The Course of Fortune

Prologue

“Sultan of the Ottomans, Allah’s Deputy on Earth, Sun of the Heaven of Prophecy, Star of the Most Happy Constellation, Lord of the Lords of this World, Possessor of Men’s Necks, King of Believers and Unbelievers, King of Kings, Emperor of East and West, Majestic Caesar, Seal of Victory, Refuge of All the People of the World, Shadow of the Almighty Dispensing Quiet on the Earth...”

His Majesty, having been roused in the depths of night by the explosions of gunpowder that had set the Royal Arsenal ablaze, and having seen with his own eyes the flames that destroyed the greater part of the Imperial Armada, ordered in his fury that the agents responsible for this perfidy be brought before him for interrogation, and now after his title, inspiring of awe no less than the scimitar he wielded against the Infidel, had rolled like thunder across the sea of turbans and silk gathered before him to melt away among the lofty minarets of Constantinople, the last of the prisoners rounded up the previous day was dragged, shackled and terrified like the others, into the pavilion of the Divan-i humayun of the Sarai itself, where the bostancis threw him unceremoniously to the floor and forced his submission with the heel of a boot until, at length, His Majesty ordered the vermin to rise.

I lifted my eyes to behold Soliman, by his own subjects given the title Lawgiver, in Christendom called grudgingly and simply the Magnificent. I faced the most powerful man on earth.

He did not see me. The Sultan’s gaze was fixed on a place beyond, as if he were unaware of the bloodied and insignificant figure cowering so far below him. The Pasha at the Sultan’s side addressed me then, barking to the dragoman that lest the prisoner deceive himself, he could be certain that naught but death awaited; were I, tho’, to reveal my accomplices who had left the Turkish fleet in ruins, I would be granted a swift beheading and be spared the bastinado.

At that instant my hands began to tremble with their own life and my bowels threatened to desert me. Yet, it were as the Pasha’s very threats served to steel my soul and I regained a portion of myself. How often in those terrible four months not a year ago had my comrades and I faced certain death at the hands of the barbarians, to be spared by the Will of God alone? Truly, what could such weak threats mean to a man who had survived that living Hell, when each morning we awoke to face the end of the world? Come, Death, I welcome you.

The dragoman began to render the Pasha’s words but in my exhaustion I uttered without thought, “An interpreter is unnecessary, Hazretleriniz, I speak Turkish.” The chief bostanci, infuriated that the prisoner had dared speak without leave, struck me across the face, opening the wound on my mouth, and I again fell into the grip of those surrounding me. At this moment the Sultan for the first time revealed an awareness of the prisoner who had been brought to him, and motioned with a nearly imperceptible elevation of his ringed finger that the bostancis should desist.

“How is it,” asked the Pasha at a nod from His Majesty, “that the infidel comes to speak Turkish?”

Only then, in the brief respite from punishment the question granted me, did I begin to perceive my surroundings. I stood in the Imperial Council Chamber itself, its dome and walls covered with ornate tiles, the color of sky. On the divans about me sat crosslegged the aghas, while men of lesser rank stood. Pages scurried this way and that, signaling to each other in their rapid sign language, for they are forbidden to speak. Behind me, in the courtyard, hundreds of janissaries stood at the ready in their red and yellow silks and unmistakable headdresses folding high over like the loose sleeve of a robe. How often, in the thick of it, had we cringed at the sight of those headdresses, so comical at firing distance and so terrifying at swordpoint? Everywhere plumes of ostrich, bright flowing robes and great turbans surrounded me, and yet for such a mass of people all was miraculously quiet, such was the discipline of my captors. I had been here once before.

Taking a deep breath, I answered the Pasha. “I was a slave of His Majesty for four years, on a galley and here, in Constantinople. It is a common fate, Hazretleriniz.”

My answer only served to convince the Pasha, who I now understood to be the Grand Vizier himself, that I was a spy and should be executed forthwith. Once more His Majesty interceded. Speaking for the first time, he pointed out that an execution without interrogation availed them nothing, and were they to learn the origin of the agents who had destroyed the Arsenal, patience was required. The Grand Vizier repeated that torture would be the simplest expedient but the Sultan, with a flick of his wrist, ended the discussion.

His Majesty’s reproach to the Grand Vizier was made without rancor or humor. His people say he has never smiled, that not once in his long reign has his demeanor ever failed to reflect the loftiness of his station. Not when he massacred the Serbs and Hungarians at Belgrade or when he wrested Rhodes from the Knights of Saint John after a siege of six months’ duration. Not when he erased the Hungarian Empire from the face of the earth or marched unopposed through the gates of Baghdad. Not when the shattered remains of the Christian fleet, defeated by his galleys at the island of Djerbé, were dragged without masts and rudders to Constantinople and the captives, among them myself, were paraded before him on the banks of the Golden Horn as they trudged into slavery.

Yet, when His Majesty finally rested his gaze upon me, and in the brief instant before I lowered my eyes in awe, I did not behold the Sultan of the greatest empire on earth. I beheld an old man. Weary and exhausted. His splendid white turban surmounted a drawn face covered with a rouge incapable of hiding the pockmarks that disfigured his complexion. His white beard blended almost seamlessly into the silk robe draped over a brittle frame. I saw a man who had not long to live.

His Majesty remarked on the patch over my left eye, the scars running along my arms and cheek and guessed I had seen war.

The Grand Vizier granted me leave to answer. “His Majesty is correct,” I whispered. “A year ago, when His Majesty dispatched the largest armada since times of legend against the Isle of Malta, God saw fit that I serve there under the Knights of Saint John, and to survive.”

My words had the effect of lightning. E’en the guards and the Pashas seated nearly out of earshot snapped their heads toward me. The Grand Vizier grew instantly furious, shouting, “Liar!” And if I wasn’t a liar, I was certainly a spy, for rumors had recently raced through the capital that the Grand Master of the Knights, in order to forestall a second invasion, had sent his agents to Constantinople to effect exactly what had transpired two nights ago. Again His Majesty raised his hand, more intrigued by my answer than angered. What proof could the prisoner offer that he fought on that accursed isle? Few enough had lived to tell the tale.

I pointed to a Pasha standing nearby, having about five and thirty years to him, and resplendently dressed in a red robe with a bejeweled dagger thrust through the sash. “That is Kapudan Piyale Pasha,” I said, “the Lord High Admiral of your fleet, who laid siege to the island.”

“It proves nothing,” the Grand Vizier shouted angrily. Everyone knew the Grand Admiral. I could easily have seen him while a slave, or while he was parading through the streets of Constantinople.

“If it pleases Your Excellency, ask the Kapudan if it is not true that the other leader, Vizier Mustafa Pasha, would not sleep in the house they had taken for headquarters because the bed was too hard.”

Immediately the Grand Vizier summoned the Admiral over and with a laugh Piyale Pasha confirmed what I had just said. “Yes, beloved Mustafa indeed complained that his back ached. Did the kafir walk into the Turkish camp?”

“Not I, but I know one who did—often.”

“A daring exploit, if true.”

“Aye, more daring exploits in so short a span of time can hardly have been witnessed in the history of the world,” I nodded, agreeing with the Kapudan’s sentiments.

Despite all evidence, the Grand Vizier remained reluctant to accept the truth of my words and, surely, the more truthful they were the more they pointed to my part in the destruction of the Arsenal. Why were they wasting time with the dog? Seeing the impossible nature of my predicament I despaired of answering, but now His Majesty in his wisdom pointed out that, had the prisoner truly lived thro’ the siege, he could provide useful intelligence, e’en as they decided whether to torture him or take his head, and his further narration would throw a light on the right course of action.

“What information may I provide His Majesty?” I bowed, seeing no choice in the matter.

Then the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, King of Kings and the Shadow of Allah on Earth said that he was most desirous of learning how his armada, the greatest ever assembled, consisting as it did of two hundred ships and forty thousand or more fighting men, with siege cannon the likes of which mortals had rarely set eyes on, was defeated on that insignificant piece of rock by a few hundred Knights, a few thousand mercenaries and a few thousand more irregulars unschooled in arms. Not merely defeated. When the Turkish fleet departed, it left twenty-five thousand dead on that rock whose name shall never be uttered.

“It was God’s Will,” I answered, “the Will of Allah.”

This reply hardly satisfied His Majesty, who warned me that my life hung by the thread of the responses I gave. He was particularly curious about the role of the Grand Master and the heroic deeds attributed to him.

I, it need not be said, required no further warnings to understand my peril, but I had neither the knowledge nor the wisdom of kings and, as in most affairs of men, no single account could provide the answer he sought. Yet, if it pleased His Majesty I could tell him of the defense of Malta that saved Christendom from an invasion by the Turks. I could tell him of the extraordinary events I witnessed as a man of arms, events that would be seared in my memory until the moment of my death. I could tell him of Grand Master Jean Parisot de Valette, who I sometimes knew and under who I sometimes served, whose steadfastness in the face of overwhelming odds might well be said to have seen us through that terrible, great siege. And I could tell him of others, equally valorous, tho’ they’d be unsung in the pages of history. But it was a long story, and hardly mine alone.

The Sultan bade me continue and to tell the story as I saw fit. He would decide just how long it would be.

One

The worst is the stench. His Majesty in his experience has no need to imagine one hundred fifty or more men, naked as the day they were born, chained three to a bench eight months of the year, pulling at their oars ten, fifteen, twenty hours at a stretch with nowhere to sleep save buttressed upon one another and nowhere to exercise their functions except at their places. The soldiers plug their nostrils with herbs or hashish to prevent themselves from gagging on the thick air, but it is to no avail, so evil are the odors rising from the galley deck.

Vermin have the run of the ship and gnaw unceasingly at the prisoners’ heels unless they are caught and eaten, for slaves can expect no food but for the soaked biskets or olives the officers thrust down their gullets to prevent them from fainting. The groans of the timbers and creaking of the blocks and cables only add to the endless maledictions of the captives to create a chorus of the damned. At season’s end fierce storms, thunder, lightning, driving wind and howling rain drown out the cries, but there is no respite. Through all is the drumbeat. Fettered leg to the foot brace behind you as you rise. Beat. Free leg forward to the stern brace. Beat. Push the oar-loom with all your might over the scarred backs of the prisoners before you. Beat. Plunge the oar into the water as you fall backwards to the bench and pull for all you’re worth. Beat. God help a slave if he misses time. The gumi will flog him mercilessly with the lash or stick until the wretch has fainted on the oar and will flog him again until he appears dead and then throw him overboard.

No one pities the man whose sufferings end this way. Many, seeing the hopelessness of their situation, pray to God for a swift release. Some beg to be flogged to death or drowned. Why most perish but some survive I have never discerned. Some do survive, for a year, for five, for ten. An iron constitution is not enough. A man must also have an iron will or a foolish belief in salvation.

I had once believed in salvation, but after four years of slavery, I had at last ceased to pray for its arrival in this mortal life. A gun-caster by trade, I’d taken pride in my work and in my skill at arms, which was considerable. Vanidad! All dreams had ended this past season. If I believed ought now, it was only that Fortune had turned on the Mediterranean since ancient times. It had turned against me as it had turned against every other wretch aboard this galley. Each of us, from the noblest born to humble Pietru at my side knew that in the eyes of our captors we were worth nothing more than a ransom, and if a ransom weren’t to be had we were worth nothing. We bent our backs to the oar. We avoided the lash when we could, grabbed for peksimet or beans as they were thrown at us and, during the winters when we’d been locked up or hauling stones for Turkish forts, we traded stories with our jailers and begged for meat.

I cannot tell you the date of that morning, tho’ it was early summer Anno Domini 1564. The day was like most others at that time of year, clear, bright. The sun was well up and we knew that by midday the heat would add to our misery. The only sounds were the usual grunts and curses, the splash of oars in the blue sea, the flap of the sails in the breeze and the caw of the seabirds that followed Cocia-Cocia’s galley as it cruised between Zante and Cephallonia, guarding the great galleon of His Majesty’s Chief Eunuch as it made toward Venice.

From my bench I could see Cocia standing on the poop dressed in his bright pantaloons, with his swarthy face and bald head, threatening the watch officer at the tavola del fischietto, as the Christians call it, the whistler’s table. Cocia-Cocia was a Calabrian turned Turk. As I regarded him, he waved the flat of a scimitar at the badbani’s head, shouting at the dog to increase the tempo. Pietru, a stocky Gozitan farmer who had seen more than his share of misery, glanced at me and spat on the deck. Together we heaved the oar as the beat picked up and Pietru, in a language I barely understood, muttered, “Mur hudu f'sormok—take it up your ass.” I found no mirth in it. Cocia-Cocia boasted that as he must go to Hell for eternity, he wanted to give the Christians a taste of the tortures awaiting him there. Truly, Christians damned him as the Executioner, not because he was feared up and down the Italian coast, which he ravaged every year, but because once aboard his ship you were not likely to leave.

This season Cocia wasn’t plundering. No, he had been engaged to escort the Chief Eunuch’s galleon from Constantinople to Venice. This vessel, laden with the richest goods of the East, boasted twenty large guns, innumerable smaller ones, carried aboard two hundred of His Majesty’s feared janissaries for protection and loomed over the small fleet surrounding it. The Chief of the Seraglio wasn’t about to put into peril his merchandise or that of His Majesty’s wives and concubines, and so we slaves heaved the oars, cursed and felt the sun bake our festering sores as it climbed into the sky.

Suddenly, all was commotion. The shouting and outstretched arms of the crew brought the prisoners’ eyes starboard. Not half a league toward the horizon seven galleys under full oar and canvas were heading straight for us. Nothing is so graceful, or so dreaded, as a galley dashing into battle at top speed. At first we could make out only the great triangles of the lateen sails, but within moments the colors, the red and white emblazoned with the eight-pointed cross told every man aboard the same thing.

“It’s the Knights,” said Pietru.

Pietru Galea ne’er spoke much but he needed utter not a word more. By the True Cross of Caravaca, those ships were galleys of the Knights of St. John, for three decades past famed throughout Christendom as the Knights of Malta. The Knights Hospitallers, the last Crusaders, the sworn enemies of the Infidel. We sucked in our breaths. These seven vessels were the entire fleet of the Knights and that could mean only one thing: Cocia must at last face Commander Romegas. The very name Romegas was enough to put dread into the heart of the stoutest corsair. No Knight had taken more prizes, no man knew the Mediterranean better, its coasts, its ports, the smallest inlets. His distain for danger was legendary. Nay, I say it was truth; once he joined battle Romegas would sooner die than retreat, damn the odds.

Brilliant vermillion with pennants flying, drums and trumpets sounding ever louder, the enemy ship bore down on us. I have killed men in duels and have run for my life under a hail of arquebus fire but I can say truly that, with each pounding heartbeat, I had never been so divided between joy and terror as on that morning. Joy at the thought that Fortune’s wheel might at last turn for good, terror at the knowledge that if the Turk went down every slave, chained, went with it.

Seeing that Romegas intended to ram us, Cocia ordered the crew to wheel about to starboard, to bring the forward guns into position. As the drumbeat quickened, the gumi’s blows rained more violently on our backs. “Hijo de puta!” I cried out in Spanish, knowing that the slave driver wouldn’t understand me. A miracle took place then. Seeing that we were turning about, the enemy gunner let off a shot with his port sacra. The ball hit the Turkish gunner square in the face and blew his head to pieces, splattering his brain all over me and everyone else around him. A fragment from the Turk’s skull hit Pietru, whose nose had been crooked from birth, and straightened it so perfectly that not even a crease could be seen from then on. Pietru told the story often.

We the slaves, tho’, were not about to aid Cocia in the slightest and, as if on a signal from On High, the lot of us dropped our oars. The galley stalled. Romegas got off one shot with his thirty-six libbre piece and an instant later his ramming spur ploughed straight into our broadside. With a great roar, our oars snapped and splintered as the ship lurched to port and heaved men overboard. We had two hundred arquebusiers and bowmen aboard and those who still had their footing let loose. In all the smoke and noise there was little for the slaves to do but keep their heads down. Romegas, tho’, leapt aboard the Turk, leading a dozen of his men, brandishing a rapier in his hand, but otherwise protected only by a small buckler and the white cross that striped his red tunic. Crying, “I’ve got your eggs in my palm now, Cocia!” he took down two corsairs at once and the mêlée began.

Cocia refused to decline the contest and received his enemy with the same ferocity. He immediately dispatched two Knights with cuts from his scimitar. All the while, making his way astern, Romegas was shouting, “Cocia, you old bastard, come to me,” while his foeman answered, “The Devil’s own son is waiting for you, Romegas!” The two met in a single combat. Today Fate went against the renegado; he received a blow on the back and fell across one of the slaves’ benches, not three paces from me. In an instant the prisoners were upon him, pummeling him senseless with their fists. Romegas, now master of the vessel, watched from the poop as the slaves passed Cocia from one bench to the next, each man giving him a blow. Some slaves so thirsted for revenge that they tore at him with their teeth. Pietru took flesh from him and spat it out in triumph and I cannot deny that I did the same. By the time Cocia had been passed to the last bench, there was little left of him and they threw him overboard.

As a small, long-tailed monkey leapt nimbly to his shoulder, Romegas ordered the Christians unshackled and the Turks chained. We watched in wonderment and disbelief as our bonds were removed, we embraced each other with tears in our eyes and cheered the Commander. I myself knelt at his feet in thanks. Only then did I perceive how as of old the Knight’s hands shook with a tremor so pronounced that he needed to clasp one with the other to steady them. That harsh face saw I had my eyes upon it, frowned and turned away. He didn’t recognize me.

Suchlike scenes were at that moment being enacted amongst the other galleys. Truly, seeing that Romegas was upon them, several of the Turkish escort fled altogether. The galleon, tho’, was not about to yield the fight. Mayhap I will describe in its proper place that sanguine engagement, which lasted five full hours and which resulted in great losses on both sides. But the end of it His Majesty knows all too well: the Knights seized the sultana, whose cargo alone was valued at eighty thousand Venetian ducats, attached ropes to it and prepared to tow it home.

Seven mornings hence, when the sun was still low and the limestone glistened white like bones, the small fleet passed into the mouth of a great harbor, unequalled anywhere in Christendom. To starboard, a long hill sloped downward ending at a star fort that stood sentinel above water’s edge. To port, three bodies swung from gallows erected on a rocky prominence which jutted into the harbor’s entrance. Ahead, the imposing castle of the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. I had come again to Malta.

Two

I was born in that most noble city of Granada without taint of Moorish or Jewish blood. Nine days after my birth I was baptized Francisco in the Church of Pedro and Pablo, where the ceremony was witnessed by the best citizens of the town, but my mother failed to see in the name she had chosen for me the omen it was. Like St. Francis himself, I would not be destined for the life of a merchant, the trade of my father.

My father Fernando had been cursed like all Spaniards with a great hunger: to rise above his station at any cost. He had inherited his business from his own father, a successful merchant of cloth and silver, and had slowly widened the firm until it included shops in Sevilla, Valencia and Avignon. He traded with the Florentines, the Venetians and sometimes even the Turks, and every three or four years received goods from China. Fernando’s success allowed him to marry well; my mother’s father had been one of the most respected goldsmiths in our city, working only on commission and once accepting an order from Emperor Carlos himself.

Luck smiled on Fernando when he helped finance a shipment of quicksilver to Nueva España, a shipment that landed safely and returned his investment three times over. His Majesty well knows the fruits of success and I am told they changed my father’s behavior markedly. From that day on he wore nothing but silks and furs and never failed to carry a sword, tho’ if he’d fought a single duel in his life, no one knew of it. He bragged everywhere that he was to be knighted, and hurried along the day by buying himself a coat of arms. Sometimes Fernando de Barai mistakenly signed himself “Don,” a slip he confessed he was not legally entitled to. He spoke incessantly of honor, became quick to take offense and no one could distinguish his bearing from that of a prince. I remember vividly the house he built while I was yet a child, a house that to the envious eyes of Granadans across the river seemed hardly short of a palace. Visitors would marvel at the gardens, where they would bask in the scent of violets and oranges and gasp in delight at the peacocks and marmosets roaming freely. In those gardens guests would often have their first cup of chocolate, for the drink had only recently appeared was considered a great rarity.

My parents naturally expected me to get enough of an education to carry on the family business and they sent me to school for my elementary and gramatica, where I learned to read and to write from printed books. There, at the foothills of the snowcapped Sierras, not a stone’s throw from the Alhambra and the Emperor’s new palace, I learned another lesson: school was not for me. His Majesty appreciates that a child knows nothing beyond the rising and setting of the sun, but it did not take me long to discover that I loathed the daily recitations of arithmetic and Latin. “Why don’t they just crucify me?” I said along with my Paternosters, and the thought of a merchant’s life began to fill me with a real if unnamed dread.

I did not know what I was good for. The stars had blessed me with a certain nimbleness of feet and deftness in my fingers. With the clarity of years I see that some of my father’s worse traits were beginning to show—that incessant striving for place—but it was tempered by my mother Anna’s piety. I never parted from the crucifix she gave me, I grew tall and muscular. I began to display a certain Devil-may-care courage born out of that indescribable disaffection with my position. My classmates called me “Esforzado,” which meant “reckless” no less than it did “fearless.” I brawled with my friends on the town squares, winning more than I lost, and with everyone traded stories about the exploits of Cortés and Pizarro. News of Pizarro’s death in Lima at the hands of treacherous assassins was the talk of the town and sparked in all the young men the heated desire to become conquistadors. By the time I was twelve I still knew nothing of what Fortune intended for me. I prayed twice daily, certain only that I would never pass thro’ the gates of the university the Emperor had built in Granada not long before my birth.

When I look back on the path that brought me to His Majesty’s palace, an abrupt turn took place when I was eleven. That year I met Blaij Vergã. A group of us had skipped school to watch an old-style jousting contest down by the bridge. A scuffle broke out in the crowd and soon it was an out and out fight among my classmates. One of them, Blaij, knifed Luis, who fell to the dirt, dead like a stone. I was close enough to see it happen.

“You killed him,” I said to Blaij later after everyone had scattered and we were alone.

“He was stealing coins from me,” Blaij answered, spitting on the ground.

“But you killed him.”

“If you say anything, I’ll break your neck.”

He might have, too. Blaij was the strongest among us at school. Nobody knew who his father was and he lived with his mother who worked as a weaver. She wanted him to be a silversmith but anybody could see that getting a loan from a Jew without interest would have been more likely. Blaij was too proud, too headstrong and always spoiling for a fight. The next day the police showed up at school and questioned the entire class. Blaij denied everything. I kept my trap shut but one of the other boys squealed and Blaij was sent away from Granada for a year.

He came back even more of what he had been. Gruff and growing powerful, with wild, unkempt black hair, he talked incessantly about his exploits, how he had followed the army as a kitchen boy, how he had learned to shoot and drink and about all the women he’d met. The thought never crossed my mind that he might be making some of it up, especially the women, and his stories produced an undeniable fascination in me. I admired and imitated him. Blaij was absolutely fearless. Facing three boys or six, he would never back down. We sometimes fought ourselves, testing each other. He was the stronger, yes, if only by a little, but I was the more agile and it was always a close contest. Of course my parents didn’t want me sullying my good name with such a bad influence. Of course their advice misfired. Blaij and I became friends. I think we hated each other.

I lost sight of Blaij for several years when I turned thirteen and my father sent me to Sevilla to learn the business. The old proverb says, “Quien no ha visto Sevilla no ha visto una maravilla,” “He who has not seen Sevilla, has not seen a wonder.” Truthfully, Sevilla was wondrous and I ran all over the city gaping: at the great cathedral, at the churches, the convents, the squares and monasteries. I forced my way up the crowded steps to the Orangery, the ancient mosque that flanked the north side of the cathedral, and walked through the Moorish door above which a relief showed Christ driving the traders out of the Temple. Beyond that door courtiers, merchants and ship owners from all over Europe gathered to discuss the price of merchandise in the Americas. People were then flocking to Sevilla and it seemed the number of souls there increased visibly every day. They were coming to make their fortunes, for through Sevilla and Sevilla alone flowed the gold and silver from the Newfound World.

From the top of the Golden Tower you could cast your gaze over the barges on the banks of the Guadalquivir and the masts of ships and the goods destined for the Indies piled high on the quay. When a fleet came in, the whole town ran to greet it, with as much dread as joy, for entire fortunes were made or lost with the fate of a single ship. Once amid the crowd I watched some Indians being led off the boat. As the savages walked down the gangplank in their strange dress they were met by cries of astonishment. Some of the women e’en fainted at the sight of them and had to be carried away. What astounded me was the finery of the dress I saw there. Not a few Sevillans sported gold-braided doublets and almost everyone else wore silk or velvet. Each lady seemed intent to outdo the next and every dress was embroidered or full of lace or swanskin, and every gentleman swaggered with a sword fastened to his waist by a silver chain.

I thanked the stars for my good fortune and might well have thanked my father for his wisdom in deciding well for me, but when I arrived at his shop, in the center of the old town, the first thing the accountant said to me was, “Go and fetch some water from the square.” His tone offended me. “I am here as an apprentice, not a servant,” I answered, puffing up my chest, but he threatened to strike me. I was nearly a man then, a tall and strong one, and I might have made him think better of his insult, but out of respect for my father I did his bidding. With such a start I became an even more reluctant merchant than before, but it was lucky for me that I went after the water, for on the square I saw a paper that Don Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza had opened a fencing school for common people.

The science of arms had recently become the rage and Don Jerónimo was to become the greatest master in all Spain. At the time I had no idea of how eminent he was—or e’en if he was eminent. I knew only that he was a rather strange man. Dark, bearded and wiry, dressed usually in an ragged doublet and a tattered cloak, he spoke of Plato, of geometry, of the circle of defense.

“Maestro, all I want is to learn how to fight!” I pleaded after hearing out his introductory.

“Get out of my school, you ill-bred urchin!” he cried and no less than kicked me through the door, shouting at my back, “Does an adept study the geometry to become a great mathematician? No! He studies the geometry to improve the powers of reason in other spheres, to think with logic, with method and without emotion.”

Only a week later did I dare return, begging Don Jerónimo’s forgiveness. He glared at me with the utmost disdain but did not turn me away. Instead he lectured with flailing arms that the base, the vulgar dishonor the Skill, just as the Ass of Cumas dons the skin of the Lion to deceive its opponents, and that the way to the Sun is blocked by many thickets. Sitting on a bench before him, I thought, here, truly, is a madman, and I almost departed of my own accord. A full year went by before his assistant Gaspar told me that Don Jerónimo studied the alchemists, among them the late Paracelsus who was famous throughout Europe, and my Master saw little difference between perfection of the Skill and the attainment of the legendary philosopher’s stone.

None of this meant anything to a beardless youth but I kept my mouth shut and learned what I could. For two years I trained daily in Carranza’s school, learning the postures, to defend myself with dagger, to parry a threat with mailed glove or cloak, the wrestling holds required to disarm an opponent, the cut and the thrust. Don Jerónimo advocated the thrust as more suited to the new Spanish espadas, rapiers, which were designed to penetrate armor and becoming the weapon of choice across Europe. He railed at the Italians, who saw the best defense as a counterattack, and who launched their assaults from static poses. “No!” Don Jerónimo would cry, “The Skill is a dance. Each step must flow into the others. That is the origin of técnica!” And so we danced around that imaginary circle, learning to step aside from an attack, deflecting it, or to circle our opponent as we searched for an opening, or to force one by varying the rhythm of the dance. Sometimes Don Jerónimo would seize me by the arm to demonstrate the mandoble, which with the two-handed broadswords carried by knights of old had been unheard of. Sometimes he would stop a bout, grab my shoulders and spin me around, shouting, “Simpleton!” and he would explain that when facing an opponent the diestro should present the smallest target, which with those heavy weapons of the past had also been impossible. Mostly, Don Jerónimo insisted that in the heat of combat the diestro must keep a level head and his blood cold and gaze upon his adversary as he would a problem from Euclid. The advice was sound, tho’ I wasn’t old enough to take it. Fortune would ensure that I would take it soon enough.

Inescapably, Father learned that I was spending the money he had given me on the science of arms, but to my great surprise he approved, for it accorded with his noble aspirations, and the episode ended happily and without rancor.

Another chapter ended less happily. During my second year in Sevilla, Don Jerónimo suddenly disappeared for more than a month and the lessons were taken over by Gaspar. When Don Jerónimo returned, he seemed years older, said only that he had been ill and that it would pass. Only under my persistent questioning did Gaspar divulge what had happened: Don Jerónimo had been summoned before the Inquisition. The Inquisition! The word itself filled me with an incomprehensible dread, tho’ I knew no more than Luther was the Devil incarnate and El Santo Oficio, the Holy Office, was defending Spain from his vile heresy. Gaspar explained that Sevilla, being the center of commerce between nations, was full of forbidden books and secret Lutherans and that Don Jerónimo’s brief incarceration had been entirely common. The Inquisitors may have found his ideas strange, but not Lutheran.

Life in Sevilla went on unchanged. The Church authorities confiscated books daily at the docks, which I loudly applauded, and if anything the city seemed to become e’er more festive. Jubilation greeted news of Luther’s death and there was dancing in the streets, but the Inquisition knew it had a long battle ahead. On many feasts you could see the Bishop leading a solemn procession into the squares where a priest would mount a platform and read an edict of faith, wherewith he invited the crowd to denounce all who held opinions heretical, suspect, erroneous, scandalous or blasphemous against our Lord and the Holy Catholic Faith. He admonished us especially to guard against those who spoke favorably of the Law of Moses, the sects of Mahomet and Luther, and all those who possessed books written by heretical authors. After speaking for half an hour the priest would lead the crowd into the church, where each and every person renewed his vows. The spectacle terrified and exhilarated me. I resolved to denounce every heretic I met and from that day on I listened to conversations with a sharpened ear.

But in my small sphere, everyone shared the true faith and I encountered no heretics in Sevilla. By the time I left I had learned far more about swordsmanship than finance and my father’s partners were glad to be rid of me. Before I returned to Granada, Father ordered me to accompany a shipment of silver and Chinese wallpaper to Burgos. Burgos lay over one hundred leagues to the north and the journey on muleback took nearly a month. We outnumbered the only brigands who troubled us, and when we entered the city some agents of the Holy Office inspected our saddlebags for offensive books, found nothing and politely demanded a bribe. At Burgos we witnessed a great miracle. A crossbow shot outside the town across the river stands a convent. On Fridays the people go there in a procession to see the crucifix and my father’s partners and I followed. When I set my eyes on it I fell on my knees and wept with joy. The crucifix, the height of a real man, is made of neither wood nor stone. Its hair grows and when one touches the limbs, they move. The townspeople told us that four hundred and twelve years after the birth of Christ, robbers captured a ship, which was carrying the crucifix in a chest. But when the thieves tried to open the chest they fell down as if dead and a great storm blew up, forcing them to Santander. They recognized this fate as a sign from God and sought out a hermit, who advised them to take the chest to the Bishop of Burgos. Finding the Bishop asleep, they awoke him. He had been dreaming of a crucifix lying on a ship that sailed the water. Astounded by this, the robbers invited the Bishop and priests to the ship. As the holy men knelt before the chest, it opened of its own accord and the Bishop brought the crucifix with great solemnity to the convent where it rests to this day.

Upon my return to Granada, life changed quickly and unexpectedly. My parents kept three slaves, one of whom was a fetching Tatar girl with slanting eyes. I was at the age when the blood had begun to boil and it was not long before those eyes caught mine and I willingly surrendered my innocence. I had her only twice and am certain I was not alone, for about a year later she was found to be with child. I denied responsibility and she was turned out. I do not know what became of her.

Blaij and I again took up our comradeship. By now we were men, young, strong, daring. Vergã had started a beard and girls blushed as we passed them in the streets. Blaij boasted that in the past two years he had had dozens of women and remarked straightforwardly that he had killed another man in a fight over one of them. He would have joined the army a year ago except that his mother had begged him to remain in Granada. Vergã was already a man you crossed at your peril. I admired this in him as well. It made him exciting and simple. He was absolutely fearless and he was absolutely dangerous.

He was also in matters of the flesh indisputably more advanced than I and soon after my return to the city he introduced me to the Granadan whorehouses where we spent all our free time among the mancebas. For on two years I abandoned myself to this dissolute life, whoring, drinking and gambling, coming home at all hours of the night, when at all. My parents despaired that I had become incorrigible. They took the only course available to them and arranged a marriage.

I’d ne’er set eyes on the girl but she was sixteen and from a family as well off as our own. The match was a good one and I could hardly object for it would join the fortunes of our two houses. When I finally met Isabella I was pleasantly surprised. She was black-haired, pretty and well spoken, in her secluded life had read more books than I and she did not overly paint her face. We went for strolls together on the town and once by accident I caught a glimpse of her ankle, which excited me greatly. Sometimes she donned the veil to meet me at night, which was a great risk, and once I caught her alone in her garden dancing the chacona.

“How dare you!” I cried, shocked at her lasciviousness. Isabella apologized profusely, swearing by the Mother of God she would never do it again, all the while secretly smiling. Our affection for each other grew and, following the current fashion, I paid some troubadours to serenade her at her window. My parents were pleased that their son would uphold the honor of the family and Isabella’s parents were pleased that her future looked assured. Plans for the wedding went ahead, which would take place after Holy Week. Guests would come from far and wide and the banquet would be grand.

It was not to be.

One night during the fiestas, I returned home late, Carnavale mask still in hand and walked into the big room. My father, surrounded by his paintings, was standing behind the table, face ashen, and my mother sat on a stool across the room, weeping.

“Mother! Father! What has happened?”

Father merely lowered his eyes to the table, on which lay a flat, green book that had been tied by a ribbon. With a frozen heart, I approached the table and slowly lifted the cover, letting it fall back onto the table. My fears were confirmed.

“This is a forgery!” I cried, “the work of a linajudo!”

Father nodded, trembling from head to foot in anger. His pride already screamed for vengeance. But there was also resignation written on his face, for he knew the damage had been done. I, tho’, was far from resigned. In fury I dashed from the house and sought out Vergã.

I found him masked in the clutches of his manceba and got him out of bed. Once he sobered up, he agreed the papers must be false. “Everyone knows your family is one of the purest in Granada,” he said with a strange sneer in his voice, “there is no taint of Moorish blood.”

It was inconceivable. The Moors had been expelled from Granada or converted more than a half-century ago. They lived in their own aljama, dressed like Arabs, fasted on Saturdays, spoke algarabía, not Spanish, wrote in a secret language. There had been many edicts forbidding them to do these things, but the infidels had bought the Emperor with great sums of money and he repealed his own laws. But for business dealings, my family never had anything to do with the Moors, and never would.

“It is the wedding,” I said. “Some swine intends to prevent my marriage to Isabella.”

“He has,” Blaij replied, offering me his flagon. “You’ll never live this down.”

“By the Holy Scriptures I shall.”

I stayed in the brothel that night but spurned my whore’s advances. The mancebas had their own ideas about who was responsible. Some Agacio de Antonio who I barely knew was in love with Isabella had been slandering me all over town. The whores’ gossip only served to inflame me but I wanted proof and in the morning I stormed over to the Town Hall with Vergã. I slammed my fist on the desk and demanded of the clerk to know if someone had been snooping around our family records. When the bastard refused to say I stretched my arm across the desk and practically strangled him. Blaij merely unsheathed his dagger and pointed it at the dog’s throat. The whores had been right, as usual. Agacio de Antonio had murdered my happiness.

We arranged the duel for that very night. Carnavale was then in full flight. As we walked to the far end of town, toward the caves across the river, we pushed our way through throngs of revelers, harlequins, swine, donkeys, monsters that terrified children. We dodged rotten eggs and knocked aside tricksters who intended to do us harm. Soldiers stormed a wooden castle and defeated the Moorish defenders, and after their victory led the prisoners through the town in chains and ceaselessly shot off their arquebuses. Nothing could distract me from my intent.

“You had better cool your blood,” Blaij said cheerfully, seeing my determination.

“Do not be concerned on my account,” I answered frigidly, “Just make certain Agacio has said his prayers.”

To reach our destination we needed to pass by the Morisco aljama. The quarter was silent as a grave and most of the houses boarded up for the night. All the Moriscos must be across the river getting drunk at the festival so they would not be exposed as the false conversos they were. There had been trouble here of late. Moors were forbidden to carry weapons, even a sharp blade, but searches had been turning up some knives, and the criminals thrown in prison.

Blaij spat on the ground. “The dogs should all be thrown out or put to the sword.”

From the depths of my soul I agreed.

When we arrived at the caves that honeycomb the Sacromonte hill, where brigands and gypsies secreted themselves, my adversary was waiting. He had come without a second. That was an insult, but I didn’t care. His death was assured. Blaij, sitting casually on a rock and swigging wine from his flagon, demanded an apology as was the custom but to no avail.

“Those papers were no forgeries,” Agacio replied. “Your great grandmother was a Moor.”

Blaij was about to say something, but I silenced him with a wave of my hand. By the Incarnation of the Holy Word, I’d had enough of this man’s arrogance and his insults to my blood purity. I kissed my crucifix and drew my sword.

My adversary and I saluted and we began to circle. Not so tall as I, he was a good swordsman, but untrained. He carried himself with a haughtiness that was unbearable, his moonlit smile nearly laughing. He thought himself assured of victory and that mocking, snickering smile was meant to enrage me. But ice ran through my veins. Three times Agacio on a pass thought he had found an opening and thrust. Three times I stepped aside from his blade, deflecting it from the path of danger. Now it was my enemy’s turn to anger, and I saw him grow heated and careless. Our swords clashed there at the mouth of the caves, and the caves returned the sound, made louder and stranger, as if bellowed forth from the depths of Hell. In his vain assaults Agacio grew ever wilder and more desperate. Then, he withdrew his dagger and advanced on me. I caught him in a prise, twisted the knife from his hand as I tripped him backwards over my knee and plunged the knife into his heart.

I caught my breath, spat on the body and was about to walk off when Blaij, having lazily applauded my success, rose from the rock on which he had been sitting and drew his sword. “Now, my turn.”

“What is this?” I asked, startled.

“He was,” Blaij said with a glance at the body, “my cousin, after all. You have defended your honor. Now I defend mine.”

I could only stare at him in amazement. “You’re a lying bastard.”

Blaij shrugged. “Come, Señor, what are you afraid of?”

He suddenly hurled himself at me with such force that he knocked me to the ground but his speed was so great that he himself tumbled beyond. We both got to our feet and the fight began. I could not overcome his natural power, and each time his blade struck mine I feared it would fall from my hand. But neither could he, with my speed, find the opening he wanted. At first I thought I was a dead man, so impossible was it for me to believe that Blaij Vergã was attempting to kill me. Only after I convinced myself that my life was in dire peril did I regain my wits and my feet. We fought and fought, that unearthly, hollow groan filling the glade. We fought until our exhaustion was so great that neither of us could stand and it seemed that the victor would be he whose heart gave out last.

Suddenly, Blaij held up his hand. “Enough,” he said with a deep laugh that unnerved me. “I just wanted to see if you could really fight.”

Panting, I merely stared at him anew.

“You’re such a cunt. Where we’re going, I’ll need a companion with balls.”

I told him right then I’d fuck his mother. “What are you talking about anyway?”

Blaij sneered and began to piss on the ground. “You think you can stay in Granada now? Hah. Those papers may be real, mayhap they aren’t, but everyone thinks you’re a Moor. You know, Señor, what happened to that Morisco woman last month?”

“No,” I answered, wringing the sweat from my hair.

“You should spend more time with the mancebas. They threw her in some secret prison and tortured her for slaughtering a kid ten years ago and because she rests on Thursday nights.”

“The Holy Office?”

“Holy Office, police, in God’s name what difference does it make? They suspect you of being a fucking Morisco, you’ll end up in the shit-hole. Forget Isabella. She won’t see you now. You’d be better off dead than alive.”

I raised my sword and held it to Blaij’s throat. “You’re a madman,” I said. “I should kill you now.”

“You won’t,” he said, not even bothering to shove the blade aside. “But be careful. Someday, my friend, I may lose my temper.” He shrugged and walked away.

Blaij may have been more dangerous, unpredictable than I had suspected, but on that day he wasn’t a madman. Isabella, as he had foretold, refused ever to see me. My father, knowing too well that a life without honor was a life not worth living, very nearly poisoned himself, but rescued by my mother Anna, he at last agreed to move the family to Sevilla. I refused to go and could think of nothing but killing myself or redemption. The priest-confessor listened, but in the darkness of the church I could see that if El Santo Oficio did not already know of the baseless accusations, it soon would. In such a despair as I had never known, one night I slipped out of the house carrying only my purse and my sword, and with Blaij Vergã, who mayhap would think only twice before putting a dagger in my back, headed to the coast. I never set eyes on Granada, the garden of Spain, or my native land again.