Wolves in Winter Read Free Page A

things,
whether this learning was not sinful. He banged his fist on the table with such force that his wine glass jumped to the floor and shattered, and I was so shocked to see the rage on his gentle face
that I began to weep. He gathered me to him and stroked my hair.
    ‘I’m sorry, little one. Don’t cry. Listen. “Wisdom and knowledge shall be granted unto thee, and I will give thee riches and wealth and honour such as none of the kings
have had that have been before thee, neither shall any after have the like.”’
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘It’s from the Bible, Mura. The Chronicles. And none of these holy murderers with their false trials and their hateful piety know anything of knowledge. It is no heresy to seek to
know, to understand the world God created for us. Their torture and their persecution and the fears they spread, that is true evil, because it is the evil of ignorance, and ignorance defends itself
with cruelty. Remember that.’
    My papa had told me many times how, hundreds of years ago, before the Spanish king El Sabio came to Toledo, the city belonged to the caliphs. And how before that, before the walls and the
churches were built, men came here from the north, men who crossed the mountains and mixed their pale hair and eyes with those of the people they found here. How they scratched their runes into the
rocks and how a century ago their magic had been collected and sent over the world on pages of vellum.
    ‘That is why our city is so special, little Mura. Many learned men came here and they brought books with them, marvellous books that told of medicines and the movements of the stars. They
came from all over the world to study and talk here in Toledo, and some people say that there is another city, under the earth, a magic city with tunnels instead of roads and palaces in caves, and
a river as cold and clear as frozen diamonds. If you can go down into that city, they say, and fill a flask of water in the river, then it will make peach trees bloom in winter time and cover the
earth with blossom.’
    I could never hear enough about the magical city, though my father told me I must not speak of it to anyone but him. He said that some people were afraid of such things, and that was why the
city had to be kept secret, because people would try to destroy what they feared. I knew that there was nothing holy in the fires that burned in Toledo in those years, nothing of love or peace.
Only ignorance and the love of power, and fear is the greatest weapon of the powerful. I knew that books are feared because their strength is silent, their challenge unspoken. My papa taught me
then how knowledge that knows when to stay silent can never be destroyed.
    The winter came. I was excited, for my father had told me I was grown big enough to wear my red dress for the Feast of Kings,
Epifania
. I had spent the afternoon carefully painting a gold
crown Papa had helped me to cut out from packing paper. He put me to bed early, with a cup of warm milk and cinnamon, stroking my hair and telling me to stay quiet as a leaf. The early winter dark
had not yet fallen, but Papa had already shut up the house and was moving uneasily in the dim rooms on the ground floor. Now and then I heard a curse and a crash as a heap of books toppled, and I
wanted to laugh at his silliness. Why did he not light a candle? It was cosy in my little bed, which Papa had moved next to the stove to keep me warm, and I was dozing off under the blankets when I
heard a tap at the street door and my father’s steps going to answer it. The hinge creaked as it closed, and I heard some muttered conversation; it wasn’t hard to pick out the husky
boom of Adara’s curious voice, even though she was trying to whisper.
    I liked Adara. I liked her bold swaying walk and the sour-spicy smell of her large bosom when she hugged me. Like many in our city, her skin was as black as a ripe fig and she wore huge hoops of
twisted gold in her