In the wacky world of late medieval Spain — where gam­bling was a major crime — con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty could be a get-out-of-jail-free card. A new­ly con­vert­ed gam­bler didn’t have to pay his debts of hon­or if his cred­i­tors were Jew­ish, because a Jew couldn’t go after a Chris­t­ian and the Church author­i­ties, pleased at gain­ing a new soul, would ignore a first offense.

When I began research­ing A Ceil­ing Made of Eggshells, my nov­el for kids ten and up about the expul­sion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, I knew lit­tle more than that there had been an expul­sion and that my ances­tors on my father’s side had been among the expelled. As I read the his­to­ry, I felt that I had entered a dream­scape, where ordi­nary under­stand­ing was no longer applied.

Some dis­cov­er­ies charmed me: an author­i­ty on Jew­ish law laid out the cir­cum­stances when it was accept­able to break the Sab­bath to pre­pare an amulet for a sick per­son; among a list of occu­pa­tions car­ried out by Jews, I found lion-tamers!

Oth­er dis­cov­er­ies were just odd: at one time, shoes worn by Jews old­er than fif­teen were taxed semi-annu­al­ly. (Footwear was made to last back then; the same pair of shoes may have been taxed many times and paid even­tu­al­ly by an heir.)

Anoth­er dis­cov­ery gob­s­macked me: priests and monks invad­ed syn­a­gogues at will dur­ing ser­vices to harangue the con­gre­ga­tion about eter­nal hell­fire. The only con­straint on the cler­ics was occa­sion­al leg­is­la­tion lim­it­ing their num­bers in the synagogues.

But one dis­cov­ery was par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling. I had to read this fact more than once from more than one source to under­stand it: in the Mid­dle Ages, in all the king­doms that would become mod­ern Spain, Jews were the prop­er­ty — lit­er­al­ly — of the mon­archs. This was an odd sort of slav­ery because Jews could move about and choose their own occu­pa­tions, but if a Jew was injured or died, com­pen­sa­tion went to the monarch who was con­sid­ered to have tak­en the loss.

Some­times this bondage worked to the advan­tage of the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion, espe­cial­ly dur­ing peri­ods when Jews were pros­per­ous, because the roy­als pro­tect­ed their assets. But when ordi­nary Chris­tians were angry with the king, they attacked his pos­ses­sions — his cas­tles and his Jews.

Dis­turbing­ly famil­iar was the badge — some­times yel­low, some­times red — that Jews had to wear; unfa­mil­iar was the fact that rich Jews could buy their way out of the requirement.

The Inqui­si­tion was insti­tut­ed king­dom-wide in 1480, and most­ly per­se­cut­ed con­ver­sos, con­verts to Chris­tian­i­ty, who were sus­pect­ed of Judaiz­ing, or con­tin­u­ing their for­mer wor­ship since the con­ver­sion was often forced. The pos­ses­sions of the accused were impound­ed, and, if there was a con­vic­tion, shared between the Church and the mon­archs. The Inqui­si­tion was lucrative!

Prac­tic­ing Jews were drawn into the Inquisition’s net, too, pressed to inform on con­ver­sos, who might be fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends, busi­ness part­ners, or clients. A Jew­ish butcher’s Chris­t­ian cus­tomers, for instance, would cer­tain­ly be Judaiz­ers, or they wouldn’t want kosher meat.

If a Jew were con­vict­ed of denounc­ing some­one false­ly, he or she would be relaxed, as it was called, or turned over into the hands of the sec­u­lar author­i­ties for execution.

The blood-libel tri­al known as the Holy Child of La Guardia is an exam­ple of bizarre Span­ish Inqui­si­tion jurispru­dence. A con­ver­so was led grad­u­al­ly by tor­ture and ter­ror to con­fess­ing — along with a few oth­er con­verts and sev­er­al prac­tic­ing Jews — to mur­der­ing a Chris­t­ian boy and using his heart and a com­mu­nion wafer in a mag­ic rite to destroy the Chris­tians of Spain by giv­ing them rabies. But, since the accused were all ques­tioned sep­a­rate­ly, their con­fes­sions var­ied, and each gave a dif­fer­ent loca­tion for the body. The most down-the-rab­bit-hole aspect of this is that no search was made for a body, and no child was ever declared miss­ing. But on Novem­ber 14, 1491, exe­cu­tions were car­ried out in an auto-de-fé, and riots took place across Spain fol­low­ing this bloody judgment.

My mar­gin­a­lia in my books reveal my sur­prise again and again: ! that the Crown exact­ed a depar­ture fee from the flee­ing Jews — who were not per­mit­ted to stay (unless they con­vert­ed); whoa! that the Crown col­lect­ed sev­er­al years’ advance income tax from the depart­ing Jews, so that the king­dom wouldn’t suf­fer for the loss of their indus­try; ai! that a ship’s cap­tain took pay­ment from Jews to trans­port them to North Africa and then sold them to pirates who would cap­ture them on the high seas and in turn sell them into slav­ery — not the roy­al kind.

This was a stranger world than any I had cre­at­ed in my fan­tasies for chil­dren, which include exot­ic crea­tures like drag­ons and ogres. How much of this world would I man­age to reflect? What had it been like to live when most peo­ple, not just Jews, had van­ish­ing­ly lit­tle agency? How did they regard them­selves and their lives?

I want­ed my main char­ac­ter to be a girl, though a girl would have less pow­er than any­one. How would she be able to move my sto­ry along?

There still were a few Jew­ish financiers and courtiers left in the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry, among them the philoso­pher Isaac Abra­vanel. I read a biog­ra­phy of him, plot­ted his trav­els across Spain, and his involve­ment in the great events of the day. Then I devel­oped a very loose ver­sion of him, Don Joseph Can­ta­la, and made him the grand­fa­ther of my pro­tag­o­nist, Loma. When Don Joseph’s wife dies of plague and Loma sur­vives against all expec­ta­tions, he becomes attached to her. Out of lone­li­ness, he brings her along with him on the mis­sions under­tak­en by the real Abravanel.

Ear­li­er, when Loma is struck with the plague and before her grand­moth­er becomes ill, her grand­moth­er ties her amulet around Loma’s neck to pro­tect her from the evil eye — intro­duc­ing medieval super­sti­tion. Trag­i­cal­ly, Loma believes for years that she caused her grandmother’s death because she had the amulet.

As a child, Loma is shy and afraid of dis­cord. Her grand­moth­er keeps her out of the syn­a­gogue until the cler­ics have left, but after her death, no one else thinks of this. When a ter­ri­fied Loma shrieks, a priest lifts her up and parades her about as an exam­ple of prop­er fear of hellfire.

To endow her with agency, I gave poor Don Joseph occa­sion­al spells — minor strokes in mod­ern terms — when Loma has no choice but to act. But because I didn’t want her to be a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry child in peri­od cos­tume, she cred­its God or her dead grand­moth­er for every smart action she takes. And I allowed her no oth­er ambi­tion than to be a wife and moth­er. The life she has isn’t the life she seeks.

The badge enters the sto­ry through its absence when Loma is briefly kid­napped by a cou­ple who plan to bap­tize her and adopt her. The lack of a badge, though she’s clear­ly a Jew, con­vinces her cap­tors that she comes from a promi­nent fam­i­ly and there will be con­se­quences if they keep her.

Loma’s old­er broth­er, a com­pul­sive gam­bler, does con­vert to avoid the con­se­quences of a bad luck streak. When one of his unpaid Jew­ish cred­i­tors is accused by inquisi­tors of tak­ing part in the La Guardia blood libel plot, he takes revenge by nam­ing the broth­er as a co-conspirator.

That the Jews belong to Fer­di­nand and Isabel­la is one of the argu­ments advanced by Don Joseph when he tries to per­suade the mon­archs not to go through with the expul­sion. He points out that, unlike oth­er sub­jects who also owe alle­giance to a bish­op or a noble, the Jews’ loy­al­ty is undivided.

I loved the research and the writ­ing. A Ceil­ing Made of Eggshells became a tapes­try for me, as I wove in the threads of his­to­ry. But I failed to include even one lion tamer!