In an instant the shorter man was upon her—his thick hand gripping her cheek, fingers pinching hard as though testing the merchandise. And just as swiftly she was shoved back—she saw only Isaac’s shoulder closing down, hard, with the swing of his fist into the man’s belly. For a moment the two stumbled at close quarters. Then the man fell and lay clutching his middle, gasping. The taller man, lunging -forward—to join the fight, or stop it?—set his hands roughly on Isaac’s shoulders, and was pushing Isaac back—Ester could see now that the shove was a warning, not an attack. But before any of them could draw breath, Isaac had swung again, and the second man stumbled and fell against a crate, his head hitting the wooden slats with a dull knock.
The man moaned. Ester watched him rouse himself, slowly, carefully. And his glare of newborn malice, aimed at Isaac.
She turned and strode back the way she’d come, the pain in her feet reeling her along the cobbles, the shops along the narrow street looming dark before her.
Footfalls, and Isaac caught her mutely by the arm.
“Come home,” she told him, her head down. Beneath her aching feet, the stones of a city she’d no desire to know. All about them the slams and cries and raucous laughter of strangers. So this was to be her London: a city disfigured in advance by the stain they carried to it. She was crying, her face hot—why now? She’d hardly wept in the years since the fire. Even at their parents’ burial, where her failure to weep was seen by the gossips as further sign of an unnatural spirit—even then she hadn’t, for the burning in her chest had eradicated any tears before they could escape. But now some weakness assaulted her and she’d no defense.
“Come home with me,” she murmured again.
Isaac’s words carried no venom this time, only weariness. “The rabbi’s house isn’t our home.” He’d no quarrel with the rabbi, she knew. His enmity was aimed at life itself, and there was nothing she could do to ease it. “Or perhaps,” he said, “perhaps you can make it home. Ester. You can . . . marry. Have sons and daughters.” She raised her face, but he wasn’t looking at her. He stared into the white sky and spoke softly, as though constructing a pleasing tale for children. “You can. Ester. You’re still . . .” He glanced down at her, and there it was: that glimmer she hadn’t seen in so long, the light that said he knew her. “You’re made differently.” He spoke quietly but for a moment his voice had its old sturdiness. “You’re like a coin made out of stone instead of metal. Or a house made out of honeycombs or feathers or maybe glass—-something no one else in all the world would think to make a house of, Ester—-something strange, but sound too. You’ve been like that always. But no matter all that, you’re still a woman. A woman can recover. Women aren’t”—he hesitated—“they’re not set. Not like a man is. A man has to be a hero or a . . . villain.” He gripped her arm tighter. “This is what I want to tell you, Ester. This is the only thing I have to tell you.” His body tensed and she saw him glance toward the river, as though the labor awaiting him there could absorb all the violence mounting in him.
Then he breathed and let go her arm, forcing himself still. She felt the effort it cost him to quell the wish to move, strike out, do something to release all that was pent in his body. Instead he spoke, quietly. “A man comes into the world to perform one function, Ester. Maybe it’s good. Maybe it’s evil. But starting that fire, you see, was my function. That makes me evil.” He looked at her squarely. His face was naked as she’d not seen it since he’d been a boy. But it held no request for forgiveness.
“On my way out of this world, I’ll do something. Something good. Like Samson.” His lips held the grim echo of a smile. “I’ll bring down some wicked house. Down!” On the word he slammed a fist into his open palm with such ferocity she cried out. “Right down on my head,” he said, simply. He breathed. “Or I’ll save someone. A boy, maybe.” The thought, for an instant, seemed to choke him. “I’ll climb onto the deck of the boy’s ship, just before the ship’s engulfed by fire. And before I’m burned, before I die, I’ll shove—him—off.” In each expelled word, a dizzying hatred.
He would strike and strike, she understood, until he’d struck himself down.
He turned and strode toward the docks.
She walked back on the cobbles as though they were made of glass.
The rabbi was where she’d left him. He raised his face to her, but waited until she’d hung her shawl.
“Your brother’s not with you,” he said quietly.
“No.”
The chill rain that had begun during her walk streaked white beyond the large room’s high windows. The fire was loud with sap. Rivka must have stoked it high before leaving on her errands. Ester could picture her: her thick arms straining the wool of her dress, and every gesture enunciating her determination to defy the winter in the rabbi’s aged body. In Rivka’s absence the snapping fire, loud and sudden enough to break thoughts in half, continued her vigilant tending.
Rabbi HaCoen Mendes sat close to the hearth. His form was slight in the high-backed chair. His cheekbones were pale knobs, his beard a yellowed white. Below his thick gray brows, the welded skin of the scars appeared tight, poreless as a child’s.
She pulled a chair near to the fire and sat. The rapid lick of the flames wrested shadows to and fro across the floor. She raised one foot, crossed it carefully over the opposite knee, unbuckled her shoe. The sole of her foot throbbed through her stocking and she felt it gingerly. Just a moment’s respite. Then she’d go back to the kitchen, where Rivka would have left ample work for her. How she’d have loved to be asked, like Isaac, to work with quill and ink.
Instead she spent her waking hours kneading thick, dry dough under Rivka’s direction, stirring stews heavy with potatoes and the occasional slice of salted beef shipped from the Jewish butcher in Amsterdam. Day after day she prepared Rivka’s spiceless Polish food, which bore no resemblance to the Portuguese dishes she’d been accustomed to in her parents’ home. At Rivka’s direction she prodded these ingredients into meals, which she carried in to the rabbi and his occasional students . . . only to return them, barely touched, to Rivka—the rabbi’s because he had no appetite, the students’ because even they, raised on heavy English fare, knew better. But Ester had neither strength nor skill to propose any fare more pleasing.