VOYAGE OF STRANGERS Read Free Page B

” Enemy. He had taught me these words while telling me about the fierce Caribe, who preyed on the Taino and were said to be cannibals.
    “ Bara ?” he said. She is dead?
    I nodded, my heart heavy.
    “ Bara !” I will kill him!
    He started forward, his face flushed with rage and his hands curling into claws. I held him back.
    “Wait,” I said, wishing I knew the Taino word for it, if indeed they had one. I put my arms around him from behind and turned him first toward Admiral Columbus, who was watching the ship raise sail from further down the beach, then toward the Niña itself.
    “Wait until we leave. Once we are gone, you may tell whom you wish and do what you must.”
    I felt him slump against me. He had understood. He would wait. Only then did I hear Fernando’s voice among others bellowing for me to let the savages be and get back to my oar, or there’d be no gold left in Cibao by the time we got there.
    As our oars raked the water and the sails of the caravel billowed ever greater as they filled with wind, I looked back once more and found Cabrera’s eyes upon me.
    “I’ll see you in hell, boy!” he bellowed, brandishing his gourd.
    “If such a place exists, you will surely get there before me,” I murmured as the boat pulled into the shadow of the Niña and we prepared to climb aboard.

    Part Two: SPAIN
     
     
    Chapter One
     
    Barcelona, April 17, 1493
    “They’re gone,” the old serving woman called out, “and they won’t be coming back.” She swept her broom across the doorstep of the neighboring house with vigor.
    I stood before my cousins’ house. The door hung ajar, half off its hinges, its wooden surface pitted and splintered as if it had been rammed with clubs or soldiers’ spears. The ground before the house was littered with broken crockery and clothing that had been trampled into the dirt. One tattered, grimy cloth was a tallit , the fringed shawl we wear when we pray.
    “Is it bad news, Diego?” Cristobal asked. I had become fond of Hutia's father on the voyage. The little Taino, twice my age and half my height, tugged at my sleeve. “This great caney looks as if the Canibale had raided.” 
    “Good riddance to them, the swine!” The old woman spat and crossed herself.
    “What is that she called them?” Cristobal asked. He had learned much Spanish on the voyage from the Indies, but no one had spoken of the recently banished Jews.
    “ Marranos .” I spoke softly, averting my head from the old serving woman’s avid gaze. “Pigs.”
    “Spain is truly a Christian country now, thanks to our blessed King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella,” the old woman said. Piety and malice blended in her tone. 
    “They owed me money,” I lied.
    “Your bad luck, young sir.” The old woman cackled. “Too bad it wasn’t the other way around. No Jews, no need to repay their loans.”              
    “I hoped to find my sister here,” I muttered, teeth and fists clenched as I strove to keep my face impassive while the spiteful old woman watched.
    My family in Seville had fled the prospect of the Inquisition’s grim tribunal last year, on the very day we sailed to the Indies. But my youngest sister Rachel had been sent to Barcelona for safety months before the expulsion. Now dread of what might have happened to her knifed through me.
    “Were they arrested?” I asked.
    “No, the sly creatures got away,” the serving woman said. “They brazened it out, see? We thought they was good Christians. But the swine have one of their heathen parties this time of year. The soldiers came the night of the blood moon.”
    Two weeks gone, then. On Passover, our most holy festival, the moon had turned red as blood. We had seen it as we made our way across Spain toward Barcelona. The Admiral, ever one to read a marvel as a sign of his greatness, had made much of it.
    The old woman leaned on her broom.
    “They don’t light the fire during their sacrifices and such. Sounds crazy, don’t