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this path, but-'

'Who is-Tilly?' the man demanded. The smile was gone completely. His face was tight, tense, angry. But the anger did not seem directed at her.

Rebecca wiped the tears away. Who is Tilly? How can anyone not know? After-Magdeburg?

The man seemed to sense her confusion. 'Never mind,' he snapped. There came a shout from a distance. Rebecca couldn't make out the words, but she knew they were in English. A warning of some kind, she thought.

The man's next words were quick and urgent: 'I only need to know one thing. Do those men mean to do you harm?'

Rebecca stared at him. Was he joking? The honesty in the face reassured her.

'Yes,' she replied. 'They will rob us. Kill my father. Me-' She fell silent. Her eyes flitted toward the place where the woman had been lying on the ground. But the woman was not there now. She was on her feet, walking slowly toward the farmhouse. Two of the hidalgo's men were helping her along.

She heard the hidalgo's voice, snarling. 'That's good enough. More than good enough.' She was startled by the sheer fury in his tone.

An instant later, the door was being opened. A black man, naked from the waist up, was climbing into the carriage. In one hand, he held a small red box emblazoned with a white cross. Despite her astonishment, Rebecca made no protest when the black man gently moved her away from her father and began examining him.

The examination was quick and expert. The man opened the box and began withdrawing a vial. Rebecca, a physician's daughter, recognized another. She felt a vast sense of relief. Thank God-a Moor! Her father thought well of Islamic medicine. His opinion of Christian physicians bordered on profanity.

The Moor turned to the hidalgo. The hidalgo, after shouting a few commands-Rebecca, preoccupied with her father, had not caught their meaning-had his head back in the carriage.

The Moor spoke in quick and curt phrases. His accent was different from the hidalgo's, and he used strange words. Rebecca could only understand some of his English.

'He's having a (meaningless word-coronation?-that made no sense). Pretty bad one, I think. We need to get him to a (hostel?) as soon as possible. If we don't get some (meaningless phrase-the first part, she thought, sounded like 'clot-busting,' but what could dirt have to do with anything?) into him, there won't be any point. The damage will have been done.'

Rebecca gasped. 'Is he dying?' The black physician glanced at her. His dark eyes were caring, but grim. 'He might, ma'am,' he said softly. 'But he might make it, too.' ('Make it?' Survive, she assumed. The idiom was strange.) 'It's too early to tell.'

Another shout came from one of the hidalgo's men. Rebecca thought it came from the farmhouse. This time she understood the words. 'They're coming! Take cover (meaningless-the hidalgo's name, she thought)!' Maikh?

The hidalgo was staring down the road. Rebecca could now hear the sounds of racing footsteps and other shouting men. Germans. Tilly's men. Baying like wolves. They had spotted the carriage.

The hidalgo shook his head and shouted back. 'No! You all stay in the farmhouse! As soon as they come up, start shooting. I'll draw their fire away from the carriage!'

Quickly, he thrust his head into the carriage, extending his hand toward the physician. 'James, give me your gun. I haven't got time to find my own.'

The Moor reached back and drew something out of the back of his trousers. Rebecca eyed it uncertainly. Is that a pistol? It's so tiny! Nothing like those great things the Landsknechte were carrying.

But she did not doubt her guess, from the eager way the hidalgo seized the thing. Rebecca knew very little about firearms, after all, though she was struck by the intricate craftsmanship of the weapon.

Now the hidalgo was striding away. Not more than five seconds later, he had taken his stance many yards from the carriage. He stopped, turned. Briefly, he inspected the pistol, doing something with it that Rebecca could not make out clearly. Then, squaring his shoulders and spreading his feet, he waited.

Rebecca was at the carriage window now, watching. Her eyes flitted back and forth from the farmhouse to the hidalgo. Even as inexperienced as she was, Rebecca understood immediately what the hidalgo was doing. He would draw the attention of Tilly's men to himself, away from the carriage. His men in the farmhouse would have a clear angle of fire.

The mercenaries charging toward the farmhouse were on the other side of the carriage. Rebecca could hear them but not see them. All she could see was the hidalgo, facing at an angle away from her.

In the battle which followed, she watched nothing else. Her eyes were fixed to a tall man in a farmyard, standing still, in a ruffled white blouse and black trousers. A humble setting, and there was something odd about his boots. But Rebecca did not care. Samuel ibn Nagrela, reciting Hebrew poetry to the Muslim army he led to victory at the Battle of Alfuente, would have been proud of that footwear. So, at least, thought a young woman raised in the legends of Sepharad.

So confident he seemed-so certain. Rebecca remembered lines from Nagrela's poem celebrating Alfuente.

My enemy rose-and the Rock rose against him.

How can any creature rise up against his Creator?

Now my troops and the enemy's drew up their ranks

Opposite each other. On such a day of anger, jealousy,

And rage, men deem the Prince of Death

A princely prize: And each man seeks to win renown,

Though he must lose his life for it.

The hidalgo fired first. He gave no warning, issued no commands, made no threats. He simply crouched slightly, and brought the pistol up in both hands. An instant later, to Rebecca's shock, the gun went off and the battle erupted.

It was short, savage and incredibly brutal. Even Rebecca, an utter naif in the ways of violence, knew that guns could not possibly be fired as rapidly as the hail of bullets which erupted from the hidalgo's pistol and the weapons of his men. She could not see the carnage which those bullets created, in the small mob of mercenaries, but she had no difficulty interpreting their cries of pain and astonishment.

Literature kept her soul from gibbering terror. She took courage from the hidalgo's own, that day, and the poetry of another at Alfuente.

These young lions welcomed each raw wound upon

Their heads as though it were a garland. To die-

They believed-was to keep the faith. To live-

They thought-was forbidden.

She held her breath. Not all the weapons fired belonged to the hidalgo and his men. She could recognize the deeper roar of the mercenaries' arquebuses. She fully expected to see the hidalgo's white shirt erupting with blood.

The hurled spears

Were like bolts of lightning, filling the air with

Light… The blood of men flowed upon

The ground like the blood of the rams on the corners

Of the altar.

But there was nothing-nothing beyond an unseen wind which tugged the hidalgo's left sleeve and left it torn and ragged. She hissed. But there was no blood. No blood.

No blood.

Suddenly-as shocking, in its way, as the beginning-the battle was over. Silence, except for the sound of footsteps running away and the shouts of fearful retreat. Rebecca heaved a deep breath, then another and another. The motion drew the physician's eye. After no more than a glance, the Moor turned back to her father. A slight smile came to his face. Rebecca, recognizing the meaning of that smile, flushed from embarrassment. But not much. Just an older man, whimsically admiring a young woman's figure. There was no threat to her in that smile.

Rebecca collapsed, falling back from her own crouch onto the cushioned seat of the carriage. She burst into tears, covering her face with her hands.

Some time later-not more than seconds-she heard the door of the carriage opening again. She sensed the hidalgo entering the carriage. Gently, he eased himself onto the seat next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. Without wondering at the impropriety of her action, she leaned into the shoulder and turned her face into his chest.

Soft silk, over hard muscle. No blood.

'Thank you,' she whispered.

He said nothing. There was no need. For the first time since the terror began that day, Rebecca felt all tension and fear fade away. For the first time in years, perhaps.

Has a flood come and laid the world waste?

For dry land is nowhere to be seen.

It was odd, then, what came to her mind. Recovering from terror in the shelter of a strange man's arm, all she could think of was a sun-drenched land of poetry and splendor, which she had never seen once in her life. Drying her tears on a silk shirt, she remembered Abraham ibn Ezra's ode to his cloak:

I spread it out like a

Tent in the dark of night, and the stars

Shine through it: through it I see the moon and the

Pleiades, and Orion,

Flashing his light.

Chapter 5

The hidalgo did not stay in the carriage for long. Two minutes, perhaps. Rebecca was not certain. Several of his men came up the carriage. There was a rapid exchange of words. Rebecca could not understand much of it, partly because of the accent and partly because they were using terms unfamiliar to her. Odd, that. Rebecca had been born and raised in London. She had thought herself familiar with every flavor of the English language.