Journey of Strangers Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2015

  A Kindle Scout selection

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  Contents

  Cast of Characters

  Part One: The Isle of Crocodiles

  Chapter 1: Joanna

  Chapter 2: Diego

  The First Letter

  Chapter 3: Joanna

  Chapter 4: Diego

  The Second Letter

  Chapter 5: Joanna

  Chapter 6: Diego

  The Third Letter

  Chapter 7: Joanna

  Chapter 8: Diego

  The Fourth Letter

  Chapter 9: Joanna

  Chapter 10: Diego

  The Fifth Letter

  Chapter 11: Joanna

  Chapter 12: Diego

  The Sixth Letter

  Chapter 13: Joanna

  Chapter 14: Diego

  Chapter 15: Joanna

  Chapter 16: Diego

  Chapter 17: Joanna

  Chapter 18: Diego

  Chapter 19: Joanna

  Chapter 20: Diego

  The Last Letter

  Chapter 21: Joanna

  Chapter 22: Diego

  Part Two: Istanbul

  Chapter 23: Diego

  Chapter 24: Rachel

  Chapter 25: Diego

  Chapter 26: Rachel

  Chapter 27: Diego

  Chapter 28: Rachel

  Chapter 29: Diego

  Chapter 30: Rachel

  Chapter 31: Diego

  Chapter 32: Rachel

  Chapter 33: Diego

  Chapter 34: Rachel

  Chapter 35: Diego

  Chapter 36: Rachel

  Chapter 37: Diego

  Chapter 38: Rachel

  Part Three: The Pillars of Hercules

  Chapter 39: Diego

  Chapter 40: Joanna

  Chapter 41: Diego

  Chapter 42: Joanna

  Chapter 43: Diego

  Chapter 44: Joanna

  Chapter 45: Diego

  Chapter 46: Joanna

  Chapter 47: Diego

  Chapter 48: Ümīt

  Afterword

  Historical Timeline

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  Discussion Questions

  Dedication and Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Works by Elizabeth Zelvin Available for Kindle

  Cast of Characters

  *known to history

  Joanna, a Jewish girl

  Simon, her brother

  Shmuel and Benjamin (Benji), her half brothers

  Riva, her stepmother

  Ezra, her father

  Diego, a Jewish sailor, formerly with Columbus* on the second voyage to the Indies

  Rachel, his sister, also returning from the Indies

  Hutia (later Ümīt), a Taino survivor of the Spanish conquest

  Fernando, a sailor

  Doña Elena Mendoza y Davila, Diego and Rachel’s mother

  Captain (later Governor) Alvaro de Caminha,* donatario of São Tomé

  Doña Marina Mendes y Torres, a Spanish converso, Diego and Rachel’s aunt

  Ernesto, Doña Marina’s major domo

  Javier, a soldier, formerly Doña Marina’s footman

  Belmiro, a degradado, formerly a Lisbon pimp

  Imaculada, a degradada, formerly a Lisbon prostitute

  Felicidade, a degradada, Imaculada’s crony

  Mateus, a degradado, Belmiro’s crony

  Hernan and Esteban, Doña Marina’s men at arms

  Natan, a Jewish boy abducted with Joanna

  Señor Ortega, Doña Marina’s man of business

  Duarte, a Portuguese soldier

  Captain Velez, captain of the Santa Cecilia

  Celeste and Isbel, two young passengers on Cecilia

  Doña Julieta, their chaperone

  Amir, a Moorish corsair in service to the Ottoman navy, formerly a slave in Seville

  Frei Jerónimo, a priest bound for São Tomé

  Signore Andrea Boccanegra, a Genoese banker

  Beppo, his apprentice

  Pero Alvares de Caminha,* Captain Caminha’s cousin

  Giuseppe Adorno, a Genoese banker

  Signora Boccanegra, Signore Boccanegra’s wife

  Niccolo Pesaro, a Venetian Jew, a trader and sutler to armies

  Three hungry unpaid soldiers, bent on robbery or worse

  Yenenga, a Mossi feiticeira, a slave in São Tomé

  Aldo Bianchini, a Jew of Ancona

  Signora Bianchini, his wife

  Rabbi Gershon, a rabbi of Ancona

  Moshe Nahman, a Jew bereft of his children

  A Jewish trader in textiles from Salonica, staying at a caravanserai in Istanbul

  A Jewish boy of Istanbul who knows the way to the Seville congregation

  Elvira and Susanna, Diego’s and Rachel’s sisters

  Akiva Davila, Elvira’s husband, a rabbi

  Efraín Mendoza, Diego’s and Rachel’s father

  Malka, the Mendozas’ neighbor, a woman who has lost her children

  Hasan, a son of Prince Cem* and the hostage of Sultan Bayezid II*

  Kira Chana, a Jewish purveyor to the Sultan’s harem

  Solomon, her son

  The Kizlar Agha, chief eunuch to the harem

  Bülbül Hatun,* Nigar Hatun,* and Ayşe Hatun,* mothers of the Sultan’s grown sons

  Adile, Gülizar, Nesrin, Seyhan, Melike, Ulviye, and Hanöm, junior ladies of the harem

  Gülbahar Hatun* and Ferahşad Hatun,* senior ladies of the harem

  Mustafa, a sword maker

  Dīrenç and Doruk, Balkan eunuchs to the harem

  Saláh, a Tunisian sailor, Amir’s cousin

  Babune, N’goran, Fafale, Kwaku, Mawuwo, and Nunke, men of the Baule and Ewe peoples, escaped slaves

  Brou, a woman of the Baule people, an escaped slave

  Musa, a Turkish oarsman

  Kemal, a Turkish sailor

  Five Tunisian muggers

  Amir’s Tunisian grandfather

  Miguel, a Portuguese Jewish fisherman and a former galley slave

  Mishambo, Nkonde, and Shanda, men of the Mbunda people, shipwrecked escaped slaves

  Ekuwa, Aminata, Lumusi, and Kamina, women of the Ewe and Wolof peoples

  Maria (formerly Mira) and Cristiano, New Christians of São Tomé

  Chaim Davila, Elena Mendoza’s cousin and Akiva’s father

  Miriam, his wife, Akiva’s mother

  Nahum, a printer, Susanna’s betrothed and later husband

  Avram, Malka’s husband, the Mendozas’ neighbor

  Akiva’s brothers, of the Seville minyan

  Two printers, Nahum’s friends, of the Seville minyan

  Part One

  The Isle of Crocodiles

  Chapter 1: Joanna

  In the commotion on the Lisbon docks, Joanna stood like a statue. Simon’s hand, sticky from the handful of dates that had made their hasty breakfast, clung to hers. She felt no fear, although all around her, women were screaming and children bawling as the king’s soldiers wrenched them apart. Her anger filled her to bursting.

&nb
sp; A mother, on her knees, hugged a soldier’s legs, pleading, “Take me instead! I will be your slave, I will do anything!” She seized his sash and clung to it.

  “Take your hands off me, woman,” the soldier said. “It is the king’s will.”

  The sash ripped, and the woman fell to the ground, where she lay pounding her fists against the sodden boards of the dock, moaning, “No! No! No!”

  A child of four or five kicked at a soldier’s booted shin, his chubby face mottled with rage.

  “I won’t go with you! I won’t!”

  The soldier backhanded him across the face. The blow sent the child sprawling. The soldier picked him up by the scruff of the neck and tossed him at a passing priest.

  “Here’s another for you.” He dusted an invisible speck from his collar. “The king wants them saved for Christ. Were I a less pious man, I would wonder why he bothers.”

  A young woman who sold oranges in the market, her eyes streaming with tears, clutched a girl who could not have been more than two to her breast. As Joanna watched, she leaped into the sea with a wail of despair.

  A line of soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, extended their pikes to form a moving barrier as they advanced, pushing back a mob of shrieking parents. A gray-bearded rabbi pushed aside the pike at his chest, intoning curses in Hebrew until he was seized, shackled, and marched away.

  They were picking the little ones, who soon would not remember that they had ever been Jewish. Surely a girl of twelve was safe, too big to interest them. But Simon was only eight. He was tall for his age, a beanpole of a boy and growing fast. Please, Ha’shem, she prayed, let them overlook Simon.

  Her father, his second wife Riva, and her two small half brothers stood not far away, a pretty little family group with their arms around each other. As she watched, her breast beginning to swell with the familiar resentment, a soldier pressed his pike against her father’s chest, pushing him and Riva back.

  “Here! We’ll take these two. Come along, no dallying! We’ll make good little Christians of you in no time.”

  “No! No!” Riva shrieked.

  Shmuel and Benjamin began to cry.

  “Not my babies! No! Ezra, do something!”

  That was so like Riva. She had been demanding that others do something, while she enjoyed the drama of her own emotions, since the day Father had brought her home, two years after Mother died.

  Father made a feeble attempt to pluck at Riva’s sleeve as she flew at the soldier, pounding on his chest, impervious in its corselet. The soldier released his grip on Benjamin to box her ear with a careless fist. She fell to the ground, sobbing, as another soldier scooped Benji up, grabbed Shmuel in an iron grip, and hustled both boys away to where the black-clad priests droned over their baptismal basins.

  Father, ineffectual as always, was too shocked to think of helping Riva up. Exasperated, Joanna strode over to her stepmother and took her by the arm. Riva looked up at her, cheeks smudged with tears, her black hair, usually so smug and tidy, hanging in lank strings around her face.

  “You! Joanna! Do something! You must go with them. Someone must look after them. Here! Soldier! Take these two.”

  She shoved Joanna toward the nearest soldier herding several boys and girls away from their frantic parents. Simon, still clinging to her, was borne along in her wake as the soldier pushed her into the midst of the pack of miserable children. They were forced toward the frowning priests, formidable in their black robes as they seized each child by the arm, gabbled hasty words in what must be Latin, and roughly pushed their heads into the water.

  When Joanna’s turn came, she held herself rigid, glaring at the priest who gripped her arm. She would not let them think that she consented to this mockery. A few drops of water could not destroy the might of Adonai. She wished the Lord had chosen to show himself in Lisbon this day. An earthquake or a burning bush would have been welcome and not beyond His powers. She shut her ears to the priests’ mumbled prayers, the frantic pleas of parents, and the howls of terrified and bewildered children.

  “Sh’ma Yisroel, Adonai Eloheinu . . .” Back in Granada, when they had still been permitted to worship in the synagogue on Shabbat, she had loved the way the cantor and the congregation sang the prayers. If she had been a boy, she could have studied Torah. She would have liked that. Even Father had admitted that she was quicker at study than Simon or their older cousins.

  “The Lord is my shepherd . . .” She had known King David’s psalm by heart since she was three. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me . . .”

  They could call her a Christian and bind her in slavery, but her soul was her own. She refused to let them break her. She would fear no evil, and she would never forget.

  Chapter 2: Diego

  We came ashore at Cadiz, wretched, hungry, and eager to see the last of our shipmates, whose casual cruelty to the Taino captives had made the voyage from Hispaniola a harrowing one. Two hundred of the five hundred who had been forced aboard the ships in Isabela succumbed to disease, starvation, and sheer misery during the crossing. The Spaniards tossed them overboard without ceremony like so much refuse. My sister Rachel spent much of the voyage at the lee rail, vomiting as if she could expel the horror of what was happening. The sailors believed her prone to seasickness. They had not seen the ship’s boy Rafael clambering up the ratlines, brown and grinning, on Mariagalante two years earlier. Our friend Hutia, safe only because all believed him our slave, never left her side. Even more helpless than we to avert his people’s fate, he looked as if he would never smile again.

  My friend Fernando, the only man aboard of whom we had a good opinion, sympathized with our distress without truly sharing it. Eager to lift our spirits, he taught both Rachel and Hutia to play at cards, which took some skill. Since merely throwing a pair of dice did not, he tutored them in cheating as well.

  “Do not wrinkle your nose at me, Diego,” Rachel said. “We will be obliged to live by our wits until we can rejoin Papa and Mama in Italy, and we must be prepared to use any tool that comes to hand.”

  The sailors would not wager with a woman or a slave, so it fell to me to game with them. I had resolved to take no booty from the Indies. But Rachel, persuasive as ever, argued that impoverishing myself was no virtue.

  “Any wealth you sacrifice serves only to enrich our shipmates,” she pointed out. “Do you think they will spend it worthily? In alms to the poor, perhaps?”

  Since the men late of Admiral Columbus’s company talked of nothing but drinking Cadiz dry as soon as we landed and swiving the ladies of the dockside brothels till they could neither stand nor catch their breath, I could not make much of a defense.

  “Where did you learn to argue so, my sister? I swear you would make a lawyer!”

  “It comes of listening while you and Papa studied Talmud,” Rachel said. “For do not the learned rabbis disagree on every point? It is all a matter of interpretation.”

  “Give over, brother,” Hutia said in Taino. “You cannot win when Rachel stands her ground. What is a lawyer?”

  With grim determination, I set about relieving the Spanish sailors and soldiers of the gold that had cost so many Taino lives. As a result, we disembarked considerably richer than we had been when our caravel left the Indies.

  “We need horses,” Rachel said. “Or mules. Hutia, do you think you could sit a horse? And had I better be a lady or a boy? Doña Marina will surely have news of Papa and Mama and the girls by now. We must travel to Barcelona to see her as soon as possible. And we do not want any trouble on the way.”

  “What is a mule?” Hutia asked. “If it is less dangerous than a horse, I am willing to try it.”

  “Less terrifying, but more stubborn,” I said.

  “I wish I had my own mule, Rosa, back,” Rachel said. “She had the sweetest temper.”

  “Only when you went the way she wished,” I said. “We must find lodging for the night. Tomorrow we will purchase
mounts. I shall ride a horse and carry my sword in full view. You two will be my servants. Rachel, you had better don your boy’s garb. We are still a long way from Firenze, and the lands we must cross may not be at peace.”

  I knew Cadiz well, thanks to the months I had spent two years before, in 1493, assisting in the preparation of Admiral Columbus’s fleet for the second voyage of discovery. Having found modest lodgings well away from the docks and dined gratefully on fresh bread and meat that harbored no living creatures, I made my way back toward the harbor, taverns frequented by sailors being the most likely source of news. I left Rachel and Hutia behind, despite my sister’s indignant protests. I could best gather information by listening unobtrusively.

  “I do not wish to attract attention,” I said. “Our recent shipmates would be amazed to see a youth in breeches who so resembles the lady with whom they shared the crossing of the Ocean Sea. Hutia, tell her she must stay within. She will not listen to me.”

  “I always listen to you, Diego,” Rachel said, “even when I do not do as you say.”

  “Rachel, enough,” Hutia said. It was comical to see how quickly she turned demure, eyes lowered, like the biddable girl she had never been. “We will have a pleasant evening together.”

  Her face came alight with mischief.

  “So we shall. My brother has been too close a chaperone in our cramped quarters on the ship.”

  “I thought Hutia would come with me,” I said.

  “I will stay with Rachel,” Hutia said.

  “We are no longer on shipboard, Diego,” Rachel said. “Did you come to think that Hutia was truly your slave?”

  I checked the protest on my lips, since it would only incite her to continue teasing me. If they fell to kissing the minute my back was turned, I could not help it. I trusted Hutia not to let matters go any further.

  “Give the landlord some coin and bespeak a tub of hot water,” I said. “You’ll feel the better for a bath.”

  I was in sore need of one myself, after weeks at sea, but it must wait. As I had expected, the biggest news of the hour in the taverns was the return of Admiral Columbus’s caravels with their cargo of exotic slaves and tales of the earthly paradise we had conquered. The bustling port, however, drew ships from every Christian city on the coast and gossip from all around the Mediterranean. By the time I had downed more tankards of ale than I cared to, I had heard that the French had invaded Italy, that the Turk cast covetous eyes on Europe, and that the Italian city-states formed and broke alliances so often that it was difficult to know which side they were on at any given moment.