There was but a gloaming light, but I saw. She was armed, full of men, her sides porcupined by cannon and bristling with menace. We were a fox that had broken into a henhouse crammed with vicious hounds. Our small caravel and four-pounders were no match. We would best attain victory through escape.
Though all light on board had been extinguished, and even the lamp in the binnacle removed, it was clear from the movements on the Spanish deck that we had been seen.
I returned to inform the crew of Rodriguez’s treachery. Jacome was quick to press his pockmarked cutlass against the Spaniard.
“This man o’ war is my brother’s ship.” Rodriguez smiled smugly. “He is the Capitan General of the Spanish navy.”
Jacome was not pleased by this information. He thrust his mangy face into Rodriguez’s and snarled, “I shall slice open your two-faced belly like a vermin-infested grainsack, then unfurl your duplicitous kishkas over the gunwales to be the living traitorwurst of sharks.”
“However death finds me, my end shall be honourable,” Rodriguez said.
“Your end shall be bloody as my blade shtups your dark star.”
“Halt on dem zokn,” Moishe said. “Hold your geezer beard, old man. His tuches will go nowhere without us.”
Rodriguez was bound to the mizzen and we convened a painted-into-a-corner council.
“We have no choice but retreat,” I said.
“It is too late,” Fernández said.
“So, nu,” said Isaac the Blind, raising his chicken-bone fist. “We shall fight like Maccabees.”
“And our end shall be Masada.” Shlomo: always ready to rouse a fatalistic cheer.
“But the Captain Rodriguez and his son,” Yahíma said. “Hostages.”
“Fnyeh,” Samuel said. “The Spanish will only discover their false bones and teeth in the flotsam of our cannon-splintered sloop. One reads the guestbook only after battle.”
A pirate ship: a barnacle-keeled kibbutz. A parliament of gonifs and rogues. Yabbering was how we decided our orders.
The Spanish were attacking?
So maybe it’s time for a committee.
While we considered various ingenious nautical subterfuges, Moishe had been gazing at motes in the empty air.
“Take Rodriguez. Bind him over the pisk mouth of a leeward cannon,” he said. “I will take his son in a skiff to the Spanish. Tonight, I am not a pirate but an honourable hidalgo to be received with courtesy.”
Moishe had Shlomo take down our Shmuel-skull and candlesticks, and raise the Spanish flag. Young Rodriguez—Pedro—was a weedy boychik of about seventeen. He was led to the cannon over which his father was tied.
“Father!” he cried, weeping piteously. His father said nothing.
“Why so farklemt?” Moishe said. “We intend only to divide his body to match his duplicitous soul. Unless …”
Moishe rested his hand reassuringly on Pedro’s shoulder.
“This evening, we row over to pay our respects to your uncle, the Capitan General. You will introduce me as Don Miguel de Levante, a hidalgo of Navarre. You will play this spiel of crypto-Jewry until the curtain falls, we return to our ship, then sail to safety. As long as we are betrayed by neither trickery nor chance, this cannon will not be needed and your father will remain unbageled.”
That evening, Don Miguel de Levante and Don Pedro Rodriguez were rowed by some of our crew to the man o’ war, the Encarnación. I travelled on Moishe’s elaborately tailored shoulder, for Moishe was a hidden Jewish wolf in a Spanish captain’s clothing, plain to see as his nose. The big macher Capitan General Don Luis Rodriguez stood impressively on the quarterdeck, dressed ongepatshket Rococco like a Torah in gold brocade and plush velvet. A priest stood beside him.
“Nephew,” Don Luis said.
“My most respectful and loving greetings, Uncle,” Pedro said. Uncle and nephew kissed and embraced. Then, “May I present Don Miguel Sánchez Villalobos de Levante of Navarre. A friend to us in these distant waters.”
Moishe bowed deeply. “Capitan, I am at your service,” he said with the slick grace of a courtier.
Don Luis swept his brocaded arm and introduced the priest who stood beside him on deck. Fray Juan de Las Castillas looked briefly at Pedro and then at Moishe and me for a soul-scouringly long time. Moishe bowed courteously and remained impassive as he was surveyed. Pedro smiled weakly as if to say, “I have the face of a nebbish, how could I have the beytsim to play false?”
“Where is your father?” Don Luis asked. “So far from the land of our birth, he does not greet his own brother?”
“My father offers his most loving recollection and his deepest regrets,” Pedro replied.
“Because of an oppressing fever,” Moishe explained, “he must rest within his cabin.”
“If my brother cannot visit me, then I shall visit him. Let us now board your skiff.” The capitan began to stride aft toward the gangway.