The Last Jew Read Online Free PDF

and who remained a Jew. They did no business with New Christians if it could be helped. Still, four years before, a desperate Helkias had consulted the physician Espina.
    His wife, Esther, a woman of good works who had been born into the Saloman family of great rabbis, had begun to waste away, and the silversmith had thought only of sustaining the mother of his three sons. Bernardo had worked hard over her, trying everything he knew, and praying to Christ for her life even as Helkias had prayed to Jehovah. But he had been unable to save Helkias's wife, may the Lord be merciful to her eternal soul.
     
    Now he hurried past Helkias's house of misfortune without stopping, knowing that soon two friars from the Priory of the Assumption would lead a burro bearing the dead first son home to his father.
    Earlier generations of Jews had raised the synagogues centuries before, obeying the ancient precept that a house of worship should be built at the highest possible point in the community. They had chosen sites at the top of lofty, sheer cliffs overlooking the Tagus River.
    Bernardo's mare shied nervously, too close to the lip of the cliff.
    Mother of God! he thought, pulling at the reins; then, as the horse settled, perforce Espina smiled at the irony.
    'Grandmother of the Savior!' he said aloud in wonderment.
    He pictured Meir ben Helkias here, waiting impatiently for the shield of darkness. He believed the youth had not been afraid of the cliffs. Bernardo remembered many a dusk when he had stood on these cliffs with his own father, Jacob Espina, searching the lowering sky for the glimmer of the first three stars that would signify the Sabbath was at an end.
    He struck the thought away as he was wont to do with any disturbing memory of his Jewish past.
    He saw the wisdom of Helkias having used a lone fifteen-year-old to deliver the reliquary. An armed guard would have announced to the world of banditry that here was treasure. A boy bearing an innocuous bundle through the night would have had a better chance.
    But it had not been a good enough chance, as Espina had seen.
     
    He dismounted and led the horse onto the cliff trail. Just over the edge was a stone hut built long ago by Roman soldiers; from it, they had thrown condemned prisoners to their deaths. Far below, the river wound in innocent beauty between the cliffs and an opposing granite hill. Boys growing up in Toledo shunned this place at night, claiming it was possible to hear the wailing of the dead.
    He walked his horse down the cliff trail until the sheer drop became a manageable slope; then he turned off and followed a path down and down, to the water's edge. The Alcántara Bridge wasn't for him, nor would it have been for Meir ben Helkias. A short distance downstream Bernardo came to the shallows where the boy would have crossed, and he remounted the mare. On the opposite bank he found the path that went toward the Priory of the Assumption. A short distance away there was rich and fertile agricultural land but here the soil was poor and sere, good only for limited grazing. Presently he heard the sounds of sheep and came upon a large flock cropping the short grass, tended by an old man he knew, Diego Diaz. The shepherd had a sprawling family almost as large as his flock, and Espina had treated a number of his relatives.
    'A good afternoon, Señor Bernardo.'
    'A good afternoon, Señor Diego; Espina said, and dismounted. He allowed the horse to crop grass with the sheep, and he spent a few minutes passing the time of day with the shepherd. Then, 'Diego, do you know a boy named Meir, son of Helkias the Jew?'
    'Yes, señor. Nephew of Aron Toledano the cheese maker, that boy?'
    'Yes. When did you see him, the last time?'
    'Yesterday eve, early. He was abroad delivering cheeses for his uncle, and for but one sueldo he sold me a goat cheese that was my meal this morning. Such cheese, I wish he had given me two.'
    He glanced at Espina. 'Why do you seek him? Has he done something