Cathedral

by Ben Hopkins

  Manfred looks at the stranded passengers. Something is wrong. Their faces are not grateful, frightened, hopeful. Their faces are blank. Cold.

  The woman on the bank abruptly stops her wailing. She picks up her baby and walks into the forest. A sudden, gelid silence falls. The men on the stranded boat now all have swords, axes. Stepping out from the forest’s gloom, a dozen archers, arrows ready on taut, straining strings.

  “My name is Staubmantel,” says a voice. “All of you. Get off the boat.”

  † † †

  They’re not much older than his son, the two of them. Bitter, brutal faces. Rough fingers rub at the weave of his cote, test the velvet of his cap. “A rich one here, a Rich One.”

  “Bring him to me.” Staubmantel speaks.

  Darkness is coming. A small clearing in the forest, a bowshot from the shipwreck shore. A bonfire. A soup pot. Grimy-faced women making food. The bandits, three dozen of them or more; men, women, children. Some with plate- and chainmail like Knights. Some with shields, all of them armed.

  A temporary encampment; kick over the fire, pour water on the ashes and it’s gone. A movable base.

  Staubmantel stands above Manfred, one head taller, maybe more. A scar judders across his forehead and cheek; souvenir of the slash of a sword. “A Rich One, is he?” His chainmailed hand slashes out, lashing across Manfred’s cheek. “Don’t look at me, you Dog.”

  Manfred faces the ground as the bandit’s hand gropes over his body, clutching at his clothes, the velvet, the supple Anglian wool, the silk scarf. “Merchant are you, Dog?”

  “Yes.” A whisper.

  “Hiding amongst the Pilgrims?”

  “Yes.”

  “Welcome to Fortune’s Wheel, Dog. See it spin.”

  The boys start sawing at his belt with their knives, cutting at the purse straps. Manfred pushes at them. “Stop! I’ll just give it to you!”

  The boy hits him in the eye with the pommel of his dagger. “We don’t take orders from you.” Manfred’s hands clutch at his throbbing head. The purse falls.

  Staubmantel counts. “A handful of pennies and heller. Is that all this Dog is worth?”

  “I KNOW THAT BASTARD!” A voice from the fire. Standing now, putting aside his soup. Carious teeth, gapped. One eye long gone, covered by a scarred and twitching lid. Finger trembling as it points at Manfred. “I know him.”

  Manfred swallows. “I don’t know you.”

  “Because I got away. If I hadn’t, you’d have stuck me like a pig.” He spits from his rotting mouth. “Staubmantel. This one. He led the raid on the Albe camp.”

  Frost fingers scuttle around Manfred’s heart. And clutch. He gasps. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Manfred Gerber. It must be Manfred Gerber.” Staubmantel laughs. “Manfred Dog Gerber. WE GOT HIM!”

  “I’m not Gerber!” Manfred struggles against the kicks and blows now raining on him. Wild, his eyes look for the Jews. As if they could help him. As if they would.

  † † †

  Through the darkling forest, traces of dusk still cling to the gaps between the trees. Stumbling through half-seen paths, brambles, briars. Kicked from behind by his two warder-boys. Hands bound behind his back. Thinking to himself like a prayer, You’ll be all right, you’ll be all right. They’ll want a ransom. A big ransom, but you’ll be all right. You’re worth two hundred marks. More. Grete will find it. She’ll sell some boats. Borrow from Schäffer. Pawn the house. You’ll be all right, you’ll be all right.

  A camp in the woods. A makeshift hunting shelter; a mighty beech at the centre, and from its first branches, a roof of wicker and wattle, spreading wide. Under the cover, a pit dug for a fire, a roasting haunch of meat. A trestle table, laden with food and wine. Two of the Basel women, brought here, stripped naked, kneeling, trembling, awaiting their fate.

  “We have Gerber! We have Gerber!” The boys shout out. “Master!”

  A tall man, broad shouldered, by the fire. Fine cloak of light blue wool, hood of silk. He turns, his steel breastplate, polished, reflects the flames.

  Manfred knows the face. He knows it. “This is Gerber?” A deep voice, rich. A refined accent, Old Alsatian, like a nobleman.

  He approaches. The boys kick at the back of Manfred’s knees so that he falls to the leafy ground, kneeling before the Master. The Unnamed.

  The Master looks down at him. The face. Hooked nose, dark eyes. Manfred knows the face. He’s seen it in the past. Not in a forest, amongst bandits, in firelight. But in broad day, through incense smoke.

  In the Cathedral.

  “Gerber? Do you know me?”

  “No, sire.”

  “I think you do.”

  The Count von Schwanenstein.

  The Count nods. “And so you do.” He crouches down to look in Manfred’s eyes. Manfred’s heart pounds. Sickness crawls in his stomach. “A shame. We could have made a pretty ransom with you. But no one may know my name.”

  Manfred’s throat is dry. He stutters, can find no spit.

  “Sorry? Do you want to say something?”

  “I can help you,” he croaks.

  “I don’t think you can, Gerber.” He stands, sweeps his hand, commanding. “Fetch the rope!”

  “I can help you! The Jews, the two Jews . . . ”

  “What Jews is he babbling about?”

  The two boys turn from the horse’s saddle where they are unravelling the rope. “Two Jews on board the pilgrim boat, master. They don’t look like much.”

  “One of them is Meir Rosheimer. He’s worth a fortune. Five hundred marks. Let me go, I’ll give you a hundred. One hundred and fifty.”

  The Count of Schwanenstein sighs. “We’re not in a marketplace, Gerber. Here I decide the price of things.”

  The boys have the rope now. They throw it over a branch. Set a bench there beneath it.

  The rope swings. The fire burns. The two pilgrim women sob, turn away. One of them has beautiful breasts. All Manfred wants is to be with that woman, one last time.

  The boys bring him to his feet. In Manfred’s mind: his son’s broken figure on the Cologne quay, Grete’s smile, the touch of his father’s hand. His mother. He can hardly see her, she died when he was so young.

  His knees are trembling so much, they hardly need to kick the bench away. He would have fallen anyway, of his own accord.

  † Manfred Gerber (1212–1247)

  SHIPWRECK

  (ANNO 5007. YUDL BEN YITZHAK IV)

  Come here, Boy,” says Emmerich, his face bright with pride. “Let me kiss you.”

  Yudl comes, lets the Strawhead Goy take him in his arms and plant a kiss on his grateful brow. “You’re learning fast. That’s a fine price you got us there . . . A fine price. I’m proud of you.”

  Yudl’s New World; the bureau in the Ehlestrasse, the teeming city dock, the Counting House where foreign coins are weighed and changed. For his apprenticeship Emmerich gives him a purse of silver every week to go and buy wares to sell on the “stopping barges,” the ships that dock at every river pier and jetty, selling trinkets, pots, tools and small bales of cloth.

  As he walks home through the Hagenburg streets, Yudl shines. He thinks of the web of trade stretching out from his purse’s silver, the pewter candlesticks bought here in the Wachsgassl workshop carried by the tireless pedlar over hill and valley to the high parishes above the Rhine. He imagines the pedlar’s rasping sing-song as he approaches the village, the toll of his bell, the dogs barking and snapping at his feet, the peasants’ worn pennies ruefully given. And then he sees the end of the journey, the final result: the candlestick standing above a smoke-black hearth in the foothills of the Alps. The triumph of trade.

  Hands behind his back, Schäffer and Associates’ new Apprentice passes through the markets, the hawkers and beggars. The Abomination holds no terror for him anymor
e; as he walks past he stares it down, forbidding its dominion over him; just a pile of stones and vain idols, an excrescence of the sinful earth.

  In the Judengasse he heads for the beth midrash, takes his place in the second row of lecterns, addresses himself to the Word of the Lord. Now that his Father has gone to Speyer, he is free. He studies no more and no less than is expected of any Good Jew. The Rabbi may grumble, but Uncle Meir is on Yudl’s side. Yes, they need scholars and scribes, but they also need traders and merchants. When the beth midrash guttering springs a leak, who is it that pays for repairs?

  It is a bright, golden late winter, mild and hopeful. Every few days storms gather above the Vogesen and scour the earth with rain, but the darkness never tarries, the clouds scatter in high, soaring winds and the sun returns, teasing forth the buds in the courtyard trees. Outside the haberdasher shop, his Mother sits in sunlight, awaiting custom, and sometimes, when work is slow, Yudl, Meir and Emmerich join her on the low, smoke-blackened stools that once sat round the family hearth. There they talk of the network of trade that Schäffer and Associates are building along the rivers of Rhine, Danube and Rhône. With her profits from the shop, Mother buys shares in the cargoes, and smiles when the letters arrive from Speyer and Ulm, showing her gains. Her heart seems light and easy, laughing happily at their jokes.

  And Yudl watches her carefully. And never once does she step out of the bounds of propriety. Always keeping her distance from the Gentile guest, never taking something directly from his hands in case their skin might touch, and if laughing, always covering her mouth and looking to the ground, in case she might tempt him with Frivolity.

  Since his Father is gone, the House in the Judengasse sighs with relief, laughter rings out from the kitchen where the women now gather to gossip and sew. The Secret Red Book has gone too, and with it the compulsion to uncover what is hidden; the pale, troglodyte truths beneath the stones.

  It will be a Golden Spring.

  

  . . . the Nations are torn by division, the Emperor wars with the Hierarch of Babylon, the Gentiles draw lots, take sides, fight amongst themselves. At the Gates of the East, the Mongol horde waits to sweep through the collapsing kingdoms. A letter has come to us from a Jew of Bessarabia under the Mongol dominion. He says that the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel wait in the rear of the Mongol armies, beyond the river Sambatyon. Their shining vanguard has been seen on the horizon. It cannot be long now until the Days of Tribulation when—

  The voices called him from the street. “Yudl! Yudl! Come quickly!”

  The previous summer, once again reading the Book of Secrets. His Father’s ravings, his vengeful dreams based on faded letters, copies of copies of copies from unknown sources in distant lands. “Yudl, come quickly! Your father! The beth midrash!”

  Yudl puts the book back in its place, locks the library door, hides the key, runs outside. Minchin and other boys waiting for him in the doorway, huddling from the midsummer rain. “What is it?” “Your father! He’s gone mad! Mad! He attacked Aberle!”

  Running the fifty steps to the beth midrash, racing inside to find his Father, pale and distraught, his eyes rolling in a ghostly, mask-like face. His limbs and body possessed by some uncontrolled power, a marionette plucked this way and that by unseen strings, held down by the Gabbai, two boys holding his feet. Nearby, dabbing his bleeding nose with a rag, Aberle, trembling.

  “Father, what happened!” “Yudl, Yudl . . . ” his Father’s hand reaches out, clutches at Yudl’s face. “My son! My son!”

  Yudl flinches, as if his Father’s hands were claws. He turns to the chorus of shocked and pale faces. “What happened?”—“He attacked Aberle! Jumped on him!”—“Aberle took Yitzhak’s place at his lectern!”—“So what, do you kill a man for using your lectern?”—“No, but . . . ” Aberle stamps his foot. “I just put my book down on it for a short while, I didn’t mean . . . ”—“You provoked him on purpose! You want his place at the Rabbi’s right hand!”—“And don’t I deserve it? I’m a scholar, not a lunatic like him!”

  Yudl looks round wildly as the babble of accusations and counter-accusations rises. He finds the Rabbi seated in the corner, holding his head in his hands. “Take him home, Yudl. He needs rest.”

  As the summer faded and the High Holidays came, Yudl’s Father retreated into silence. He hardly left his library, only going to the beth midrash when the Law required it of him. When Yudl went up the stairs to visit, he found him hunched over a book, unmoving, seemingly not even reading, just staring at the Letters as if they were some great, mute mystery.

  On the night of Yom Kippur, they lay prostrated on the floor of the beth midrash, wrapped in their shrouds. As the Cantor rose to recite the penitential chatanu prayer, his Father cried out, his eyes wide in his face, foam on his lips, “They are coming! They are coming!” And he raced out into the street.

  Yudl followed, half-tripping over his kittel, into the damp dirt of the Judengasse. Darkness. From a few shutters, the dim, guttering light of tallow candles, kept burning by the women in vigil, waiting for the men to return from schul. His father stumbled to the alleyway that runs past their house. “The Goyyim are coming! The Goyyim!”

  There are the stories, handed down from generation to generation. That the Goyyim wait for Yom Kippur night, when all the Jewish men are in their synagogues, prostrated in repentance. Then they creep into the Jewish quarter and enter the Jewish homes, and take the women in their beds and fornicate with them.

  The Judengasse shutters opened, the women, pale in candlelight, stared outside, frightened at the noise. But there were no Goyyim sneaking through the dark streets. Only Yitzhak Rosheimer, frothing at the mouth, and his shamed son Yudl, trying to grab hold of his flailing, desperate arms . . .

  

  Yudl dreams that his Father is dead. Drowned in the mikve, struck down by leprosy, killed by robbers. He dreams that he will never return from his convalescence in Speyer. He dreams that (God forbid!) his widowed Mother marries the Strawhead Goy.

  Opening his eyes from half-sleep, Yudl tells himself that these are sinful dreams. He knows that the dreaming mind is adrift on a trackless, unknown sea, but that the dreamer is the Helmsman, setting the course. Rubbing his eyes, he sees the first light of dawn seeping through the shutters. He waves his hands, dismissing his dreams, and recites: I give thanks before You, Living and Eternal King, that You have returned my soul with compassion.

  Early winter afternoon in the Ehlestrasse bureau. Yudl and Emmerich are reckoning their takings, the coins and promissory notes from the year’s last convoys. They are alone in the office, the assistants have left early for the Martinmas feast; the first barrels of the year are being breached, crowds are gathering outside the Cathedral for the Festival of the New Wine.

  Yudl doesn’t look up from the Counting Table. His heart is beating fast. He must say it now or forever leave it unsaid.

  “There are people who say that you are my father.”

  Emmerich holds still. Lays down his quill. Silence. Ink drops from the nib, blotting the page, spreading, a black rose.

  His voice shakes. “I would be proud to be, Yudl.”

  Yudl looks up from the coins and figures. But Emmerich is looking away, staring at the blank wall as if the sad story of the past were written there. “Your Mother and I, when we were young. Your age. We liked each other. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen . . . ” He pauses, collects himself. “And she, the Lord only knows why, liked me. She would watch me as I went about my business in the Quarter. Your Father was always in the synagogue, studying. But your uncle noticed. And sent me to Mayenz to be apprenticed, moved me out of the way, out of trouble. Then you were born, with fair hair. And although I was far away, the Gossipers started their work.”

  Emmerich now turns to face him. His grey eyes are surprisingly still, steady.

  That evening, Yudl i
s at home, alone, sitting in his father’s library. The room smells of soot and sadness. Yudl runs his hand over the desk, piling up a ridge of dust. He sits, pulls a random book from the shelf, opens it. Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, a Hebrew translation from the original Arabic. His Father’s favourite.

  He starts to read, thinking of his Father’s beautiful voice, reciting the Torah. Fervent, musical and true.

  On the page, the letters suddenly swim and meld. A haze of words, dim, as if seen through mists. Yudl’s hands dab at his eyes as his tears fall on the page and a sob rises up from deep within him, from that forgotten place full of bitter, hateful love.

  

  In the beth midrash, an early spring night, the lamps burning. Yudl and the elders of the community face each other on the rough benches. The Rabbi reads the letter aloud.

  . . . Meir is less convinced of this than me, but he accepts its terrible logic. The Rabbi will know that Maimonides, he of blessed memory, has said that it is a mitzvah to pay a ransom for a captive. But he will also know the shameful case of Levi bar Darga, who paid an excessive ransom of 13,000 dinars for his daughter. And he will know that the Mishnah says that one must not ransom captives for such high sums, for to do so is to encourage the venal to target Jews for ransom in future.

  They killed Manfred Gerber, whose wealth is similar to my brother Meir’s. They did not ransom him, but executed him. And they are holding us ransom for five hundred marks, a terrible sum that will bankrupt our family and cause hardship to our Hagenburg community which relies so much on the Rosheimer wealth for its well-being.

  We therefore plead to you. Do not pay our ransom. Should you pay it, other Jews and other communities will be targeted and endangered.

  Do not give our captors this encouragement to ransom other Jews.