How brilliant the moon. Its sharp disk shedding a halo against the high black sky. A moon so bright it seemed impossible it made no sound.
Every weathered board of the deck plain in the marble light. Every wavetop aglitter. Every trough bottomless, rushing with the truth of the unthinkable chill below. The sails bellying overhead, their severe shadows rocking with the motion of the ship. Black, white, black. The shadows crossing and recrossing her slim fingers as they lay still on the rail.
A night waiting for someone but to pronounce what was already evident.
Swathed in blankets on a low bench beside the rail, the still form of the rabbi seemed to float like the foam on the sliding waves, his white beard and pale face rising and falling on each breath of the ocean.
Beyond them, nearly lost in the shadows near the ship’s prow, her brother stood silent. Not a word to her since their departure from Amsterdam. As though he had determined to leave some last shred of softness behind, and a mere glance at her face could undo his resolve.
The water clapped hollow against the prow and the vessel slipped under the fine pricking of the stars, toward a dark solidity on the horizon.
England.
A sickening hope, like a gall in her stomach.
7
November 4, 2000
London
Helen was stiff with chill. The thick sweater she pulled tighter around her shoulders was little help, and the small heater she’d brought with her didn’t seem to reach this side of the library. But the tall windows here provided the best light.
All afternoon, Bridgette had made it her business to pass by the room in her high-heeled boots and a multi-hued green scarf of dizzying intensity, inquiring yet again into their progress or enunciating solicitously over the phone words Helen was clearly meant to hear: “I’m awfully sorry I had to change the plan, but the schedule has gone into someone else’s hands. I sincerely hope this delay doesn’t make a mess of the whole project.” Ian might have been cowed by Helen’s insistence on three days’ reading to persuade the university to make the purchase; not so Bridgette. Today was to be Helen’s final day with the papers, and Bridgette had made known that it would end early: Sotheby’s was due at the Eastons’ in late afternoon to begin assessing the manuscripts.
That morning, before leaving for Richmond, Helen had called Jonathan Martin’s office once more to check on his progress. Notably, he had gotten on the phone himself rather than relay a message through his secretary, to tell Helen that he’d spoken personally with Ian Easton, and that Ian had struck him as “an affable fellow”—which Helen understood to mean “pliable”: Jonathan Martin’s favorite sort of person. Martin, meanwhile, was planning to discuss the question of purchasing the documents with the vice chancellor over lunch.
The possibility almost made her laugh aloud: for once, after all these years, might Jonathan Martin’s ability to silk his way around the system work in her favor? Until this week, she’d felt assured of finishing out her remaining months with minimal contact with the man. She’d stopped attending his lectures and receptions years ago—let the junior faculty show up to flatter, she’d no interest in competing over office-space allocations. She’d be long retired, thank goodness, before the department’s move to the renovated wing Jonathan Martin had been so delightedly raising funds for these past years: connectivity, convenience, creative development of space—nothing, that is, to do with the real work of history, and everything to do with Martin’s wish to once and for all declare superiority to the rival department over at UCL.
Yet now this was the man on whom her fate seemed to depend: Jonathan Martin, who, when she’d told him about the documents earlier that week, had sat silent a full seventy seconds. She knew; she’d watched the clock in his office. In fact, she wouldn’t have put it past him to watch it himself. Seventy seconds: enough time to make the uninitiated squirm. But she was well acquainted with the man’s ostentatious deliberations.
“Helen, this is a major find,” he’d said—still staring out the window. Posing for Rodin, she supposed.
If it was childish to indulge her distaste for him by keeping up a withering internal monologue as yet another of Martin’s silences ticked by, at least it kept her from rising from her chair and pounding her bony fist on his hardwood desk for him to stop curating his own image—Jonathan Martin, with his well-groomed graying hair and impeccable shave—and start doing what any head of a history department in his right mind ought to do.
At last he turned back to her. “An extraordinary find to conclude a career with, I must say.” Behind the words she could read his regret that the one to make such a find had been Helen Watt—a dried-up scholar, inconveniently unphotogenic, on the cusp of a mandatory retirement no one but her would rue. How much better if one of Martin’s bright young hires had made the discovery! Someone who could be relied on to hitch a ride on the publicity that might come from this, become an academic star, and accrue years of benefit to the university.
She watched Jonathan Martin flick aside his displeasure. For the moment. And reach for his telephone and, in his basso profundo voice, instruct his assistant to connect him—immediately!—to the university librarian. It so happened, he confided to Helen as he waited for the connection, that he had some funds available for just such a purchase, from a longtime donor eager to help raise the profile of the department. If that’s what it took to get the papers before some other university made news by acquiring them, he’d be glad to have the History Department contribute a portion of the expense . . . though for that contribution he’d naturally expect a certain consideration.
Which meant, Helen knew, that he’d lean on the librarian to give his scholars preferential access to the documents. A violation of the Freedom of Information Act, but of course there were ways around that for a political creature like Jonathan Martin.
“Afternoon,” Bridgette breathed as she entered the room, this time wearing a black wool coat and carrying an armload of magazines. Aaron looked up as though startled by her entry—as though he could possibly have missed the staccato footsteps approaching him. He gave Bridgette that smile, the one that involved only one side of his mouth. Helen couldn’t help but watch. The princely, cocky tilt of his head. The smooth olive planes of his face, the heavy lashes, the dark almond-shaped eyes. Only a boy who’d been raised in luxury could carry his good looks that way.
Dror. Even his good looks hadn’t belonged to himself alone.
Bridgette seemed about to stop—then regained stride, deposited her magazines on a shelf of the library, and returned to the entryway. Aaron stood at the table, watching her go, looking entertained.
Slowly, magisterially, he turned his head in Helen’s direction.
The outer door shut, making her jump.
Aaron had turned back to his document. Adjusting the gloves around his narrow, sinewy wrists, he emitted a grunt of annoyance.
She’d required that he wear gloves, of course. At the store, the clerk had given her a choice between latex surgeon’s gloves or a pair of prim white dainties left over from another century’s afternoon tea: the opportunity to make Aaron look like a forensics hero while handling the documents, or like a nineteenth-century fop. As the clerk rang up her purchase she’d chided herself for her own satisfaction.
He peeled off the thin cotton gloves, dropping them inside out on the tabletop, and sat, pulling his laptop toward him. “Don’t worry,” he said without looking up. “I’m not checking my e-mail.” He typed for a few seconds, then waited, eyes on the screen.
With a vexation she didn’t fully understand, Helen turned back to the letter before her. It was addressed to HaCoen Mendes. Fragments of the old red wax seal remained where the recipient had pulled the folded page open. The ink had faded to a dull brown but was legible, the paper torn at one end but otherwise intact.