She formed a small smile. “No,” she said.
He drank from his ale, set the cup on the table. “Did you note that Sasportas has gone—and not just to the countryside, but out of England altogether? Our esteemed new rabbi, it seems, chooses not to shepherd his congregation through such a visitation. The plague offers him divine signal to flee, as he’s wished to since first he arrived here. The man was too godly for a congregation of merchants.” Manuel’s full lips formed a wry rose. Then he turned serious. “There’s no plague in Richmond, Ester. Come there with me.”
She spoke flatly, with a mute gesture toward the rabbi’s room. “I won’t leave him now.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
She didn’t know whether to feel grateful or bitter.
“I wish you’d come with me,” he said, “but I respect you for the choice. When we marry, you’ll show me the same devotion.”
He leaned across the table and picked up the page he’d pushed aside. Quickly he read it. She knew what was there: the rabbi’s dictation—words she’d committed to paper without ever understanding they were addressed to her. For I speak to you as a father to a son, and though your endeavor be beyond my reach, still I wish to gird you with all the understanding and love of God that I harbor in my heart. It is for this that I labor, for I believe it will be my last good deed in this world.
With a tolerant smile, Manuel HaLevy set down the page, patted it, and set his used cup atop it. “Remember the choice that’s offered you,” he said.
A night torqued by dreams. In long wakeful hours, in a black silence broken only by the rabbi’s faint moans, she rehearsed the day’s events, as though trying to solve an equation with aching heart and flesh for its components.
Near dawn, carriage wheels below her window.
She descended the stair and opened the door before John had lifted his hand to knock. She stood, one hand on the doorknob for strength.
Behind John, set against the dark street and white sky, was a coach piled with baggage. The coachman hunched in his seat, his face shuttered against the city; framed in the half-closed window, silently facing forward, was Thomas. Before addressing her John glanced back at them, as though drawing strength from their impatience.
When he turned to her, she saw that he looked diminished, apprehensive.
Something had gone wrong, something whose name was still just outside her reach. All the world would have told her that her error had been in giving herself to him—that he abhorred her now because she’d so easily surrendered her virtue—yet she felt certain that wasn’t right. Something had slipped between them, and in slipping had started a dreadful wordless tumble she didn’t know how to stop. She’d given her body because it was the only way she knew to speak the truth—to make John understand what she pledged, lay it out plainly alongside the love he’d offered. Yet their joining had carried him too far, to a territory where he didn’t recognize himself, or her.
If she could have curled herself up in his pocket as he stood there on the street, she’d have done it. She would even, in that instant, have abandoned the rabbi. She’d have forsaken her writing as a barren folly, climbed shivering into the carriage to warm herself beside him. Take me with you.
But it was too late. His face bore the marks of his own suffering. She read there his struggle to think well of himself, and his panic to flee all the sudden scourges of this city, herself among them.
“You’ll come to join me,” he said. “Perhaps. After.” He essayed each word carefully.
She forced herself to walk the steps of his logic. “After the rabbi’s death?”
He offered an uncertain nod.
She opened her mouth to insist: But what of our love? What of all you swore? And as John glanced yet again toward the safety of the coach, another, more desperate impulse rose in her: to speak words she knew would corral him in an instant.
I gave you my honor; now you know your duty to me.
But she could not comprehend a love that must be purchased with pity. Nor would she force John to her side through a language of honor in which she did not believe. Honor and love were no kin—all who claimed so did ill in the world. At last, now, she understood her own grandmother’s pained choice. A heart is a free thing, Lizabeta had said, and once enslaved will mutiny.
She thought, Let me not enslave that heart that so wishes for liberty. Let him come to me in freedom, or not at all.
She said to John, “I’ll await word from you, then.”
He appeared relieved. Then, as all she’d left unspoken rang in the silence, unhappy.
He mustered himself. Then looked directly at her. “I haven’t your strength of heart,” he said.
You would, she thought, if you had my life.
“I shall see you, then.” A halting kiss on her cheek.
In her confusion she allowed it. Piercing words rose to her lips—but speaking them would squander a silence she needed, now, to absorb every detail of him. Had Ester once thought it frivolous for a woman to don breeches in order to learn the mind of her lover? She’d have done far more now, as John turned for his carriage. She’d have bent herself wholly to a new shape, if only she might understand. Enchant. Be other than what she was.
He’d loved her. To doubt this would be to doubt her very sanity.
His carriage receded down the street.
The days narrowed, dimmed, piled one upon the next. They muffled one another, indistinguishable—save for the flare of the match on Sabbath as Rivka lit the candles, then placed a drop of wine on the rabbi’s pale tongue. Ester and Rivka waited, together, as he labored to swallow it. Outside the windows, London had reshaped itself. The sound of hooves had all but left the streets and what remained of all London’s throngs was a populace of extremes: those too poor to flee, and those whose love of their possessions made them unwilling to leave them; those too ill for the journey, and those who trusted firmly in their good health; those who would plunder, and those few unselfish souls who still wished to tend the sick, in the watchful hush that had overtaken the city.
In the distance Ester at times heard bells, strange poundings, flurries of noise followed by dreadful quiet. Now and then, muted cries from beyond their door broke the silence. Ester ventured out when they needed supplies, offering herself for their errands and household labors so Rivka could remain at the rabbi’s side. There was no more laudanum to be had in the city, and the apothecary had doubled the price for willow bark. The man would no longer take the coin from her hand, but with a wordless shake of his head bade her set it on his table—as though not only touch but even speech might prove deadly.
One evening near dusk, returning from the apothecary, she strayed to the park where she’d once encountered Catherine. A foolish thing to do, yet she no longer feared for her own safety. Grass had overgrown the paths, and the dim air was rich with birdcalls—for by the mayor’s authority all London’s cats, blamed for spreading the pestilence, had been killed. She stood beneath the fresh rills of song, amid cool waves of grass, until stars pricked overhead. From a deserted street nearby came the dim light of a single lantern, carried by an invisible stranger hastening through the streets toward home, its faint, aching glow careening from window to window.
Words she’d once read in another world, in a lamp-lit bookbinder’s shop, floated through her mind: What’s gone and what’s past help should be past grief.
The soft English sod beneath her shoes.
She found Rivka red-eyed. Setting her cloak on the peg, she heard the rabbi breathing shallowly on the bed Rivka had made for him by the fire. His voice was a dry whisper. Hesitant, she stepped closer to hear. She hadn’t allowed herself to be so near to him in weeks, choosing instead to make herself useful from a distance, for she felt certain her presence must burden him.