Bottle aloft, one hand still on the fabric of Mary’s dress, Thomas paused. Then he lifted the bottle to his lips—first cautiously, then draining it. He settled onto the couch. “The comet. Let’s hear of that, shall we?”
Something fluttered on Mary’s face. She blinked at Thomas. Then she sat.
“Provide for your friends, will you, Thomas?” Bescós said.
Thomas held the bottle upside down, letting a few red drops darken the velvet of Mary’s father’s couch. Immediately, Mary called Hannah for another bottle; while they waited for it, Ester saw Mary rub her fingertips over the stain with an expression both triumphant and bitter.
John was frowning.
“To learn of the comet, my dear Thomas,” said Bescós, “you ought read these publications your noble father wastes on you.” He lifted the Proceedings and smacked Thomas with it. Thomas grabbed at the volume with a rueful cry, but Bescós tossed it to the floor, both men laughing.
John picked it up. After studying it a moment, he turned to Ester and spoke in an undertone. “You’ve been reading this?”
“Yes,” Ester said.
“I’d like to know your thoughts,” he said. “My teachers speak most highly of the Royal Society.”
“You’re a student?”
John flushed as though the question were both compliment and accusation. “I was. Or am.” He shook his head. “That is, I will be again, if I’m to have my say in the matter.”
The new bottle was brought, this time a pale canary wine. Thomas held it to the light and scrutinized it, running his fingers along the elegant raised pattern stamped in wax at its base—the coat of arms of the da Costa Mendes house—as though sizing it up for purchase in the marketplace. He drank, and passed the bottle to Bescós and John. When it reached Mary she took a deep drink herself.
“Come, give it here,” said Thomas, gesturing for the bottle again. “Medicine against the plague.”
“It’s the cats that spread that,” said Mary. She took the wine from Thomas and drank again, cringing as she swallowed as though forcing herself. Ester saw that she avoided Bescós’s gaze, conducting herself as though he weren’t in the room.
“The dogs,” said Thomas.
“Cats and dogs,” Mary agreed. “And the miasma. Still”—she wiped her mouth daintily with the lace of her sleeve—“my father says we’ll see the sickness die out before it strengthens.” She flushed, as though she hadn’t planned to mention her father. “The astrologers say so as well.”
Mary passed the canary. Ester raised it, set her lips on the cool green glass, and drank. The wine was sweet in her mouth and warmed her immediately.
She saw the surprise on John’s face: the ladies of his acquaintance, perhaps, did not drink from a bottle. Deliberately, under his gaze, she took a second drink, though it made her cough.
“How goes your wooing, my friend?” Thomas said as the bottle went round.
Bescós let out a warning laugh.
But Thomas persisted. “Have you softened your ways, so as to persuade her father?”
“You, my friend, wouldn’t understand such things,” said Bescós quietly, and Ester saw that while Bescós might prick Thomas freely in play, the same would not be tolerated in reverse.
“Ach man, give us a morsel,” cried Thomas. “How far does this holy she permit your advances?”
“Thomas!” John warned. “Show respect.”
With a sharp creak of his chair, Bescós sat forward. “What do you know of a natural love?”
Thomas’s laughter quieted.
“Had I your family coat of arms, Thomas,” said Bescós, “had I your splendid education, I’d be wed already. Yet see what use you make of them.” Bescós’s gesture encompassed Thomas, head to foot.
From his seat, Thomas replied with a mocking half-bow.
But Bescós widened his gesture to include Ester, and Mary. “What is it in this household, I wonder,” he said, “that so captivates you, and John as well? Each of you entranced by your Jewess.”
Ester’s eyes fled to Mary, who appeared uncertain whether this was a jest.
“Let me instruct you,” said Bescós, still addressing only the men, “in the manner of natural love. It’s as follows: like must couple with like. All else is repellent.”
Ester could not help but turn to John. He was watching Thomas and Bescós warily and now, blushing, cut in. “You speak as though the company of Jewesses were lesser.”
At John’s words, Bescós’s eyes lit. “Yet how do you fail, John, to call the Jew unnatural? Do you know, man, about the Jews of York?”
None answered.
“It’s a fascinating example of obstinacy,” Bescós continued, his voice turning light as though he were about to recount an amusement. “They slaughtered themselves. Right here in our own dear England, they fled into a castle in fear for their lives, and locked the doors against the mob, and then when the mob made plain it would not leave without Jewish blood, the Jews killed themselves in honor of their own beliefs.” He looked at Ester now, a curious smile on his lips. “Imagine that. They saved the Christians the knifework.”
The rain drummed distantly on the roof.
“Truly,” Bescós continued, “the choices of the Jews have always seemed unnatural to me. If I may say it, they seem born martyrs, preparing their whole lives for the moment when they’ll be hunted, while conducting themselves so as to provoke the hunters.” He turned to Mary. “Tell me, would you do as they did? Or would you rather someone else set the knife to your throat? Or perhaps you’d plead and renounce your faith.”
John half stood, his hands gripping the wooden rests of his chair. “You insult this company and threaten the ladies.”
“Ah yes,” laughed Bescós. “The ladies. But tell it true, John. Aren’t the ways of the Jews commonly considered fodder for curiosity? Haven’t you heard your own father muse thus about Jews?”
John’s cheeks flushed. He gave a brief, reluctant nod. “Yet you take matters too far, Bescós.”
Bescós, sitting back now in his chair, waved a hand. “Well, John. I retract and repeal any words of mine that might have offended.”
John’s gaze turned to Ester. She met it plainly, and her trust seemed to firm his resolve. There was in him, she saw, something that hungered to be tested.
But Bescós had done with testing. He smiled faintly. “This business of the Jews is no real concern to me. I’ve other matters of my own to attend to. Let’s drink, and then we’ll haul Thomas to the theater, won’t we, and propel him onto the stage still full of wine.”
“See?” Thomas cried. “All ends well.”
Slowly John leaned back in his chair, but Ester could see he was not at peace with Bescós, or with himself.