From below Ester’s window, the dull noise of the man hammering his shoulder against the door continued, but fewer voices cheered each blow. From near the door, a harsh cry. Bescós. “It’s a devil’s trick,” he shouted.
But Ester spoke above him, her voice thin and high. “We trust in your church, not this man’s.” Without looking at Bescós, she pointed a trembling hand in his direction. “Let your vicar use our wealth to expunge our sins. We’ll give this household and all it contains to him and to him alone. This man here—he’s called Esteban Bescós—he wishes to take it for himself. Don’t let him withhold the fortune from your church.”
Beside Ester, Rivka drew a jagged breath, as though she’d only now woken from a dream. She was staring as if Ester were the vilest of all traitors. Then she turned away, as though she’d discovered the same of her own self.
Below the window, the woman with the swollen eye was raising her voice to override the pug-faced man beside her. “Then go to the church and find him,” she said.
A brief hesitation. Then the pug-faced man nodded and departed.
A rigid smile remained on Bescós’s face. “It’s a trick!” he shouted. And he gestured broadly toward the da Costa Mendes house, as though welcoming friends to a feast. But the woman with the swollen eye answered without turning to him. “We’ll let the vicar say so, won’t we?”
The man thudding against the front door made two last efforts, accompanied by a few companions’ laughter, then staggered back into the crowd, calling for ale.
Ester shut the window. “We have to gather our things,” she said.
For a minute Rivka didn’t move.
Ester spoke softly. “Do you know what the rabbi said to me, before he died?”
Rivka looked up.
“He said he’d failed to be brave enough to be a martyr when he was young. And he was afraid he’d fail again, were he tested. Imagine”—Ester was shocked by the quaking of her own voice—“such a man believing he failed God. Rivka, I disbelieve this notion of God. A God who would ask this of us can’t be the same as gave us our wish to live. If I’m wrong, then the sin be on me.”
Rivka shook her head hard. “Don’t speak these things to me.”
Ester swallowed. “Then listen to the rabbi’s words, not mine. He would wish you consolation. He taught the verse, God is near to the broken-hearted.”
Rivka said nothing, only turned for the stair.
An hour, more. It was afternoon, the air thick with heat. Ester watched from the window, clenching and unclenching in her hand the heavy key to the da Costa Mendes house.
Below, the crowd grew steadily, passersby trickling in from either end of the street as they happened upon the day’s sport. Shouts and laughter surged. Several women walked the edge of the gathering—the one with the swollen eye and her companion with the babe on her hip and others—and with almost lascivious eagerness they appeared to be telling the story to all who entered. Two sharp cracks from the house’s attic, loud as gunshots—Ester and Rivka cried out—then scattered shouts from below as shards fell to the cobblestones. A few youths stood on the street, picking up more rocks, taking lazy aim at the panes of the attic windows. Nearby, a small number of men stood stolid, paternal, their backs to the house as if to guard it from premature trespass; or perhaps merely to ensure their place in line to loot it. Almost furtively, they watched the women on the perimeter of the crowd. Something in their posture was wolfish and apprehensive—and Ester saw that they hungered for an enemy against which they might yet be capable of protecting someone. Then they’d fight it with a fury like none they’d mustered before—pound and pound until the fibers of its flesh loosened, and lost hold.
She couldn’t see Bescós.
The vicar’s arrival spread a simmering hush along the street.
Ester opened the window to its fullest and stood in plain view.
Could it be that a man so frail still walked? He was wrinkled, his form bent with age, his eyelids red and puffed. Perhaps, Ester thought, he was simply the only vicar left in the city.
But as he drew near, she saw that his pale face bore the fury of a man spurned. He spread his arms wide, and his voice had a shocking strength. “Do you give this house to the church?” As he cried out the question, the vicar glanced upward at the window only briefly. His glare slid from Ester’s face to those congregated about him—as though he’d at last corralled his flock and this time meant to brand them. Those nearest stepped back from his fury. Ester saw a few bow their heads, though most of the crowd appeared unmoved. But the old vicar advanced on those around him, turning to one and then another. Still louder, he cried, “The devil must be driven out without mercy!”
Straining to be heard, Ester shouted from the window. “I give this!” She held out the thick key. “It opens every door. All will belong to the church, the house and all its wealth.”
But the vicar still did not look at her. “The Lord does not accept empty riches,” he screamed to those standing about him. “Not without the lone tribute that is eternal.”
His words held the street in thrall.
He turned his withered face to Ester so suddenly, she stepped back from the window. “Do the Jewesses,” he enunciated, “give their souls?”
She’d known it would be necessary. Yet the words were dreadful. She held herself upright. “I do,” she said.
Behind her, a small sound escaped Rivka.
“This sin is mine, not yours,” Ester whispered.
“They offer their souls,” the vicar announced majestically to his congregation. Yet he raised a hand, delaying absolution. “Will God accept such an offering?”
Swiftly Ester opened a drawer of the dressing table that had been Mary’s. “We have to gather what we can,” she said to Rivka. With a whispered discúlpame, she slid Mary’s necklaces and rings aside and, closing her spirit to all that the delicate, familiar baubles threatened to raise in her, she found a few coins—enough, perhaps, to pay for passage out of London, if they lived. Then, without a glance at Rivka—for it seemed to her that the slightest provocation might prompt Rivka to balk—she fled downstairs.
Moments later she heard Rivka thumping clumsily about the bedchambers as though blind. When they met at the foot of the stair, Rivka had donned a voluminous cloak, and her figure was thickened by bundles she’d stowed within her clothing.
Her brown eyes rested for a long moment on Ester’s. Then she set a hand on Ester’s arm, and gripped.
The sun was sectioning the floor of the front room, each wedge of yellow light a threshold. Together they crossed one after another, until they reached the shadowed entryway. For the first time in forty days, Ester set her hand on the lock, then turned to Rivka for permission.
Rivka drew a long breath through her nostrils, then nodded.
She unlatched the heavy door and swung it open.
An assault of sunlight. The strangers stepped back.
Ester opened her mouth to speak—but the words never sounded. Bodies shoving. Rough hands, grabbing. A face, too close to Ester’s—a scabbed sore on a stubbled cheek. Shouts, open mouths, an elbow knocking her forehead, hard. A hand snaking into Ester’s hair, twisting, wrenching—fiery pain, she heard the hank rip from her scalp. She gasped, but didn’t let out a scream, nor did Rivka, whose grip was iron on her arm. A press of bodies pushed them forward, hands hard on Ester’s shoulders, on her waist, feeling for her breast through the fabric of her dress, one unseen hand rummaging her skirt to squeeze sharply at her sex. She could feel Rivka struggling beside her, heard a man grunt as Rivka did something to make him twist away. And then before them the vicar stood waiting.
As they neared he spread his arms above them, a look of satisfaction on his fallen face. And the hands, one by one, released them.