1632

'Ease up, guys! I think we've got a damsel in distress here. The way I see it, that makes figuring out which side we're on a piece of cake.'

Frank chuckled. 'You always were a romantic. And a damn fool for a pretty face.'

Mike shrugged. Still smiling, he started moving slowly toward the carriage. He kept his hands widespread, so that the outriders could see he was unarmed.

'You call that face 'pretty'?' he demanded over his shoulder. 'You're nuts, Frank. Me, I think we just got promoted. We were on the set of that movie Deliverance.' With a snort: 'Or maybe it was Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now-'

The woman's face was closer. 'Now we're in Cleopatra,' Mike said. The words came out much more softly than he'd intended. And he realized, with a little start of surprise, that he was no longer joking at all.

Chapter 4

The carriage's sudden lurch threw Rebecca against her father. Balthazar Abrabanel hissed with pain.

'Gently, daughter!' he admonished. He pressed his hand more firmly against his chest. Balthazar's gray-bearded face was drawn and haggard. His breath came short and quick.

Rebecca stared at him. Her own heart was racing with a fear so great it bordered on panic. Something was wrong with her father. His heart…

The sound of a shouting voice came from outside the carriage. Rebecca recognized the voice. It belonged to the leader of the small group of Landsknecht whom her father had hired in Amsterdam to escort them to Badenburg. But the man's German was so thickly accented that she didn't understand the words themselves. Clearly, though, the man was startled by something.

Another shout. This time she understood. 'Identify yourselves!'

Balthazar moaned softly. Then, with an obvious effort: 'See what is happening, Rebecca.'

Rebecca hesitated. Her father's condition was frightening. But, from long habit, she obeyed within a moment.

She fumbled with the sash which held the curtain closed. The hasty action brought its own exasperation. The carriage was open-sided. Rebecca would have preferred to keep the curtain open at all times, to enjoy the breeze. But her father had insisted on making the entire trip closed off from exterior view.

'This journey will be dangerous enough, child,' he'd told her, 'without men getting a look at you.' The statement had been accompanied by an odd smile. Fondness and pride, partly. But there had been something else…

When she had realized what that 'something else' was, Rebecca had been startled as much as shocked. The shock came from understanding the crime her father feared. Do men actually do such things? The startlement, from realizing that even her father thought she was beautiful. Others had told her so, but- The notion still seemed odd. She herself never saw anything in the mirror but a young Sephardic woman. Olive skin, long black hair, a nose, two dark eyes, a mouth, chin. Yes, the features were very regular and symmetrical. More so than most, perhaps. And she sometimes thought, in her rare moments of vanity, that her lips were attractive. Full, rich. But still-beautiful? What does that mean?

Finally-it took but seconds, though it seemed an eternity-she had the sash undone. She brushed the curtain aside and thrust her head through the window.

For a moment, she did not understand what her eyes were seeing. Her mind was still fixed on her father's plight. His heart…!

Then, she saw. She gasped and drew back. A new terror came, crashing onto the old. Some of that fear was caused by the sight of bodies scattered everywhere. Or so it seemed to her, in that first glimpse. Rebecca had never witnessed scenes of violence before. Nothing beyond scuffling ruffians, at least, and the authorities in Amsterdam tolerated little even of that. She had certainly never Blood everywhere! And that's-that's a head lying over there. And that woman-what? Has she been-? Oh, God!

But so much only caused fear. The terror-the hot spike sent down her spine-was caused by the sight of the man standing right before her. Advancing toward her. Not thirty feet away, now.

Rebecca watched the man come, paralyzed. Like a mouse watching a serpent.

An hidalgo! Here? God save us!

'What is it, child?' demanded her father. Hissing: 'What is happening?' She sensed him lurching forward on his seat behind her.

She was torn between fear of the hidalgo and fear for her father. Then-was there any end?-came yet another terror. She heard the leader of her father's hired Landsknecht shout again.

'Let's go!' she heard him cry. 'Come on! We're not getting paid enough for this!'

Rebecca heard pounding hooves set into motion. An instant later she felt the carriage rock and realized that the driver had leapt off also. She could hear him thrusting through the bushes alongside the road, racing off.

They're deserting us!

She turned back into the carriage, staring wide-eyed at her father. Her lips began to open. But the gentle and wise man upon whom she had relied all her life would be no help to her now. Balthazar Abrabanel was still alive. But his eyes were shut, his jaws tight with agony. Both hands were now pressed to his chest. He was slipping off the cushions onto the floor of the carriage. A faint groan came.

The child's terror overrode the others. Rebecca was on her knees in an instant, clutching her father. Desperately trying to bring comfort and aid, not knowing how she could do either. She stared at the heavy chests resting on the seat bench opposite her. Those contained her father's books. His translation of Galen's medical writings was in one of those chests. But it was hopeless. There were thirty-seven volumes of Galen. All of them written in Arabic, which Rebecca could only read poorly.

She heard a voice. Startled, she turned her head.

The hidalgo was standing at the window of the carriage, pushing his head through the window. The man was so tall that he had to stoop a bit to do so.

Again, the voice. The words registered, barely. She thought she understood them, almost. But it was not possible. He couldn't be speaking The hidalgo spoke the same words. This time, they registered fully. Most of them, anyway. His accent was very strange, unlike any she had ever heard in that language.

English? He speaks English? No hidalgo speaks English. It is beneath their contempt. A tongue for pirates and traders.

She stared at him, now as confused as she was frightened. The man was every inch the hidalgo. Tall, strong, erect, handsome. He exuded the certainty and self- confidence which only a Spanish nobleman possessed. Even his clothing, a ruffled white shirt-silk, she was sure of it-over dark trousers, was not dissimilar. True, she thought there had been something odd about his boots, but He smiled very widely. Who else has such perfect teeth?

And then, he spoke again. The same words, repeated for the fourth time. 'Please, ma'am, do you need help?'

***

Rebecca Abrabanel would always wonder, in the years to come, why she spoke the truth then. Spoke it-babbled it. She would spend hours remembering that moment, sitting quietly by herself. Wondering.

Some of it, she would decide, was ancient heartbreak. For all the savagery of the Holy Inquisition and the pitilessness with which the hidalgos enforced the expulsion, Spain and Portugal's Sephardim would never be able to forget Iberia, the sun-drenched land they had come to love, spending centuries helping to build, convinced that Jews had finally found a place of welcome and refuge. Until Christian royalty and nobility decreed otherwise, and they were driven out to wander again. Yet they retained the language, and recited the poetry, and cherished the culture for their own. Ashkenazim could huddle in their ghettos in central and eastern Europe, shutting the outside world from their souls. But not the Sephardim. Almost a century and a half had gone by since their expulsion from the land they called Sepharad, but it was still the highest praise, amongst them, to call a man hidalgo.

So she would conclude, as the years went by, that some of her response had been a child's, discovering-hoping to discover-that legends were not lies, after all. That there did exist, somewhere in the world, a nobility that was not simply cruelty and treason, veiled beneath courtesy and custom.

But there was more. That, too, she would conclude. There had also been the reaction of a woman.

For there had been the man himself. Handsome, yes, but not quite in the hidalgo way. Even in that moment of terror and confusion, she had retained enough of her wits to sense the difference. The man had possessed none of a hidalgo's raptor beauty. Simply a good-looking man-almost a peasant, come to it, with that blunt nose and open smile. And if his eyes had been such a pure blue as to give despair to hidalgos, there had been nothing in them but friendship and concern.

So Rebecca Abrabanel would conclude, over the years. But she would still find herself wondering about that moment. Hour after hour, at times. It was self-indulgence, perhaps. No other moment in her life, when she looked back, would ever bring quite such a glow to her heart.

***

'Yes-please! My father…' She lowered her head for a moment, shutting her eyes. Tears began leaking through the lids. Softly: 'He is very ill. His heart, I think.'

She opened her eyes and raised her head. The man's face was blurred by the tears.

'We are alone,' she whispered. 'No one-' A shuddered breath. 'We are marranos.' She sensed his puzzlement at the term. Of course. He is English. 'Secret Jews,' she explained. To her surprise, she managed a chuckle. 'Not even that now, I suppose. My father'-she pressed her fingers down, as if to safeguard the gray head in her hands-'is a philosopher. A physician, by trade, but he studies many things. Maimonodes, of course, but also the arguments of the Karaites on the Talmud. And Averroes the Moslem.'

She realized she was babbling. What did this man care? Her lips tightened. 'So he was expelled by Amsterdam's Jews for heresy. We were on our way to Badenburg, where my uncle lives. He said he could provide us shelter.' She jarred to a halt, remembering the silver hidden in the chests of books. Fear came again.

The man spoke. Not to her, however. He turned his head and shouted: 'James, get over here! I think we've got a very sick man here.'

He turned back. His smile was thinner, now, not the gleaming thing it had been earlier. But even through the tears Rebecca could sense the reassurance in it.

'What else do you need, ma'am?' he asked. His face tightened. 'There are some people coming this way. Men carrying weapons. Who are they?'

Rebecca gasped. She had utterly forgotten about the band of mercenaries they had encountered earlier.

'Tilly's men!' she exclaimed. 'We didn't think they had come so far from Magdeburg. We encountered them two miles up the road. We were hoping to escape down