As soon as he was sure the youths had gone, a tall stooped figure dressed in a Black Friar’s habit edged cautiously around the entrance to the courtyard and began to pick his way towards the crumpled figure lying in the corner. He had almost reached the body when he heard the sound of the bolts being drawn back on the door of the house. He hesitated, gazing longingly at the black stone still grasped in the dead man’s hand, but before he could reach it the door opened and a maid rushed out screaming and shouting. The friar turned and fled from the yard, empty-handed.
Judith tore through the streets, running after Nathan and her brother Isaac. Her brother yelled at her to go back, but she ignored him. As a small child, she’d been able to beat any boy of her age in a race, but now, at seventeen, she was hampered by her long skirts, and the two young men were already inside the courtyard by the time she caught up with them.
A huddle of women stood just inside the archway to the yard, clutching each other and chattering shrilly like starlings. Judith edged past them and walked over to where Isaac and Nathan stood. As she looked down, it was all she could do to keep from retching. She reached inside her kirtle and grasped the silver amulet in the form of a hand which her mother had given her for protection. She held it so tightly the metal cut into her palm, but she didn’t feel it.
The district bailiff was bending over what looked like a heap of blood-soaked rags, but when he caught sight of the white badge on Nathan’s chest he straightened up and stepped aside. ‘He’s one of yours. You know who he is?’
Nathan pressed his hand to his mouth as if he was about to vomit. ‘Zayde? Grand-pere? ’ he whispered.
He sank to his knees in the muck and began shaking the old merchant as if he was sleeping and had to be woken. Tears streamed down the young man’s face. He gently eased the black stone from the old man’s fingers and, grasping the gnarled hand, pressed it to his lips, kissing it over and over. Judith felt the tears stinging her own eyes. She grasped her brother’s arm. Startled to find her at his side, Isaac pulled her into his arms, hugging her so fiercely that Judith knew it was as much to comfort himself as her.
‘Well, who is it, then?’ the bailiff demanded gruffly. ‘His name’ll be needed for the records.’
‘The merchant… Jacob ben Meir…’ Isaac said. ‘Have you caught the bastard who did this to him?’
The bailiff grimaced. ‘Hue and cry’s been raised. There’s men out looking, but I don’t reckon we’ll find anyone, No idea who we’re looking for.’
‘Someone must have seen something,’ Isaac insisted. ‘What about the people who live here?’
The bailiff shrugged. ‘Didn’t see anything. All busy about their duties. Was a maid found the body, and by then whoever did this was long gone. I dare say he brought it on himself. Might even have been the Jew who started it. Look there.’ He nodded to the black stone in Nathan’s hand. ‘The old Jew was holding that when he was found. Could break a man’s skull, could that. Maybe he tried to hit someone from behind to rob them and they were just defending-’
Nathan gave a bellow of fury and outrage. He was on his feet in a flash, the stone raised in his hand. But the bailiff was a burly man, well used to dodging the blows of drunks and desperate men. And as Nathan struck out, the bailiff grabbed his arm, twisted it and sent him sprawling face down in the yard across the body of his grandfather.
‘Get him out of here,’ the bailiff growled at Isaac. ‘I’m only letting him get away with that ’cause I can see the lad’s upset, but if he threatens me again…’
Isaac hastily dragged Nathan upright and bundled him towards the archway. All the fight had drained out of Nathan; though he was still grasping the stone tightly, he offered no resistance. All eyes followed the sobbing young man as he stumbled over the cobbles, his grandfather’s blood dripping from his hands.
Wednesday 22 May, the fourth day of Sivan
‘At least you had the sense to stay away from my inn until morning.’ Magote scowled. ‘So the old Jew’s dead, is he? I hope for the sake of your necks there were no witnesses.’
The innkeeper’s widow glanced sharply at Gamel and his two friends, but they merely shuffled their feet and grunted. The courtyard of the Grey Goose Inn was empty, but Magote had been long enough in her game not to take any chances. She gestured the lads into the long low lean-to that served as her brewing room and followed them, taking care to leave the door open just a crack so that she could observe anyone entering the yard.
‘I asked you if there were any witnesses?’ she repeated in a dangerously quiet tone.
Gamel jerked his chin defiantly. ‘I made sure they told the bailiff they saw nothing. They know what’ll happen to them if they talk.’
‘Good lad. You’re learning.’ Magote nodded approvingly.
There was an art to handling these boys: reward and punishment, praise and terror in equal measure. The trick was to keep the lads off balance; never let them guess what was coming. Over the years, she’d worked up quite a gang of them; nearly a dozen lads under her control now. She’d lost a few from time to time — some who’d got themselves knifed, others hanged for thieving — but not one of them had ever fingered her, not even to save their own miserable skins. She was feared far more than the gallows, for even the slowest hanging was as quick as a cut-throat’s knife compared with what she could do to those who betrayed her. If the condemned lad kept his mouth shut, she’d see his family had a fat purse to comfort them for their loss and he’d have someone to pull on his thrashing legs to bring a merciful end to the slow strangulation of the rope. But if the lad was foolish enough to talk… Widow she might be, but those who had the misfortune to cross her knew her better as the widow-maker.
Magote had made good use of the inn after her whore-mongering goat of a husband abruptly and mysteriously departed this life. Innkeepers always know what travellers have in their purses, and what the pedlars and camelots will buy with no questions asked. But Magote had her rules: guests in the Grey Goose were left unmolested for just as long as they remained in her inn enjoying her hospitality. As she told her lads, only a fool plucks a bird while it’s still laying eggs, but once it’s finished laying, then it’s fair game.
Magote narrowed her eyes. The lads were too quiet, shifty. There was something they weren’t telling her. She folded her huge muscular arms across her ample breasts. ‘Well, where is it? Hand it over.’
Gamel looked in mute appeal to his friends, but they were staring fixedly at the rushes on the floor as if they’d never seen anything so fascinating before.
Gamel swallowed hard. ‘The old man, he’d nothing on him… nothing. Searched him and his horse too.’
‘What!’ Magote spat the word out with such venom that all three lads cringed. ‘Did you lose him, let him stop off somewhere in the city? Did he speak to anyone?’
‘Never out of our sight, he wasn’t, from the time he came in through the gate,’ Gamel protested.
‘Don’t lie to me, you miserable little pig’s turd. The old man left with a full pack. Rumour was he was to sell his finest books. This was to be his last trip. He’d have brought back enough gold to see him through for the rest of his days. So where is it?’ She seized a hank of Gamel’s greasy black hair, twisting it and pulling his head back until she forced him down on his knees. ‘If you’re trying to cheat me, boy…’
‘I swear there was nothing…’ he squealed. ‘Nothing except a lump of stone, that were all, a lump of black stone.’
‘Heavy?’ Magote demanded.
Gamel nodded as best he could with her fist still gripping his hair. Magote slowly raised her calloused hand. Gamel saw what was coming, but had no way of avoiding it. She struck him so hard across his cheek that it made his head ring.