“Don Luis,” Moishe called in a low voice of much urgency, “there is great danger. Our ship is seized, the captain, your brother, held by pirates and slung over a cannon’s muzzle. We dared not divulge this most important truth for the brigands watch us with murderous keen eyes. We were to play as if all were well. Betrayal means a cannonball through his midst. They have sent us on a ruse. You must move as if unaware of this.”
Moishe had gone beyond the rehearsed script. We were only to have pretended to be other than who we were and then return. Don Luis looked to his nephew. The boychik Pedro’s confusion was apparent on his anxious face, though certainly it reflected the tsuris of his father’s plight.
“Early morning,” Moishe said, “these corsairs will storm your ship when all but the watch sleeps without thought of danger.”
“Some accounts of piracy in these Indies have been made,” Don Luis said. “But these only in the tales of explorers—Columbus, Pinzón, others—as apt to liken a fish-filled freshet to a river of gold. We did not know there was truth in these otherwise lies.”
A slight twitch of muscle in Moishe’s mouth betrayed that he kvelled proud that his exploits were known in the courts of Castille and Aragon. Our piracies had left all either marooned or dead. He had not thought that either would be capable of report.
“There is perhaps a means to save your brother and return his ship to his rightful care,” Moishe said.
Don Luis ordered some drink to be brought. Our visit should appear convivial to those paskudnik rogues on the surveilling ship. We toasted to King Ferdinand and to Queen Isabella. Fray Juan raised his mug in a blessing to the Pope. Then several times, he raised his mug again. Then Moishe explained his sneaky sheygets scheme.
Moishe and Fray Juan remained on the quarterdeck. The Spanish slid quietly into the leeside boats, sheltered by the sails, the dark, and by Moishe recounting a big megillah something to Fray Juan, vigorously windmilling his arms like a meshugener Don Quixote. On his shoulder, I exercised great care lest my end resemble nuggets and the feathered snow of pillowfights.
The Spanish were heavy with arquebuses and swords. They would surprise the unsuspecting pirates with a pre-emptive strike guided by the shmendrik son Pedro. For, nu, it was his father who bunged the cannon.
They began to row in dark water to the distant side of our ship.
“Don Miguel Sánchez Villalobos de Levante of Navarre,” Fray Juan said, interrupting Moishe’s flailing diversion as soon as the Spanish had disappeared into the murk.
“Years ago, you were a boy and ‘Miguel Levante’ was enough to hide you. I know who you are.”
Moishe’s hand went to his sword.
“Don Miguel, you need not joust with my ribs. I, too, have another name. Once I was a ghost named Padre Luis Dos Almos. You and this bird crept into the residence of the Archbishop of Seville. In the dark of the library, you dirked the inside of a Jew named Abraham.”
“When one must, one can,” Moishe said. “And may one tooth travel with his immortal soul always, only so it should ache forever.” He released the hilt of his sword and bowed.
“So, Father, this new world, come here often?” he asked. Sangfroid was Moishe’s middle name. At least when it wasn’t Sánchez Villalobos.
“I travelled for many years,” Fray Juan said. “I knew no solid ground. I was lost. Finally, I sought to evade the iniquity of Europe here in Orbe Novo, the New World, but it festers here, like the rot and slobber of a flax dam, with the ravenous putrefaction of greed, a negligent savagery toward natives. A new and more murderous Inquisition, we exile their blood from their very bodies. Indeed, I now return from the court at Castille where I have pleaded with both King and Queen, seeking to end the destruction of the people of these Indies. I have found myself in my own voice, speaking for those who have none.”
Fray Juan was a man seized by both wine and conviction. His face, already red with drink, flushed still further as he adopted the manner of a preacher, fulminating with great volume to his man and bird congregation.