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    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.
    But she understood the gist of their discussion. And that, too, she found peculiar. The hidalgo and his men seemed puzzled, as if they were disoriented by their location. They were also confused, apparently, as to what course of action to pursue.
    Strange, strange. Again, fear began to creep into Rebecca’s heart. The hidalgo’s men, for all that they clearly respected him and sought leadership, were not addressing him as a nobleman. That meant, despite his courtesy of manner, that he must be a leader of mercenaries. A bastard son of some petty baron, perhaps, from one of England’s provinces. That would explain the accent.
    Rebecca shrank back in her seat. Mercenaries were vicious, everyone knew it. Criminals in all but name. Especially here, in the Holy Roman Empire, which had been given over to the flames of war.
    Her eyes flitted to her father. But there was no comfort to be found there. Her father was fighting for his life. The Moorish physician was holding him up and giving him some small tablets from the vial he had taken out of his box. Rebecca did not even think of protesting the treatment. The black doctor exuded an aura of competence and certainty.
    The hidalgo came back to the carriage. Timidly, Rebecca turned her head toward him.
    
Relief.
There was still nothing in his eyes but friendliness. That, and—
    She found herself swallowing. She recognized that look. She had seen it before, in Amsterdam, from some of the more confident young men in the Jewish quarter. Admiration; appraisal. Desire, even, veiled under courtesy.
    But, after a moment, she decided there was no trace of lust. At least, she
thought
not. Lust was not something Rebecca was really familiar with, except the flowery version of it which she had found in some of her father’s books. The romances which she tucked into great tomes of theology, reading in the library of their house in Amsterdam, so that her father might not notice her unseemly interest.
    She felt a flash of pain, remembering that library. She had loved that room. Loved its quiet, its repose. Loved the books lining every wall. Her father’s mind lived in the past, and tended to be disdainful of the present. But for one modern device her father had nothing but praise—the printing press. “For that alone,” he was wont to say, “God will forgive the Germans their many crimes.”
    And now here they were, in the land of the Germans. Adrift in time of war, seeking shelter in the eye of the storm. Or so, at least, they had hoped. She would never see that library again, and for a moment Rebecca Abrabanel grieved the loss. Her childhood was gone with it, and her girlhood too. She was twenty-three years old. Whether she wanted them or not, the duties of a grown woman had fallen upon her shoulders.
    She straightened those shoulders, then, summoning determination and courage. The motion drew the hidalgo’s eyes. The admiration lurking within those blue orbs brightened. Rebecca didn’t know whether to cringe or smile.
    As it happened, she smiled. And did not, somehow, find that unthinking reaction strange.
    The hidalgo spoke. His words came clipped, full of peculiar contractions and idioms. Automatically, Rebecca translated into her own formal English.
    “With your permission, ma’am, we need to use your carriage. We have injured people we must get to proper medical treatment.”
    “And
quickly
,” muttered the Moor, still crouched on the floor next to her father. “I’ve given him some—”
aspiring?
Rebecca did not understand the word.
    The hidalgo’s eyes moved to the chests and crates piled on the other side of the carriage’s interior. “We’ll have to remove those, to make room.”
    Rebecca started.
Her father’s books! And the silver hidden within!
    She stared at the hidalgo. As he recognized her fear, she thought to see a flash of anger. But if so, it was gone in an instant.
    The hidalgo’s large hand tightened on the carriage door. His right hand, she noted idly. One of the knuckles was split, scabbed over with blood. An injury from the battle?
    But it was his face that she was concerned with. The hidalgo looked away for a moment, scanning the distance. His jaws seemed to tighten. Then, with a faint sigh, he turned back to her.
    “Listen to me, lady.” Pause. “What is your name?”
    “Rebecca—” She hesitated. “Abrabanel.” She held her breath. Of all the great family names of Sepharad, Abrabanel was the most famous. Notorious.
    But the name, apparently, meant nothing to the hidalgo. He simply nodded, and said: “Pleased to meet you. My name is Mike Stearns.”
    
Mike?
Then:
Oh. It’s those bizarre contractions again. Michael.
    The hidalgo flashed a smile. Then, as quickly as it came, the smile vanished. His face became stern and solemn.
    “Listen to me, Rebecca Abrabanel. I do not know what this place is, or where we are. But I do not care.” Fiercely: “
Not one damn bit.
As far as I am concerned, we are still in West Virginia.”
    Rebecca’s mind groped at the name. West—
what
?
    The hidalgo did not notice her confusion. His eyes had left her for a moment. Again, he was scanning the countryside around them. His look was fierce.
Fierce
.
    Growling, now, almost snarling: “You—and your father—are under the protection of the people of West Virginia.” His eyes moved to his men, clustered nearby. They were watching him, listening to him. The hidalgo’s jaw tightened. “
Specifically
,” he stated, “you are under the protection of the United Mine Workers of America.”
    Rebecca saw the hidalgo’s men lift their shoulders, swelling their own determination and courage. Their sleek, delicate-looking weapons gleamed in the sunlight.
    “
Damn straight!
” barked one of the younger men. He cast his own hawk glare at the countryside.
    Rebecca was heartened by that reaction, but her confusion deepened.
America?
Her jaw grew slack.
There are almost no English in America. True, that little wretched colony of theirs is called Virginia, if I remember correctly. But America is—
    Hope flared.
Spanish, of course. But Sephardim are there too. Since the Dutch took Brazil, eight years ago, America has been a refuge. My father told me there is even a synagogue in Recife.
    Rebecca stared at the hidalgo.
Was he a hidalgo?
She was completely adrift, now. Her mind groped for reason and logic.
    Her confusion must have been apparent. The hidalgo—
Michael, think of him as Michael
—chuckled. “Rebecca, I am just as puzzled as you seem to be.”
    The brief moment of humor passed. Severity returned to his face. Michael leaned forward, placing both hands on the open window of the carriage. “Where
are
we, Rebecca? What place is this?”
    Her eyes went past his shoulders. She could not see much, they were so wide. “I am not certain,” she replied. “Thuringia, I think. Father said we had almost reached our destination.”
    Michael’s brows furrowed. “Thuringia? Where is that?”
    Rebecca understood. “Oh, of course. It’s not well known. One of the smaller provinces of the Holy Roman Empire.” His brows were deep, deep. “Germany,” she added.
    His eyes grew wide, almost bulged. “Germany?” Then, half-choked:
“Germany?”
    Michael turned his head, staring at the landscape. “Rebecca, I’ve lived in Germany. It’s nothing like this.” He hesitated. “Oh, I suppose the countryside’s a bit the same. Except for being so—so raggedy-looking.” He frowned, pointing a finger at the corpses still lying in the farmyard. “But there are no men like this in Germany.”
    Michael barked a sudden laugh. “God, the
Polizei
would round them up in a minute! Germans love their rules and regulations.” Another barked laugh. “
Alles in ordnung!
”
    Rebecca’s own brows were furrowed.
“Alles in ordnung?” What is he talking about? Germans are the most unruly and undisciplined people in Europe. Everybody knows it. That was true even before the war. Now—
    She shuddered, remembering Magdeburg. That horror had taken place less than a week ago. Thirty thousand people, massacred. Some said it was forty thousand. The entire population of the city, except the young women taken by Tilly’s army.
    Michael’s blue eyes were suddenly dark with suspicion. No, not suspicion. Surmise.
    “Guess not, huh?” He shook his head, muttering. “Later,” she thought he said. “Deal with it later, Mike. For now—”
    There was a shout. Several. Michael pushed himself away from the carriage, looking toward the woods. Rebecca leaned forward, craning her neck.
    Many more men were coming out of the woods. For an instant, Rebecca was paralyzed with fear. But seeing the odd costumes and weapons, she relaxed. More of Michael’s men. More of these—
Americans?
    Then Rebecca saw the first women coming through the trees, their faces filled with worry and concern. Like a child, she burst into tears.
    
Michael. And women.
    
Safe. We are safe.