As a young boy in seventeenth-century Portugal, Juan Pereira lived a Christian life with his mother and father, but he often wondered why he was not a choir boy like most of his friends. One fateful night, he discovers the truth: he is of Jewish descent, and his real name is not Juan but Benjamin. That same night, the secret hiding place of the Jews is discovered by the Inquisition, and Benjamin loses his mother and father to martyrdom. Forced to flee Portugal, Benjamin finds solace in the guidance of Senor Rodriguez, his parents' trusted friend. They search for a safe place for Jews to live, far from the raging fires of persecution. It is in the midst of this search that Benjamin encounters Rachel da Sousa, and they fall in love. Forced to leave Europe to freely live as Jews, the couple takes to the high seas and heads for the New World. The high seas are dangerous, and the new world isn't much safer. With the help of Samuel, an African slave in search of his lost brother, and Adario, a Huron Native American, Benjamin and Rachel find hope in a free future, but nothing goes as planned. Soon separated, the lovers must find a way to reunite and finally discover a place to call home.

CHILDREN OF THE COVENANT

By JANE FRANCES AMLER

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Jane Frances Amler
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-3240-9

Chapter One

The heavy door slammed shut, leaving Juan Pereira, his mother, and his father at the top of a stairway leading down into blackness. Juan's mother lit a torch and then handed it to his father who began the descent. Juan followed them down a long, dark staircase, his hands slipping along the rock outcroppings and damp earthen walls, his feet slipping on the moldy, wet stone steps, so that he had to take one careful step at a time. Ants, centipedes, and worms wove in and out of the dirt; spiders scurried up his legs, so that he stifled a cry. He didn't want to follow his parents. Darkness surrounded him, and the damp air was thick and hard to breathe. He thought of the sunlight piercing the red and violet stained glass windows in church that morning. He began to hum the music he had heard the choir boys sing, their voices echoing against the walls of agate, lapis lazuli, and alabaster, then soaring to the heights of the vaulted ceiling. It seemed to him now, as he descended into the earth, that as they sang they could have ascended past the priest, whose arms had been raised as he talked of heretics, past the gilded high altar, past the stain glass windows to God.

"Stop that!" his father said.

Juan stopped humming and wondered why he was not a choir boy. His family was as fine a Christian family as any of the others, yet he felt different, isolated from the other boys. Falling behind, the lighted torch too far ahead, he stumbled across a root and fell cutting his knee. His mother turned back and gently picked him up. He closed his eyes as he felt her warm arms and smelled the leafy scent of her skin. This was the way she had held him when he was young, but now he was too old for this embrace; he pulled away and brushed off the dirt. He looked up at his father and held his breath. The torch light flickered across his father's dark eyes, his brown velvet doublet, his finely combed goatee, and thin pressed lips. Juan wanted to reach out, touch his face, and wipe away the angry expression.

"Papa, I ..."

His father brought his finger to his lips to silence him, and without a word, turned, continued down the stairs. Juan had no choice but to follow.

"Where are we going? I don't want to know their secret. Why must we hide under the earth like this?" he thought, carefully picking his way around roots and stones.

They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and now a corridor stretched into complete darkness. The ceiling hung just above his father's head, and the corridor was so narrow that Juan could slide his fingers along both sides of the walls. He put his hands out in front of him, to ward off spirits or skeletons, which he was sure, would appear at any moment. They walked through the darkness for a long time. Juan tried to figure out what direction they were going but couldn't. Finally, they came to a door, and his father knocked five times, waited a moment, and then knocked twice. As the door opened and light began to pour out of the room, Juan closed his eyes, afraid of what he might see.

"Juan, open your eyes," his mother said softly, "and greet our friends."

Instead of bones and coffins, Juan saw his friends, Carlos and Beltran Saragossa, and behind them, their parents. He recognized the Vergaras, the Cazallas, the Pintos, and other friends of his parents, crowded in a small room carved from the earth. Men were standing next to benches which lined the four walls. Torches burned in each corner, and a wooden structure, with a six pointed star on each of two doors and two intricately carved wooden angles crowning the top, stood in the center of the room. Juan watched his mother join the cluster of women in the far corner. She smiled at him as his father said, "Come," and led Juan to the center of the room, to the wooden structure, to the other boys, to Senor Rodriguez.

Senor Rodriguez was slightly older than Juan's father, but a shock of white hair and the bushy white eye brows above his blue eyes made him unique from the other, darker men in the room. Whenever Juan met him in the shops, in church, in his father's home, he noticed that the man never smiled. Since Senor Rodriguez had no children, no wife, he lived alone. He stood before the three boys and said,

"Please be seated."

The men and boys sat on the smooth worn wooden benches, and Senor Rodriguez continued.

"It must seem strange to you that your mothers and fathers have brought you to this room. What you see here is not frightening or evil—it is just the opposite—it is holy. There was a time when this structure, the Ark, stood in the light of day." He opened its doors, behind which Juan saw a scroll wrapped in velvet, adorned with silver crowns and a breastplate, which reflecting the torch light, seemed to glow. Very carefully, Senor Rodriguez took it out. His father stood and helped him lay it on a wooden podium. As they took off its crowns, tiny silver bells softly jingled, causing Juan to shiver. They carried the scroll over to the boys, and Juan recoiled when he saw strange symbols written it.

"You need not be afraid of it, Juan," his father said. Senor Rodriguez added, "These writings tell the stories from the old testament. It is the story of Adam and Eve, of Noah and the Ark."

As Juan stared at the scroll, it seemed as if the serpentine symbols would strike him. He pulled his legs up onto the bench, hugging his knees, his feet not touching the floor, and looked down at the ground where he expected snakes to slither by. Carlos and Beltran bent over the scroll and gently touched it, but Juan turned his face away. He and his friends did not belong down here; he would have no part in it. He looked up to see his father glaring at him. His face hot, he stared back at the earth—he had angered his father again. He noticed that when he crossed himself, his father would turn away, and now he understood why. He turned to his mother who was watching him. He adored her, her face, her thin dark rose colored lips, her delicate nose and chin. Her wide brown eyes silently pleaded with him to do what his father asked, but he could not. Never having seen these symbols before, he wondered if they were evil incantations or black magic which could call up the dead!

Senor Rodriguez did not press him, but instead carried the scroll back to the podium and laid it down. Turning to the boys, he said, "Juan, Carlos, Beltran, you must understand, these stories are not evil, not sinful, but are taught within the Church. They speak of righteous men, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of Moses delivering the Jews out of Egypt."

Juan sat up straight when he heard the word Jews. Suddenly the room seemed too small, the ceiling hung too low, the air was cold and damp. He wanted to get up and run away, to turn again to his mother, but he dared not. He could not bear to know that she was a part of this, that this was something she wanted for him. His father, yes, he was the one who had brought him here, but not his mother! He closed his eyes and thought of the week before when he had been sick with fever. His mother had hovered over him, wiping his brow, lifting him so that he could sip on a clear broth. His father had stood in the doorway, not entering, not speaking. He had fallen asleep for what seemed like a moment, but when he woke, she was gone as if she had vanished.

Senor Rodriguez was saying, "Now, in 1642, we meet underground here in Lisbon to study and pray as our ancestors did for centuries throughout Portugal and Spain."...