Chapter ELEVEN
Fluria Continues Her Story
IN TWO WEEKS, GODWIN CAME TO OXFORD AND APPEARED at the door of our house.
He wasn’t the Godwin, naturally enough, I had once known. He had lost the sharp edge of youth, the inveterate recklessness, and something infinitely more radiant had replaced it. He was the man I knew from our letters. He was mild when he spoke and gentle, yet filled with an inner passion that was difficult for him to restrain.
I admitted him, without telling my father, and at once brought in the two girls.
It seemed I had no choice now but to let them know that this man was in fact their father, and gently, kindly, this is what Godwin begged me to do.
“You’ve done no wrong, Fluria,” he said to me. “You’ve borne a burden all these years that I should have shared. I left you with child. I didn’t even think on the matter. And now let me see my daughters, I beg you. You have nothing to fear from me.”
I brought the girls in to meet him. This was less than a year ago, and the girls were thirteen.
I felt an immense and joyful pride when I presented them, because they had become beauties without question, and they had inherited the radiant and happy expression of their father.
In a quavering voice, I explained to them that this man was in fact their father, and that he was the Br. Godwin to whom I wrote so regularly, and that up until these past two weeks, he had not known of their existence, but wanted only to lay eyes on them now.
Lea was shocked, but Rosa smiled immediately at Godwin. And in her usual irrepressible manner, declared that she had always known some secret surrounded their birth, and she was happy to lay eyes on the man who was her father. “Mother,” she said. “This is a joyful time.”
Godwin was stricken with tears.
He approached his daughters with loving hands, which he laid on both their heads. And then he sat weeping, overwhelmed, looking again and again at both of his daughters as they stood there, and giving way over and over to soundless sobs.
When my father realized he was in the house, when the elder servants told him that Godwin knew now about his daughters and they knew about him, my father came down and into the room and threatened to kill Godwin with his bare hands.
“Oh, but you are blessed that I’m blind, and can’t find you! Lea and Rosa, I charge you, take me directly to this man.”
Neither of the girls knew what to do, and I stepped at once between my father and Godwin, and begged my father to be calm.
“How dare you come here on this errand!” my father demanded. “Your letters I’ve tolerated and even from time to time I’ve written to you. But now, knowing the extent of your betrayal, I ask how dare you be so bold as to come under my roof?”
As for me, he had equally harsh language. “You told this man these things without my consent. And what have you told Lea and Rosa? What do these children actually know?”
At once Rosa tried to calm him. “Grandfather,” she said, “we have always sensed that some mystery surrounded us. We’ve asked in vain many times for the writings of our supposed father, or some keepsake by which we could remember him, but nothing ever came of this, except our mother’s obvious confusion and pain. Now we know that this man is our father, and we can’t help but be happy on account of it. He’s a great scholar, Grandfather, and we have heard mention of his name all our lives.”
She tried to embrace my father, but he pushed her away.
Oh, it was dreadful to see him this way, staring blindly before him, clutching his walking stick, yet without his bearings, feeling now that he was alone amongst enemies of his own flesh and blood.
I began to cry and couldn’t think of what to say.
“These are daughters of a Jewish mother,” my father said, “and these are Jewish women who will be someday the mothers of sons who are Jews, and you will have nothing to do with them. They are not of your faith. And you must leave here. Don’t tell me stories of your high sanctity and fame in Paris. I have heard enough of this many a time. I know who you really are, the man who betrayed my trust and my house. Go preach to the Gentiles who accept you as the reformed sinner. I accept no confession of guilt from you. If you don’t visit a woman every night of your life in Paris, I stand to be surprised. Get out!”
You don’t know my father. You can’t know the heat of his wrath. I barely touch on the eloquence he used to flog Godwin. And all this in the presence of the girls who were staring from me to their grandfather, and then to the Black Friar who went down on his knees and said:
“What can I do but beg your forgiveness?”
“Come close enough,” said my father, “and I will beat you with all my strength for what you’ve done in my house.”
Godwin merely stood up, bowed to my father, and giving me a tender glance, and looking back on his daughters sorrowfully, made to leave the house.
Rosa stopped him, and indeed threw her arms around him, and he held her with his eyes closed for a long moment—things my father couldn’t see or know. Lea stood stock-still, weeping, and then ran from the room.
“Get out of my house,” roared my father. And Godwin obeyed at once.
I was in dreadful fear as to what he was doing or where he had gone, and now there seemed to me to be nothing to do but to confess to Meir the whole tale.
Meir came that night. He was agitated. He’d been told there had been a quarrel under our roof and that a Black Friar had been seen leaving and the man had been in great distress.
I shut myself up with Meir in my father’s study and told him the truth. I told him I didn’t know what was to happen. Had Godwin gone back to Paris, or was he still in Oxford or London? I had no idea.
Meir looked at me for a long time with his soft and loving eyes. Then he surprised me completely. “Beautiful Fluria,” he said, “I’ve always known the girls were your daughters by a young lover. Do you think there are those in the Jewry who do not remember your affection for Godwin, and the tale of his break with your father many years ago? They don’t say anything outright, but everyone knows. Calm yourself on this account, insofar as it concerns me. What faces you now is not my defection, surely, for I love you as much today as I did yesterday and the day before that. What faces us all is what Godwin means to do.”
He went on speaking to me in the calmest manner.
“Grave consequences can await a priest or brother accused of having children by a Jewish woman. You know this. And grave consequences can await a Jewess who confesses that her children are daughters of a Christian man. The law forbids such things. The Crown is anxious for the property of those who violate it. It is impossible to see how anything can be done here, except that the secret be kept.”
Indeed, he was right. It was the old stalemate, which I had faced when Godwin and I had first loved each other, and Godwin had been sent away. Both sides had reason to keep the secret. And surely, my girls, clever as they were, understood this very well.
Immediately Meir had produced a calm in me that wasn’t too different from the serenity I often felt when I read Godwin’s letters, and in this moment of remarkable intimacy, because it was very truly that, I saw the meekness and innate kindness of Meir more clearly than before.
“We must wait to see what Godwin will do,” he repeated. “In truth, Fluria, I saw this friar leave your house, and he seemed a humble and gentle man. I was watching, because I didn’t want to come in if your father was in this study with him. And so I happened to see him very clearly as he came out. His face was white and drawn, and he seemed to carry an immense burden on his soul.”
“Now you carry it too, Meir,” I said.
“No, I carry no burden. I only hope and pray that Godwin will not seek to take his daughters from you, for that would be a horrid and terrible thing.”
“How can a friar take his daughters from me?” I asked.
But just as I asked this question, there came a loud knocking, and the maidservant, my beloved Amelot, came to tell me that Earl Nigel, son of Arthur, was here with his brother the friar, Br. Godwin, and that she had shown them in and made them comfortable in the best room of the house.
I rose to go, but before I could, Meir rose beside me and took my hand. “I love you, Fluria, and want you for my wife. Remember this, and I knew this secret without anyone having to tell me. I even knew that the old Earl’s youngest son was the likely man. Believe in me, Fluria, that I can love you unstintingly, and if you do not want to give me your answer now as to my proposal, things being as they are, be assured that I wait patiently for you to decide whether we will be married or not.”
Well, I had never heard Meir put that many words together in my presence, or even in my father’s. And I felt greatly comforted by this, but in total terror of what awaited me in the front rooms.
Forgive me that I cry. Forgive me that I can’t help it. Forgive me that I can’t forget Lea, not now as I recount these things.
Forgive me that I weep for Rosa as well.
O Lord, hear my prayer,
listen to my cry for mercy;
in your faithfulness and righteousness
come to my relief.
Do not bring your servant into judgment
for no one living is righteous before you.
You know this psalm as well as I do. It is my constant prayer.
I went in to greet the young Earl who had inherited the title from his father. Nigel, too, I had known as one of my father’s students. He looked troubled but not angry. And when I turned my gaze on Godwin I was once again astonished by the gentleness and quiet that seemed to surround him, as though he were present, yes, and vibrantly so, but in another world as well.
Both men greeted me with all the respect they might have shown a Gentile woman, and I urged them to be seated and take some wine.
My soul was quaking. What could the presence of the young Earl mean?
My father entered and demanded to know who was in his house. I begged the maid to go to Meir and ask him to come in with us, and then, my voice unsteady, I told my father that the Earl was here with his brother, Godwin, and that I had invited them to take some wine.
As Meir came in and stood beside my father, I told all the servants, and the whole body of them had come in to wait on the Earl, to please go out.
“Very well, Godwin,” I said. “What have you to say to me?” I tried not to cry.
If the people of Oxford knew that two Gentile children had been brought up as Jews, might they not try to harm us? Might there not be some law under which we could in fact be executed? I didn’t know.
There were so many laws against us, but then these children were not the legal children of their Christian father.
And would a friar such as Godwin want the disgrace of having his paternity known to everyone? Godwin, so beloved by his students, could not possibly wish for such a thing.
But the power of the Earl was considerable. He was one of the richest in the realm, and had the most power in resisting the Archbishop of Canterbury whenever he chose, and also the King. Something terrible might be done now in whispers and without a public display.
As I considered these things, I tried not to look at Godwin, because I felt only a pure and elevated love when I looked at him, and the worried expression on the face of his brother caused me fear and pain.
I felt again that this was a stalemate. I was gazing at a chessboard on which two figures faced each other, and neither had an opening for a good move.
Don’t think me hard at such a moment for calculating. I saw myself as to blame for everything that was now taking place. Even the quiet and pensive Meir was now on my conscience as he had asked for my hand.
Yet I calculated as if I were doing sums. If exposed we will be condemned. But claim them and Godwin faces disgrace.
What if my girls were taken from me, and theirs was to be a life of unendurable captivity in the Earl’s castle? This is what I dreaded above all else.
All my deception had been through silence, and now I knew that the chess pieces faced each other and I waited for the reach of the hand.
My father, though offered a chair, remained standing, and he asked Meir if he would take the lamp and light the face of both the men who stood opposite him. Meir was loath to do this, and I knew it, and so I did it, begging the Earl’s pardon, and the man only gestured his acceptance and looked directly beyond the flame.
My father sighed and gestured for a chair and then sat down. He put his hands on top of his walking stick.
“I don’t care who you are,” he said. “I despise you. Trouble my house, and you inherit the wind.”
Godwin drew himself up and came forward. My father, hearing his footsteps, raised his walking stick as if to push him back, and Godwin stopped in the center of the room.
Oh, this was agony, but then Godwin, the preacher, the man who moved crowds in the squares of Paris, and in the lecture halls, began to speak. His Norman French was perfect, and of course so was my father’s and so is mine as you can hear.
“The fruit of my sins,” he said, “is now before me. I see what my selfish acts have wrought. I see now that what I so thoughtlessly did has had grave consequences for others, and that they have accepted these consequences with generosity and grace.”
I was deeply moved by this, but my father indicated his impatience.
“Take these children from us, and I will condemn you before the King. We are, if you have even for a moment forgotten it, the King’s Jews, and you will not do such a thing.”
“No,” said Godwin in the same meek and eloquent manner. “I would do nothing without your consent, Magister Eli. I haven’t come into your house with the pretense of any demand. I come with a request.”
“And what could that be? Mind you,” said my father, “I am prepared to take this stick and beat you to death.”
“Father, please,” I begged him to stop and listen.
Godwin accepted this as though he had the patience to be stoned in public without lifting a finger. Then he made his intentions clear.
“Are there not two of these beautiful children?” he said. “Has not God sent two because of our two faiths? Look at the gift he’s given to Fluria and to me. I, who never expected to have the devotion or love of a child, am now possessed of two, and Fluria lives daily, without disgrace in the loving company of her offspring, which might have been torn from her by someone cruel.
“Fluria, I beg you: give one of these beautiful girls to me. Magister Eli, I beg you, let me take one of these beautiful girls from this house.
“Let me take her to Paris to be educated. Let me watch her grow up, Christian, and with the loving guidance of a devoted father and uncle.
“You keep close to your heart always the other. And which you choose to come with me, I will accept, for you know their hearts and you know which one is most likely to be happy in Paris, and happy with a new life, and which is more timid, perhaps, or more devoted to her mother. That both love you, I have no doubt.
“But Fluria, I beg you, realize what it means to me as a believer in Jesus Christ, that my children cannot be with their own, and that they know nothing of those most important resolves their father has made: to serve his Lord Jesus Christ in thought, word, and deed forever. How can I return to Paris without begging you: give one of the girls to me. Let me raise her as my Christian daughter. Let us divide between us the fruit of our wicked fall, and our great good fortune that these beautiful girls have life.”
My father went into a fury. He rose to his feet, clutching his walking stick.
“You disgraced my daughter,” he shouted, “and now you come wanting to divide her children? Divide? You think you are King Solomon? If I had my sight I’d kill you. Nothing would stop me from it. I would kill you with my bare hands, and bury you beneath the backyard of this house to keep it from your Christian brethren. Thank your God that I’m blind and sick and old and can’t tear your heart out. As it is, I order you out of my house, and insist that you never return, and do not seek to see your daughters. The door is barred against you. And allow me to put your mind at ease on this account: these children are legally ours. How will you prove otherwise to anyone, and think what scandal you bring upon yourself if you do not leave here in silence and give up this brash and cruel request!”
I did everything in my power to restrain my father, but with a sharp elbow he pushed me to the side. He swung his walking stick, his blind eyes searching the room before him.
The Earl was stricken with sorrow, but nothing could touch the look of misery and heartbreak in Godwin. As for Meir, I couldn’t tell you how he was taking this argument because it was all I could do to put my arms around my father and beg him to be quiet, to let the men speak.
I was in terror, not of Godwin, but of Nigel. Nigel was the one after all with the power to seize my two daughters, if he chose, and to subject us to the harshest judgment. Nigel was the one with money enough and men enough to seize the girls and lock them up in his castle miles from London and deny me that I would ever see them again.
But I saw only gentleness in the faces of both men. Godwin was again weeping.
“Oh, that I have caused you pain, I am so sorry,” he said to my father.
“Caused me pain, you dog!” my father said. With difficulty he recovered his chair and sat down again, trembling violently. “You have sinned against my house. You sin now against it. Get out of it. Go.”
But what surprised everyone at this moment of passion was that Rosa came into the room and in a clear voice asked her grandfather to please say nothing more.
Now with twins, even identical twins often are not doublets in heart and soul. As I’ve already hinted to you, one can be more inclined to directness and to command than the other. So it was with my daughters, as I’ve said. Lea behaved always as if she were younger than Rosa; Rosa it was who often decided what they would do or not do. In this she resembled me as much as she resembled Godwin. She resembled my father as well, as he was always a man who spoke with force.
Well, forcefully, Rosa spoke now. She said to me in the gentlest yet firm manner that she wanted to go to Paris with her father.
At this Godwin and Nigel were both deeply moved, but my father was speechless and bowed his head.
Rosa went to him, and wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him. But he would not open his eyes, and he dropped his walking stick and balled his fists on his knees, ignoring her as if he did not feel her touch.
I tried to give him back his walking stick as he was never without it, but he had turned away from all of us, as if coiled into himself.
“Grandfather,” said Rosa, “Lea cannot bear to be separated from our mother. You know this, and you know that she would be afraid to go to a place such as Paris. She’s fearful now of going with Meir and Mother to Norwich. I am the one who should go with Br. Godwin. Surely you can see the wisdom of this and that it is the only way for all of us to be at peace.”
She turned and looked at Godwin, who was regarding her with such loving-kindness I could scarcely bear to see it.
Rosa went on, “I knew this man was my father before I ever saw him. I knew that the Br. Godwin of Paris to whom my mother wrote with such devotion was in fact the man who had given me life.
“But Lea never suspected, and now wants only to be with Mother and with Meir. Lea believes what she would believe, not on the strength of what she sees, but what she feels.”
She came to me now and put her arms around me. She said to me gently, “I want to go to Paris.” She frowned and seemed to be struggling to form her words, but then she said simply, “Mother, I want to be with this man who is my father.” She kept her eyes on me. “This man is not like other men. This man is like the saintly ones.” Here she referred to those strictest of Jews who try to live entirely for God, who keep Torah and Talmud so totally that they have acquired with us the name Chasidim.
My father sighed and stared upwards, and I could see his lips moving in prayer. He bowed his head. He stood up and made his way to the wall, turning his back to all of us, and he began bowing from the waist as he prayed.
I could see that Godwin was overjoyed at this decision on the part of Rosa. And so was his brother, Nigel.
And it was Nigel who spoke now, explaining in a low respecting voice that he would see that Rosa had all the clothing and all the luxuries that she could possibly need, and that she would be educated in the finest convent in Paris. He had already written to the nuns. He went to Rosa and kissed her and said, “You’ve made your father very happy.”
Godwin appeared to be praying, and then he said under his breath, “Dear Lord, you have placed a treasure in my hands. I promise you that I will safeguard forever this child, and that hers will be a life rich in earthly blessings. Please, Lord, grant her a life of spiritual blessings.”
At this I thought my father would lose his mind. Of course Nigel was an Earl, you understand, and had more than one estate, and was used to being obeyed not only by his household but by all his serfs and everyone who encountered him. He didn’t realize how deeply his assumptions would offend my father.
Godwin saw the picture, however, and again, as he had before, he went down on his knees to my father. He did it with utter simplicity as though it were nothing for him, and what a picture he made there in his black habit and sandals, kneeling before my father and pleading with him to forgive everything and trust that Rosa would be loved and cherished.
My father was unmoved. Finally with a deep sigh he gestured for everyone to be silent, because by this time Rosa was pleading with him, and even the proud but gentle Nigel was begging him to see the fairness of it.
“The fairness of it?” my father said, “that the Jewish daughter of a Jewish woman should be baptized and become a Christian? Is that what you think is fair? I should see her dead before such a thing should be allowed to happen.”
But Rosa, in her boldness, pressed close to him and wouldn’t let him take his hand from hers. “Grandfather,” she said, “you must be King Solomon now. You must see that Lea and I are to be divided, because we are two, not one, and we have two parents, a father and a mother.”
“It’s you who have made the decision,” my father said. He was speaking wrathfully. I never saw him so angry, so bitter. Not even when I had first told him years ago that I was with child had he shown such anger.
“You are dead to me,” he said to Rosa. “You go with your mad and simpleminded father, this devil who worked his way into my confidences, listening to my tales and legends and would-be instruction, all the while he had his wicked eye on your mother. You go ahead, and you are dead to me and I will mourn for you. Now leave my house. Leave it and go with this Earl who has come here to take a child from a mother and grandfather.”
He left the room, easily finding his way out, and slammed the door behind him.
In that moment I thought my heart would break, that I would never know peace or happiness or love again.
But something occurred then, which affected me more deeply than any spoken words.
As Godwin stood and turned to Rosa, she slipped into his arms. Irresistibly she was drawn to him, and lavished her child-like kisses on him, and laid her head on his shoulder, and he closed his eyes and cried.
I saw myself in that moment, as I had loved him years ago. Only I saw the purity of it, that it was our daughter he held close to him. And I knew then that there was nothing I could or should do to oppose this plan.
Only to you, Br. Toby, do I admit this, but I felt a complete release. And in my heart I said my silent farewell to Rosa, and my silent confirmation of love for Godwin, and I took my place at Meir’s side.
Ah, you see how it is. You see. Was I wrong? Was I right?
The Lord in Heaven has taken Lea from me, my child who remained with me, my faithful, timid, and loving Lea.
He has taken her, as my father in Oxford refuses even to speak to me, and mourns for Rosa who is yet alive.
Has the Lord passed judgment on me?
Surely my father has learned of the death of Lea. Surely he knows what we face here in Norwich and how the town has made of Lea’s death a great cause for our condemnation and possible execution, how the evil hatred of our Gentile neighbors may break out against all of us once again.
It is a judgment on me, that I let Rosa become the ward of the Earl and go with him and Godwin to Paris. It is a judgment, I can’t help but believe it. And my father, my father has not spoken a word to me, nor written a word since that very hour. Nor will he even now.
He would have left our house that very day, if Meir hadn’t taken me away immediately, and if Rosa had not gone that very night. And poor Lea, my tender Lea, she struggled to understand why her sister was leaving her for Paris, and why her grandfather sat silent as one made of granite, refusing to speak even to her.
And now my tender darling, brought to this strange city of Norwich, and beloved of all who laid eyes upon her, has died, helplessly, of the iliac passion as we stood by unable to save her, and God has placed me here, imprisoned, until such time as the town breaks out in riots and we are all to be destroyed.
I wonder if my father is not laughing at us, bitterly, for we are surely undone.