True, she may be safe. But if Castro is arrested then they are all in danger. All the Jews of Jerusalem

Each morning, the printer bellows out the news of Jerusalem, two hands cupped around his mouth, so his voice echoes against the stone walls of the prison and penetrates each cell.

With the printer here, there’s no pretending that she’s in a different place, no chance of spiriting herself off to Toledo, to smell the ripening orange trees and the sunbaked streets. Merciless, he brings them back to the present, to the prison, to the guards and the empire.

She supposes he gleans his information from the guard who brings him bread and water. “The city is about to be upended,” he called out this morning. “Abraham Castro is to be arrested.”

Upended. The man thinks he is some kind of Yonah Hanavi, talking about Nineveh.

But although she scoffed, slowly, as the day progresses, worry seeped through the walls of the cell, into the chambers of her heart. She summons up the picture of Abraham Castro in her mind. His long face, made for rulership, given extra presence by the large turban he wears, adorned with gold chains and jewels.

What will happen if the man is arrested? What will happen to the wall of Jerusalem?

What will happen to her?

The morning plods on, and the piece of bread and bowl of soup that usually come for the midday meal do not arrive. Her stomach begins to complain. And without this break in the day, time becomes unbearable: a slow, sinking swamp in which she tries to move forward but does not succeed.

Castro, arrested? For a decade, maybe more, she has been sending him money, easing his way as he climbed up, up, up to become the most prestigious Jew in Jerusalem, right-hand man to the Ottoman governor. She has paid for the best security forces for him: a cadre of soldiers wearing the Castro livery who patrol the streets with swords of the finest steel, engraved with her name.

She drops her head into her hands. If she is imprisoned, then it is only logical that he will be pulled down.

A month ago, it seemed that everything she touched was blessed with success and prosperity, that together they were inching forward toward the day when the Jews will have their own dominion in the land, when they will offer korbanot, when the voices of the Leviim will braid a melody that reaches up to the Heavens.

And now, she sees that all she has done is wreak destruction.