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Then, shockingly, the friar clapped his hands, summoning the guard who waited outside the door.
    Bonestruca made a small movement of his hand: Take him.
    As Bernardo turned to go, he saw that the sandaled feet beneath the table were well fashioned, with long and slender toes.
     
    The guard led him down the corridors, down the steep flights of stairs.
    Sweet Christ, you know I have tried. You know...
    Espina was aware that in the lower bowels of the building were cells and the places in which prisoners were questioned. He knew for a fact that they had a rack called a potro, a triangular frame to which a prisoner was bound. Each time a windlass was turned, more bodily joints were dislocated. And something called a toca, for water torture. The prisoner's head was kept low in a hollowed-out trough. Linen was thrust into his throat. Water was poured through the cloth, blocking the throat and nostrils until suffocation brought on confession or death.
    Jesus, I ask ... I implore ...
    Perhaps he was heard. When they reached the exit, the guard motioned him on, and Espina proceeded alone, out to where the horse had been tied.
    He rode away at a walk, fighting to compose himself so when he arrived home he could reassure Estrella without weeping.
     
     
    Part Two
    THE SECOND SON
    Toledo, Castille
    March 30, 1492
     
     
    5
    Yonah ben Helkias
     
    'I will take Eleazar down to the river, perhaps to catch our supper. Eh, Abba?'
    'The polishing is finished?'
    'Much of it is finished.'
    'Work is not finished until it is finished. You must polish it all,' Helkias said in the bleak tone that always wounded Yonah. Sometimes he wanted to stare into his father's distant eyes and tell him: Meir is dead but Eleazar and I are still here. We are alive.
    Yonah hated to polish the silver. There were half a dozen large pieces still to do, and he dipped his rag into the stinking mess, a thick mixture of powdered bird dung and urine, and rubbed and rubbed.
    He had learned the taste of bitterness early, with the death of his mother, and it had been very hard for him when Meir was killed, because by that time he had been older, past thirteen years, and had better understood the finality of loss.
    Only a few months after Meir's death, Yonah had been called to the Torah to recite the law and become a formal member of the minyan. Adversity had matured him beyond his age. His father, who had always seemed so tall and strong, was diminished, and Yonah didn't know how to fill the space emptied by Helkias's grief.
    They knew nothing of the identity of his brother's murderers. Some weeks after Meir had been killed, word had reached Helkias Toledano that the physician Espina was about the town, asking questions regarding the event that had taken his son's life. Helkias had brought Yonah with him to call upon Espina and speak with him, but when they had reached his house they saw it was abandoned, and Joan Pablo, the Espinas' former servant, was taking away for his own use all that remained of the furnishings, a table and some chairs. Joan Pablo had told them the physician and his family had gone away.
    'Where have they gone?'
    The man had shaken his head. 'I know not.'
    Helkias had gone to the Priory of the Assumption to talk with Padre Sebastián Alvarez, but on his arrival he had thought for a confused moment that he had made a wrong turn in the road. Within the gate was a row of wagons and tumbrels. Nearby, three women were treading purple grapes in a large vat. Through the open door of what had been the chapel Helkias could see baskets of olives, and more grapes.
    When he had asked the women where the priory had been moved, one of them told him the Priory of the Assumption had been closed and the Hieronymite order had rented the property to their farmer.
    'And what of Padre Sebastián? Where is the prior?' he had asked. The woman had smiled at him and shook her head and shrugged, without stopping her treading.
     
    *
     
    Yonah had tried very hard to assume the