by Anne Rice
As we left Paris, the sun was just rising, and I was filled with misgivings, perhaps because Rosa was so angry and so confident, and Godwin so seemingly innocent, even in the way he lavished upon every servant his brother’s money as we set out.
Nothing material meant anything to Godwin. He burned with zeal to endure anything that nature or the Lord or circumstance forced upon him. And something in me thought that a healthy desire to survive what lay before us might have served him a little better than the guileless manner in which he moved headlong to what fate had in store.
He was absolutely committed to the deception. But it was unnatural to him in the extreme.
He had been himself in all his debaucheries, he told me when his daughter was sleeping apart from us, and he had in his conversion and commitment to God been nothing but himself.
“I don’t know how to dissemble,” he said, “and I’m afraid I’ll fail at it.” But I thought, more than once, that he wasn’t afraid enough. It was almost as if he had become, in his inveterate goodness, a little bit of a simpleton as is bound to happen, I think, if and when one gives oneself absolutely to God. Again and again, he said that he trusted God would make everything right.
It is impossible to relate here all the other things we spoke of during that long ride to the coast; or how we talked together constantly even as the boat tossed on the rough waters of the Channel, and as our newly hired cart made its way to Norwich over the muddy frozen roads from London.
The most important thing for me to note is that I came to know both Rosa and Godwin better than I had known Fluria, and tempted though I was to ply Godwin with questions about Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus (who was already being called by this great title), we talked more about Godwin’s life among the Dominicans, his delight in his brilliant students, and how committed he was to his Hebrew study of Maimonides and Rashi.
“I am no great scholar when it comes to writing,” he said, “except perhaps in my informal letters to Fluria, but I hope that what I am and what I do will survive in the minds of my students.”
As for Rosa, she had guiltily enjoyed her life among the Gentiles, and no small part of it had been her extreme pleasure at seeing the Christmas pageants before the cathedral, until she had felt that Lea, so many miles from her, was suffering grievous pain.
“I keep this ever before my mind,” she said to me once while Godwin slept in the cart beside us, “that I did not give up my ancestral faith out of fear or because some wicked person tormented me into it, but because of my father, and because of the zeal I saw in him. Surely he worships the same Lord of the Universe that I worship. And how could a faith be wrong, which has brought such simplicity and happiness to him? I think his eyes and his manner did more to convert me than anything that was said to me. And I find him always a shining example of what I mean to be. As for the past, it weighs on me. I can’t bear to think of it, and now that my mother has lost Lea, I can only pray with all my heart that, young as she is, she’ll be the mother of many children by Meir, and for this, their life together, I make this journey, giving in perhaps too easily to what has to be done.”
She seemed aware of a thousand difficulties of which I hadn’t even thought.
First and foremost, where would we stay when we reached Norwich? Would we go at once to the castle, and how would she play the part of Lea before the Sherriff, not knowing whether Lea ever knew the man face-to-face?
Indeed, how could we even approach the Jewry and seek shelter with the Magister of the synagogue, for with one thousand Jews in Norwich, there was bound to be more than one synagogue, and should Lea not have known a Magister by likeness and by name?
I sank into silent prayer when I thought of these things. Malchiah, you have to guide us! I insisted. But the danger of presumption struck me as very real.
Because Malchiah had brought me here did not mean there was no suffering ahead. I thought again of what had so struck me about the mix of good and evil in the cathedral. Only the Lord Himself knew what was really good and evil, and we could only strive to follow every Word He’d revealed as to the good.
In sum, that meant anything might happen. And the number of people involved in our plot worried me more than I allowed my companions to know.
It was midday, under a lowering and snowy sky, when we approached the town, and I was visited by exhilaration much as I was before I took a life, only this time I knew a spectacular new aspect of it. The fate of many people depended on what I might bungle or accomplish, and that had never actually been the case before.
When I’d murdered Alonso’s enemies, I’d been brash almost as Rosa was brash now. And I had not done it for Alonso. This I now knew. I had done it to strike back at God Himself for what He had allowed to happen to my mother and my brother and sister, and the monstrous arrogance of this gripped me and wouldn’t give me any peace.
At last as our wagon with its double team of horses rolled into Norwich, we hit upon this plan.
Rosa would sleep, feverishly in her father’s arms, her eyes closed, as she was ill from the journey, and I, who didn’t know anyone in the Jewry, would ask of the soldiers whether or not we might take Lea into her own house, or must we go to the Magister of Meir’s synagogue, if the soldier knew whom that man might be.
I could naturally claim utter innocence of any knowledge of the community, and so could Godwin, and we all knew that our plan would be immeasurably helped if Lord Nigel had arrived and was at the castle awaiting his brother.
Perhaps the guards of the Jewry would be prepared for this.
As to what happened, none of us was prepared at all.
The sun was a dim glimmer beyond the gray clouds as we entered the street before Meir’s house, and all of us were surprised to see lights in the windows.
We could think only that Meir and Fluria had been released, and I climbed out of the cart and immediately knocked on the door.
Guards appeared out of shadows almost immediately, and one very belligerent man, large enough to crush me between his hands, demanded that I not harry the inhabitants of the house.
“But I come as a friend,” I whispered, not wanting to wake the ailing daughter. I gestured to her. “Lea, the daughter of Meir and Fluria. Can’t I take her into her parents’ house there to rest until she is strong enough to see her parents in the castle?”
“Go in then,” said the guard, and he pounded on the door abruptly with the outside of his right fist.
Godwin stepped down out of the cart, and then received Rosa into his arms. She lay against his shoulder as he hooked his right arm beneath her knees.
At once the door opened, and I saw there a gaunt individual with thin white hair and a high forehead. He wore a heavy black shawl over his long tunic. His hands were bony and white and he appeared to stare dully at Godwin and the girl.
Godwin gasped, and immediately stopped in his tracks.
“Magister Eli,” Godwin said in a whisper.
The old man stood back and, glancing meaningfully at the guard, he gestured for us to enter the house.
“You may tell the Earl, his brother is come,” said the old man to the guard, and then he shut the door.
It was now clear to me that the man was blind.
Godwin planted Rosa on her feet gently. She too was white with shock at the realization that her grandfather was here.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Grandfather,” she said at once, in the kindest voice, and she moved towards him, but he, staring forward, gestured for her to stay where she was.
He looked cold and remote, and then he took a deep breath, as if he were savoring her faint perfume.
Then he turned disdainfully away.
“Am I to believe you are your pious sister?” he asked. “Do you think I don’t know what you mean to do? Oh, you are her very double, how well I remember, and was it not your wicked letters to her from Paris that prompted her to go with these Gentiles into the church? But I know who you are. I know your scent. I kn
ow your voice!”
I thought Rosa would give way to tears. She bowed her head. I could feel her trembling though I wasn’t touching her. The thought that she had killed her sister must have already occurred to her, but now it seemed to hit her full force.
“Lea,” she whispered. “My beloved Lea. I am incomplete for the rest of my days.”
Out of the shadows, another figure came towards us, a young and robust man, with dark hair and heavy brows, who also wore a heavy shawl over his shoulders against the chill in the room. He too wore the yellow taffeta badge of the Ten Commandments.
He stood with his back to the firelight.
“Yes,” said the stranger. “I do believe you are her very double. I could not have told the two of you apart. It is possible that this will work.”
Godwin and I nodded to him gratefully for this little enthusiasm.
The old man turned his back to us and moved slowly to the chair by the fire.
As for the younger man, he looked about himself and at the old man, and then he went to him and whispered something to him under his breath.
The old man made a despairing gesture.
The young man turned to us.
“Be swift and wise,” he said to Rosa and to Godwin. He didn’t seem to know what to make of me. “The cart outside, is it big enough to hold your father and mother, and your grandfather? For as soon as you work your little spell, you should all leave here at once.”
“Yes, it’s quite big enough,” said Godwin. “And I agree with you that haste is most important. As soon as we know that our plan has worked.”
“I’ll see to it that it’s taken around the back,” said the man. “An alleyway leads to the other street.” He eyed me thoughtfully, then went on: “All of Meir’s books have gone to Oxford,” he said, “and every other precious thing has been moved out of this house in the quiet of the night. It took some bribing of the guards, of course, but it’s been done. You should be ready to leave as soon as your little play has been performed.”
“We will be,” I said.
Then bowing to us, the man went out the front door of the house.
Godwin glanced at me helplessly and then at the old man.
Rosa wasted no time.
“You know why I’ve come here, Grandfather. I’ve come to work any deception required of me to remove suspicion from my mother that she poisoned my sister.”
“Don’t talk to me,” said the old man, staring forward. “I’m not here on account of a daughter who would give up her own child to Christians.” He turned as if he could see the brightness of the fire. “I am not here on behalf of children who have given up their faith for fathers who are no better than thieves in the night.”
“Grandfather, I beg you, don’t judge me,” said Rosa. She knelt down beside the chair and kissed his left hand.
He didn’t move or turn to her.
“I’m here,” the old man said, “to provide the money that is needed to save the Jewry from the madness of these people, spawned by your sister’s foolishly entering their very church. And that much, I’ve already done. I’m here to save the priceless books that belong to Meir which might have been carelessly lost. As for you and your mother—.”
“My sister paid for entering the church,” said Rosa, “did she not? And my mother, how she has paid for everything. Won’t you come with us and won’t you vouch for me that I am who I will say I am?”
“Yes, your sister paid for what she did,” said the old man. “And now it seems that innocent people would pay for it, and so I’ve come. I should have suspected your little plot even if Meir had not confessed it to me, and why I still love Meir after his having been fool enough to love your mother, I can’t say.”
He suddenly turned to her as she knelt there. It was as if he were struggling to see her.
“Having no sons, I love him,” he said. “I once thought my daughter and my granddaughters the greatest treasure I could possess.”
“You will go along with what we mean to do,” said Rosa, “for Meir’s sake then and the sake of all the others here. It is agreed?”
“They know that Lea has a twin sister,” he said coldly. “Too many people in the Jewry knew it for it to remain secret. You take a great risk. I wish you had left it to us to buy our way free of this.”
“I don’t mean to contradict the fact of us being twins,” Rosa answered. “Only to claim that Rosa is waiting for me in Paris, which in its own way is true.”
“You disgust me,” he said under his breath. “I wish I had never set eyes on you as a babe in your mother’s arms. We’re persecuted. Men and women die for their faith. But you leave your faith for nothing but the pleasure of a man who has no right to call you his daughter. Do what you will and be done with it. I want to leave this place and never speak to you or your mother again. And that I will do as soon as I know the Jews of Norwich are safe.”
Godwin approached the old man at this point, and he bowed before him, whispering his name again, Magister Eli, and waited before his chair as if for permission to speak.
“You’ve taken everything from me,” said the old man in a low hard voice as he stared in the direction of Godwin. “What more do you want now? Your brother awaits you at the castle. He dines with the Lord Sherriff and with this zealous Lady Margaret, and he reminds her that we are valuable property. Ah, such power.” He turned to the fire. “Would that money had been enough—.”
“Then plainly it is not,” said Godwin very softly. “Beloved Rabbi, please speak some words to give Rosa courage for what she has to do. If money would have done it, then it would be done, is that not so?”
The old man didn’t answer him.
“Don’t blame her for my sins,” said Godwin. “I was bad enough in my youth to harm others in my recklessness and carelessness. I thought life was like the songs I used to sing when I played my lute. I know now that it isn’t. And I’ve pledged my life to the same Lord that you worship. In His name, and for the sake of Meir and Fluria, please forgive me for all the things I’ve done.”
“Don’t preach to me, Br. Godwin!” said the old man with bitter sarcasm. “I’m not one of your addle-brained students in Paris. I will never forgive you for taking Rosa from me. And now that Lea is dead, what is there for me but my loneliness and my misery?”
“Not so,” said Godwin. “Surely Fluria and Meir will raise up sons of Israel, and daughters. They’re newly married. If Meir can forgive Fluria, how can you not?”
The old man at once flushed with rage.
He turned and pushed Rosa away from him with the very hand that she held and tried to kiss again.
She fell back with a start and Godwin caught her and helped her to her feet.
“I’ve given one thousand marks of gold to your miserable Black Friars,” said the old man looking toward them, his voice now trembling with his anger. “What more can I do but remain quiet? Take the child with you to the castle. Work your blandishments on Lady Margaret, but don’t overplay your hand. Lea was meek and sweet by nature. This daughter of yours is a Jezebel. Keep that uppermost in your mind.”
I stepped forward. “My Lord Rabbi,” I said, “you don’t know me, but my name is Toby. I too am a Black Friar, and I will take Rosa and Br. Godwin with me to the castle. The Lord Sherriff knows me and we will make swift work of what we have to do. But please, the cart out back, see that you are ready to go in it, just as soon as the Jews in the castle are safely released.”
“No,” he said shortly, “that you should leave this town after the little pageant is imperative. But I will remain to make sure the Jews are safe. Now get away from me. I know you’re the one who dreamt up this deception. Carry it out.”
“Yes, I was,” I confessed. “And if anything goes wrong with it, I’m to blame for it. Please, please be ready to leave.”
“I might give you the same caution,” said the old man. “Your friars are disgusted with you that you went off to Paris to seek ‘Lea.’ They want to make a saint
out of a foolish girl. Mind, if this fails you’ll suffer with the rest of us. You’ll suffer as much for what you’re attempting here.”
“No,” Godwin said. “No one will be harmed here, especially not one so devoted to helping us. Come, Toby, we have to go up to the castle now. There’s no time for me to speak to my brother alone. Rosa, are you ready for what we must do? Remember, you’re ill from your journey. You weren’t up to this long ordeal, and speak only when Lady Margaret speaks to you, and keep in mind your sister’s quiet ways.”
“Will you give me your blessing, Grandfather?” Rosa pressed. I wished she hadn’t. “If not that, will you give me your prayers?”
“I’ll give you nothing,” he said. “I am here for others who would give up their lives rather than do what you did.”
He turned his shoulder against her. He looked as sincere and miserable in his rejection of her as any man could.
I couldn’t fully grasp it, because she appeared so fragile and gentle to me. She had her fiery purpose, yes, but she was still a girl of fourteen, and a great challenge lay before her. I wondered now if I had proposed the right thing. I wondered if I hadn’t made a terrible blunder.
“Very well, then,” I said. I looked at Godwin. He put his arm gently around Rosa. “Let’s go.”
A heavy knock on the door startled all of us.
I could hear the voice of the Sherriff announcing his presence, and that of the Earl. Suddenly there were shouts from outside, and the sound of people beating on the walls.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Judgment
THERE WAS NOTHING TO BE DONE BUT TO OPEN THE door, and at once we saw the Sherriff still on his mount, surrounded by soldiers, and a man who could be none other than the Earl, on foot beside his mount, and with what appeared to be his own guard of several mounted men.
Godwin went directly into his brother’s arms, and holding his brother’s face in his hand spoke to him intently under his breath.
The Sherriff waited on this.