Chapter THIRTEEN
Paris
BY THE TIME WE REACHED PARIS, I HAD HAD ENOUGH of thirteenth-century travel to last me easily the rest of four lifetimes, and though I’d been dazzled repeatedly by a thousand unusual sights, from the dizzying, tightly packed half-timbered houses of London, to the spectacle of Norman castles on varying hilltops, and the never-ending snow falling upon village and town through which I passed, we were intent only on reaching Godwin and laying the case before him.
I say “we” because Malchiah was visible to me off and on through the journey and even went part of the way by wagon with me to the capital, but he would give me no advice except to remind me that Fluria’s and Meir’s lives depended on what I might do.
When he appeared, it was in the garb of a fellow Dominican, and whenever it seemed that my transportation had fatally broken down, he would manifest himself to remind me I had gold in my pockets, that I was strong and capable of doing what was required of me, and then a cart would appear, or a wagon, with a gentle driver willing to let us ride with the bundles, or the firewood, or whatever was being transported, and in many different vehicles I slept.
If there was any one part that was an agony, it was crossing the Channel in weather that kept me perpetually sick on board the small ship. There were times when I thought we would all be drowned, so stormy was the winter ocean, and I asked Malchiah more than once, and in vain, if in the midst of this assignment it was possible for me to die.
I wanted to talk with him about all that was happening, but that he wouldn’t allow, reminding me that he wasn’t visible to other people and I would look like a madman talking out loud to everyone. As for my talking to him only in my mind, he insisted this was too imprecise.
I took this to be an evasion. I knew he wanted me to complete this mission on my own.
At last we passed through the gates of Paris, without mishap, and reminding me that I would find Godwin in the University quarter, Malchiah left me with the stern reminder that I had not come here to gaze idly at the great Cathedral of Notre Dame or to wander the precincts of the Palace of the Louvre but to find Godwin without delay.
It was as fiercely cold in Paris as it had been in England, but the sheer press of human beings who swarmed the capital provided some meager warmth. Also there were little fires burning everywhere round which people warmed themselves and many spoke of the dreadful weather and how unusual it was.
I knew from my earlier reading that Europe at this time had been entering into a period of spectacularly cold weather that would last for centuries, and once again I was grateful that Dominicans were allowed to wear wool stockings and leather shoes.
No matter what Malchiah had told me, I went immediately to the Place de Grève and stood for a long moment before the recently complete facade of Notre Dame. I was stunned, as I always had been in my own time, by the sheer magnitude and magnificence of it, and could not get over the fact that it was, here before me, just beginning its adventure in time as one of the greatest cathedrals anyone could ever behold.
I could see scaffolding and workmen surrounding a distant corner of the building, but the edifice was very nearly complete.
I went inside, finding it thronged with people in the shadows, some on their knees, others drifting from shrine to shrine, and I knelt on the bare stones, near one of the towering columns, and I prayed for courage and I prayed for strength. I had the strangest feeling when I did this, however, that I was somehow going over Malchiah’s head.
I reminded myself that that was nonsense, that we were both working for the same Lord and Master, and there came to my lips again the prayer that had come earlier, much earlier: “Dear God, forgive me that I ever separated myself from You.”
I cleared my mind of all words, listening only for the guidance of God. That I was kneeling in this massive and magnificent monument to faith during the very age when it had been built lulled me into a wordless gratitude. But above all I did what this immense cathedral meant for me to do: I laid myself open to the voice of The Maker and bowed my head.
An awareness came over me, all of a sudden, that though I was in dread of failing in what I had to do, and though I was in pain for Fluria and Meir and all the Jewry of Norwich, I was myself happier than I had ever been. I felt strongly that I had been given such a priceless gift in this mission that I could never give thanks enough to God for what was happening to me, for what had been placed in my hands.
This didn’t engender pride in me. Rather I felt wonder. And, as I pondered, I felt myself talking to God without words.
The longer I remained there, the deeper came my realization that I was now living in a way that I had never lived in my own time. I had so thoroughly turned my back on life in my own time that I didn’t know a single person as I knew Meir and Fluria, and had no devotion to anyone as I now had a deep devotion to Fluria. And the folly of this, the deliberate despair and resentful emptiness of my own life, struck me with full force.
I looked through the dusty gloom to the faraway choir of the great cathedral, and I begged for forgiveness. What a miserable instrument I was. But if my ruthlessness and my craftiness could be eclipsed now in this mission, if my cruel tools and talents could be useful here, I could only marvel at the majesty of God.
A deeper thought nudged at me, but I could not quite grasp it. It had something to do with the binding fabric of good and evil, with the way in which the Lord might extract the glorious from the seeming disasters of human beings. But the thought was too complex for me. I felt I was not meant to complete this realization—only God knew how the dark and the light were mingled or separated—and I could only give voice to my contrition again and pray for courage, pray to succeed. Indeed, I sensed a danger in pondering why God allowed evil, and how He might use it. I felt He alone understood this, and we were never meant to justify evil or to do it out of any misguided notion that evil had in every day and age, its certain role. I was content not to understand the mystery of the workings of the world. And I felt something surprising suddenly: whatever was happening that was evil had nothing to do with the great goodness of Fluria and Meir that I’d experienced firsthand.
Finally, I said a small prayer to the Mother of God to intercede for me, and then I rose, and walking as slowly as I could to savor the sweet candle-lighted darkness, I went out into the cold winter light.
It is pointless to describe in detail the filth of the Paris streets, with their slops in the central gutters, or the jumble of the many three- and four-story houses, or the reek of the dead from the massive cemetery Les Innocents in which people transacted all manner of business in the snowfall right amongst the many tombs. It’s pointless to try to capture the feeling of a city in which people—crippled, humpbacked, dwarfed, or tall and gangly, advancing on crutches, carrying huge bundles on their bent shoulders, or hurrying upright and with purpose—were going every which way at once, some selling, some buying, some carrying, some scurrying, some rich and carried in litters or marching bravely through the mud in their bejeweled boots, and most rushing about in simple jerkins with hooded tunics; a populace wrapped to the teeth in wool or velvet or fur of all different quality, to defend themselves against the cold.
Over and over beggars beseeched me for help, and out of my pockets I put coins in their hands, nodding to their prayerful gratitude, as it seemed my pockets contained an endless supply of silver and gold.
A thousand times I was seduced by what I saw but had to resist it. I hadn’t come, as Malchiah had told me, to seek out the royal palace, no, nor to watch puppeteers bravely putting on their little shows at the little crossroads, or to marvel at how life went on in the bitterest of weather, with tavern doors open, or how life was lived in this most remote and yet familiar of times.
It took me less than an hour to push my way through the crowded and winding streets, and into the student quarter where I was suddenly surrounded by men and boys of all ages dressed as clerics, wearing robes or gowns.
Nearly everyone was wearing a hood due to the abysmal winter, and some sort of heavy mantle, and one could tell the rich from the poor by the amount of visible fur lining their garments and even trimming their boots.
Men and boys were coming and going from many small churches and cloisters, the streets were tantalizingly narrow and crooked, and lanterns were hung out to fight the dismal gloom.
Yet I was easily directed to the priory of the Dominicans, with its small church and open gates, and found Godwin, whom the students quickly identified for me as a tall, hooded brother, with sharp blue eyes and pale skin, atop a bench, obviously lecturing in the open cloister court itself to a huge and attentive crowd.
He was speaking with effortless energy, in a beautiful and fluid Latin, and it was a pure delight to hear someone speaking—and the students replying and questioning—in this tongue with such ease.
The snow had slackened. Fires had been built here and there to warm the students, but the cold was miserable and I soon learned from a few whispered remarks to me by those on the fringes that Godwin was so popular now, in the absence of Thomas and Albert who had gone on to teach in Italy, that his students simply couldn’t be contained indoors.
Godwin gestured colorfully as he addressed this sea of eager figures, some of whom sat on benches, writing frantically as he spoke, and others sitting on cushions of leather or soiled wool, or even on the very stone ground.
That Godwin was an impressive man didn’t surprise me, yet I couldn’t help but be amazed at how very impressive he truly was.
His height alone was striking, but he had the very radiance that Fluria had tried so meaningfully to describe. His cheeks were ruddy from the weather, and his eyes were ablaze with a deep passion for the concepts and ideas he was expressing. He seemed utterly invested in what he was saying, what he was doing. A genial laughter punctuated his sentences, and he turned from right to left gracefully to include all his listeners in the points being made.
His hands appeared to be wrapped in rags except for his fingertips. As for the students almost all wore gloves. My hands were freezing but I too wore leather gloves and had since I’d left Norwich. I felt sad that Godwin did not have such fine gloves.
He had his students laughing riotously at some witticism when I found a place beneath the arches of the cloister, and against a stone pillar, and then he demanded of them that they remember some very crucial quotation from St. Augustine, which any number called out eagerly, and after that, it seemed he was going to launch on a new subject, but our eyes connected, and he stopped in mid-sentence.
I couldn’t tell if anyone knew why he’d stopped. But I knew. Some silent communication passed between us and I dared to nod my head.
Then, with a few preoccupied words, he dismissed the entire class.
He would have been surrounded forever by those asking him questions, except that he told them with careful patience and gentleness that he had important business now, and besides that he was frozen, and then he came to me, took me by the hand, and drew me after him, through the long low-ceilinged cloister, past many an archway, and past many interior doors, until we reached his own cell.
The room, thank Heaven, was spacious and warm. It was no more luxurious than the cell of Junípero Serra at the Carmel Mission of the early twenty-first century, but it was cluttered with wonderful things.
Coals heaped generously in a brazier gave off the delicious heat, and quickly he lighted several thick candles, placing them on his desk, and on his lectern, both of which stood very near his narrow bed, and then he gestured for me to have a seat on one of several benches to the right side of the room.
I could see that he often lectured here, or had done so before the demand for his words had reached such heights.
A crucifix hung on the wall, and I thought I spied several small votive pictures, but in the shadows, I couldn’t make out what they were. There was a very hard thin cushion there before the crucifix and what was obviously a picture of the Madonna, and I surmised that that was where he knelt when he prayed.
“Oh, but forgive me,” he said to me in the most generous and affable manner. “Come, warm yourself by the fire. You’re white from the cold and your head is damp.”
Quickly, he removed my dappled hood and mantle, and then he removed his own. These he hung on pegs on the wall, where I knew that the heat of the brazier would soon make them dry.
He then produced a small towel and wiped my head and face with it, and then his own.
Only then did he unwrap his hands and stretch his fingers over the coals. I realized for the first time that his white cassock and scapular were thin and patched. His was a lean frame, and the simplicity of his short cut ring of hair made his face all the more vital and striking.
“How do you know me?” I asked.
“Because Fluria wrote to me and told me that I would know you when I saw you. The letter preceded you by only two days. One of the Jewish scholars teaching Hebrew here brought it to me. And I’ve been worried ever since, not by what she wrote, but by what she failed to write. And then there is another matter, and she’s told me to open my heart entirely to you.”
He said this with ready trust and again I had a sense of his graceful demeanor and his generosity when he brought one of the short benches up to the brazier and sat down.
There was a firmness and a simplicity to his smallest gestures, as if the time for him was long past when any artifice needed to affect anything that he did.
He reached into one of his voluminous and hidden pockets, beneath his white scapular, and drew out the letter, a folded sheet of stiff parchment, and put it in my hand.
The letter was in Hebrew, but as Malchiah had promised I was able to read it plainly:
My life is in the hands of this man, Br. Toby. Welcome him and tell him all, and he will tell you all, as there is nothing he does not know about my past and present circumstances, and no more than this do I dare to put down here.
Fluria had signed herself with only the first letter of her first name.
I realized no one would know her hand better than Godwin.
“I’ve known something was wrong for some time,” he said, his brows knitting in distress. “You know everything. I know that you do. So let me tell you before I attack you with questions, that my daughter Rosa was seriously ill for some days, insisting that her sister Lea was in great pain.
“It was during the most beautiful days of Christmas when the pageants and the plays before the cathedral are more lovely than any time of the year.
“I thought perhaps, our Christian ways being new to her, she was simply frightened. But she insisted that her misery was on account of Lea.
“These two, you know, are twins, and so it is that Rosa can feel those things that are happening to Lea, and only two weeks ago, she told me that Lea was no longer in this world.
“I’ve tried to comfort her, to tell her this can’t be so. I’ve assured her that Fluria and Meir would have written to me if anything had befallen Lea, but Rosa can’t be persuaded that Lea is alive.”
“Your daughter is right,” I said sadly. “That’s the heart of the entire dilemma. Lea died of the iliac passion. Nothing could be done to prevent it. You know what this is, as well as I do, a disease of the stomach and the insides that causes great pain. Surely people almost always die of it. And so Lea, in the arms of her mother, has died.”
He dropped his face in his hands. For a moment I thought he’d break into sobs. And I felt just a tinge of fear. But he murmured over and over the name of Fluria, and in Latin, he begged the Lord to console her for the loss of her child.
Finally he sat back and looked at me. He whispered, “And so this beautiful one whom she kept has been taken from her. And my daughter remains here, ruddy and strong, with me. Oh, this is bitter, bitter.” The tears stood in his eyes.
I could see agony in his face. His genial manner had completely collapsed in this misery. And his expression had a childlike sincerity as he slowly shook his head.
“I am so deeply sorry,” I whispered as he looked at me. But he didn’t answer.
We kept a long silence for Lea. He had a faraway look in his eyes for a while. And once or twice he warmed his hands, but then he simply let them fall on his knees.
Then gradually I saw the same warmth and openness in him as before.
He whispered: “You know this child was my daughter, of course, I’ve told you as much already in my own words.”
“I do,” I said. “But it’s the child’s very natural death which is bringing ruin to Fluria and to Meir now.”
“How can this be?” he asked. He seemed innocent when he asked me, as if his learning had given him an innocence. Perhaps “humility” would have been a better word.
I also could not avoid noticing that he was a handsome man, not merely because of his regular features and near shining face, but because of this humility and the muted power that it conveyed. A humble man can conquer anyone, and this man seemed to hold nothing back out of the usual masculine pride that suppresses emotions and expression.
“Tell me everything, Br. Toby,” he said. “What is happening to my beloved Fluria?”
A film of tears appeared in his eyes. “But before you start, let me tell you something straight-out. I love God and I love Fluria. That is how I characterize myself in my heart, and God understands.”
“I understand too,” I said. “I know of your long correspondence.”
“She has been my guiding lamp many a time,” he answered. “And though I gave up all the world to come into the Dominicans, I did not give up my exchange with Fluria, because it has never meant anything to me but the highest good.”
He brooded for a moment, and then added, “The piety and goodness of a woman like Fluria are things one doesn’t find so often among Gentile women, but then I know little of them now. It seems a certain gravity is common to Jewish women like Fluria, and she has never written to me a single word that I couldn’t share with others, or should not have shared with others for their benefit—until this note came to me two days ago.”
This had a strange effect on me because I think I was half in love with Fluria for the same reasons, and I realized for the first time how very serious Fluria had been, and the name for this is “gravitas.”
Once again, Fluria in memory reminded me of someone, someone I had known, but I couldn’t think who this person was. Some sadness and fear were connected with this. But I had no time to think on it now. It seemed a perfect sin to think about my “other life.”
I looked around the little chamber. I looked at the many books on the shelves and the parchment pages scattered on the desk. I looked at the face of Godwin who was waiting on me intently, and then I told him all.
I talked for perhaps half an hour explaining everything that had happened, and how the Dominicans of Norwich were in the grip of a delusion about Lea, and how Meir and Fluria could not share with anyone except their fellow Jews the awful truth of the matter that they had lost their beloved child.
“Imagine the grief of Fluria,” I said, “when there is no time for grief because fabrications have to be made.” I stressed this. “And it is a time for fabrications, just as it was for Jacob when he deceived his father, Isaac, and later when he deceived Laban to increase his own flock. It’s a time for dissimulation because the lives of these people are at stake.”
He smiled and nodded to this reasoning. He gave no objection to it.
He rose and began to pace back and forth in a tight little circle because that was all that the room allowed.
Finally, he sat down at the desk, and oblivious to my presence began a letter at once.
I sat for quite some time merely watching him as he wrote, blotted, and wrote some more. Finally he signed the letter, blotted for the last time, then folded the parchment and sealed it with wax, and looked up at me.
“This will go now to my fellow Dominicans at Norwich, to Fr. Antoine, whom I know personally, and it is full of my strong advice that they are on the wrong path. I vouch for Fluria and Meir, and give here a frank admission that Eli, Fluria’s father, was once my teacher at Oxford. I think it will make a difference but not enough of a difference. I cannot write to Lady Margaret of Norwich and if I did, she would no doubt commit the letter to the flames.”
“There’s a danger in this letter,” I said.
“How so?”
“You admit a knowledge of Fluria to which other Dominicans may be privy. When you visited Fluria in Oxford, when you went away with your own daughter, didn’t your friars in Oxford know of these things?”
“O Lord help me,” he sighed. “My brother and I did everything to keep it a secret. Only my confessor knows that I have a daughter. But you’re right. The Dominicans of Oxford were most familiar with Eli, the Magister of the synagogue, and their sometime teacher. And they know that Fluria had two daughters.”
“Exactly,” I said. “If you write a letter, drawing the attention of the world to your connection, then an imposture which might save Fluria and Meir cannot be attempted at all.”
He threw the letter on the brazier and watched it go up in flames.
“I don’t know how to solve this,” he said. “I’ve never faced anything more bleak and ugly in my life. Dare we attempt an imposture when Dominicans from Oxford might well tell those in Norwich that Rosa is impersonating her sister? I can’t bring my daughter into this danger. No, she cannot make the journey.”
“Too many people know too much. But something has to happen to stop this scandal. Do you dare to go, and to defend the couple before the Bishop and the Sherriff?”
I explained to him that the Sherriff already suspected the truth that Lea was dead.
“What are we to do?”
“Attempt the imposture, but do it with more cunning and more lies,” I said. “That is the only way I see to do it.”
“Explain,” he said.
“If Rosa is willing to impersonate her sister, we take her to Norwich now. She will insist that she is Lea and that she has been with her twin sister, Rosa, in Paris, and she can show great indignation that anyone has so maligned her loving parents. And she can express an eagerness to return to her twin sister at once. By admitting the existence of the twin, converted to the church, you provide a reason for her sudden trip to Paris in the middle of winter. It was to be with her sister, from whom she’d been separated only a short time. As for your being the father, why should any mention be made?”
“You know what the gossips say,” he offered suddenly. “That Rosa is in fact the love child of my brother Nigel. Because Nigel was with me every step of the journey. As I told you, only my confessor knows the truth.”
“All the better. Write to your brother at once, if you dare, and tell him what has happened, and that he must proceed to Norwich at once. This man loves you, Fluria told me so.”
“Oh, indeed, and he always has, no matter what my father sought to make him think or do.”
“Well, then, let him go, and vow that the twins are together in Paris, and we will journey there as quickly as we can with Rosa, who will then claim to be Lea, indignant and bereft over the state of her parents, and she will be eager to return to Paris with her uncle Godwin at once.”
“Ah, I see the wisdom in this,” he said. “It will mean disgrace for Fluria.”
“Nigel need not say outright that he is the father. Let them think it, but he need not say it. The girls have a legal father. Nigel need only claim the interest of a friend to the child who has converted to Christianity, as he was a guardian to her sister before her, her sister who waits in Paris for Lea, the new convert, to return.”
He was deeply absorbed in what I was saying. I knew he was thinking of the many aspects. The girls, as converts, might be excommunicated and thereby lose their fortune. Fluria had spoken of this. But I could still see a passionate Rosa, pretending to be an indignant Lea, and pushing back the forces that threatened the Jewry, and no one in Norwich surely would have the gall to demand that the other twin come there as well.
“Don’t you see?” I said. “It’s a tale that accommodates everything.”
“Yes, very elegant,” he answered, but he was still thinking.
“It explains why Lea left. Lady Margaret’s influence did make her accept the Christian faith. And so she sought to be with her Christian sister. Lord knows, everyone in England and France wants to convert the Jewish tribe to Christianity. And it is a simple matter to explain that Meir and Fluria have been most mysterious about all this because to them it is a double disgrace. As for you and your brother, you are the patrons of the newly converted twins. It’s all very plain in my mind.”
“I see it all,” he said slowly.
“Do you believe that Rosa can impersonate her sister, Lea?” I asked. “Do you believe that she can do such a thing? Will your brother lend a hand? As for Rosa’s willingness to try it, do you have any idea?”
He thought on this for a long moment, and then he said simply that we had to go to Rosa now this very evening, though it was late and obviously getting dark.
When I looked through the little window of the cell, I saw only darkness, but that might have been the thickness of the snow.
Again, he sat down and applied himself to writing a letter. And he read it aloud to me as he wrote.
“Beloved Nigel, I am in great need of you, for Fluria and Meir, my beloved friends, and the friends of my daughters, are in grave danger, due to recent events, which I cannot explain here but will confide in you as soon as we meet. I ask that you go at once to wait for me in the town of Norwich, where I am now heading this very night. And that you present yourself there to the Lord Sherriff, who holds many Jews in the castle tower for their protection, and you make known to the Lord Sherriff that you are well acquainted with the Jews in question, and that you are the guardian of their two daughters—Lea and Rosa—who have become Christian and now live in Paris, under the guidance of Br. Godwin, their godfather, and their devoted friend. Please understand that the inhabitants of Norwich are not aware that Meir and Fluria had two children, and they are very much perplexed as to why the one child whom they knew has left the town.
“Insist to the Lord Sherriff that he keep this matter secret until I can meet you and explain further why these actions must be undertaken now.”
“Splendid,” I said. “Do you think your brother will do it?”
“My brother will do anything for me,” he said. “He’s a kindly and loving man. I would say more if I thought that such a letter might not fall into the wrong hands.”
Once again he blotted his many sentences, and his signature, folded the letter, sealed it with wax, and then he rose, bidding me to wait, and went out of the room.
He was gone for some time.
It struck me as I looked around the little room, with its scent of ink and old paper, its scent of leather book binding and burning coals, that I could spend my whole life here happily, and that, in fact, I was living a life now so superior to anything that I’d ever lived before that I almost wanted to cry.
But this was no time to think of myself.
When he returned, he was out of breath and somewhat relieved.
“The letter will go out tomorrow morning, and make much greater progress than we will make, on its way to England, as I’ve sent it care of the Bishop who presides over St. Aldate’s, and the manor house of my brother, and he will deliver the letter into Nigel’s hands.”
He looked at me and once again the tears came up in his eyes. “I could not have done this alone,” he said gratefully.
He removed his mantle from the peg, and mine as well, and we dressed for the snow outside. He started to wrap his hands again with the rags that he’d laid to the side, but I reached into my pockets whispering a prayer and drew out two pairs of gloves.
“Thank you, Malchiah!”
He looked at the gloves, but then, with a nod, took the pair I offered and put them on. I could see he didn’t like the fine leather or the fur trim, but he knew that we had work that we had to do.
“Now, we go to see Rosa,” he said, “and tell her what she already knows, and ask her what she wishes to do. If she refuses this task, or feels she cannot do it, we will go to testify in Norwich on our own.”
He paused. He whispered, “Testify,” and I knew he was troubled now by the amount of lies involved.
“Never mind it,” I said. “There will be bloodshed if we don’t do this. And these good people, who have done nothing, will die.”
He nodded and out we went.
A boy with a lantern, who looked very much like a heap of wool garments, waited for us outside, and Godwin said we would go to the convent where Rosa lived.
We were soon hurrying through the darkened streets, passing an occasional noisy tavern door, but generally groping our way behind the boy who held the lantern, and a heavy snow had begun to fall.