There was shouting from the crowd, but the singers continued.
Rabbi Daniel’s arms were tied to his side, but somehow he had managed to free one of his hands. Before anyone else noticed, he had reached up and clasped the tefillin box strapped to his forehead and torn it away. Tefillin, the Judaizing badge his captors were happy to have him display.
A guard ran toward him, sword raised to separate the arm from the rabbi’s body.
The rabbi threw the tefillin box like a hand grenade. It was, we assumed, only filled with prayers.
It burst into flame. A yontef cocktail. He must have planned to light the kindling beneath him. He would not let them take his death from him. The fire was his own.
But his half-tied arm moved as if it were broken and he had missed the pyre beneath him.
Instead, the box landed on the ground and rolled into the trail of oil. The kuf ignited, a wall of flame that surrounded the stakes and separated the condemned from the others. The soldier was caught in between. His robes turned to fire and he ran screaming into the crowd that opened before him. He ran thirty feet and then toppled to the ground, burning like a trash heap.
Moishe dropped his torch and walked before the stands. He looked steadily into the shocked faces of the priests, nobles, the powerful. He raised his hands with the Biblical drama of a prophet.
“This is not the end, it is Ein Sof—there is no end. But I am going now. I bid you all zay gezunt—a fond farewell.”
Then he ran into the space at the bottom of the kuf, disappearing into what looked like unrelenting hellfire.
From the outside, it appeared that the heretics—Jews and conversos—would be consumed by this lake of fire.
Inside, we were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace: surrounded though untouched by flame. Then a geshrey wailing. The rabbi’s clothes were on fire, the pyre beneath him burning. Moishe seized the knife from his belt, thrust it through the flames and slashed the ropes binding the rabbi. He threw the rebbe to the ground. We had little time before we’d either be overcome by the heat or else the kuf would consume its fuel. Moishe cut the others free and Sarah ran to cover the rabbi in her shawl. She helped him up and guided him as he staggered.
Moishe could not separate those chained together by iron, but we could lead them to safety, escaping from the open top of the kuf. It led directly into a long alleyway, a street of weavers. Those who stood there, watching the auto-da-fé, moved quickly away, crossing themselves and muttering prayers. We were dybbuk spirits, walking ghosts, consumed by fire, beginning our God-forsaken pilgrimage to hell.
We turned a corner. There was Padre Luis sitting on a barrel.
“Good work,” he said and jumped down. “Now, quick—in the barrel.”
Did he expect us all to climb inside a single barrel? Na, even Ali Baba’s forty thieves had one each.
But Do?a Gracia—we hadn’t recognized her in the line of those chained together, she was so stooped and dirty and her clothes were torn—moved forward and pulled back the lid. Inside were the stolen red robes from the Catedral. Those whose hands were free draped the robes around the others, hiding their chains and sanbenito smocks.
Moishe held me beneath his cape.
An apikoros procession—a march of heretics—walking to the water.
As much as possible, we kept to the alley’s dusky arteries, though eventually we had to cross the jugular of Calle del Agua, lined with celebrants waiting for the procession to pass on its way to its final destination, the Catedral. They hadn’t yet heard of the escape from fire.
Murmurs in the crowd as we went by. We were a raggle-tag procession of shlumperdik clerics wandering away from the Catedral and into the dark yard of a cobbler’s shop. Rabbi Daniel wobbled unsteadily, supported by Sarah.
How to kvell with joy and relief, smooch and embrace before a singed rabbi?
“Sarah,” Moishe said.
“Basherter,” Sarah said, touching his soot-streaked cheek.
Then she saw something down the calle.
“Rabbi.” She pulled him into the obscurity of the covered stairs behind the shop. The others quickly followed.
Two huge church bulvans—cattle-thick bruisers. Moishe strode up to them but said nothing. And he did not resist as they seized him and ox-marched him away.
Sarah had saved everyone. Moishe would waddle like a gunsel into the brig if it would continue to keep them safe.
And I would follow.
They dragged us across the city. Finally, they threw us onto the fetid shmutzy straw of a cell. I knew where we were. The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition did not host its guests at a five-star establishment. This place was rated but one farkakteh Yiddish star. And we’d seen it from the other side.
What happened next?
Bupkes.
We waited.
Time can be a scarifying lash when your world is a small room and you’ve nothing to do but wait for the bullwhip of the inevitable.
Night then dawn.