Chapter TEN
Fluria Continues Her Story
BROTHER TOBY, IF YOU EVER MEET MY GODWIN, HE will love you. If Godwin is not a saint, perhaps there are no saints. And who is the Almighty, Blessed Be He, that he would send me a man so like Godwin just now, and so like Meir, for you are that as well.
Now, I was saying to you that the girls were flowering, and each year grew more lovely, and more devoted to their grandfather, and more a joy to him in his blindness than possibly children are to many a man who can see.
But let me make mention here of Godwin’s father, only to say that the man died despising Godwin for his decision to become a Dominican friar, and leaving all his fortune, of course, to his eldest son, Nigel. On his deathbed, the old man exacted a promise from Nigel that he would never set eyes on his brother, Godwin, and Nigel, who was a worldly and clever man, gave in to this with a shrug.
Or so Godwin told me in his letters, because Nigel immediately left the grave of their father in the church and went to France to see the brother he both missed and loved. Ah, when I think of his letters, they were like cool drinking water to me, all of those years, even though I couldn’t share with him the joy I had in Lea and Rosa. Even though I kept that secret fastened in my heart.
I became a woman of three great pleasures, a woman who listened to three great songs. The first song was the daily teaching of my beautiful daughters. The second song was my reading and writing for my beloved father who depended upon me often for this, though he had students aplenty to read to him, and the third song was the letters of Godwin, and these three songs became a small choir that soothed and educated and improved my soul.
Don’t think me evil that I kept the secret of the children from their father. Remember what was at stake. For even with Nigel and Godwin reconciled and writing regularly to each other, I couldn’t envisage anything coming of my revelation except disaster all around.
Let me tell you more of Godwin. He told me all about his classes and his disputations. He would not be able to teach theology until he was thirty-five, but he was preaching regularly to large crowds in Paris and had quite a following. He was happier than he had ever been in his life, and he said over and over again, he wanted me to be happy, and asked why I had not married.
He said the winters were cold in Paris, just as they were in England, and the friary was cold. But he’d never known such joy, when he had had pockets of money to buy all the firewood he would want, or all the food. All he wanted in the world was to know how it went with me, and had I too found happiness.
When he wrote of this, the untold truth pressed in on me painfully, because I was so happy with our two daughters at my knee.
Gradually, I realized that I wanted Godwin to know. I wanted him to know that these two fine flowers of our love had bloomed safely and gave forth their beauty now in innocence and with protection.
And what made the secret all the more painful was this, that Godwin continued so ardently with his Hebrew studies, that he often disputed with the learned Jews in Paris, and would go to their houses to study with them and talk with them, just as he had long ago done when he went back and forth between London and Oxford. Godwin was as much now as ever a lover of our people. Of course he wanted to convert those with whom he disputed, but he had a great love for their keen minds, and above all for the devout lives that they lived, which he said often taught him more about love than the conduct of some of the theology students at the university.
Many a time I wanted to confess the whole state of affairs, but these considerations stopped me, as I’ve told you. One, that Godwin would be deeply unhappy if he knew that I had been left with child. And secondly, that he might, as any Gentile father might, be alarmed that two daughters born to him were being brought up as Jews, not so much because he would judge me for what I had done, or fear for their souls, but because he knew the persecutions and violence to which our people are often subjected.
Two years ago, he knew what had happened in the matter of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln. And we had written to each other candidly about our fears for the Jewry of London at that time. When we are accused in one place, the violence can break out in another. The hatred of us and the lies about us can spread like a plague.
But such horrors as that pressured me to keep the secret. For what if Godwin knew he had daughters in danger of riot and murder? What would he do?
What finally caused me to put the whole question before him was Meir.
Meir had come into our house just as Godwin had years ago, to study with my father. As I’ve indicated, my father’s blindness did not stop the flow of students. The Torah is written on his heart, as we say it, and after all his years of commentary on the Talmud he knows it by heart as well. And all of Rashi’s commentary on Talmud, that he knows too.
The Masters of the Oxford synagogues came to our house regularly to consult with my father. People even brought him their disputes. And Christian friends he had aplenty who sought his advice on simple matters, and now and then, when they needed money, with the laws now against our lending, they came for him to find some way to borrow without the interest being recorded or known. But I don’t want to talk of those things. I have never managed my own property.
And very soon after Meir began to come to my father, he managed my affairs for me, and so I didn’t have to think of material things.
You see me here dressed richly and in this white wimple and veil and you see nothing to mar the image of a rich woman except this taffeta badge affixed to my breast which brands me as a Jewess, but believe me when I say I seldom think of material things.
You know why we are moneylenders for the King and for those of his realm. You know all of this. And you know probably that since the King outlawed our money lending at interest, ways have been found around it, and we still hold in the name of the King a great deal of parchment on many a debt.
Well, my life being devoted to my father and my girls, I didn’t consider that Meir might ask for my hand, though I couldn’t help but notice what any woman would, and I’m sure even you have noted, that Meir is a fine-looking man of considerable gentleness and keen mind.
When he very respectfully asked for my hand, he put it to my father in the most generous terms—how he hoped, not to deprive him of me and my love, but rather to invite all of us to move with him to the house he’d only just inherited in Norwich. He had many connections there, and relations, and was a friend to the richest of the Jews in Norwich of whom there are many, as I think you know simply from the sight of the many stone houses that stand out so remarkably. You know why we build our houses of stone. I don’t have to tell you.
Now my father had almost no sight left to him. He could tell when the sun had risen and he knew when it was night, but as for me and my daughters he knew us by the touch of his gentle hands, and if there was anything that he loved almost as much as he loved us, it was instructing Meir, and guiding Meir’s reading. For Meir is not only a student of Torah and Talmud, and of Astrology and Medicine, and all those other subjects which have interested my father in passing, but Meir is a poet, and he has a poet’s view of things, and he sees beauty everywhere that he looks.
If Godwin had been born a Jew, he would have been a twin to Meir. But I’m talking nonsensically, for Godwin is the sum of many amazing currents as I’ve explained. Godwin enters a room as if a collection of people have just taken it by storm. Meir appears quietly and with a silken manner. They are alike and not alike at all.
My father consented at once that I might marry Meir, and that, yes, he would go to Norwich, where we knew the Jewish community was very prosperous and where there had been peace for some time. After all, the horrid accusations that Jews had killed Little St. William were almost a hundred years old. And yes, people went to the shrine, and looked on us with fear in their fervor, but we had many friends among the Gentiles and old injuries and slights sometimes do lose their sting.
But was I to enter into marriage with Meir and not tell him the truth? Was I to let such a secret lie between us, that my daughters had a living father?
We could not seek the advice of anyone, or so my father thought, and he brooded over the matter, not wanting me to proceed unless somehow this problem could be solved.
So what do you think I did? Without telling my father, I turned for counsel to the one man in all the world whom I most trusted and loved, and that was Godwin. To Godwin, who had become a living saint amongst his brothers in Paris, and a great scholar of the science of God, I wrote and put the question.
And writing the letter in Hebrew as I did so often, I told him the whole story.
“Your daughters are beautiful in mind and heart and body,” I told him, “but they believe themselves to be the children of a dead father, and the secret has been so well kept that Meir, who has proposed marriage to me, does not dream of the truth.
“Now I put it to you, you who are now well beyond the point where the birth of these children would cause you misery or worry, just as I assure you that these precious girls receive every blessing that they can, what should I do as to Meir’s proposal? Can I become this man’s wife without giving him a full account?
“How can one keep such a secret from a man who brings to the marriage nothing but tenderness and kindness? And now that you know, what is it that you, in your heart of hearts, want for your daughters? And accuse me now if you will, of failing to tell you that these peerless young women are your girls. Accuse me now before I enter into marriage with this man.
“I have told you the truth, and feel some great selfish relief in it, I must confess, but also a selfless joy. Should I tell my daughters the truth when they are of age, and what do I do with this good man, Meir, now?”
I implored him that this not be a shock to him, but that he give me his most pious advice on what I should do. “It is to Br. Godwin that I write,” I told him, “the brother who has given himself to God. It is on him that I depend for an answer that is both loving and wise.” I also told him that I had meant to deceive him, but could never resolve whether I had protected him or done him wrong.
I don’t remember what else I wrote. Perhaps I told him how quick of wit were the two girls, and how well they had progressed in their own studies. I certainly told him that Lea was the quieter one, and Rosa had always something clever and amusing to say. I told him that Lea disdained all things of the world as not important, whereas Rosa could not have too many dresses, or too many veils.
I told him Lea was devoted to me, and clung to me, whereas Rosa peered out the window at the goings-on in Oxford or London whenever she was confined at home.
I told him that he was represented in all ways in both his daughters, in Lea’s piety and discipline, and in Rosa’s irrepressible gaiety and ready laugh. I told him that the girls had much property from their legal father, and that they would inherit from my father as well.
Now as I sent the letter off I feared that if I had angered or disappointed Godwin, I might have lost him forever. Though I no longer loved him as I had in my youth, as I no longer dreamed of him as a man, I loved him with all my heart and my heart was in every letter I wrote to him.
Well, what do you think happened?
I had to confess I had no idea what had happened, and there was so much running through my mind that it was with a great effort that I let Fluria go on. She had spoken of losing both her children. She was filled with emotion as she talked with me. And a great deal of this emotion had taken hold of me as well.