Yiddish for Pirates(22)

He looked around the room and up at the high window as if he were imagining escape.

“But I have no idea how.”

I told him about how the room filled with red capes and Hebrew books.

“So, nu, how will the rabbi and his Jews fly from their prison?” he asked.

“Red wings,” I said, spreading my own grey ones impressively. “Not a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but sheep in red silk. Catholic wolves. We’ll dress them as Inquisition priests.”

“You molodyets of a bird,” he said. “You clever rascal. An impressive plan.

“Especially the part where they’re still locked in a dungeon, but just better dressed.”

We agreed that there were some details that remained to be worked out.

There was a knock on the door. “Perhaps it’s the Messiah,” I said. “Our prayers are answered.”

Nu, it was the bread man telling us that Do?a Gracia wanted to see us.





Chapter Eleven



He led us along a covered hallway and into a small inner courtyard. Do?a Gracia was sitting by a pool with another fountain, surrounded by greenery. Broad leaves, hibiscus flowers, palm trees, and twittery birds with the brainpower of flowers.

It felt like home.

Do?a Gracia received us like a queen.

Moishe bowed slightly as he stood before her, and so, whether I intended to or not, I bowed also.

“I see you and the bird have become friends,” she said.

“Yes, Do?a Gracia,” he said. “We’ve had a few minutes together. He’s taught me all he knows.”

She laughed but then added gravely, “Flight should be something on your mind. Even with my gold, it will be hard to keep the Inquisitors satisfied without you. They are not planning to bother themselves with even the pretence of a trial. On Friday they intend to burn those they have already taken.”

“Like Shabbos candles,” I said without thinking.

What a pisk I have sometimes. A big mouth.

“You have taught this bird not only davening, but about Shabbos candles, too?” Do?a Gracia looked at Moishe with some amazement.

“He needs to know. For his Bar Mitzvah,” Moishe joked, covering for me.

“And similes?” she said. “You taught him similes?” She was a clever bird herself. She knew.

“Once I had a husband,” she said. “He was a smart man. Even when he was alive, he never disagreed with anything I said. But I’m told that when the opportunity arose and he was called upon to make his own decisions, he had a mind of his own. I suspect that it’s this way with this parrot. That’s good. We can use him.”

What was I saying about being press-ganged?

“You can be of great help in rescuing our friends,” she said to me. And then, businesslike, she moved on, evidently believing it best not to question intelligence in this time of folly.

A prominent merchant from a family of hidden Jews, her husband had been murdered by zealots. Since then, the Do?a had sworn to help Jews or conversos escape. They’d be taken on as extra crew or cargo on her trade ships that sailed for Morocco. The ships would return with a new Moroccan crew and fruit, wheat, slaves, copper, iron and African gold—gold-embroidered caps, golden saddles, shields and swords adorned with gold, and even dogs’ collars decorated with gold and silver.

Jewish freedom was all collar and no dog. And the dog that wasn’t there was free to roam the streets of Fez, Marrakech and Rabat.

It was only a matter of time, she said, before all Iberian Jews and the sincere or expedient New Christians would be as the Jews of Egypt in ancient times: slaves, servants, and builders of monuments to their masters. The Jews of Andalusia had been expelled, ballast thrown kippah-first off the kingdom’s bow, but even this treacherous fate wasn’t available to conversos. The Inquisition would poke and prod for signs of the vermin-taint of continued Judaizing, take their money and property, but not let them leave, save through Death’s door.

Do?a Gracia wouldn’t wait for the waters to part to help them escape these plagues. She had a fleet.

Moishe and the condemned Jews would travel to Morocco—to Fez—where the houses were finely built and curiously painted, tiled and roofed with gold, azure, and other excellent colours, some with crystal fountains and surrounded with roses and other odoriferous flowers and herbs. And where they could be safe.

When she had helped the last of the hidden Jews to escape, she would set sail herself for Morocco, an elf at the end of a difficult Age.

Her plan: We knew that most prisoners were held in a dungeon that had been created below a certain church. She would have someone ply the guard with drink. It was a typical escape story. Moishe would help me get through the bars. I’d get the key from the guard and carry it in my beak. The taste of freedom in a jailbird’s mouth.

I suggested we bring the red capes so that the prisoners, as the saying goes, could be disguised in plain sight. In those times of heightened security, Do?a Gracia thought it would be a good idea.

I looked at Moishe with I-told-you-so eyes.

“But it will be impossible to get the capes from the Catedral,” Do?a Gracia said. “Do you expect that we can just walk out with them?”

Now it was Moishe’s turn for the I-told-you-so eyes.

But then: “I know of a way,” he said. “My father told me this story. Each evening, a servant was seen walking home from the court, carrying a silver plate covered by a cloth. ‘Leftovers,’ he said. The guards at the portcullis began to get suspicious. ‘He’s stealing from the king,’ one said to the other. ‘Let’s search him.’ And so they did. They lifted the cloth from the plate, but there was nothing but a few scraps of ill-used food. Each day for a month the man walked home with a plate and each day the guards found only scraps. At the end of the month, the man did not return to work. The news quickly spread throughout the palace that thirty silver plates were missing from the royal kitchen and the shyster was nowhere to be seen.