Bristol House (38 page)

I could find no fault with his argument. “Then we have no hope,” I said.

“That is not true. There is a way, though I must rely on you to take it, and I do not know if you have the courage or the skill required.”

“I have both, Father,” Rebecca said.

The Jew nodded. “Yes, you do.”

I said nothing, waiting to hear his plan. But when I thought he would speak, he instead once more crawled into the next chamber, and for some time we heard him rooting around in his secret place. I asked Rebecca if she knew what he had in mind, but she shook her head and did not answer me; instead she arranged the plague woman’s cloak behind her head as a pillow, in the same way I had been using Dom Hilary’s parcel, and kept her hands clasped over her belly, as if the unborn child required protection more than we did.

At last the Jew pulled himself back to where we were. This time he too had a bundle, made I saw from his kirtle. Even our breath seemed to find no place in our cramped quarters, but he managed to squeeze the thing he carried into the space we occupied. “In here,” he said, “are treasures that will buy you hospitality and safety.”

“The master will not be content with whatever you have in there,” I said. “He will simply have us tortured until we reveal their source. Then we will burn as he intended right along.”

“You are a bigger fool than I imagined,” the Jew said, and turned from me to look at his daughter. “Rebecca, I will tell you a series of names and places. You will remember them?”

“Yes, Father.”

He nodded. “I trust you shall. And you”—he looked at me—“will go with her because as a woman alone, even with the protection of the cloak, she cannot travel so far without incurring suspicion or worse.”

“Go where?” I still did not understand the daring of his plan.

“First to the coast of Kent. Then you must get across the channel. There are plenty of boatmen who will take this”—he pulled a gold plate from his parcel—“as fare.”

“No need,” Rebecca said. “I have Mistress Juryman’s coins.”

Her father laughed, and I had no opportunity to ask what they were talking about because he immediately went on. “I should have expected you would. Very well, but you may use this if need be.” He again brandished the gold plate. “It is not a treasure like the rest.” He patted the bundle he had made. “These go only to our people.”

“To Jews,” I said, beginning finally to see the outline of the scheme he had in mind. Then I remembered Dom Hilary’s words:
If you survive this threat, Justin, you must quit England.
“To Jews living in places far away,” I added. “That is what you mean, is it not?”

“It is. There are thriving Jewish colonies in the Rhenish towns of Metz and Strasbourg, and across the Rhine in Offenburg and Breisach. I have clansmen in each. Even you”—he looked at me—“will be received for my sake. And because of what you bring.” He gestured again to the hoard in his kirtle.

I had heard stories of how Jews had blood contacts everywhere and thus maintained and grew their wealth. I never thought the notion to be of more than passing interest. Now I was learning that my life depended on that spiderweb of connection.

But what life? I began all this seeking a reward that would make me rich enough to claim as my wife the daughter of Giacomo the Lombard. It had instead led me to become in truth what I had pretended to be. “I am priested,” I said, “and vowed to remain so until I die.” In my mind I added the extraordinary intelligence that Dom Hilary had shared with me, that I was a priest of the True Obedience of Avignon, charged with the task of returning a real and bona fide pope to the church. Though I believed utterly in what Dom Hilary had said—was not the Jew’s scheme further proof that God spoke through Hilary?—I did not say the words aloud. Because I could not imagine how I would discharge my obligation, it seemed best not to boast of it. “I am vowed to be a monk of the Charterhouse. I cannot change that now.”

“I do not ask that you marry her,” the Jew said. “Only that you see these treasures safely to our people. The girl as well,” he added, though it was plain to me, and I suspect to Rebecca, that the contents of his pack mattered to him more.

“I can promise that,” I said. Getting out of this dilemma by any plan, however unlikely to succeed, seemed to me far better than remaining where we were and starving or being discovered.

“Swear it,” he said, “by the Almighty Creator of the Universe.”

I swore.

He looked content. Rebecca was not. “Do neither of you ask what I wish in all this?”

“Do you have a choice?” her father asked. “You are my flesh and your mother’s daughter, and for those reasons I might forgive you what you have done. For other men you are simply a whore.”

“Not,” she said quietly, “if he”—she nodded in my direction—“escorts me as a widow.”

The Jew nodded. “It is a story that will be believed,” he said. “And you will be welcome because of what you bring.”

“If,” she said, “you have in there what I believe you have, I will be more than welcomed, I will be revered.”

Her father looked not at her but at me. Then he seemed to make up his mind. “Treasures stolen from the Temple in Jerusalem,” he whispered. “Do you understand?”

Such things, I realized, as might have been touched by the hand of Jesus Christ himself, for the Gospels tell us that when Our Savior was in Jerusalem, He went to that very temple to offer worship to His Father in heaven. I could not speak for the enormity of the thought, but I nodded and so did the Jew.

So was our bargain made.

It was necessary to wait until my hair had grown sufficient to cover the tonsure, which meant Rebecca must make one further excursion into the countryside to fetch us food and drink. “Go,” I said, “to Mistress Grindal in the Hollow Way and ask for help in the name of the Speckled Egg. She will give you all you need.” Rebecca donned the plague cloak and went and did as I had told her, and returned with meat and cheese and ale enough to last us until my tonsure was grown out and my beard full enough to serve as some sort of disguise should any who sought us know what I looked like. Then, after nightfall of a day when we had heard no patrols of searching soldiers, Rebecca and I climbed out of the pit.

I left my habit behind and dressed in the clothes Dom Hilary had given me, as he had obviously intended I should do. Hidden beneath them, close to my heart, was the other thing I had found in the parcel: an Agnus Dei. It was little bigger than my thumbnail, and I recognized it at once as that rarest and most precious of holy relics, a scrap of wax—this one encased in red silk—blessed by a pope. I was sure, given the source, it commemorated the reign of Pope Clement VII, whom I then believed to be the true successor to Saint Peter—a conviction based on the word of Hilary, and on all the remarkable things that had happened to me since first I entered the Charterhouse.

“Do we now again call you Geoffrey?” the Jew asked, eyeing my change of clothing.

“Call me what you will. In my heart”—I touched my hidden and blessed treasure—“I remain Dom Justin.” And, I added in my mind, a priest of the True Obedience of Avignon.

“Geoffrey is dead,” Rebecca said. “I loved Geoffrey, but he disappeared a long time ago.”

She spoke more truth than she knew, so I did not contradict her.

In all the time of our preparation and planning, we had not asked the Jew her father why he was not coming with us, or what he intended to do when we were gone. It seemed an unnecessary question. In the final moments before we left, he said, “Wait four days, Daughter, then begin to say the mourning prayer for me. As I have no son, I rely on you.”

“It is a sin,” I said, obligated by simple charity in the face of such a blatant confession of wicked intent, even on the part of a Jew.

“Not always,” he told me. “Not to protect what remains from further desecration.” He turned to his daughter and showed her something that was in his hand. “This is for you,” he said, “not to be gifted to the others. I pray you will pass it on to my grandchild.”

“I promise I will do so,” Rebecca said.

He did not immediately give her the treasure he had deemed to be a personal gift, only looked at her for some few seconds, then said, “For your mother’s sake, indeed for your own, I wish it had not been thus. It means little now, but I am sorry for what you have suffered because of me.” Then he grasped the two ends of the thing he was giving her, a silver tube of some sort, and twisted them in opposite directions. One end came free in the manner of a stopper pulled from a jug. I knew from the way he angled his body he thought to keep me from seeing what he did, but so close were our quarters, it was not possible. And though he whispered, I heard him tell her the thing inside was never to be removed. “You must swear you will not replace the original
klaf
. And that you will make whoever you give this to swear the same thing.” And when she had done so, he replaced the part that had come loose and gave her the thing, and she did as women always do and secreted it down her bosom.

Giacomo the Lombard, known also as the Jew of Holborn

From the Waiting Place

I intended to wait the full four days until, following my instructions, my daughter would begin saying the prayer of mourning. But the second day after they left, I heard above my head more patrols than ever before, and I suspected that something or someone had given the soldiers a clue as to where I and my treasure might be found. Had they captured Rebecca and Geoffrey and forced the information from them? Perhaps, but perhaps not. There were many other possible explanations, from chance to coincidence. Having for so long refused to allow grief for my daughter to take precedence over what I knew to be my duty, I could not dwell on that riddle. My intention was not changed.

I crawled into the second chamber.

The tools I used to dig were where they had always been. I ignored the trowel and the small smith’s mallet, which I sometimes used to break up stubborn clods of earth, and took in hand the much larger pickax. Instead of tiny, careful strokes moving a few inches of soil at a time, I swung it wildly, using as much force as I could summon while lying on the ground at full stretch. Indeed, I exerted more strength than I should by nature possess. After a time great lumps of clay fell on my head and all around me. I struggled to my knees, fearing I might smother myself without bringing about what I intended.

Then, after a few more strokes, thin cracks began traveling the length and breadth of the wall of earth in front of me, widening even as I watched. All at once, the wall crumbled, as if a child’s hand had pushed over an edifice built of sand. Miraculously I was not buried by the shower of dirt and stones but was instead able to drag myself over the rubble into the cavern that was newly exposed.

I was in a chamber that was wider and taller than either of the two I had so laboriously uncovered over the space of nearly five years, and everywhere I looked were wondrous things.

I staggered to my feet, my eyes dazzled by the glory of the treasure I had discovered and turned every which way, hungry to see it all, not knowing where to look first. But even as I stumbled toward the nearest marvel—a golden menorah as tall as a small child and as wide as the span of both my outstretched arms—the water began rising at my feet. In seconds it was at my knees, and moments after, waist-high. The Fleet was rushing toward me, ready to claim the stolen treasure of the Templars. And me with it.

The flooding river rose as high as my chest, but I struggled toward the thing that shone before me, hoping to survive long enough to touch it with my own hands. Finally I was close enough to see the almond blossom shape of the menorah’s nine candleholders and so to convince myself of the likelihood that once it had burned in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Here was truly the most ancient symbol of my people. I grasped it and lifted it above my head and shouted my final words: “
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
” Hear, O Israel: The Lord Our God, the Lord is One.

And so I came to the Waiting Place. I am told my wife and my daughter have preceded me here, and that both spoke for me before moving on. Moreover, I am promised that having told my story, I too will soon be allowed to depart this way station between time and eternity. I am joyful.

•

30

Maggie looked lost in the hospital bed, small and wizened, only her sea-blue eyes showing any sign of vitality. Geoff had told Annie what to expect; nonetheless she was shocked by the physical deterioration wrought in what seemed a few days.

“Apparently the cancer’s everywhere,” Geoff had said, repeating the verdict of the oncologist in a flat monotone that for him was more expressive than hysteria. “All the vital organs are involved, and she’s got a lump the size of my fist on her rib cage. Exterior, or it would have killed her by now. As it was, the thing started hemorrhaging, and that’s what drove her to get help. She said it was ruining her pink chair.”

Maggie’s way of putting it was more direct. “I made an agreement with my cancer. I wouldn’t bother it if it didn’t bother me. It was a temporary truce, and the time ran out. Sit down, Annie darling, and stop looking so glum. No poking and prodding and vomiting and losing my hair. My choice, and I’d do it again.” She patted the thick white braid that hung over her shoulder. “Now, tell me what you found in Strasbourg. Geoff started to explain yesterday, but I was too doped up to understand. And it made a great excuse to have you come and visit.”