by Neal Roberts
Menachem strains to recall whether he was indeed humming before she made herself known. For an instant he cannot recall any part of his life that took place before she spoke to him. Then he remembers Rachel, and the song. “I think it’s called ‘Greensleeves.’”
“That’s what I thought. My father wrote that song,” she says wistfully. She steps forward, lifts her skirts off the floor, and perches delicately on a bench facing the fire, only a few feet before him. Although he can feel the fire’s heat at his back, all he can think of is the warmth exuding from her.
“Are you a cook?” he ventures.
“No,” she replies, “although this is my kitchen. Are you the grocer’s boy?”
He bows courteously. “At your service,” he pronounces beautifully, just as he was taught by Aunt Sarah.
The Red Lady (which is how he now thinks of her) giggles with delight.
“And what is your name, squire?”
He plays along with her elevated courtliness. “I am known as Menachem, madam.”
“And your surname?” she asks. He looks at her, puzzled. She rephrases her question. “Your family name?”
“I have no surname,” he replies humbly.
“Well,” she says, “I can see you are a quick learner, anyhow.”
“And what, may I ask, is your name?”
She muses for a moment before answering. “You may ask, squire. I think that I shall not tell you my first name, for you may not call me by it. But my surname is ‘Tudor.’” She stresses the word “surname,” as though to caress him for attentiveness to his lessons.
Menachem’s mind races. He has heard that name before. “Is that not the name of the royal house of England?”
She smiles. “Why, yes, Menachem, it is!” When she says his name, it sounds like Manokkem.
After a moment’s thought, he ventures: “Are you a relative of the Queen?”
She regards him forlornly. “Alas, I am not. But where is my potato?”
As Menachem is about to hand it to her, she snatches it away, and her coy expression dares him to snatch it back. She is too quick for him, tossing it from one hand to the other, always too gingerly for him to reach. She giggles, and the music in her voice makes her seem little more than a schoolgirl having him on. She raises the potato over her head, and Menachem, not about to be defeated, places a foot on the bench beside her and steps up. Reaching as high as he can, he tugs the potato from her grasp.
He steps back down and sees that her expression has changed in an instant. Now she seems to be fighting off a sadness. Although he doubts it has anything to do with the potato, he kneels before her and offers it back to her with both hands.
She laughs despite herself, and tries in vain to fight the tears forming at the edges of her eyes. She blows her nose into her handkerchief. “You may keep the potato, Squire Menachem.”
“Why are you so sad?” he asks, sorry for any part he has played in her dismay.
She tries to speak several times, but no voice will emerge.
“Have you any children?” he asks.
She shakes her head, and the tears well up again. He has put his finger on it. He assures her calmly, “You are young and beautiful, and shall no doubt have many happy children.”
She draws herself together, and clears her throat.
“Alas,” she says, “I am so lowly a person that I lack the authority to make such decisions for myself.”
From the corner of his eye, he sees men with torches emerge from a big stone building far across the courtyard.
She sees him notice them. “They’re looking for someone.”
“For whom, I wonder?”
She laughs sulkily. “For me.”
The door behind him bursts open, nearly stopping his heart, and lets in a blast of cold air. It’s Avram, and he’s alone.
“Uncle!”
But Avram’s expression is frozen in amazement. His eyes, wide as saucers, are riveted on the Red Lady’s face, and at first he seems unaware that his nephew is in the room. Then he kneels reverently, his eyes downcast, and pulls Menachem beside him by the back of his shirt, pressing him down onto bended knee.
“Forgive him, madam, please. He is just a boy who knows nothing.”
She smirks. “He has done nothing requiring an apology, Goodman Grocer. But you do him wrong to say he knows nothing.” She casts Menachem an appraising eye. “He speaks English beautifully.” Her glance darts skeptically from the small, swarthy grocer to the tall young boy whose hair is very nearly the color of her own. “Is he of your family?”
Avram fixes his stare on a place just before the lady’s feet. “He is distantly related, madam. His parents lived in Poland, but … passed away in a fire.”
“How dreadful!” she replies. “His English has nothing of the Pole about it. He is not Polish, is he?”
“Indeed, he is not, madam. His people went to Poland from Flanders many years ago, but they continued to speak English in their home.”
She nods knowingly. “That is because they are English, having been deported to Flanders by my illustrious ancestor Edward the First. Is that not right?”
Beads of sweat begin to form on Avram’s forehead and glisten in the red light of the coals. “You are correct, madam.”
“An achievement of which my family can be right proud,” she says sardonically. “How long has he been with you in England?”
“Less than a fortnight, madam.”
To Menachem’s young eyes, an idea seems to be forming in the lady’s mind.
She cocks her head. “In such a brief time, has anyone in your family grown especially fond of him?” Avram evidently has no idea how to respond. “Do not be coy, Goodman Grocer. You know what I mean. Would your wife or children be bereft by his absence?”
Avram is dumbstruck, his eyes now boring a hole in a spot before her feet. Menachem somehow has the strange feeling that his life is being negotiated between the Red Lady and Avram, and that the Red Lady clearly has the upper hand. Avram appears to be drowning.
“Well, madam,” Avram shrugs. “We all welcome him, but it is the women who seem to be especially fond of him, especially my daughter.”
The Red Lady looks askance at Menachem and smiles bitterly, as though she knows him to be the devil himself. “I can understand that, Goodman Grocer.” She straightens herself and stands up to her full height, a simple motion that nearly causes Avram to swoon.
She regards Menachem, and sighs. “You are beloved of women. You sing well, and speak beautifully. All in all, you seem headed for an easy life, Goodman Menachem.” She brings her chin up to a proud height. “I shall ensure that your life is made less easy” — Menachem looks up at her imploringly — “but far more meaningful” — she hesitates — “and important. Goodman Grocer, would your family object to my placing this boy under my protection, in the custody of an educator at Merton College, Oxford?”
“But, madam, there is the matter of his Hebrew religion — ”
She waves away his concern. “His private religious practice will be fully respected, and he will be permitted to visit with you and your lovelorn daughter on holidays.”
Avram’s shoulders fall in relief. Through the windows, torches approach, ever closer to the cottage. The shouts of men can now be heard, some guttural, others belonging to cultured nobility.
“Your name is Añes, is that correct?” she asks.
“It is, madam.”
“Well, let’s make his a little more English,” she says pensively. “He shall be known as ‘Noah Ames.’ Now, will that be all, Goodman Añes?”
“Yes, madam. Thank you, madam.”
“You are most welcome. I will send for Goodman Ames in a few days.”
The torches are now very close. Menachem is sure that, if the kitchen were illuminated by more than glowing embers, the men outside would have discovered the Red Lady well before now. Down the dark corridor behind the lady, there is a loud banging on the heavy front door, throug
h which a man commands sternly, “Open up, in the name of the Queen!”
Now the lady’s eyes open wide. “Go!” she says excitedly, waving them out the rear door.
Avram scoops Menachem violently into his arms and rushes out of the door, shutting it quietly behind him. At first he appears to duck down, but Menachem sees that his knees have buckled beneath him. Avram struggles to stand again, and rushes away toward the oxcart, pulling Menachem behind him by the hand. Reaching the bushes, Avram lowers his head and quietly vomits.
While Avram composes himself and feebly struggles to find a water bladder in the cart, Menachem watches through the windows of the cottage as a strange scene unfolds.
A man and a boy enter through the front door. The man is quite stout, and appears to suffer from a crippling foot injury. Discovering the Red Lady, he claps his hands in relief and collapses into a chair, removing one boot and rubbing his foot, while the boy lights candles throughout the kitchen. The lady’s hair is just the color Menachem perceived in the firelight. The man dispatches the boy through the front door. Although Menachem cannot hear the instructions given the boy, he assumes he has been sent to assure the other search parties that the Red Lady is found.
The man’s voice is too deep to make out, but the words of the lady, though muffled by the windows, can be heard. “Sir Henry,” she says, “I have told you that I will not be kept under guard like a common criminal!” She kneels to massage his wounded foot. “Your gout must be so painful! Poor Neville!” She wags an admonishing finger. “How could you allow yourself to be enlisted on a pointless errand such as this?”
Sir Henry places his hands sympathetically on her shoulders, and peers deeply into her eyes. Although she stamps her foot and turns away, from that point the voices die down, and the lady’s words can no longer be heard.
“Menachem,” whispers Avram, “come over here, out of the light.” He places himself and the boy outside the view from the cottage windows. Sounding exhausted, he points to a stump and says, “Sit.” He stoops and hugs Menachem as though he loves him more than his own life, and begins to quake, although whether from fear or relief Menachem could not say. “It is true, what they say. God protects children and fools. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, the Lord is One.” He draws his nephew’s face from his chest, holds him squarely by the shoulders, and looks him in the eye.
Menachem can no longer bear the silence. “Who was the Red Lady?”
Avram regards him incredulously. “Who did she say she was?”
“When I asked her, she would not tell me her first name, and said her family name is ‘Tudor.’ But she said she is not related to the Queen.” Voice full of concern, he asks, “Will they hurt her?”
Avram regards him skeptically. “Think hard, Menachem. Is that exactly what she said?”
“I — I asked her if she was a relative of the Queen, and she said” — his eyes roll up in deep recollection — “‘alas, I am not.’”
Although Avram is apparently losing patience, he says indulgently, “Menachem, we are Jews. We live by our wits, or we do not live long. If a lady at the Tower tells you she is named ‘Tudor,’ but she is not a relative of the Queen, then who is she? You know this. Who is she?”
Menachem’s furrowed brow slowly relaxes. Much of what he has heard and seen begins to fall into place. Tears stream from his eyes.
“She is the Queen.”
Chapter 1
34 Years Later
February 26, 1592
Southwark, England
THE PLAGUE THAT has terrorized the locals, leaving a horrible toll in its wake, appears to be ebbing at long last. Although few families have been left entirely untouched, a palpable relief now pervades the town.
For each of the past two years, the Master of the Revels has ordered the closing of all London theaters during the plague-ridden months of summer and autumn. Starving troupes of professional players have been forced to earn their meager bread touring the country.
But even during the worst years, the plague recedes each winter, allowing theaters to reopen. Most are as unroofed as any papist abbey desecrated at the hands of Henry the Eighth, and a roofless theater is unusable during cold winter months. But The Rose does particularly well then, as its thatched roof blocks the wind over the Thames from sweeping down onto the audience.
On this particular Saturday in February, a chill breeze blusters through the theater windows, bracing but bearable. Every avid theatergoer knows that by late afternoon the frigid wind will shift and stream full gale through the windows, setting everyone’s teeth on icy edge.
It’s a bright early afternoon at The Rose, and excitement mounts in the crowded house. In a few minutes, Lord Strange’s Men will take to the stage to debut a new play: The Jew of Malta, by the same Kit Marlowe who penned Edward the Second. That play ended with a red-hot poker being shoved up the arse of a deposed king, inflicting upon the monarch an excruciating death and titillating the audience with a frisson of gleeful horror.
One never knows how far Marlowe will go to shock, but his occasionally enthralling verse provides cover for any nobleman wishing to attend. Despite their masks, however, noblemen are required by the demands of gentility to make a show of averting their eyes from his more lurid displays.
Noah Ames now sits beside his good friend Henry Neville in costly seats aside The Rose’s stage. From here, Noah can see what the groundlings cannot: Concealed by the makeshift curtain suspended across center stage are many artfully disorganized stacks of gold-painted coins. Kettles and other household items, also falsely gilded, are carefully arranged to appear carelessly strewn among the coins.
“How goes my old schoolmaster Savile?” asks Henry.
Noah smiles fondly to think on the man who taught him how to get along as a secret Jew in a Christian world, while having no such experience himself. “He is well, and happy so long as he can spend all his time writing. I hope his work can be read when it’s complete, as his writing seems an unbroken script of undulating waves. Someone once asked to see his travel journal from our European tour, and could not make heads or tails of it. Gave it up in an hour or two.”
“I remember everything about that tour,” says Henry. “We should write a journal of it ourselves, so that it will not be lost to posterity.”
“As a barrister, I have little choice but write … however haltingly.” Noah turns to Henry. “But I did not know you to be a writer.”
Henry’s face reddens, and he looks away. “No, not I.”
An actor cloaked in the black gabardine of the comic Jew strides to center stage on the actor’s side of the curtain, his face painted into a cunning expression, his eyes sharpened. Smiling briefly at Henry and Noah, he assumes the face of the wicked Jew and tugs the curtain open dramatically, allowing the offstage audience its first glimpse of the gilded trove.
Ooohs and aaaahs arise from the groundlings. Noah can see a quite different reaction from those in the balcony, where the wealthy and noble smile into their sleeves at the groundlings’ ignorance in crediting these trashy props as a plausible representation of gold.
Although the house appeared to be full until now, Noah notices with curiosity that one of the largest boxes in the balcony remains vacant and dark.
The player hugs a golden kettle, runs his hands lovingly through the clinking coins, and, in what passes for a thick Jewish accent, shouts loud enough to overcome the audience’s murmur:
So that of thus much that return was made:
And of the third part of the Persian ships,
There was the venture summed and satisfied.
Henry covers his mouth with his hand and mutters. “Good Lord! Is that how a Jew speaks English?”
Noah replies, cupping his hand over his own mouth. “Who can say? There have been no Jews in England for three hundred years.” But, of all people, he knows best the falsity of his own remark. He wonders yet again how no one has ever guessed at his own Jewishness, at least not with any seriousness
.
Though sometimes he feels himself a chameleon adapting his color to his gentile surroundings, in truth his concealment requires little effort, as nothing that can be seen in a mirror reveals his Hebrew race. Nor does his manner of speech. Still, one would think that someone as close as Henry to the workings of his inner mind would have suspected him before now.
Barabas, the gold-loving Jew of Malta, is visited by two merchants. To the second, he proudly proclaims,
Rather had I a Jew be hated thus,
Than pitied in a Christian poverty:
He turns to face the audience with a sneer of contempt.
For I can see no fruits in all their faith,
But malice, falsehood, and excessive pride,
Which methinks fits not their profession.
The crowd hisses. At this, Henry slaps his leg, briefly winces in self-inflicted pain, and draws close to Noah’s ear. “Marlowe’s got it right on that score. Christendom is a world of hypocrites.” He surveys the stern-faced crowd. “Still, it will not do to have it writ down, or publicly pronounced.”
Suddenly, the play comes to an abrupt, unscripted halt, the players standing silently on their marks attempting to remain in character, their respectful attention acutely riveted on the vacant box in the balcony. Evidently, they have been signaled that some dignitary has arrived fashionably late and is now making his or her way in. The groundlings silently turn to see who is so important that his arrival is allowed to interrupt such a long-awaited performance.
Henry leans close to Noah, using the hiatus to complete his thought. “Half of Parliament think Kit Marlowe is a recusant papist. The other half is sure he’s an atheist, of all things.” He shakes his head. “I half expect the Master of the Revels to shut down this play before its debut has finished.”
“What do you think Marlowe believes, as far as religion?” asks Noah quietly.