Act of Faith (5 page)

‘Ow!’

‘Back to work, boy.’

One afternoon, our master called me in to witness, with Fra Clement, the unwrapping of a copy of the infamous
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
, which had arrived from a bookseller in Venice. It wasn’t like any book I had ever seen, with the type arranged in different ways across the page — like a vase turned upside down, or on other pages in a single column — and the words themselves a strange mixture of many languages.

I laughed aloud. ‘It’s glorious,’ I said.

Master de Aquila beamed. ‘From the Aldine Press, the greatest of them all. Only think — this book is nearly a hundred and fifty years old and the printing still as clear as daylight.’

‘Astonishing,’ said Fra Clement, although he merely glanced at the book itself.

‘You are not impressed?’ said Master de Aquila. ‘Perhaps you don’t approve of the content. But it is the printing we admire.’

‘Your eye is more expert in such matters,’ said Fra Clement.

‘Then let me show you something truly wonderful.’

Master de Aquila reached under his desk and pulled out a long, polished wooden box. Inside was something wrapped in velvet, which he removed slowly, reverently, to reveal a scroll of painted parchment.

‘Do not be offended, but today I wish to show you something from my own faith.’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘It is the Torah of Seville.’

I swear Fra Clement gasped.

Master de Aquila unrolled it a little so we could see the finely drawn Hebrew lettering, and the lapis blue and carnelian flowers painted on the velvet wrap.

‘You bought this?’ I said.

‘Let us say I rescued it. These scrolls cannot belong to one man. They belong to a community. People would have sacrificed a great deal to pay for someone to create this. Those people are all gone now; all the Jews were exiled from Spain hundreds of years ago. But I will keep it safe. Perhaps, one day, this Torah can return home.’

‘Spain will never allow it,’ said Fra Clement.

Master de Aquila shrugged. ‘Never is a long time. That is one lesson we can learn from the peoples of the desert and their great books. Exiles, conquests — these things pass, they come and go over the centuries. Who are we to say what will happen in generations to come?’

‘Perhaps you are right.’ Fra Clement bent down to examine the lettering. ‘You are a lucky man, my friend. You have so many treasures.’

‘I am indeed.’

‘And I, too,’ said Fra Clement. ‘Although I am a poor monk, and have no need of possessions, I am blessed with your friendship.’

He straightened up. ‘I can’t read Hebrew, of course, but this is precious in anyone’s language.’

‘Thank you, Clement. You are a man of great taste.’

Fra Clement inclined his head graciously, but his eyes never left the scroll.

Master de Aquila squirrelled the books away in his library. Eventually, the dull ones ended up in the reception room downstairs, in which he and I had first met. It looked different now, though. I had dusted it and scrubbed the floor, and arranged all the volumes alphabetically, by title, on the shelves. Then I began at ‘A’ and started reading. I didn’t mind that they were books for which Master de Aquila felt no great love. They soothed my mind; and, anyway, sometimes it was the binding or the printing of which he disapproved, not the words within.

By the time I read through to the letter ‘G’, we had grown into one another like a tree and a sapling, my master and I. He could pass me pages without a word and I knew his mind, his heart — knew exactly what to do.

Later, the pages became more difficult, in languages I didn’t know, so that all I could do was check the shapes of the individual letters against the original and hope for the best. I knew my master would have approved the words before they went into the workshop, but I had no idea what they meant.

‘This,’ he would say, ‘is the law of my people. These pages are the Mishnah. From the old Babylonian Talmud. The Talmud and the Torah are our holiest texts.’

The pages were different to any I had seen before, with notes printed in margins and at the foot of each page.

‘Commentary,’ Master de Aquila explained. ‘Many wise men
have debated these laws, so we print the debates alongside the original word.’

‘But if it is the law, how can there be so much disagreement?’

He chuckled. ‘Think of it as exploration rather than disagreement. These are very ancient words, and, over the centuries, the world has become a different place. The rabbis look at the law with fresh eyes, and sometimes it takes on new meanings. But rather than just amend the law and forget the old ways, we print the old and the new together.’

‘How strange.’

‘Not to me. It is our tradition. In England, the way things are, you’d have to print new laws every year. But perhaps then people forget the original intent of a law.’

‘I don’t think much of the laws in England,’ I said.

‘With good reason.’

I looked more closely at the pages. ‘Are these laws any better?’

‘They are different. As different as people. That’s all.’

‘Is it permitted for us to print this?’ I asked.

‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘But that’s a good example of a law that needs to change — and change it will, one day, just as the world is transformed all over again.’

‘I’m not confident that will ever happen.’

‘Believe it,’ he said.

‘Once I did — as did my father. But now I’m not so sure.’

‘Look around you, Isabella.’ He pointed to the dozens of new books piled on the office floor. ‘Look at what we are creating with our new technology. It is a revolution. The world cannot help but change. You must see that.’

‘Perhaps,’ I conceded. ‘But that doesn’t mean I want to risk my life shouting it from the rooftops.’

‘Someone must.’

‘Not me,’ I said. ‘Those times are past.’

‘You sound like an old woman.’

‘I feel like one.’

‘It will pass.’

He let it rest there, thank goodness. Like those letters on the page, Master de Aquila’s meanings were sometimes mysterious to me, even as we grew closer. But his moods were unpredictable. Occasionally, when I handed back my proofread sheets or written notes, he’d grumble or snap or find fault with my grammar; but other times he laughed out loud if I’d caught an error by a particularly pompous author or found fault in a foolish customer.

Just as I discovered more about my master, and found my way about his house and the workshop, so, too, I learned about the city and its language. Master de Aquila sent me on errands — at first to the market or the fishmonger, then later to carry messages to one of the booksellers near the Exchange or his colleagues in printing houses along the Herengracht. As the months passed, I grew used to the streets and canals, the women in the market and the maids hanging washing in the back lanes, the elderly booksellers and bluff printers, my master and his men and my new life.

The booksellers and printers and my master and his men all got used to me, too. Many were Spanish Jews, like my master; others were German or Venetian or even Swiss; all of them attracted to this merchant centre where people from all over the world gathered to trade, deal, negotiate, buy and sell — and print.

Amsterdam was a place of safety for renegades of all kinds: adventurers, intellectuals, dissidents, pilgrims and men with more money than sense. Only the Roman Catholics were not welcome, as the city turned its back on the Pope and shrugged off the hand
of the Church. But Amsterdam had opened its gates to Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal, to bankers from Bern, to Irish ship captains and English preachers, and to me — the orphan from the sea. Outsiders, we were, all of us, in a Europe being remade by war and the discovery of new worlds beyond the seas.

On Friday nights, my master kept Shabbat by himself, upstairs in his library, with the candles lit. Willem and I sat downstairs in the kitchen, listening to him sing and mutter to himself.

‘I am not a good Jew,’ he told us one Friday. ‘A Jew without family, a Jew without a country, must give thanks alone.’

He wasn’t a very good Jew, so far as I could tell. We all ate the same foods and he never worried if it were pure; he ate no more or less than usual on the Sabbath. We all worked on Saturdays, but he gave the men a day off on Sundays, so they could give thanks to their own God. He dressed modestly, but without the trappings of a devout man. He wore his hair and beard long because he couldn’t be bothered cutting them, and wore a cap at all times just so his head would stay warm — or so he said.

On some religious holidays, he went to his colleague Simon’s house. They had been friends, he said, as children in Córdoba. Simon was a master printer, too, but he specialised in maps: beautiful creations for those who collected such things, and workaday charts for sea captains and sailors. He often called in to our workshop, too, and admired Master de Aquila’s latest masterpieces.

Occasionally, my master went out after dark — to a meeting to plan the building of a new synagogue, he told me. But mostly he kept to himself, and so did I. All day we worked, and after work there was silence.

Willem visited Gerda on Sunday afternoons, and often went out with his friends in the evenings. On Sundays I stayed in my bedchamber, or by the fire in the kitchen, alone. I didn’t pray any more, didn’t go to church in the city with the others.

On Thursdays, Fra Clement came to supper, and the two men retired to the library afterwards to talk. Their conversations were serious, their voices a continuous low growl. There was none of the laughter and teasing that went on between Master de Aquila and Simon. They were always arguing about something or other: the Pope had excommunicated someone for looking too closely at the night sky; or some duke had expelled a philosopher from his court because he hadn’t liked the man’s new book. I paid no attention. I’d heard similar arguments many times before.

Willem always left the house on Thursday nights.

‘Where on earth are you going at this hour?’ I asked him one winter’s evening. ‘It’s freezing.’

‘Out,’ he said.

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere.’

‘Why do you always leave when Fra Clement is due?’

He glared at me. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘Just wondered.’

He shrugged.

‘You must admit it’s rather pointed,’ I said.

He glanced at the door and then dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘I don’t trust him.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t like him.’

‘He seems all right to me.’

‘He’s a Catholic,’ said Willem.

‘As is half the world.’

‘The wrong half. He’s a Papist. He belongs in Rome, not here.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘He’s probably never been to Rome.’

‘Maybe. But he doesn’t belong in Amsterdam — this is a God-fearing city.’

Willem’s blue eyes had brightened with the same zeal that had illuminated those Puritan faces back in England. Yet I couldn’t stop myself laughing.

‘Are you suggesting that a monk doesn’t fear God?’ I said.

He threw his cloak around his shoulders. ‘I’m not arguing theology with a girl. I don’t trust him, that’s all, and nor should you. Don’t stick your nose into matters you don’t understand.’

He nodded a farewell. I bowed my head.

‘I won’t,’ I assured him. ‘Obviously it is all too complex for me.’

If he were at home alone, Master de Aquila worked well into the night. One evening, I warmed some wine and toasted cheese for a late supper. When I knocked and pushed open the door, he jumped as if I were the city watchman.

‘It’s you, child. You gave me a fright.’

‘Forgive me.’ I put the tray down carefully on his proofreading table. God help me if I spilled any wine on the fresh pages. ‘You’re working late, sir.’ I poured him a goblet. ‘You don’t sleep. You’re as bad as my father.’

‘I’m too old to sleep,’ he said. He stared up at the window, as if he could see into the darkness. ‘There’s so little time left to me, Isabella, and so much to finish.’

‘You won’t get it done any faster if you’re worn out,’ I said. ‘At least eat something.’

‘Don’t fuss, child.’

I crossed my arms and stood, waiting, until he put out his hand for the plate.

‘You have your supper, I’ll work on these pages,’ I suggested.

‘I’m afraid you can’t help me with this,’ he said. ‘These are not letters you will be able to translate.’

At his elbow sat dozens and dozens of printed sheets, but next to them was an even higher pile: the handwritten manuscript pages yet to be set and imprinted. All were covered in a close Hebrew script; the characters moving to the left across the page.

‘I haven’t seen this manuscript in the workshop.’ I moved closer. ‘What is it?’

‘This is my great work,’ he whispered. ‘A Hebrew Bible, with an English translation.’ He smiled at the pile of paper as if they were old friends. ‘I have been working on it for many years now. There is no money in it, of course, but it’s no matter. I do it because I can — because it needs to be done.’

‘Has anyone translated it into English before?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘But none like this. You see? I am printing the passages side by side in the two languages, so you can read them together, and learn from both. A friend is making the translation, but both his mind and my press operate much more slowly than they once did. I print it in small batches, when I am able, when our commercial work allows.’

He held up a sheet to the light. I could see at a glance where he had marked corrections, where the letters differed from the written master copy on his desk — a stroke there, the angle of a curve here. The printed pages were dotted with tiny engravings, perfect little representations of the words, and in the margins were footnotes and annotations, all precisely ordered and numbered with Arabic numerals in red. I knew that my master was creating something
beautiful, to the glory of his God, in ink that could never be erased, would never run down the page in the rain — words that could only ever be destroyed by men, or by flames.

‘Is it …’ My voice dropped low. ‘Is it allowed?’