Chapter SIX
The Mystery of Lea
IT WAS AN ANGRY MOB, AND FRIGHTENING IN APPEARANCE because it was not all rabble by any means. Many carried lanterns and some had torches, and a few even carried tapers, and many were richly dressed in velvet and fur.
The houses on either side of this street were of stone, and I remembered that the Jews had built the very first stone houses in England, and with reason.
I could hear Malchiah’s intimate voice as I approached.
“The priests in white are from the cathedral priory,” he said, as I looked to the three heavily robed men closest to the door of the house. “The Dominicans are gathered there around Lady Margaret, who is a niece to the Sherriff and a cousin of the Archbishop. That’s her daughter beside her, Nell, a girl of thirteen. They are the ones bringing the charge against Meir and Fluria that they’ve poisoned their child and secretly buried her. Remember, Meir and Fluria are your charges, and you are here to help them.”
There were a thousand questions I wanted to ask. I was reeling from the statement that a child might have been murdered. And only dimly did I make the obvious connection: these people were being accused of the very crime I myself had committed habitually.
I pushed into the midst of the crowd, and Malchiah was gone and I knew it. I was on my own now.
It was Lady Margaret who pounded at the door as I approached it. She was stunningly dressed in a narrow robe with dagged leaves, all trimmed in fur, and she wore a loose hooded mantle of fur. Her face was stained with tears, and her voice was broken.
“Come out and answer!” she demanded. She seemed utterly sincere and deeply distressed. “Meir and Fluria, I demand it. Produce Lea now or answer for why she’s not here. We’ll have no more of your lies, I swear it.”
She turned around and let her voice ring out over the crowd. “Tell us no more fanciful tales, that this child has been taken to Paris.”
A great chorus of approval rose from the crowd.
I greeted the other Dominicans who moved towards me and told them under my breath that I was Br. Toby, a pilgrim, who had traveled through many lands.
“Well, you’ve come at the right time,” said the tallest and most impressive of the friars. “I’m Fr. Antoine, the Superior here, as you no doubt know, if you’ve been to Paris, and these Jews have poisoned their own daughter because she dared to enter the cathedral on Christmas night.”
Though he tried to keep his voice down, this brought an immediate sobbing from Lady Margaret, and her daughter Nell. And many shouts and cries of agreement from those around us.
The young girl, Nell, was as exquisitely dressed as her mother, but infinitely more distressed, shaking her head and sobbing. “It’s all my fault, all my fault. I brought her to the church.”
At once, the white-robed priests from the priory began to quarrel with the friar who’d spoken to me.
“That’s Fr. Jerome,” Malchiah whispered, “and you’ll see he leads the opposition to this campaign to make another Jewish martyr and saint.”
I was relieved to hear his voice, but how could I ask him for any further information?
I felt him push me forward and I suddenly found myself with my back to the door of the large stone house in which Meir and Fluria obviously lived.
“Forgive me, as I’m a stranger here,” I said, my own voice sounding completely natural to me, “but why are you so certain that a murder has taken place?”
“She’s nowhere to be found, that’s how we know,” said Lady Margaret. She was surely one of the more attractive women I’ve ever seen in my life, even with her eyes reddened and wet. “We took Lea with us because she wanted to see the Christ Child,” she said to me bitterly, her lip trembling. “We never dreamed that her own parents would poison her and preside over her deathbed with hearts of stone. Make them come out. Make them answer.”
It seemed the entire crowd started shouting at these words, and the white-clad priest, Fr. Jerome, demanded silence.
He glared at me.
“We have enough Dominicans in this town already,” he said. “And we have a perfect martyr already in our own cathedral, Little St. William. Those evil Jews who murdered him are long dead, and they did not go unpunished. These Dominican brethren of yours want their own saint as ours is not good enough.”
“It’s Little St. Lea whom we want to celebrate now,” said Lady Margaret in her hoarse and tragic voice. “And Nell and I are the cause of her downfall.” She caught her breath. “All know of Little Hugh of Lincoln, and the horrors that were—.”
“Lady Margaret, this isn’t the town of Lincoln,” insisted Fr. Jerome. “And we have no evidence such as was found at Lincoln to believe in a murder here.” He turned to me. “If you’ve come to pray at the shrine of Little St. William, then we welcome you,” he said. “I can see you’re an educated friar and no ordinary beggar.” He glared at the other Dominicans. “And I can tell you right now that Little St. William is a true saint, famous throughout all England, and these people have no proof that Fluria’s daughter, Lea, was ever even baptized.”
“She suffered Baptism of blood,” insisted the Dominican Fr. Antoine. He spoke with the confidence of a preacher. “Doesn’t the martyrdom of Little Hugh tell us what these Jews will do, if allowed to do it? This young girl died for her faith, she died for entering the church on Christmas Eve. And this man and woman must answer, not merely for the unnatural crime of killing their own flesh and blood, but for the murder of a Christian, for that is what Lea became.”
The crowd gave him a loud roar of approval, but I could see that many bystanders did not believe in what he’d said.
How and what was I supposed to do? I turned and knocked on the door, and said in a soft voice, “Meir and Fluria, I’m here to defend you. Please answer to me.” I didn’t know whether or not they could hear me.
Meantime half the town it seemed was joining the crowd, and suddenly there sounded from a nearby steeple the clang of an alarm bell. More and more people were crowding into the street of the stone houses.
Suddenly the crowd was thrown in disarray by oncoming soldiers. I saw a well-dressed man on horseback, his white hair flowing in the wind, with a sword on his hip. He brought his horse to a halt several yards from the door of the house, and there gathered behind him at least five or six horsemen.
Some people immediately ran away. Others began to shout: “Arrest them. Arrest the Jews. Arrest them.” Others drew closer in as the man dismounted and came up to those who stood before the door, his eyes passing over me without any change of expression.
Lady Margaret spoke before the man could.
“My Lord Sherriff, you know these Jews are guilty,” she said. “You know they were seen in the forest with a heavy burden, and no doubt buried this child right by the great oak.”
The Sherriff, a big husky man with a beard as white as his hair, looked around himself disgustedly.
“Stop that alarm bell now,” he shouted to one of his men.
He took my measure again, but I didn’t step aside for him.
He turned to address the crowd.
“Let me remind you good people that these Jews are the property of His Highness King Henry, and if you do any damage to them or their houses or their property, you do damage to the King, and I’ll place you under arrest and hold you completely accountable. These are the King’s Jews. They are Serfs of the Crown. Now be gone from here. What, would we have a Jewish martyr in every town of the realm?”
This drew a storm of protest and argument.
Lady Margaret at once grabbed his arm. “Uncle,” she implored him. “A terrible evil has been done here. No, it is not the dastardly thing done to Little St. William or Little St. Hugh. But it is just as evil. Because we took the child with us into the church on Christmas Eve—.”
“How many times must I hear this?” he answered her. “Day in and day out, we’ve been friends to these Jews and now we turn on them because a young girl leaves without a farewell to Gentile friends?”
The bell had stopped, but the street was choked with people, and it seemed to me that some even came over the rooftops.
“Go back to your homes,” said the Sherriff. “The curfew’s been rung. You are unlawful if you remain here!” His soldiers tried to bring their mounts a little closer in, but it wasn’t easy.
Lady Margaret beckoned furiously for certain people to come forward, and at once two rather ragged individuals were produced, both of them reeking of drink. They wore the simple wool tunics and leggings of most of the men in the crowd, only their limbs were wrapped with rags, and both of them appeared dazed by the torchlight and the many people pushing and pulling at each other to see them.
“Why, these witnesses saw Meir and Fluria go into the woods with a sack,” cried Lady Margaret. “They saw them by the great oak. My Lord Sherriff, and my beloved uncle, if the ground weren’t frozen we would already have the child’s body from where they buried it.”
“But these men are drunkards,” I said without thinking. “And if you don’t have the body, how can you prove that there’s been a murder?”
“That is exactly the case,” said the Sherriff. “And here’s a Dominican who isn’t half mad to make a saint of someone who’s beside a warm hearth right now in the city of Paris.” He turned to me. “It’s your brethren here who have stoked this fire. Make them come to their senses.”
The Dominicans were plainly furious at this, but one other aspect of their demeanor struck me. They were sincere. They believed themselves quite obviously to be in the right.
Lady Margaret became frantic. “Uncle, don’t you understand my guilt in this? I must pursue it. It was I, and Nell here, who brought the child to Mass and to see the Christmas pageants. We were the ones who explained the hymns to her, who answered her innocent questions—.”
“For which her parents forgave her!” the Sherriff declared. “Who in the Jewry is more mild mannered than Meir, the scholar? Why, you, Fr. Antoine, you’ve studied Hebrew with him. How can you bring this charge?”
“Yes, I studied with him,” said Fr. Antoine, “but I know him to be weak and under the rule of his wife. She after all was the apostate’s mother—.”
The crowd warmed to this loudly.
“Apostate!” cried the Sherriff. “You don’t know that the young girl was an apostate! Too much is simply not known.”
Clearly the crowd was beyond his control, and he realized it.
“But why are you so certain the child is dead?” I asked Fr. Antoine.
“She took sick on Christmas morn,” he said. “That’s why. Fr. Jerome here knows it. He’s a physician as well as a priest. He attended her. They started to poison her even then. And she lay abed for a day in deepening agony, as the poison ate at her stomach, and now she’s gone without a trace and these Jews have the effrontery to say her cousins took her to Paris. In this weather? Would you make such a journey?”
It seemed all who could hear had something to say on the outrage of this, but I let my voice carry as I spoke.
“Well, I’ve come here in this weather, haven’t I?” I answered. “You cannot prove a murder with no evidence of it. That fact remains. Was not there a body of Little St. William? Was not there a victim in Little St. Hugh?”
Lady Margaret again reminded everyone that the ground around the oak was frozen.
The young girl cried bitterly, “I didn’t mean any harm. She only wanted to hear the music. She loved the music. She loved the procession. She wanted to see the Babe laid in the Manger.”
This brought fresh cries from the crowd all around.
“Why didn’t we see her cousins who came to take her on this fanciful journey?” demanded Fr. Antoine of me, and of the Sherriff.
The Sherriff looked about himself uneasily. He raised his right hand and gave a signal to his men, and one of them rode off. He said to me under his breath, “I’ve sent for men to protect the entire Jewry.”
“I demand,” Lady Margaret interjected, “that Meir and Fluria answer. Why are all these wicked Jews locked in their houses? They know it’s true.”
Fr. Jerome spoke up immediately, “Wicked Jews? Meir and Fluria, and old Isaac, the doctor? These very people we’ve counted as our friends? And now they are all wicked?”
Fr. Antoine, the Dominican, shot back crossly, “So you owe them so much for your vestments, your chalices, your very priory,” he said. “But they’re not friends. They’re moneylenders.”
Once more the shouting started, but now the crowd was parting and an elderly man with streaming gray hair and a bent back made his way into the torchlight. His tunic and robes all but touched the snowy ground. On his shoes he wore fine gold buckles.
I saw at once the yellow taffeta patch fixed to his breast that meant he was a Jew. It was cut in the shape of the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, and I wondered, How in the world could anyone have ever seen that particular image as a “badge of shame”? But indeed they did and Jews throughout Europe had been compelled to wear it for many years. I knew and understood this.
Fr. Jerome told everyone sternly to make way for Isaac, son of Solomon, and the old man rather fearlessly took his place near to Lady Margaret and across from the door.
“How many of us,” asked Fr. Jerome, “have come to Isaac for potions, for emetics? How many have been cured by his herbs and his knowledge? I’ve sought the man’s knowledge and judgment. I know him to be a great physician. How dare you not listen to what he says now?”
The old man stood resolute and silent until all the shouting had died away. The white-robed priests of the cathedral had moved closer to him, to guard him. Finally the old man spoke in a deep and somewhat ragged voice.
“I nursed the child,” he said. “True, she entered the church on the very night of Christmas, yes. True, she wanted to see the beautiful pageants. She wanted to hear the music. Yes, she did this, but she came home to her parents a Jewish child as she had left them. She was only a child, and easily forgiven! She took sick, as any child might in this inclement weather, and soon became delirious in her fever.”
It seemed the shouting would break out again, but both the Sherriff and Fr. Jerome gestured for silence. The old man looked about him with a withering dignity, and then continued:
“I knew what it was. It was the iliac passion. She had sharp pain in her side. She was burning hot. But then the fever cooled, the pain went away, and before she left these parts for France, she was herself again, and I spoke with her, and so did Fr. Jerome here, your own physician, though you can hardly say that I have not been a physician to most of you.”
Fr. Jerome assented to all this vigorously. “I tell you as I’ve told you before,” he said. “I saw her before she left for her journey. She was cured.”
I was beginning to realize what had happened. The child had probably suffered appendicitis, and when the appendix burst, the pain naturally lessened. But I was beginning to suspect that the journey to Paris was a desperate fabrication.
The old man was not finished. “You, Little Mistress Eleanor,” he said to the young girl. “Did you not bring her flowers? Did you not see her calm and collected before her journey?”
“But I never saw her again,” cried the child, “and she never told me she was making any journey.”
“The whole town was busy with the continuing pageants, busy with the plays in the square!” said the old doctor. “You know you were, all of you. And we don’t attend these things. They are not part of our way of life. And so her cousins came and took her and so she went away, and you knew nothing of it.”
I knew now that he wasn’t telling the truth, but he seemed determined to say what he had to say to protect not only Meir and Fluria but his entire community.
A few young men who had been standing behind the Dominicans now pushed through their ranks and one of them shoved the old man and called him a “filthy Jew.” The others pushed the old man to one side and then the other.
“Stop this,” the Sherriff declared, and he gave a signal to his horsemen. The boys ran. The crowd parted for the riders.
“I will arrest anyone who lays a hand on these Jews,” the Sherriff said. “We know what happened in Lincoln when things got out of hand! These Jews are not your property, but that of the Crown.”
The old man was badly shaken. I put out my hand to steady him. He looked at me, and I saw that scorn again, that withering dignity, but also a subtle gratitude for my understanding.
More grumbling came from the crowd, soldiers or no soldiers, and the young girl began to cry again miserably.
“If only we might have a dress that belonged to Lea,” she whimpered. “This would confirm what has happened, because at the mere touch of it many might be healed.”
That idea was astonishingly popular, and Lady Margaret insisted they were likely to find all the child’s clothes in the house because the child was dead and had never been taken away.
Fr. Antoine, the leader of the Dominicans, threw up his hands and demanded patience.
“I have a story to tell you before you proceed with this,” he said, “and my Lord Sherriff, I ask that you listen as well.”
I heard Malchiah’s voice in my ear. “Remember you are a preacher too. Don’t let him win the argument.”
“Long years ago,” said Fr. Antoine, “a wicked Jew in Baghdad was stunned to find that his son had become a Christian and threw the child into a roaring fire. Just when it seemed the innocent boy would be consumed, down from Heaven came the Blessed Virgin herself, and she rescued the boy, who came out of the flames unharmed. And the fire consumed that wicked Jew who had tried to do his Christian son such wicked harm.”
It seemed the crowd would storm the house after this.
“That’s an old tale,” I shouted at once, infuriated, “and it’s been told all over the world. Every time it’s a different Jew and a different city, and always the same outcome, and who among you has seen anything like it with your own eyes? Why is everyone so willing to believe this?” I continued as loudly as I could, “You have here a mystery, but you don’t have Our Blessed Lady and you don’t have proof and you must stop.”
“And who might you be, to come here and speak on behalf of these Jews!” demanded Fr. Antoine. “Who are you to challenge the Superior of our own house?”
“I mean no disrespect,” I said, “but only that it proves nothing, this tale, and certainly not any guilt or innocence here.” An idea came to me. I raised my voice as high as I could.
“All of you believe in your little saint,” I cried. “Little St. William whose shrine is in your cathedral. Well, go to him now and pray for guidance. Let Little St. William guide you. Pray to him to discover the girl’s burial place, if you’re so set on it. Won’t the saint be the perfect intercessor? You couldn’t ask for better. Go to the cathedral, all of you, now.”
“Yes, yes,” cried Fr. Jerome, “this is what must be done.”
Lady Margaret looked a bit stunned by this.
“Who better than Little St. William,” said Fr. Jerome, flashing a quick glance at me. “Who was himself murdered by the Jews of Norwich a hundred years ago. Yes, go into the church to the shrine.”
“Everyone, go to the shrine,” said the Sherriff.
“I tell you,” said Fr. Antoine, “we have another saint here, and we have a right to demand of the parents that they give over to us what clothes this child has left behind. Already a miracle has been worked at the oak. Whatever clothing remains here should become as holy relics. I say, break in this door, if need be, and take the clothes.”
The crowd was going wild. The horsemen drew in closer, forcing them to scatter, or back up. Some people were jeering, but Fr. Jerome stood firm with his back to the house and his arms out, crying, “The cathedral, Little St. William, we should all go now.”
Fr. Antoine pushed past me and the Sherriff and he began to beat on the door.
The Sherriff was furious. He turned to the door. “Meir and Fluria, prepare yourselves. I mean to take you to the castle for safekeeping. If required, I’ll take every Jew in Norwich to the castle.”
The crowd was disappointed, but there was confusion on all sides, with many crying the name of Little St. William.
“And then,” said the old Jewish doctor, “if you take Meir and Fluria and all of us to the tower, these people will loot our houses and burn our sacred books. Please, I beg you, take Fluria, the mother of this unfortunate, but let me talk with Meir, that perhaps some donation can be made, Fr. Antoine, to your new priory. The Jews have ever been generous in these matters.”
In other words, a bribe. But the suggestion of it worked like a miracle on all who heard it.
“Yes, they should pay,” someone murmured, and another, “Why not?” And the news seemed to be traveling to all those assembled.
Fr. Jerome cried out that he would now lead a procession to the cathedral, and anyone who feared for the fate of his or her immortal soul should come with him. “All you that have torches and candles, walk ahead to light the way.”
As the horsemen were now putting many people in danger of being trampled, and Fr. Jerome strode off to lead the procession, many followed him, and others grumbled and began to slip away.
Lady Margaret hadn’t moved, and now she approached the old doctor:
“And did he not help them?” demanded Lady Margaret, peering right into his eyes. She turned to the Sherriff with an intimate look. “Was he not, by his own words, part and party to it? Do you think Meir and Fluria are so clever as to produce a poison without his help?” She turned on the old man. “And will you remit my debts to buy me off so easily?”
“If that would calm your heart and make you amenable to the truth,” said the old man. “Yes, I will remit your debts for all the worry and trouble you’ve suffered over this.”
This silenced Lady Margaret but only tentatively. She cared very much that she not yield on this account.
The crowd was now thin, with more and more joining the procession.
At once the Sherriff motioned for two of his mounted men. “Take Isaac son of Solomon safely home,” he said. “And you, all the rest of you, go with the priests to the cathedral and pray.”
“None of them is to be pitied,” insisted Lady Margaret, though she didn’t raise her voice to address the stragglers. “They are guilty of a multitude of sins, and they read black magic in their books which they hold to be higher than the Holy Bible. Oh, this is all my doing that I had mercy on this one child. And such grief that I am in debt to the very people who murdered her.”
The soldiers escorted the old man away, their horses making the last few onlookers scurry off, and I could see more clearly that many had gone on following the lanterns of the procession.
I put my hand out to Lady Margaret.
“Madam,” I said. “Let me go in and talk to them. I’m not from this place. I don’t belong to either side in this quarrel. Let me see if I can tell the truth of the matter. And be assured, this matter can be settled in the light of day.”
She looked at me almost softly, and then wearily she nodded. She turned and with her daughter joined the end of the procession headed for the Shrine of Little St. William. Someone handed her a lighted taper as she glanced back, and gratefully she took this and went on.
The mounted soldiers drove off all the others. Only the Dominicans remained, eyeing me as if I were a traitor. Or worse, an impostor.
“Forgive me, Fr. Antoine,” I said. “If I find proof that these people are guilty, I’ll come to you myself.”
The man did not know what to make of it.
“You school men, you think you know everything,” said Fr. Antoine. “I too have studied though not at Bologna or Paris as you must have. I know sin when I see sin.”
“Yes, and I promise you my full report,” I responded.
At last he and the other Dominicans turned and went away. The darkness swallowed them.
The Sherriff and I remained at the door of the stone house, with what now seemed a glut of mounted men nearby.
The snow was still falling very softly, and had been all during the melee. I saw it clean and white suddenly in spite of the crowd that had just been here, and I also realized I was freezing.
The soldiers’ horses were anxious in this narrow place. But more mounted men were coming, some with lanterns, and I could hear the echo of their hooves in the nearby streets. I didn’t know how big the neighborhood of the Jews was, but I was certain they did. Only now did I notice that all the windows were dark in this part of the town, except for the high windows of Meir and Fluria.
The Sherriff pounded on the door.
“Meir and Fluria, come out,” he demanded. “For your own safety, you’re to go with me now.” He turned to me and spoke under his breath. “If it has to be so, I will take them all and keep them until this madness has stopped, or they’ll burn down Norwich just to burn the Jewry.”
I leaned against the heavy wooden door, and said in a voice that was soft yet loud, “Meir and Fluria, there is help for you here. I’m a brother who believes in your innocence. Please allow us to come in.”
The Sherriff merely stared at me.
But at once we heard the bar being lifted, and the door opened.