been waiting all day for this moment. My father is holding one of his endless business meetings at our house. More men than usual today.

Cristobal touched her shoulders. He’s a banker. Why doesn’t he meet them in his office?

I don’t know. Perhaps, it’s more convenient and private—which businesspeople prefer. Susona did not want to talk about her father or his penchant for confidentiality. Rather, she wondered about Cristobal’s thoughts concerning her and hoped to coax them out of him. She touched her heart-shaped lips, then pressed them gently, affectionately to his. Let’s discuss us, our love, and our future.

AFTER A SATURDAY EVENING meal, Susona settled into a cushioned chair in the first-floor sitting room. Just as she threaded a needle to work on her embroidery, her father rushed in.

Go upstairs, he urged. I have another conclave. My patrons require utmost privacy. They’re investing huge sums. I must assure them of secrecy.

Susona gathered her materials and smoothed wrinkles from her blue linen dress. She climbed the stairs balancing fabric, sewing supplies, and a brass oil lamp in her hands. As she placed the lamp on a table in her bedchamber, her curiosity about her father’s business conferences grew. When she had asked him, he explained they were working on a complex transaction with several parties. Yet, the secretive meetings always included the same men, and they’d been meeting more frequently, often late at night. He held the gatherings in hushed tones, behind locked doors. After she heard the clang of the bolt, she crept downstairs in bare feet. She tiptoed to the meeting room door and pressed her ear against the wood. Why the secrecy?

Whispers. Sentence fragments were all she could hear: awaiting arms shipments ... the realm must be quashed ... "only way to stop the torturing of conversos ... under this regime, we’ll continue to suffer ... our fate is sealed if we don’t rebel ... time cannot be spared ... others are sympathetic but afraid to object ... they quiver, frightened they’ll be accused of heresy ... we must act ... we have a plan ... smuggling weapons ... within two weeks we can rise up ... nobility will become the ones chained to dungeon walls.

It took her a few moments to decipher the meanings, but as she pieced them together she shuddered. How could he engage in this rebellious conspiracy? He’ll be tortured and killed. Then what? Susona had no siblings. Her mother died of the bloody flux before she could walk. Cristobal was her future. Cristobal’s family was nobility. She knew they would be swept up and imprisoned if the conspiracy succeeded.

Confused, shaking with fear and her mouth dry, she swallowed hard, then padded back to bed. She loved Cristobal. She’d lose him. How could she keep him safe? Her father safe? She squirmed all night, sweating through her nightdress. She watched out her window as morning light overtook darkness. Stars disappeared and the moon faded from view. Although consumed all night by the dilemma, she discerned no safe way forward. She needed to talk to someone. Cristobal.

Susona descended the stairs to the sound of her father rattling dishes in the kitchen. She walked in to see him shoving them onto a shelf. He turned around swiftly, grimacing. His lower lip twitched.

Papa, is something wrong?

No. No, only business problems.

Susona walked closer to him and stood in front of his chest. Papa, I overheard a snatch of your discussion last night. You’re plotting something. It sounds dangerous.

His neck and face turned red. You shouldn’t have been listening! It’s no business of yours!

Susona breathed in deeply. Don’t be angry. I’m scared. What you were talking about is fraught with danger. You scold me when I act stupidly. But are you? You’re my father, my family. I don’t want you doing something reckless.

Whatever you heard, it does not involve you. Keep it to yourself.

What if I can’t? I’m worried about you. And about me! I feel I must do something.

You shan’t. Do you understand?

Susona nodded and her father swiveled around her.

I’m leaving. I’m late for a meeting, he shouted as he walked through the front door.

On Sunday? Susona yelled back.

He didn’t answer.

SUSONA’S STOMACH CHURNED. There was only one person she could trust, who could tell her what to do. She feared her father was hurling himself into the jaws of the Inquisition. He would be caught, tortured, and executed. She had to stop him, or he would destroy his own life, hers, and the lives of Cristobal and his family. Everyone and everything she held dear would be ruined. Cristobal’s father had influence. He would know what to do and how to prevent her father and his compatriots from launching themselves into a treacherous, futile act. He could save everyone from harm and imprisonment. It had to be done.

Susona squeezed the folds of her long ivory skirt and straightened her bodice as she looked for Cristobal to emerge from Sunday mass. She kept an eye on the heavy wood doors inset under layered stone arches as she paced in front of the Iglesia de Santa Ana, a church built in the 1200s beyond the city walls. A trickle of parishioners emerged followed by clusters of others. Cristobal stepped out with his parents. His mother glided to the street in an expansive cream-colored skirt, matching bodice, and flared cuffs. His father strutted beside her in high leather boots, head high and expression stern. Susona caught Cristobal’s eye. He twisted his mouth and darted his eyes back and forth, first toward his parents, then in the opposite direction and back again. The full sleeves of his crimson linen shirt ruffled in the breeze as he drifted over. Susona’s belly knotted, uncertain how to interpret his facial expressions and evident hedging. She glanced downward, then looked up with a timid smile as he finger-combed his thick brown hair that curled over his collar and framed the handsome face she adored.

Come with me, urged Susona. I have an urgent matter to discuss, for your sake and mine.

He raised his eyebrows. Susona coupled her arm with his and led him behind the church to a secluded garden, where she braced herself against a mossy stonewall. A tremor of fear coursed through her. Rarely had they talked about serious matters.

What did you want to tell me? asked Cristobal.

Susona squeezed her fingers, uncertain. Nothing ... I ... I just wanted to see you? Do you like my new bodice and skirt?

That’s not why you wanted to talk with me. What is it? You look worried.

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you today.

But you have and for a reason. I’m the man you love. Who you trust. Whatever it is, it’s something we should know together. He touched the underside of her chin with two fingers and gently lifted her face. We shouldn’t keep our concerns and feelings from each other. They should not come between us. He kissed her forehead gently.

She felt the sweetness of Cristobal’s lips on her skin. Then she gazed into his blue eyes and knew she loved him.

Susona gulped air, pressed her teeth to her lip, then divulged everything she had learned from listening to her father’s meeting—all to protect her father, Cristobal, his family, and most of all the relationship she cherished. She told herself this would prove her devotion and allow them to prepare to defend themselves against any uprising. As the words left her lips, Cristobal’s face reddened and his posture stiffened.

When she finished, he squinted into her deep brown eyes and asked, Are you sure?

Susona nodded silently and hung her head.

I must go, he declared. She bent forward to kiss him but he backed away, pivoted, and sprinted to the front of the church.

Susona’s eyes followed him as he disappeared around the building. What have I done? she wailed to herself. I’ve lost him. I’ve betrayed my father. With deep heaving breaths, she wept into her hands until it seemed she had no more tears to shed.

SUSONA RAN HOME. BREATHLESSLY, she spurted everything she had told Cristobal to her father. He stared back, mouth agape, then swung back his arm and slapped her face.

You fool! You’ve betrayed me! You’ve written my death sentence. I must warn the others.

As night descended, Susona’s father hustled his fellow conspirators into the back room. From her bedchamber, she heard him say, We must all get out of here. Fast. Destroy every shred of evidence. Scatter it in the wind. Don’t come back. Go!

Susona cracked open the lead-framed window in her room, letting in a stream of cool night air, yet it did nothing to temper the burn of her shame and regret or her fear for her father.

Movement across the square caught her eye. She peered into the darkness. In the moon shadow of a building across the plaza waited several masked and helmeted men, their hands on the hilts of their swords. She gasped. She knew with certainty that her terrible folly and heedlessness were hurtling toward a tragic conclusion. Her wretched deed had set in motion an unstoppable, horrific chain of events, and her father and his compatriots would suffer beyond imagination.

Chills shivered down her spine. She was selfish. A coward. She knew she would be as responsible for her father’s torture and death as the priests that imprison him, and as the executioner who ignites the pyre when he’s burned at the stake.

Susona trembled as the armed men marched through the moonlight and hammered on their front door, crashing it open. They shouted her father’s name and the names of his fellow conspirators. Their heavy footfalls stomped through the hallway to her father’s study.

She cowered in a corner behind her bed, as she once did as a little girl fearing punishment. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Terrified, she covered her ears to block the soldiers’ booming commands as they herded her father and his fellow conspirators down the hallway and shoved them into the street.

Susona! Why? Why? Look what you’ve done! her father howled, his voice seemingly laced with tears.

Her heart plunged. She wailed into her hands. She hated herself for telling Cristobal. After he raced home and revealed the plot to his father, he ran to the chief assistant to the mayor of Sevilla, a family friend, who informed the Court of the Inquisition.

Susona crept back to her window and pulled on her tangled hair. She watched a burly guard grab her father’s arm and stand toe-to-toe with him. Your fate is sealed, the guard barked, as wads of spittle sprayed onto her papa’s face. Your punishment is preordained. The faster you confess, the less pain inflicted before your fiery death. Now get out of my way! Move!

The guards forced her father and his accomplices through the square at sword points, hands bound but heads high in defiance, until they vanished from view.

Susona collapsed to her knees and dug her fingernails into the windowsill. She shivered with shame. Salty tears soaked her cheeks and dribbled across her lips. She slipped onto the floor and rolled onto her back, flailing her arms and legs in anguish. Though her tears stopped flowing, she knew her defiance and wretched betrayal would scar her forever.

FEBRUARY 1481: Throngs jeered as the inquisitors sentenced prisoners to death in a public space bordered by the Castle of San Jorge’s massive stone block walls and the bank of the Guadalquivir River, in a ritual called an auto-da-fé. Clerics denounced and castigated the condemned in impassioned sermons. They shook their fists, pointed upward, and swept their arms while jabbing their fingers at the crowd, warning them not to deviate from the true Catholic faith; or they, too, would be imprisoned deep inside the castle’s dungeons where the accused were chained, interrogated, and tortured for months. The clerics intended to frighten. When the inquisitors finished their escarmientos, as the threatening lectures were called, authorities marched the prisoners through the cobblestone streets in another humiliating spectacle. Susona watched from the back of the mob, struck by the irony of the phrase auto-da-fé. It meant act of faith. All of the convicted had practiced their Judaic faith secretly in defiance of the dictates of Spanish Catholicism.

Her father along with Pedro Fernández Benadeva, Abolafia El Perfumado, Alvaro de Sepulveda, Gabriel de Zamora, and the other collaborators plodded through the shadowy passageways. Each wore a coroza, a tall cone-shaped cap, and a sanbenito, a yellow penitential cloth that draped from their shoulders, emblazoned with an X on the front and back.

Susona backed away from the horde and kept pace with her father as he and the others were paraded into a large square. She kept her eyes on them as she trudged, wracked with guilt, praying silently for her papa’s forgiveness, and wanting to shout for his attention but feared drawing unwanted scrutiny. For a moment she closed her eyes, then bumped into someone. Her eyes flung open. She looked down at a young boy she’d knocked to the ground. I’m so sorry. She extended her hand to lift him up. He looked to be five or six. His tear-stained cheeks, matted saddle-brown hair, and thin boney body gave the appearance of someone who had not bathed or eaten in days. Are you hurt?

He stared up at her with big round eyes. He pulled up his dirty pant leg and looked at the bloody abrasions on his knee. See? Just scrapes.

Where are your parents? Susona asked. I’ll take you to them.

My mother died the day I was born. My father ... His hands flew to his eyes as he gazed over at the auto-da-fé procession. He gulped in air and pointed. That’s him.

Susona looked at the young man, barely above twenty, with unruly hair that hung over his ears. Your father is Gabriel de Zamora?

The boy nodded.

Susona’s heart broke into ever more pieces. Her hand flung to her neck. She gasped for breath, like her head had been forced underwater and held until her lungs burst. She choked on her own guilt and the pain she had caused so many. The damage could never be repaired, and this boy’s life was injured beyond anything she could imagine. How could she live with herself?

Susona squinted back tears and reached for the boy’s hand. Come with me. I’ll see you to safety. Perhaps this was the first step, she thought.

No, he replied. I know what’s about to be done. I must see it.

But ... but it will be horrible.

He’s my papa. I won’t see him ever again.

Her stomach roiled like ocean swells in a violent storm. She feared not just for her father and the boy’s father, but for the boy as well, and all those who would suffer horrific fates. This fear promised to be never-ending, rooted in her conviction that circumstances would worsen, like a terminal affliction that portends only a melancholy end. She inhaled and exhaled, and with each pounding beat of her heart vowed to carry on, yet not knowing how. She swallowed the bile that had risen in her throat and looked down at the boy. What’s your name?

Jacome. My father calls me Jaco.

I’m Susona. She pointed toward the procession. That’s my father, she choked out, the first one in the line. We are both losing our papas today. Take my hand. We’ll watch as much as we can bear.

Masked guards pushed the doomed prisoners up onto the quemadero platforms on which they would be burned alive, turned them to face the crowd, and tied their hands behind the stakes. They scrolled thick ropes around their shoulders, chests, waists, and legs. The crowd stirred around Susona and Jaco as laborers stacked bundles of dry brush, sticks, and thicker branches around the prisoners’ bare feet and leaned longer ones against their legs. Jaco’s little hand shook inside Susona’s, and she squeezed his palm gently.

A priest from the Holy Tribunal, wearing a pointed conical hat, shouted the charges over the crowd and asked the condemned if they wanted to confess publicly: Repent now and we will show you the mercy of the garrote instead of the fire. One man nodded his head. An executioner stood behind the repentant, then twisted and tightened a spiked leather collar around his neck until his head hung and his breathing ceased. The crowd howled.

Susona wiped a tear away, then another rolled down her cheek as her father’s sunken brown eyes bored into her. He drew his blistered lower lip into his mouth and bit down. He bowed his head, then looked up at her with a thin, sad smile. She prayed he forgave her, but how could he? What did he wish to tell her with that smile? That question would haunt her for the rest of her days.

Susona watched an executioner lower a torch to the brush at her father’s feet, setting the wood ablaze. Smoke curled up. Tongues of fire licked his legs. The bottom of his ragged tunic burst into flames, and the inferno roared upward over the rest of his body. Susona stared through the smoke into her father’s hollow eyes until she could no longer listen to his agonizing screams. Her eyes flooded with tears. She could never forgive herself.

An executioner shoved his torch into the pyre at the feet of Gabriel de Zamora. Susona covered Jaco’s eyes with her trembling hand and tugged him gingerly away with the other. He should not see his father die in such excruciating pain. He had seen more than enough, so had she, on the most agonizing day of her life. Tears streamed down her face as she pulled Jaco through the crowd. Most in the throng shouted their approval. Some gasped. Others shrieked with joy. Why, she wondered, was seeing people burned to death a cause for celebration?

PART I:

EXPULSION

Chapter 1

10 ½ years later

Toledo, Spain, Autumn 1491

The acrid smell of burnt bodies hung in the air. Mazal Abravanel squeezed her gray eyes shut to block the horror. She forced herself to look again, brushing back her chaotic, dark-brown hair. The setting sun sprayed its rays through her father’s scorched, blackened corpse as it hung limply from a charred stake in Toledo’s Plaza de Zocodover as if God wanted her to see a glimmer of hope through the carnage. The gleam reignited her passion to keep going, to live, to find a way out of this nightmare; it did not diminish her deep-set fear for her own fate.

Mazal sensed the spine-chilling fascination of the spectators around her—many of whom had traveled great distances from throughout Castille and Aragon—straining to absorb the grisly display of incinerated forms. Hanging near her father were the smoldered remains of a local spice trader, a bookbinder, and one of Mazal’s teachers. She remembered well her tutor’s hardy laugh and the sparkle that once animated his eyes. Now all of their blackened, faceless skulls lolled unnaturally over their bony shoulders.

Two hours earlier, Mazal had watched henchmen rope the convicted to stakes before sanctimonious friars in black robes conducted the ritual public penance. The condemned wore the demeaning pointed coroza on their heads and nothing else. Their gaunt, nude bodies made them seem like shadows of who they once were. Their bare feet were embedded in a pyramid of dry timbers. Welts and dark bruises marred their battered frames and disfigured limbs. In their last moments, they stared blankly at the assembled horde.

Determined to show her love and belief in her father, Mazal looked into his eyes as black-clad guards strapped his arms over the top of the T-shaped stake and bound his ankles at the bottom. He squinted as if anticipating the searing pain to come, then staring at her, mouthed the word sal, pleading with her to leave.

The events culminating in this gruesome spectacle had begun months earlier. Mazal recalled the moment she first heard the rumor. It had struck the Jewish community like the bite of a poisonous snake. The venom was brewed and diffused by Tomás de Torquemada, the Dominican friar spearheading the Inquisition. The lies reached Mazal’s ears from a pious Christian friend, who huffed, You’re a forbidden fruit. I once believed in your goodness. I know better now. May all of you Jews burn in hell for all eternity!

But why? asked Mazal, her face burning, her lips quivering. We’ve been baptized. We’re Catholic, like you.

New Christians, her friend corrected. But still Jewish, I’d bet. You aren’t who you claim to be. Only the most vicious people would inflict unspeakable cruelty against innocent Christian children. And your father is implicated. You must be too.

Mazal’s hands shook as if holding onto the sides of a wagon jostling over a rutted road. Her voice wavering, she asked, What do you mean? I can’t imagine what you’ve heard.

It came from the mouth of my priest. It was proclaimed by Friar de Torquemada. They wouldn’t lie.

What did they allege? My papa is a kind, loving man.

No! He’s cruel! He’s been accused. He deserves to die.

Accused of what?

Snatching a little boy from La Guardia.

Mazal knew this could not be true. The town of La Guardia is a two-day journey from Toledo. My father hasn’t left the city in months. If he were gone for the four days needed to travel back and forth, I would know—and he wouldn’t leave his business unattended that long.

"I knew you’d to deny it. Your father and his fellow conspirators—Jews and marranos—abducted that five-year-old child. They threw him into a cave. They murdered him in a wicked Jewish ritual, inflicting unbearable pain."

"My friend, don’t believe what you heard. It’s a lie, like other lies spread about Jews. Jews did not crucify Jesus. The Romans did. Jews don’t poison wells to spread disease or inflict Black Death. Those are said to prod people into hating Jews and distrusting New Christians like my father and me.

Mazal, I don’t know what to believe, but I know you’re not my friend anymore. I despise all Jews and all false converts like you. Your father and other Jews carved out that boy’s heart while he was still alive—while it was still beating—and used it for some foul Jewish rite. Why? How could they do that?

Shaken, Mazal gritted her teeth. They didn’t. There is no such Judaic ceremony. My father and I are New Christians, but I know from before that such rituals are not Jewish. If it’s true, tell me the boy’s name. Who are his parents? Where is the cave? Where is his body?

Her former friend shot a hostile glare and stabbed a finger into Mazal’s chest. Ask your father; he knows. The friars must too.

Mazal rushed home with a sharp ache in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t believe that a friend who had known her and her family for years, and to whom they had shown much kindness, could fall prey to such malicious rumors. The hate that belched from her mouth disturbed Mazal to the core. If her former friend could believe these lies, then far more people did as well, making Spain a much more perilous place.

Panting for breath, Mazal sprinted down the curved street to her house, only to see armed members of the Holy Brotherhood shoving her father out their front door with his arms and feet locked in iron shackles. She staggered to them. Before you take him, may I say goodbye? I may not see him alive again.

She did not wait for an answer. On tiptoes, she kissed his whiskered cheek. He bent from the waist to lower his head toward her but the guards jerked him upright. Neighbors gawked from windows and doorways across the cobblestone way.

He looked at her through weary eyes. His voice was hoarse. The accusation is a lie.

I know.

To the Holy Tribunal, accusations are facts. He started shaking as he looked from his daughter to the guards. The guards pushed him toward a prison wagon. Rushing his words while stumbling, he added, There’ll be no reprieve. They’ll torture me until the pain is too great and ... and they’ve ex-extracted a false confession, Pr-pray for me. He took a deep breath and clenched his fists as if trying to contain his anguish for her sake. Know always that I love you.

Papa, I will. I’ll forever carry you in my heart. May God look after you.

She watched as they shoved him into the stand-up iron cage and locked the gate. Gripping the bars,