“Do it, Ester. If you must, then deceive your husband just as you deceived me—but you’ll do it with a full belly and a house with children. I wish”—his mouth worked—“I wish you not to die, Ester. And not to know hunger. I wish that more fervently, God forgive me, than I wish for you to change your conduct. I know your obstinacy. My words won’t keep you from using the mind God gave you, even if you forget it’s God that gave it you. But allow me to be your teacher one last time. Marry, and have bread. And let your husband be more blind to your doings than was I.”
She shook her head, hard. Of one thing she was certain. “Manuel HaLevy won’t be deceived,” she said. “He’s told me himself that as his wife I would write only to teach his children their letters. He . . .” She hesitated. “He’s a better man than I once thought. He’s generous and honest when he wishes to be. But he turns all his force and intelligence to building an edifice for his heirs. There’s much to celebrate in that life. But I fear it more than I rejoice in it. I’m not a woman who can be content where other women are.” She closed her eyes, wishing now to see no more than the rabbi did. “So God made me.” Behind her closed eyelids, the fire made small undulating patterns—an ocean of warmth and light dancing. And she saw that even as she’d tried to speak the truth, she’d fallen short of the mark. For were it John the rabbi was urging her to marry, she’d not claim herself incapable of joying in things other women wished for. And if it was so, that God had made her as she was, then whence this wild desire rising in her to entrust herself, soul and body, to an Englishman whose intentions she knew less than she knew Manuel HaLevy’s? How difficult it was to grasp even a single truth of her own spirit.
“Now,” said the rabbi, his voice weak, “you will write for me a letter to the Dotar, in Amsterdam. If you won’t marry Manuel HaLevy, then perhaps a dowry from them will raise your prospect of another marriage. Ester. You must think of your future.”
She said nothing.
“Write it,” the rabbi said. “I believe, Ester, that obedience is due me now.”
At dawn she rose, heavy with sleep. Through the night she’d fetched blankets and water at Rivka’s request, venturing no closer—though the rabbi’s shallow breaths sounded everywhere in the quiet house, measuring the passing hours. In the pale morning light, she read John’s letters yet again.
I think of you in that meadow, and the deer that allowed us so close. I think of your fist clenched so tight in the carriage after that foolish play, and the slow labor of unclenching your fingers. How I long to see you unclench your spirit until the full weight of your trust rests with me. For I see life has been hard with you and your trust is a thing not readily given.
My business here finished, I return to London now with apprehension of the pestilence but full of joy at the prospect of seeing you.
All morning, her thoughts bounded with confusion and hope, shielding her from her surroundings. At the apothecary’s shop, ringed by grim-faced women trading advice about anti-pestilential herbs, Ester closed her ears to tales of children risen from their churchyard graves to comfort grieving mothers. When one woman raised a finger and pronounced that she could hear the comet in its dreadful passage through the heavy skies, its roar the voice of God’s vengeance, Ester tightened her grip on the coins in her pocket and fixed her eyes on the apothecary’s table. And carried the small vial of laudanum home, where she let Rivka administer it to the rabbi, herself staying at a distance. So it was Ester who stood close to the door when a messenger knocked, delivered a letter, and fled.
I stay with Thomas on Downgate Street, for he is in need of company as well as counsel. But I see London’s sickness all about, and I would not linger. I have papers to travel, dear Ester, and wish to leave this city with all haste. Come with me. I’ll take you to see green such as you’ve not guessed at in your life.
Ester, my father will wish your conversion. I cannot but say that such a choice would ease your life, though I won’t press you for it. Even should you do this, whatsoever affections you hold for the beliefs of your people remain a matter of your own conscience, and I will cherish your conscience.
At noon she slipped from the house. Crossing Gracechurch Street, hurrying along Lombard, she opened her eyes as she had not in days, and saw London as John now must, having been absent during the weeks of its swift transformation. On Candlewick Street, a man had taken off his clothing and was waving it above his head, his ribs a piteous ladder, his private parts a dark smudge, shouting something Ester couldn’t make out as she hurried by. Down a narrow alley she glimpsed a cross painted in rough white strokes on the wooden door of a house, warning all away. The plague had extended its fingers everywhere now, and grasped the city whole. Two men strode quickly past her, wearing nose cones of herbs and walking in the center of the streets so as to avoid coming near to any residence. They stepped aside only when a cart passed, bearing two bodies on the way to burial, one a man and one a small girl who seemed to rest her head on his chest. Ester glimpsed the dead girl’s face, beautiful in its slumber despite the sores that marked it, as she slept alongside her father.
John answered Thomas’s door.
Before she could greet him, he set a hand on her elbow and pulled her close. His kiss was light and questioning, then glad. He held her about the waist.
“Where’s Thomas?” she said.
“Gone to see Mary. She begged him to visit, which he hadn’t done these weeks. Is Mary well?”
“I wish I knew. She hasn’t responded to my letters, nor would she come to the door when I visited.”
John shook his head slowly. “It’s not Thomas’s first such trouble, I’m afraid. He dances away from it.”
“Yes,” Ester said. “We all understood that, save Mary.”
John pursed his lips. “Perhaps one never can foresee what one hopes not to see.”
“Perhaps not,” she said.
There was no more to say on the matter. They stood together in the entry. After a moment John laughed, dispelling the silence. “You’ll come with me, then? I wish to leave in the morning, no later.”
They were near the same height, and she held his eyes. “I came to tell you why I cannot. Not yet.”
He gave a slight, disbelieving laugh.
“The rabbi is too ill to travel,” she said. “He’s dying. I have to stay with him.”
“You’ll not get a travel permit if you wait, Ester. Already petitioners are waiting days, some only to be denied. The disease spreads too rapidly, hardly a parish is felt safe any longer.”
“I know this,” she said. “And if he should die tonight I’ll be with you tomorrow. But understand, I can’t leave him while he lives.”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “In fact, Ester, I don’t understand. If what you feel for me is love”—he laughed again, as though countering a child’s foolish logic, and spoke to her slowly. “Your loyalty to the rabbi is an honorable thing. I respect it. But Ester, London is shuttering to burn itself to embers in this sickness. This is love, Ester, and it wishes to save you.” He regarded her with an intensity she’d not seen in him before. “If you refuse, we might not see one another again. Does love matter so little to you?”
Words caught in her throat. “You misunderstand,” she began. But how to explain what she felt, the absurd hopes he raised in her? She couldn’t fathom a happy fate for herself—yet the very thought of him was a seed germinating, threatening to crack stone. The hour they’d spent beside the river had offered such a shock of beauty, she couldn’t choose whether to banish it from her mind or think of nothing else. His quiet riveted her in a way all the proud promises of Manuel HaLevy could not. She wished to say even some small piece of this, but the words terrified her, like a prayer so full of hubris it might invite a curse.
She said, “I’ve done a wrong to the rabbi. I’ll tell you of it one day. I cannot set it right, but I can accompany him now in his final days. If I fail to do that, I’ll never be a spirit you wish to stand beside.”
He nodded—a nod that gave away nothing. His face had altered. Something was awry.