When Leonora wakes, she does not know where she is. Before she opens her eyes, she half expects to smell the ripening persimmon tree through the window, the steam coming from the kitchens, the rising sun hitting the plowed earth. She opens her eyes and blinks.

The ceiling is a crisscross of beams. She traces the outline of the room with her eyes, without moving her body yet. The room is small, smaller than she has ever been in before. In her childhood room in Spain, the crease that turned the wall from vertical to horizontal, where wall changed path and became ceiling, went on and on and on.

The room itself was the place where she slept, yes, but also studied and played and even ate, often enough, when her parents were away and they left her with Ines. They would huddle over the little table and ignore the dishes of lamb and beef sent up from the kitchen, prepared with banquets in mind, for the notables and diplomats and rabbis who would flock to her parents. Instead, they would suck on rounds of salty cheese and chew soft bread.

Often enough, especially as she grew older, she had to join the formal meals. They are part of your education, her mother would explain, while selecting a dress to fit the occasion. Leonora had to learn to maintain her composure no matter the tidings that were brought to their door. She had to give people the sense that if we all only think enough and help each other enough, even impossible situations can be conquered.

She also learned to sift through conversations for crumbs of knowledge that she didn’t know, to build up an internal map of different places in her head: each town, its rabbi, its notables both Christian and Jew, its source of income, whether agriculture or imports or artisanship… all of it had to be absorbed and noted down afterward, in a large book that had no title, no matter how often she begged her mother to make one up.

Now, here she is in her small room — the smallest she has ever known. Outside the air feels fresh but thin; spring is supposed to be in the air, but these are not the usual smells. If anything wafts in from the outside, it is overcome by the smell of plaster that seemingly refuses to dry.

And she is no longer young, and her parents surely lie in a small, mossy graveyard somewhere. In Italy, perhaps. She does not even know.

Leonora blinks. How hard would it be to make inquiries and find her parents’ graves? She has contacts in communities across the world. It would not be too difficult.

She hauls herself out of bed, ignoring the aches in her knees and the stiffness that this wet and cold weather webs around her. Strange, really, that she has never thought of it.

A servant bustles in, bearing a silver basin of warm water. Leonora nods her thanks and waits for the girl to leave, but she hesitates at the door.

“There is something outside that you should see.”

Before she can ask what, the servant has gone.

There are two windows in Leonora’s room, facing both the front of the house and the side. She opens the shutters and sees, in a neat line, a row of earthenware pots.

She leans out the window. Good. These are the pots that, yesterday, she had ordered filled with stew and given to those hungry children to transport food for their families. She had hesitated in the giving, for the pots were purchased in Egypt: well-made from superior clay, with a bright, clear glaze. The potter had boasted that the glaze was quartz fired with ground desert plants, found nowhere else in the world. She has seen enough places to believe him.

She closes her eyes into a squint — her eyesight is not as good as it once was. Is that black smeared on the belly of the pots? When she squints, the line of pots looks suddenly like a row of soldiers, come to attack. She throws on her warm cloak, leaves the sanctuary of her bedroom, and strides outside.

The pots have been smeared with ash. She kneels down and looks closer. Each one bears three letters: bet, gimmel, daled. Bagad. Betrayal. Her cloak flies up in a gust of wind and she pulls it close. Traitor.

She turns and hails a servant, passing with a sack of grain on his back. “Who did this?”

It is a foolish question. Who did it but the families who received the food?

The servant looks scared. She plants both feet on the ground. She will reach the bottom of this.

“Call—” She thinks. “Call Amram.”

She has not the patience to argue with Yishai, convince him to bend to her will. Amram is far more pliable, and though it usually irritates her, at times it is helpful. He will fawn his way into these houses and find the meaning of this message.

Amram has black curls that spring when he bends down to kiss her hand. The gesture would be quite charming, if it were not a sediment from childhood, those imaginary games of knights riding across the Pyrenees.

She speaks quickly. These pots. This message. He examines them, careful not to touch the smear, as if it might defile him.

“What is this?” He looks up at her confused. Yesterday, he was offended that Yishai was chosen to buy the next-door property. Now she will give him a chance to prove himself.

Traitor. Someone — a group of someones, a group of someones who ate from their bounty yesterday — hurls accusations against them.

“I must know who and I must know why.”

He bows.

All morning, Ines comes back and forth to her desk, worrying about the rugs, and whether Bellida and Gracia will want them, and whether it is foolish to simply follow her mistress’s instruction and buy her a simple woolen rug. Leonora listens each time, and returns to her accounts. Let the rugs go. They are just another distraction to take her away from her work, along with the smeared jugs and her question of whether the children will appear for the midday meal.

She stares at the column of figures but can make no sense of it. She has only just entered the town. Ho could she have made enemies so fast? Traitor.

She mutters and Ines picks up on her words: “Do they not know that they themselves are traitors? Betraying their hungry children.”

Ines clucks her tongue in agreement.

She pushes her books to one side and looks up. “You saw those children yesterday. Wan cheeks and eyes that looked too big for their heads. They didn’t even look like children.”

Ines sits down and pushes a stray white hair from her face. “Skin and bone, that’s what they were. And those pearly teeth ready to sink into anything that might look like food.”

Restlessness turns into an anger that snaps at her like a stray dog, fed once and lingering in the hope of scraps. She looks up. “It is a wonder to me, Ines, that when the Almighty sends a child into This World, He doesn’t demand a promissory note in return that says, care for your child. Feed, clothe, and protect.”

Ines looks out the window. “Any fool can bring a baby into the world. Or a girl scant out of childhood herself.”

She speaks innocently enough. Ines knows not that her words stab deep in the center of Leonora’s body, spreading to her chest and arms, which begin to tremble; lacerating her lungs, such that she cannot bring in air, for the pain is so great.

A promissory note.

A girl, scant out of childhood.

She must simply concentrate on taking a breath inside her, and then out again. Wait for the pain to subside. Hold on to the faith that surely, if G-d has kept her alive until this day, it is so she can pay penance, however incomplete.

By noon, a small crowd has gathered, summoned by Amram who has urged them all — do not simply send cryptic messages. Come and explain yourselves to my mother, for she is a woman of substance.

She surveys them from the window. A ragtag bunch, graying beards, some with the darker complexion of Jews of the Maghreb, others with the pale skin of Ashkenazim, probably come here from Jerusalem.

She will address them from this window. It is good for them to look up to her. She lays her hands flat against the stone windowsill, hoping that the cold will stop them trembling.

Come, Leonora.

You have argued down tax collectors in Naples, telling them that they had no legal right to board your ships if all you are doing is docking to bring on supplies. You have defended yourself in court and outwitted diplomats who wanted you to lend them money on easy terms. Why are you so afraid?

But all that was different. They were not Jews. She had not settled in their place. She did not have a plan that needed the goodwill of the townspeople. She could unleash her fury and not worry that they would think her unwomanly, call her Lillith, the consort of the devil himself. For she could simply mount her stead and ride off. But now, different tactics are called for.

She will keep her voice low and conciliatory, but she will begin the parry. “Friends, thank you for coming. It was a zechut for me to send bread and stew to your children yesterday. May they use their strength to bring sweet words of Torah and good deeds into the world.”

Have her words done their job? It looks not. One man mutters and shakes his head; two gesture to each other, jawlines tight with anger. One chews on his thumb. If only the group would disperse and she could talk to them as individuals, caring fathers, then she could placate them. At present they are feeding off each other, buzzards around the corpse that is their grievance, and none will give way.

Behind her, Ines rests her hand on Leonora’s shoulder. She is grateful.

“Have they simply talked their way into this outrage?” she asks Ines in an undertone.

“Of course they are angry,” says Ines. “You have showed them their failure to feed their family. Gratitude sours to hatred, you know that.”

Leonora nods. It is one of the trials of wealth. People think that enemies are born from jealousy, but it is not true. They are born from indebtedness, desperate to free themselves, even if to do so they must recast you, shaping you into a woman of evil.

“Honored friends,” she calls down. “The Almighty has blessed me with wealth, but I am only His messenger, giving to you what is your due.”

She is nearing the line where persuasion becomes groveling. But two of the men are stepping away, one with his head bowed. The others remain, and she is suddenly worried that they will kick at her pots and shatter them.

She continues: “I pass on to you what is rightfully yours.”

What she would like to say is utterly different. She would like to say, what kind of fathers are you? Barter your cloaks. Sell pails of water. Turn the world upside down. Go to the mystical masters and beg them for segulot and incantations to make wheat grow from rock. Beseech the kadi to reduce the taxes. Write to Hurrem Sultan, the first lady of Istanbul, for she has a reputation for charity and she has set up imarets, soup kitchens across the empire. But no, instead you attack the woman who is keeping your child’s body and soul together.

“It is your money,” one of the men calls up to her. “It smells of filth.”

“Filth? Pray explain your words.”

“We know where your money comes from. You lend it to the church so that they can build batei tumah, here in Eretz Hakodesh. The interest makes you a rich woman, but you are defiling our land. You feed our children avodah zarah. Shame on you!”

“Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!” they call up to her. “Traitor!”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 792)