Bristol House (17 page)

My blood chilled. If Dom Hilary was aware of my perfidy, Thomas Cromwell would soon have cause to think I had failed him, and I should burn or mount the Tyburn steps, or perhaps even be dipped repeatedly into boiling water until one by one my appendages fell cooked into the cauldron, and finally my torso was lowered and death came.

•

Annie could not stop thinking about the meaning of the code in the Bastianich drawings, the sheer wickedness of such bigotry. She called Maggie and, as she’d hoped, was invited to Sharpleshall Street.

“I was jealous when I heard you went first to Simon with this business, Annie darling.” Maggie was wearing her rimless glasses and peering at the screen of a small laptop. “But of course you were right. He pointed out that they changed their underwear on Thursday, so they were Jews. I would never have thought of such madness.”

“Who would?” Annie asked.

“Apparently many people in the sixteenth century. But the way the artist hid the code, that’s really clever. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“That’s what Rabbi Cohen said.”

“And as usual, Simon was right. Now, tell me, do you like him?”

“I like Rabbi Cohen a lot. I’ve never known a rabbi before, and he—”

Maggie chuckled. “You know I didn’t mean Simon. I’m asking about Geoffrey, and you are politely telling me to mind my own business.”

Annie blushed.

“It’s all right, darling. You are entirely correct, and I should mind my own business, but that’s never been my style. So tell me, have you heard from my boy?”

“A couple of e-mails,” Annie said. “He says he’s pleased with the interviews. Good material for his book.”

“Hmm. To me he sends e-mails asking if I have invited Annie to tea, but”—Maggie gestured to the books and papers that covered every surface—“there’s not room just now for any kind of tea party. Don’t tell Geoffrey, the gourmet cook, that I had you get fish and chips on your way here. He’ll tear me a strip off.”

Maggie wore gray pants and a soft blue angora sweater. The clothes hung on her thin frame, as if, Annie thought, they needed to be a couple of sizes smaller. Which, given how much Maggie clearly liked pretty things, made it seem they had probably fit better when she bought them. She probably missed meals, as older people often did. Annie was glad her presence meant that Geoff’s mother was getting a decent meal, even if they were eating it straight from the paper wrappings.

“Authentic East End style,” Maggie said, wiping her fingers on a paper napkin. “Now, since you won’t tell me indiscreet things about my son, I will tell you what’s bothering me about these drawings.”

She took off her glasses and began tapping the frame on the table in a rhythm that punctuated her words. “Why would a Jew passing as a Lombard necessarily live in a house built in the Lombard style?”

“Because small houses like these”—Annie nodded toward the coded drawings on the laptop—“were mostly built by the people who lived in them. So if the occupants were Lombards—and even more so, I suppose, if they were using that identity to obscure the fact that they were also Jews—they might have deliberately built in the Lombard pattern.”

Maggie nodded. “I see. Geoffrey did say you were clever.”

“The inscriptions, however, are really odd.” Annie explained about the bastardized Latin.

“Interesting,” Maggie said. Then she nodded toward the bottles of beer occupying one corner of a table piled high with papers and books. “You’re sure you won’t have one of those?”

“Quite sure, thank you.” Annie finished the last of her fish and made up her mind as she tidied the remains of the meal. “I don’t drink, Maggie.” She looked directly at the other woman as she spoke. “I’m a recovering alcoholic. I thought Geoff might have told you.”

“I see.” Maggie did not smile, but neither did she frown. “No, he didn’t tell me. At least not in so many words.”

“I’ve been sober for four years. I’m sorry if that makes you worry about your son and me, but we’re not—”

“Not yet,” Maggie said firmly. “I guessed that much. And you and Geoffrey do not worry me.” She reached to touch Annie’s hand as she spoke. “It was his marriage to Emma that worried me.”

Annie was startled. “But Geoffrey said you and Emma adored each other.”

“Indeed we did. Emma was beautiful and brilliant, and I loved being with her. Everyone did. It was like being warmed by the sun. But she was entirely the wrong wife for Geoffrey.”

“Why?”

“Too much a golden girl,” Maggie said. “Too strong, and much too independent. Of course my son needs someone as smart as he is, else he’d be bored silly. But . . .” She hesitated. “Geoffrey thrives on righting wrongs. It’s not simply his professional persona—it’s who he is. He requires someone he can enfold and protect, because that’s what steadies him. Someone who’s not just intelligent but strong enough to need him. I’m not sure if you are, but I always knew Emma was not.”

Before Annie could come up with any response to this possible vision of herself and her future, her cell rang. She started to say she’d let the call go to voice mail, but when she looked at the caller ID, it said “P. J. Weinraub.”

13

The Connaught Hotel was a small and polished gem in the heart of Mayfair on Carlos Place, near Grosvenor Square and the U.S. embassy. Americans who could afford it frequently stayed there. “They know me well here, and my suite is exceedingly comfortable,” Weinraub said. “I hope you can say the same about Mrs. Walton’s apartment.”

Annie told herself it was a perfectly natural question, and that Mr. Weinraub was not looking at her with any particular intensity. “The apartment’s very comfortable, thank you.”

“And so convenient for your work. Since it’s near the British Museum, and the Tudor documents archive is there for the moment. The archivist . . . what’s her name?”

“Jennifer Franklin.”

“Yes, I remember now. This Mrs. Franklin, is she being cooperative?”

“Entirely. Very helpful.”

“Good. Tell me then, Dr. Kendall, how matters are progressing. Have you uncovered the secrets of our Jew of Holborn?”

“I’ve had three weeks, Mr. Weinraub. This was meant to be a three-month assignment. I can’t—”

“No, of course you can’t be definitive yet. I entirely understand. But are there any signs of progress, any reason to hope?”

She’d come directly from Maggie’s. Her tote—the one that said Davis School—was on the floor near her feet. Between them, actually. Safe but out of sight. It did not measure up to the bags of the women around her marked Gucci and Fendi and Vuitton, but in it were hard-copy prints of the digital photographs of the drawings of the Lombard houses, including one that enlarged the stippled section containing the code. She could produce the pictures and make Philip Weinraub a happy man.

What was it the woman from the synagogue in Breisach had written . . .
I remember the story of the 1535 gift from the Jew of Holborn. But no one has seen the famous
kaf
since the war, and certainly no one has asked about it in years.

Which statement added to the increasing body of evidence proving that Geoff had it right all along. Philip Weinraub had picked Annie Kendall for this investigation because he could manipulate her. Because she was vulnerable. Annie was conscious of squaring her shoulders. It wasn’t going to be quite that easy for him, she decided. Academia, even at the level of a third-rate private school for girls, was excellent training for collegial infighting. She left the drawings where they were. “I’m close, Mr. Weinraub. I may have some exciting information very soon.”

“That is good news. Can I presume it relates to the source of the ancient Judaica?”

“Indirectly perhaps. My approach is to physically locate the Jew of Holborn, prove his existence, then—”

“We are absolutely convinced of his existence,” Weinraub interrupted. “Shalom has been following this thread for a few years now.”

“Yes, I understand,” Annie said. “But for the information to stand up to the scrutiny of scholars, you must document every step and prove each assertion.”

“The Judaica is the issue.” Weinraub sounded not simply annoyed but truculent. “If we can discover where the Jew of Holborn found his treasures, the whole world will take notice. Surely you realize how much that will enhance your professional reputation, Dr. Kendall.”

“I do, Mr. Weinraub. And as I said, I expect to have more information for you shortly.”

“Very well. I shall try to be patient. I also have a bit more information. A few days ago I heard from the synagogue in Gerstheim. You remember, they have the
ma’akhelet.
”

“I remember,” she said. She had not found an address for the synagogue in Gerstheim. Originally she’d simply thought they had no Internet presence; now she was beginning to think they might not exist. It was, however, too soon to confront Weinraub. She still hadn’t heard from Metz or Offenburg.

“I wrote to ask them about
mezuzot,
” Weinraub said. “We are particularly interested in
mezuzot.
Did I tell you?”

Annie said he had. She did not add that she’d forgotten, because like so many of the detailed instructions Philip Weinraub delivered during their New York meetings, his arguments sounded obscure and circular and his expectations unrealistic. Now she suspected he might also be a flat-out liar. There was only one response to that: Fuck you, P. J. Weinraub. Under the table she nudged the tote bag a little closer to her leg, beyond any possibility of being accidentally overturned and spilling out the evidence she was withholding.

“Especially
mezuzot
made from silver or gold,” he was saying. “Such things could actually have come from the Temple. And it seems at least possible that such a mezuzah might still exist. They’re small, easy to hide . . . You could come across a silver mezuzah from the Temple right here in London today. That would be an enormous coup, Dr. Kendall.”

Annie let that pass. “May I ask what the Gerstheim synagogue told you?”

“They do not have any unusual or particularly old
mezuzot
. But I can assure you there is a legend that such a thing exists. A silver mezuzah from the Holy Temple itself that will one day show up in London. So why not now?”

And pigs, Annie thought, might fly. But not anytime soon. “History is full of legends, Mr. Weinraub. Some of them are only that. Magical stories we wish were true.”

Her employer stared at her, waiting for more.

According to Geoff, Weinraub was fifty-nine. In addition to being short and thin with narrow shoulders, he had a shiny bald head over which he arranged a few strands of black hair. A skinny, wrong-side-of-middle-age guy with an obvious comb-over. He should have seemed utterly ordinary, even boring. But in the elegant bar of the Connaught, where everything reeked of money, Annie was conscious of just how much power the eccentric billionaire had over her future.

Dom Justin

From the Waiting Place

I must accept that I cannot reach the woman unless she is where I may have been able to see her from the Charterhouse. Such rules, I have learned, are not arbitrary; they are built into the design of this universe. They are immutable as well as logical and cannot change, as the nature of Almighty God does not change. So though here peacefulness prevails in the knowledge that salvation is assured, I know a great and disturbing urgency. I cannot find her, and on her side of the divide the danger grows.

•

Jennifer Franklin had returned from her vacation in the Canary Islands. On Wednesday morning Annie was to meet her at the museum. Wednesday was also the day Geoff was due home, but not until late in the afternoon. He’d e-mailed to say he’d call her when he landed.

Mr. Weinraub was still at the Connaught. When they’d met on Monday in the hotel bar, he’d said certain business interests would keep him in London for a time. “In the light of that, Dr. Kendall, perhaps you will keep me regularly informed of any new developments in the search for the Jew of Holborn and his secrets.”

She’d promised she would. Apparently that wasn’t enough for him. He’d called her twice that same evening and three times on Tuesday. The question was the same on each occasion: “Anything new, Dr. Kendall?”

“Not really, Mr. Weinraub.” She still hadn’t told him about the drawings, or the coded words in the stippling. Annie considered it each time they spoke, but the revelation stuck in her throat.

A little after ten p.m., while she was watching the news—some royal had been photographed in Genoa with a woman not his wife, the viability of a single-currency euro zone was once again under intense scrutiny, the pope had been taken to the hospital, and Annie Kendall realized how much she missed Jon Stewart—her cell rang. Weinraub again. “Nothing at all?” he asked. And when she didn’t immediately answer: “I am disappointed, Dr. Kendall. Perhaps I will have to close down this inquiry.”

“You gave me three months, Mr. Weinraub. I’m not a third of the way through that time yet.”

“Almost a month,” Weinraub insisted. “And if you don’t have anything to tell me now, why should I think the next two months will produce results? I must see some progress, Dr. Kendall, or you will have to go home. A pity, since I know you were planning to publish the results of this study.”

“I expect to have something interesting for you very soon, Mr. Weinraub.”

“I’m looking forward to that, Dr. Kendall.”

When she hung up, Annie caught herself staring at the cabinet full of booze an arm’s length away.

The next morning she went to a sunrise AA meeting at the Y on Great Russell Street.

Different but the same, everywhere. These folding chairs were wood, scarred and battered with age, but they were arranged in the customary circle. She was a couple of minutes early. Everyone smiled at her. She smiled back. At precisely six a.m. a silver-haired woman with a surprisingly young face read the customary preamble. “Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism . . .” Then the moment of silence, followed by the famous serenity prayer. And soon the stories. She was the third speaker. “Hello, my name is Annie, and I’m an alcoholic . . .” Finally the hugs. As far as she knew, they weren’t prescribed, but she’d never been to a meeting that didn’t include them.
Nobody really knows why it works, Annie my girl. Maybe it’s the hugs.
Sidney had said that years ago. Annie thought it was true.