The Sempster's Tale (26 page)

‘But you had to know afterwards. If nothing else, he must be circumcised!“

‘He told me. Before ever we became lovers, he told me. So I knew, yes!“

‘And you…“

‘I
love
him.“ What else could she say? She knew what was said of coupling between Christian and Jew—that it was a bestiality that only the harshest penance could cleanse, that the soul was supposed to be as polluted by it as the body was. But she had been in love with Daved before she knew he was Jewish, and her love had burned past all else. Including caring what anyone thought of her love. And now the Inquisition had him, and every nightmare she had ever had about him might be going to come true, and with a twist that hurt her arm she wrenched free of Dame Frevisse, gathered up her skirts, and ran after the men, leaving the nun to think what she would and follow as she might.

Inside, Mistress Hercy had met the men in the screens passage, but the Naylors were standing behind Daved, not holding onto him, and she seemed not to know there was trouble that way but was demanding at Raulyn, “What do you mean, he was attacked? By whom? Why?”

‘We don’t know who. Just some louts. Someone who’s against friars, that’s all. He’s safe and staying here a time. What of Pernell?“

‘The noise wakened her, but it was over before she knew what it was, thank blessed St. Mary. Father Tomas, come up and give her some comfort about Hal.“

‘I will.“ Father Thomas answered unsteadily, drawing away toward Brother Michael waiting impatiently just inside the hall. ”I’ll be there—“

‘Later,“ Raulyn interrupted. ”We must needs talk first. By your leave.“ He started forward, past Mistress Hercy, with the Naylors crowding Daved to go ahead, too.

‘Anne,“ Mistress Hercy said. ”Come help me tell Pernell all’s well.“

Anne brushed past Mistress Hercy, following the men into the hall, saying in echo of Raulyn, “Later. I’ll be up later.”

Behind her, she heard Mistress Hercy say to Dame Frevisse with quiet-voiced worry, “There’s something more, isn’t there?,” and Dame Frevisse answer, “Yes.” At the far end of the hall’s near side, the men were going through the doorway to the old solar, save for Raulyn stopped in the middle of the hall, saying to a maidservant there, “No. What I want just now is no one in the hall at all until I say differently.”

The maid curtseyed and left as Raulyn put out a hand to stop Anne going past him, saying, “Anne, no.”

Avoiding his hand, Anne said only, “Yes,” and went on, into the solar.

Until the new wing of rooms had been built along the yard, this had been where the family withdrew from the household’s general life to the privacy they now had in the parlor upstairs. It was become Raulyn’s office, used for such business as might not be done in the shop and to keep his records and “For somewhere he gets away from an over-womaned household,” Pernell had once said, smiling. With twilight deepening outside the single window, the men were only shapes in the room’s gathering shadows, with Brother Michael nearest the door, his back to her, making certain no one left. Daved, still flanked by the Naylors, was across the room, facing his foe, while Father Tomas stood alone to one side, looking shrunken and huddled.

Anne eased sideways from the doorway, keeping behind the friar, letting Raulyn go past her. He did, going to lay Daved’s daggers on his desk beside several account rolls, some pens, and a silver inkpot. Brother Michael started to say something to him but broke off as Dame Frevisse entered with a lighted candle, throwing sudden brightness across the room, and saying as she came, “I took the candle from the servant bringing it. I thought you’d want no one else here.”

‘Nor do we want you,“ Brother Michael snapped.

But Dame Frevisse was already going to light the fat candles waiting on a wrought-iron stand beside the desk. The growing golden light shone on the polished wood of the desk, the chair there, the several heavily locked chests against the walls. Underfoot, the carpet’s crimson, green, and yellow pattern was mostly left to shadows, but the woven tapestry of St. Nicholas, patron saint of merchants, sailors, and children, on one wall was caught into brightness and so were the men’s faces: Daved’s set and hard, all look of a merchant gone from him but something of harsh laughter still glinting there; Father Tomas’ with fear as openly on him as his priest’s gown; the Naylors’ wary, watchful, uncertain yet about what any of this was.

‘You.“ Brother Michael pointed at the younger of Dame Frevisse’s two men. ”Get between him and the window. And you,“ at Master Naylor. ”Have your dagger out. If he tries anything sudden, kill him.“

Anne pressed her hands over her mouth to stop an outcry, her gaze desperately on Daved, willing him to find escape from this as Raulyn protested angrily, “Sir!”

Done with the candles, Dame Frevisse blew out and laid down the one she had carried and drew aside, against the wall and, like Anne, mostly behind Brother Michael in undoubted hope he would forget she was there, which he well might, his gaze fixed on Daved like a hawk on its prey. But Daved looked less like prey than a hawk in his own right head raised, the candlelight catching deep on the scorn and anger in his dark eyes. He had hidden the fringed cloth under his shirt again, but that was all he had hidden. The courage that had let him dare his game against Christians all these years was bared and shining, and with it the deep-set certainty and pride of who he was. Whatever Christians thought of him, he had no shame that he was Jewish. He had not hidden the cloth again because of shame. He had hidden it to keep it from profane eyes.

From Christian eyes, Anne thought with a pain under her heart almost worse than her aching fear for him.

In the desolation of knowing more clearly than ever how much there was about him she did not know and had no hope of understanding, she pressed back against the wall, arms wrapped around herself, as Brother Michael said, first at Raulyn, “What we need is rope. Or, better, chains.” And at Father Tomas, “Stand over there with him.”

Father Tomas, his voice fear-thinned and shaking, said back, “I am not Jewish. I will not be tried by you as a Jew.”

‘This is no trial,“ Daved said, laughter harsh under the words. ”This is an ass of friar pretending to rights he doesn’t have.“

‘I’ve have rights over you, heretic,“ Brother Michael said back at him. ”I have the right to hold and question you, to find out the depth of your treachery and heresy, your—“

‘To be a heretic,“ Daved said, ”I would have to have been a Christian first. I have never been baptized, never been Christian. Therefore you have no claim on me as heretic.“

‘What you are,“ Brother Michael said with cold anger, ”you and all your kind, is a disease in the body of Christendom, to be cleansed by baptism or cut away by force if you refuse to change from your diseased ways.“

“That
is straight against what your own popes have said, one after another, for generations,” Daved returned. And Anne realized he was fighting in the only way left to him. With words. If not with hope. “By your popes’ orders, that you claim to obey, Jews should be left to live in peace. But the dog Dominicans and you Franciscans have decided otherwise, have set to hunting us to the death against the word of your own popes.”

‘You were allowed to live among us out of pity for you, blindly clinging to the Old Law, unable to see the light of Christ, yet owed some debt of gratitude because it was from your ways the way of Christ came.“

“That
is not answer to what I said,” Daved shot back at him with scorching cold. “We’re allowed to live among you because we make money for Christian princes.”

‘By usury,“ Brother Michael said with cold scorn back at him. ”Bleeding Christians of their wealth to your own foul ends.“

‘By loaning money,“ Daved agreed with matching scorn. ”A thing unallowed to Christians, but a thing that Christians need. For how many hundreds of years were we invited—even paid with privileges—to move into kingdoms, princedoms, cities, towns by kings, bishops, and lords? Not out of ’Christian charity‘ or anything like it, no, but so we could make money in ways forbidden to Christians. Money that those kings, bishops, and lords then taxed from us without stint, leaving us hated by those around us and struggling to survive ourselves.“

‘You had but to turn Christian to live as cleanly as anyone else,“ Brother Michael said coldly.

‘Yes,“ Daved agreed again. ”Save for the small point that by Christian law there are no free Jews. Every Jew is some Christian lord’s property, to be used or even ’given‘ away as a lord’s gift to someone, the way a hound or a field might be handed over for their use and profit. A Jew who turns Christian deprives his lord of a piece of property, and so a Jew who turns Christian forfeits to his lord everything he owns in recompense, to begin his Christian life with nothing. Such is Christian ’mercy‘ and ’charity.‘ He loses all and gains nothing.“

‘He gains his soul’s salvation!“ Brother Michael returned sharply.

‘He gains poverty, desolation, and the unending suspicion of any Christian who knows his past.“ Daved jerked a nod at Father Tomas. ”Look how readily you want to believe the worst of him for no better reason than that he had a Jewish grandfather.“

‘The Jewish taint remains in the blood, generation unto generation. That is proved and known.“

‘I thought that your rite of baptism was supposed to cleanse and make anew the soul of Man.“

‘It does, but as a dog returns to its vomit—“

‘And an ass to its braying,“ Daved snapped.

Anne had seen him angered in small ways a few times. What she had never seen was him
in
anger—anger around him like a dark and burning cloak, still in his control but— like fire—no less dangerous for that. But what she also saw was the gathered horror in the stares the nun’s two men now had on him, as if somehow, now that they understood what Daved was, he was turned into something hideous. But he wasn’t. He was still Daved, and Brother Michael would give him over to men who would kill him for it, would torture him to break his will and body, then burn him alive, chained to a stake, helpless while flames leaped up around him through high-piled wood, with no hope except that his executioner might strangle him before the fire reached his flesh, and if that mercy weren’t given, then the agony as the flames took him from the feet upward, his flesh scorching, blackening, burning. His screams until finally the flames finished with him, and there was nothing left but ashes and charred bones. All of his beauty, his laughter, his kindness and strength and clever mind gone in screaming agony to nothing.

That was the death he had played against every time he had taken on the seeming of a Christian. And he was still playing against it, Anne realized. Goading the friar. Keeping him at word-war. Holding off the moment he would be bound, chained, locked away until taken to the bishop’s prison. Maybe hoping—Anne’s heart lifted with the desperate thought—hoping that the trouble in the streets would spread into enough confusion that somehow he’d have chance at escape. Or that his uncle would come back with, somehow, rescue. Or fighting because it was not in him simply to give up.

But Brother Michael’s urge to battle looked to be no less than his, and past Daved’s words he was saying on, “… even so man returns to his old sins and, worse, finds new sins in which to wallow. Look you at the Church’s mercy, leaving Jews through all these centuries past to follow your faith, such as it was, because it was the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the faith of the Prophets, the faith given to mankind to ready us for Christ’s coming. Despite your blindness to the Light of Christ, despite your persevering in darkness, the Church sheltered you as one shelters a cripple. And yet treacherously, under that protection, you have corrupted the very faith you professed, that very faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that was the Church’s reason for mercy to you.”

Daved laughed shortly, bitterly. “For that, and because we made money your Christian princes could leech from us by bushelfuls.”

Brother Michael raised his voice. “You were allowed to dwell among us in hope the Light would finally end your blindness, despite you’ve lived by usury and other foulnesses, preying on Christian weaknesses.”

‘We’ve lived by whatever ways Christians leave to us,“ Daved said sharply back at him. ”And those ways become fewer every year. Whenever we have something that a Christian covets, it’s taken from us, sooner more usually than later. Does a Jew hold land and make it prosper? A Christian finds a lord to give it to him instead. Let Jews have lands or vineyards or trades that prosper, laws are passed that take away the lands, the vineyards, forbid us those trades. We used to practice every craft in Christendom, but steadily, steadily, we’ve been forced back and back into lesser and lesser lives. And then you scorn us for how we live, for what we do to stay alive with the less and less you, in your Christian ’charity,‘ leave to us.“