“A pity,” Patricia said. But there was no pity on Patricia’s face—and Helen recognized, as though looking in a mirror, another woman who didn’t waste useless sentiment on herself or others. In place of pity, though, something else animated Patricia’s expression: honest interest. Even the possibility, however faint, of a tough camaraderie. It occurred to Helen for the first time that Patricia was close to her own age, and that Patricia’s orderly desk held no photographs of children or grandchildren.
“I’ve always thought you were one of the only non-egoists in this place,” Patricia said, her blue eyes steady. “Perhaps the sole faculty member who cares more for the past than for his own selfish present.”
Helen found her voice. “Well, that’s—”
But Patricia wasn’t finished. “I tolerated his ill breeding in part because I believed him accountable to you.” On her pursed lips, the merest hint of a wicked smile. “Shall I confiscate his smuggled pencils now?” she said. “Or shall we start with the mobile phone in his bag? Or the utility knife our American Boy Scout insists on carrying on his person, or perhaps the pens he’s hiding in his pockets?”
Helen turned. At a small table tucked between two projecting bookcases near the wall sat Aaron, his familiar lean form bent over a thickly inked document on a brown velvet cushion. His wooly dark head was bowed, and he was biting at the end of a pencil. Even from behind, his anxiousness was clear.
She was stunned by the relief she felt at his presence.
He raised his head, and for the first time, his face was free of ego, of hostility, of anything other than quiet, humbled uncertainty. They looked at each other. After a moment he tilted his head. It was his apology.
A laugh escaped her, a bark of reprieve.
His old cocky grin lit his face. He turned back to the document without a word.
Helen turned back to Patricia, conscious of the warmth on her own cheeks. “It seems,” she said, “that I misunderstood to whom you were referring.”
“It seems,” Patricia said, with an admirably impassive expression, “that you did.”
Leaving Patricia at her desk, Helen went to the table where Aaron sat. She read over his shoulder. The Portuguese letter was right side up on the cushion, the Hebrew inverted.
“What do you have?” she said, lowering herself into the chair beside him.
“I’m rechecking my translation now,” he said in low tones. “Making some minor changes. But you need to see something else.” Beside him was a second cushion with another document; he slid it toward her. “I got Library Patricia’s unprecedented permission to have two documents out at once, don’t ask me how.” He raised a finger to his lips as though to swear Helen to silence. “I think she has a crush on me.”
“I very much doubt that,” said Helen.
How had they gone from ashen-faced anger to this strange new comfort? She wasn’t sure what had happened, or even whether it was a good thing. But she knew she did not, at this moment, want to be sitting alone at this table.
“I asked to hold on to the cross-written letter,” Aaron said, “because I didn’t want to risk returning it and having them get to it before you could see it.”
“You mean Wilton’s group?” Helen said, intending to sound unconcerned.
Abruptly, Aaron turned to look at Wilton and his students. He turned with his whole torso, so no one in the room could miss the fact that he was looking them over.
Two of the male postgraduates looked back at Aaron uncertainly. Aaron answered with a Cheshire cat grin.
Dropping audibly back in his seat, he turned to Helen. “Bunch of weenies,” he said, loud.
The rare manuscripts room was silent.
Casually, as though the entire room weren’t listening, he added, “Speaking objectively, of course.”
She regarded him. “I assume that’s American for May the best team win?”
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
She felt their eyes on her back: Wilton’s group, trying to sort out whether they’d just been mocked or invited into a joke. A faint smile formed on her lips.
It lived only a moment. Despite Aaron’s bravado, she knew more than he did. Jonathan Martin could cut off their access to the documents at any point. Aaron would have to make his way in this department. He shouldn’t burn bridges for her sake—a fact that surely would occur to him soon.
But here he was beside her, at least for the moment. “What’s the other document?” she asked him.
“You’re going to like this,” Aaron said. He pulled the second cushion closer. She saw there were dark half-moons under his eyes. He looked tired, and boyish, and honest. She couldn’t reconcile it with the Aaron Levy who had departed her office the day before—even then, even chagrined and defeated, he’d still had a self-righteous air. But now, for the first time since she’d met him, he looked cracked open—like a man who was out of ideas, and could only wait attentively for what might come next. When he spoke, his voice was quiet at its core, as though tempered by some setback larger than she herself could have inflicted.
“You know the Manuel HaLevy referred to in the cross-writing?” Aaron said to her quietly. “It sounds like there was a scandal involving his younger brother. Which is why the older brother came looking for him. And there are some interesting hints as to the nature of the scandal.”
She lingered one moment before turning her attention to the document. She realized she understood nothing about Aaron, except that for some reason he’d bent his neck and knelt beside her on the chopping block. Had he nowhere else to go?
Good God, they had something in common.
16
March 20, 1665
4 Nisan, 5425
London
To congregate long here might be folly. Yet the sun warmed the cobbles outside the synagogue with a boldness that seemed to captivate all of them—even Rivka, who lingered heavy-lidded at the rabbi’s elbow. Ester, too, lagged among the small crowd, drifting at the edge of a circle of older women.
Observed singly, the men and women milling on the street might have appeared English, albeit with some foreign ancestry. If their complexions were slightly shadowed or their faces cast in a strange mold, such differences were still readily overlooked in light of a man’s coiled English wig or a woman’s English dress. Yet though London’s Jews might go unremarked one by one, together they were recognizable in an instant: dark-lashed almond eyes, bent noses, mouths tipped downward at the corners with some old, bittersweet knowledge.
Were they safe?
They gathered, scattered, regathered. Birds on a rooftop.
A few women near Ester were trading news of far-flung family. Ester stood half-listening, blinking at the unaccustomed brightness. Only the esteemed Rabbi Sasportas seemed immune to the seduction of this day’s sun. It had become his habit to depart promptly after prayers and take his meal behind closed shutters—even now, he and his small retinue disappeared around the corner without a backward glance. Sasportas, with his heavy arched brows and ebony skullcap, the weighty pouches beneath his dark eyes, seemed to have expected a congregation that would reverently accept his authority—not politely praise his sermons, make rich gifts to the synagogue’s coffers, then climb into waiting carriages and go off to their business, throwing off the Sabbath despite whatever thunder Sasportas might fling at them in the following week’s sermon.