1492

by MARY JOHNSON




1492

CHAPTER I

THE morning was gray and I sat by the sea near Palos
in a gray mood. I was Jayme de Marchena, and that
was a good, _old Christian_ name. But my grandmother
was Jewess, and in corners they said that she never
truly recanted, and I had been much with her as a child.
She was dead, but still they talked of her. Jayme de Marchena,
looking back from the hillside of forty-six, saw some
service done for the Queen and the folk. This thing and
that thing. Not demanding trumpets, but serviceable. It
would be neither counted nor weighed beside and against
that which Don Pedro and the Dominican found to say.
What they found to say they made, not found. They took
clay of misrepresentation, and in the field of falsehood sat
them down, and consulting the parchment of malice, proceeded
to create. But false as was all they set up, the time
would cry it true.

It was reasonable that I should find the day gray.