by Anne Rice
Before I could answer her, the wooden door to the chamber opened and the Sherriff appeared, fully armed, his hair wet with snow. He stepped aside as two serving boys dragged several trunks into the room, and then in came Meir.
His eyes fixed on Fluria, and he threw back his snow-covered hood.
Fluria fell into his open arms.
The Sherriff was in dreadful humor, which was to be expected.
“Br. Toby,” he said, “your advice to the faithful to pray to Little St. William produced a stunning result. The crowd stormed the house of Meir and Fluria for relics of Lea and have made off with all her clothes. Fluria, my dearest, it might have been wise of you to pack up all those dresses and bring them up here when you came.” He sighed again and looked around as if he wanted something on which he might bang his fist. “Miracles are being claimed already in the name of your daughter. Lady Margaret’s guilt has driven her on a little crusade.”
“Why didn’t I foresee this!” I said miserably. “I only thought to direct them away.”
Meir wrapped his arms all the more tightly around Fluria as if he could shield her from all these words. The man’s face was a marvel of resignation.
The Sherriff waited until the serving boys were gone, and the door was closed, and then he addressed the couple directly.
“The Jewry is under heavy guard and the small fires started have been put out,” he said. “Thank Heaven for your stone houses. And thank Heaven that Meir’s letters requesting donations have already been sent. And thank Heaven that the elders have given large gifts of gold marks to the friars and to the priory.”
He stopped and sighed. He glanced at me helplessly for an instant, then returned his attention to them.
“But I will tell you right now,” he said, “that nothing is going to stave off a massacre here except that your daughter, herself, should return and put an end to this mad rush to make her a saint.”
“Well, that is what will be done,” I said before either of them could speak up. “I’m on my way to Paris now. I assume I will find Br. Godwin your advocate in the Dominican Chapter House near the University? I’ll begin my journey tonight.”
The Sherriff was unsure. He looked at Fluria.
“Your daughter can return here?”
“Yes,” I answered. “And surely Br. Godwin, a worthy advocate, will come with her. You have to hold on until then.”
Meir and Fluria were speechless. They looked at me as if they were entirely dependent upon me.
“And until then,” I said, “will you let the elders come here to the castle to consult with Meir and Fluria?”
“Isaac, son of Solomon, the physician, is already here for safekeeping,” said the Sherriff. “And more will be brought here if need be.” He ran a gloved hand back through his wet white hair. “Fluria and Meir, if your daughter cannot be brought back, I ask that you tell me now.”
“She’ll come,” I said. “You have my word on it. And both of you, pray for my safe journey. I’ll travel as fast as I’m able.”
I went to the couple and I placed my hands on their shoulders.
“Trust in Heaven, and trust in Godwin. I’ll be with him as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Paris
BY THE TIME WE REACHED PARIS, I HAD HAD ENOUGH of thirteenth-century travel to last me easily the rest of four lifetimes, and though I’d been dazzled repeatedly by a thousand unusual sights, from the dizzying, tightly packed half-timbered houses of London, to the spectacle of Norman castles on varying hilltops, and the never-ending snow falling upon village and town through which I passed, we were intent only on reaching Godwin and laying the case before him.
I say “we” because Malchiah was visible to me off and on through the journey and even went part of the way by wagon with me to the capital, but he would give me no advice except to remind me that Fluria’s and Meir’s lives depended on what I might do.
When he appeared, it was in the garb of a fellow Dominican, and whenever it seemed that my transportation had fatally broken down, he would manifest himself to remind me I had gold in my pockets, that I was strong and capable of doing what was required of me, and then a cart would appear, or a wagon, with a gentle driver willing to let us ride with the bundles, or the firewood, or whatever was being transported, and in many different vehicles I slept.
If there was any one part that was an agony, it was crossing the Channel in weather that kept me perpetually sick on board the small ship. There were times when I thought we would all be drowned, so stormy was the winter ocean, and I asked Malchiah more than once, and in vain, if in the midst of this assignment it was possible for me to die.
I wanted to talk with him about all that was happening, but that he wouldn’t allow, reminding me that he wasn’t visible to other people and I would look like a madman talking out loud to everyone. As for my talking to him only in my mind, he insisted this was too imprecise.
I took this to be an evasion. I knew he wanted me to complete this mission on my own.
At last we passed through the gates of Paris, without mishap, and reminding me that I would find Godwin in the University quarter, Malchiah left me with the stern reminder that I had not come here to gaze idly at the great Cathedral of Notre Dame or to wander the precincts of the Palace of the Louvre but to find Godwin without delay.
It was as fiercely cold in Paris as it had been in England, but the sheer press of human beings who swarmed the capital provided some meager warmth. Also there were little fires burning everywhere round which people warmed themselves and many spoke of the dreadful weather and how unusual it was.
I knew from my earlier reading that Europe at this time had been entering into a period of spectacularly cold weather that would last for centuries, and once again I was grateful that Dominicans were allowed to wear wool stockings and leather shoes.
No matter what Malchiah had told me, I went immediately to the Place de Grève and stood for a long moment before the recently complete facade of Notre Dame. I was stunned, as I always had been in my own time, by the sheer magnitude and magnificence of it, and could not get over the fact that it was, here before me, just beginning its adventure in time as one of the greatest cathedrals anyone could ever behold.
I could see scaffolding and workmen surrounding a distant corner of the building, but the edifice was very nearly complete.
I went inside, finding it thronged with people in the shadows, some on their knees, others drifting from shrine to shrine, and I knelt on the bare stones, near one of the towering columns, and I prayed for courage and I prayed for strength. I had the strangest feeling when I did this, however, that I was somehow going over Malchiah’s head.
I reminded myself that that was nonsense, that we were both working for the same Lord and Master, and there came to my lips again the prayer that had come earlier, much earlier: “Dear God, forgive me that I ever separated myself from You.”
I cleared my mind of all words, listening only for the guidance of God. That I was kneeling in this massive and magnificent monument to faith during the very age when it had been built lulled me into a wordless gratitude. But above all I did what this immense cathedral meant for me to do: I laid myself open to the voice of The Maker and bowed my head.
An awareness came over me, all of a sudden, that though I was in dread of failing in what I had to do, and though I was in pain for Fluria and Meir and all the Jewry of Norwich, I was myself happier than I had ever been. I felt strongly that I had been given such a priceless gift in this mission that I could never give thanks enough to God for what was happening to me, for what had been placed in my hands.
This didn’t engender pride in me. Rather I felt wonder. And, as I pondered, I felt myself talking to God without words.
The longer I remained there, the deeper came my realization that I was now living in a way that I had never lived in my own time. I had so thoroughly turned my back on life in my own time that I didn’t know a single person as I knew M
eir and Fluria, and had no devotion to anyone as I now had a deep devotion to Fluria. And the folly of this, the deliberate despair and resentful emptiness of my own life, struck me with full force.
I looked through the dusty gloom to the faraway choir of the great cathedral, and I begged for forgiveness. What a miserable instrument I was. But if my ruthlessness and my craftiness could be eclipsed now in this mission, if my cruel tools and talents could be useful here, I could only marvel at the majesty of God.
A deeper thought nudged at me, but I could not quite grasp it. It had something to do with the binding fabric of good and evil, with the way in which the Lord might extract the glorious from the seeming disasters of human beings. But the thought was too complex for me. I felt I was not meant to complete this realization—only God knew how the dark and the light were mingled or separated—and I could only give voice to my contrition again and pray for courage, pray to succeed. Indeed, I sensed a danger in pondering why God allowed evil, and how He might use it. I felt He alone understood this, and we were never meant to justify evil or to do it out of any misguided notion that evil had in every day and age, its certain role. I was content not to understand the mystery of the workings of the world. And I felt something surprising suddenly: whatever was happening that was evil had nothing to do with the great goodness of Fluria and Meir that I’d experienced firsthand.
Finally, I said a small prayer to the Mother of God to intercede for me, and then I rose, and walking as slowly as I could to savor the sweet candle-lighted darkness, I went out into the cold winter light.
It is pointless to describe in detail the filth of the Paris streets, with their slops in the central gutters, or the jumble of the many three- and four-story houses, or the reek of the dead from the massive cemetery Les Innocents in which people transacted all manner of business in the snowfall right amongst the many tombs. It’s pointless to try to capture the feeling of a city in which people—crippled, humpbacked, dwarfed, or tall and gangly, advancing on crutches, carrying huge bundles on their bent shoulders, or hurrying upright and with purpose—were going every which way at once, some selling, some buying, some carrying, some scurrying, some rich and carried in litters or marching bravely through the mud in their bejeweled boots, and most rushing about in simple jerkins with hooded tunics; a populace wrapped to the teeth in wool or velvet or fur of all different quality, to defend themselves against the cold.
Over and over beggars beseeched me for help, and out of my pockets I put coins in their hands, nodding to their prayerful gratitude, as it seemed my pockets contained an endless supply of silver and gold.
A thousand times I was seduced by what I saw but had to resist it. I hadn’t come, as Malchiah had told me, to seek out the royal palace, no, nor to watch puppeteers bravely putting on their little shows at the little crossroads, or to marvel at how life went on in the bitterest of weather, with tavern doors open, or how life was lived in this most remote and yet familiar of times.
It took me less than an hour to push my way through the crowded and winding streets, and into the student quarter where I was suddenly surrounded by men and boys of all ages dressed as clerics, wearing robes or gowns.
Nearly everyone was wearing a hood due to the abysmal winter, and some sort of heavy mantle, and one could tell the rich from the poor by the amount of visible fur lining their garments and even trimming their boots.
Men and boys were coming and going from many small churches and cloisters, the streets were tantalizingly narrow and crooked, and lanterns were hung out to fight the dismal gloom.
Yet I was easily directed to the priory of the Dominicans, with its small church and open gates, and found Godwin, whom the students quickly identified for me as a tall, hooded brother, with sharp blue eyes and pale skin, atop a bench, obviously lecturing in the open cloister court itself to a huge and attentive crowd.
He was speaking with effortless energy, in a beautiful and fluid Latin, and it was a pure delight to hear someone speaking—and the students replying and questioning—in this tongue with such ease.
The snow had slackened. Fires had been built here and there to warm the students, but the cold was miserable and I soon learned from a few whispered remarks to me by those on the fringes that Godwin was so popular now, in the absence of Thomas and Albert who had gone on to teach in Italy, that his students simply couldn’t be contained indoors.
Godwin gestured colorfully as he addressed this sea of eager figures, some of whom sat on benches, writing frantically as he spoke, and others sitting on cushions of leather or soiled wool, or even on the very stone ground.
That Godwin was an impressive man didn’t surprise me, yet I couldn’t help but be amazed at how very impressive he truly was.
His height alone was striking, but he had the very radiance that Fluria had tried so meaningfully to describe. His cheeks were ruddy from the weather, and his eyes were ablaze with a deep passion for the concepts and ideas he was expressing. He seemed utterly invested in what he was saying, what he was doing. A genial laughter punctuated his sentences, and he turned from right to left gracefully to include all his listeners in the points being made.
His hands appeared to be wrapped in rags except for his fingertips. As for the students almost all wore gloves. My hands were freezing but I too wore leather gloves and had since I’d left Norwich. I felt sad that Godwin did not have such fine gloves.
He had his students laughing riotously at some witticism when I found a place beneath the arches of the cloister, and against a stone pillar, and then he demanded of them that they remember some very crucial quotation from St. Augustine, which any number called out eagerly, and after that, it seemed he was going to launch on a new subject, but our eyes connected, and he stopped in mid-sentence.
I couldn’t tell if anyone knew why he’d stopped. But I knew. Some silent communication passed between us and I dared to nod my head.
Then, with a few preoccupied words, he dismissed the entire class.
He would have been surrounded forever by those asking him questions, except that he told them with careful patience and gentleness that he had important business now, and besides that he was frozen, and then he came to me, took me by the hand, and drew me after him, through the long low-ceilinged cloister, past many an archway, and past many interior doors, until we reached his own cell.
The room, thank Heaven, was spacious and warm. It was no more luxurious than the cell of Junípero Serra at the Carmel Mission of the early twenty-first century, but it was cluttered with wonderful things.
Coals heaped generously in a brazier gave off the delicious heat, and quickly he lighted several thick candles, placing them on his desk, and on his lectern, both of which stood very near his narrow bed, and then he gestured for me to have a seat on one of several benches to the right side of the room.
I could see that he often lectured here, or had done so before the demand for his words had reached such heights.
A crucifix hung on the wall, and I thought I spied several small votive pictures, but in the shadows, I couldn’t make out what they were. There was a very hard thin cushion there before the crucifix and what was obviously a picture of the Madonna, and I surmised that that was where he knelt when he prayed.
“Oh, but forgive me,” he said to me in the most generous and affable manner. “Come, warm yourself by the fire. You’re white from the cold and your head is damp.”
Quickly, he removed my dappled hood and mantle, and then he removed his own. These he hung on pegs on the wall, where I knew that the heat of the brazier would soon make them dry.
He then produced a small towel and wiped my head and face with it, and then his own.
Only then did he unwrap his hands and stretch his fingers over the coals. I realized for the first time that his white cassock and scapular were thin and patched. His was a lean frame, and the simplicity of his short cut ring of hair made his face all the more vital and striking.
“How do you know me?” I
asked.
“Because Fluria wrote to me and told me that I would know you when I saw you. The letter preceded you by only two days. One of the Jewish scholars teaching Hebrew here brought it to me. And I’ve been worried ever since, not by what she wrote, but by what she failed to write. And then there is another matter, and she’s told me to open my heart entirely to you.”
He said this with ready trust and again I had a sense of his graceful demeanor and his generosity when he brought one of the short benches up to the brazier and sat down.
There was a firmness and a simplicity to his smallest gestures, as if the time for him was long past when any artifice needed to affect anything that he did.
He reached into one of his voluminous and hidden pockets, beneath his white scapular, and drew out the letter, a folded sheet of stiff parchment, and put it in my hand.
The letter was in Hebrew, but as Malchiah had promised I was able to read it plainly:
My life is in the hands of this man, Br. Toby. Welcome him and tell him all, and he will tell you all, as there is nothing he does not know about my past and present circumstances, and no more than this do I dare to put down here.
Fluria had signed herself with only the first letter of her first name.
I realized no one would know her hand better than Godwin.
“I’ve known something was wrong for some time,” he said, his brows knitting in distress. “You know everything. I know that you do. So let me tell you before I attack you with questions, that my daughter Rosa was seriously ill for some days, insisting that her sister Lea was in great pain.
“It was during the most beautiful days of Christmas when the pageants and the plays before the cathedral are more lovely than any time of the year.
“I thought perhaps, our Christian ways being new to her, she was simply frightened. But she insisted that her misery was on account of Lea.
“These two, you know, are twins, and so it is that Rosa can feel those things that are happening to Lea, and only two weeks ago, she told me that Lea was no longer in this world.