‘Mutton head! Haven’t I taught you anything? These Jews cover gold in black wax or tar, even dip it in lead to disguise it from cod-wits like you. That trick’s so old, Adam was pulling it.’
Gamel’s eyes were watering with pain. ‘But it didn’t feel like-’
‘You couldn’t feel your own arse unless someone kicked it for you.’ Magote spat in disgust. ‘Now you get out there and find out who’s got that stone. You fetch it here, and I promise you’ll be living like a lord on your cut of the gold. But if you fail I’ll be taking my cut from you, and I don’t mean in coins.’
Judith peered out of the casement on the upper floor of the synagogue, checking that the garden below was empty. Few men came to study this early in the evening, especially on a weekday, which is why her brother and his friends met here. Satisfied that she would not get caught, Judith laid down her broom and tiptoed across the wooden floor towards the tiny study chamber at the far end.
Her brother and his friends had entered the study chamber from the outside staircase at the back of the building. They didn’t dare risk coming in through the main synagogue entrance in case the rabbi or one of the elders should see them. A year ago Rabbi Elias had closed the Talmudic school and forbidden the study of the Kabbalah after their teacher had been forced to flee abroad with his wife. It was dangerous to provoke the Christians, Rabbi Elias said; they were already suspicious enough of the Jews, and regarded the mystical symbols and charts of the Kabbalists as sorcery.
Besides, Rabbi Elias did not approve of these new ideas from Spain and Germany with their strange meditations, which had been known to drive young men into states of dangerous melancholy or mad ecstasy, which was almost as bad.
‘Read the Torah, pray and work hard to earn a living. That is enough to occupy any young man,’ he declared.
But Judith’s brother Isaac and his three friends, including the rabbi’s own son, Aaron, had continued to study in secret in defiance of the rabbi’s instructions. Aaron swore that he for one was not going to be intimidated by the Christians even if his father was too cowardly to stand up to them.
Judith edged her way along the wall of the chamber until she found the familiar spot where there was a small hole in the wooden partition. She hunkered down and pressed her ear to the gap. She did not need to squint through it to know who was talking. She’d been eavesdropping on this room for months, listening to their fierce debates, and by now she had learned almost as much as they had.
Her brother Isaac was speaking. ‘But Jacob must have told you why he wanted the stone. He was no fool, not when it came to business, anyway.’
‘What more can I tell you?’ Judith heard the exasperation in Nathan’s voice. ‘His old friend in Exeter sent him a message, and the next thing I knew Zayde was setting off. My mother told him it was dangerous to make such a journey at his age and with such valuable books, but he said when Moses saw the burning bush he went to it without hesitation, and where would our people be if he had not?’
‘Now you’re telling us he thought he was Moses?’ Aaron said mockingly. ‘That proves the old man was crazy.’
‘You talk to me about crazy,’ Nathan snapped. ‘Last week you were certain that a new prophet had been born that hour, because the fish you had for dinner had a glass bead in its belly.’
Judith heard the scrape of a chair as if someone had pushed it violently backward.
‘Enough!’ Benedict’s voice rang out hard and commanding. Benedict was only eighteen, two years younger than her brother Isaac, but he had a certainty about him that made others listen. ‘We’ve tried every test of the alchemist’s art on the stone. It transforms nothing, and it will not itself transform into anything but what we see.’
Benedict was already a skilled apothecary, having learned the trade from his father, but since his father had been hanged, Benedict had been forced to learn what he could from books. He could read Latin, German and French as well as Hebrew and, according to her brother, Benedict’s room beside the apothecary’s shop was stuffed with books on every subject from alchemy to brewing cordials for coughs. Not that Judith had ever seen them, of course; an unmarried girl did not visit a man in his chamber, not even her future husband.
She and Benedict had been betrothed for two years now, and Judith had not thought it possible to be more infatuated with a man than she was on that day they gave each other their pledge. But as the months passed that youthful adoration had matured into a deep and solid respect, and a love that sometimes burned so fiercely in her she thought she would be consumed by it, if they did not soon become man and wife.
‘So,’ Aaron said, ‘if Benedict is right, and the stone is not valuable, then what…’ Suddenly his voice took on a new excitement. ‘This scroll, what is its value?’
Judith put her eye to the hole in the partition and peered into the room. The rabbi’s son was brandishing a small leather scroll under the nose of Nathan.
Nathan tugged at the small wisp of hairs on his chin which was struggling to proclaim itself a beard. ‘Three, four shillings,’ he hazarded.
‘No, I mean what makes it worth three shillings? Is it the leather?’
Nathan snorted. ‘What? An old piece of leather like that? A penny or two at most. It’s what’s written on…’
He broke off as Aaron snatched up the stone from where it lay between them on the table. Trembling with excitement, Aaron pulled a candle towards a solid-glass globe to intensify the light of the flame and tilted the stone upwards. The others crowded in to peer over his shoulder. For a long time all four men stared at it.
‘Is that…’ Isaac began. ‘No, it’s nothing.’
‘Wait…’ Aaron turned the stone around. ‘There! There! Do you see it? Where the blood lies. It’s the Hebrew letter — Shin. And that mark there. It’s the letter Mem. ’ The stone was wrenched from hand to hand as each of the four young men pored over its surface.
‘And there… there’s another. Is it… could it be a Hay?’ Nathan cried out, almost dropping the stone in his excitement. ‘Shin, Mem, Hay, or is it Mem, Shin, Hay? Moses! The letters spell Moses in Hebrew.’
‘You are useless, Nathan,’ Aaron yelled, ripping the stone out of his hand. ‘That is a final letter Mem. It can only be written at the end of a word. Hay, Shin, Mem. Don’t any of you see it? The letters spell HaShem. It means The Name. That is what is written on the stone — The Name. That is what the Eternal One was called at the climax of creation when He made Adam; only when creation was complete could HaShem, The Name, be known. And it is the title that the Eternal One used of Himself when He gave us the Torah on Mount Sinai. I am HaShem that brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slaves. Don’t you see this is a sign that He is going to deliver us from those who oppress us. A sign written on stone, just as the law was written on stone. And tomorrow night Shavuoth begins, when those tablets of stone were given to Moses. It all fits.’ Aaron grasped the white strips on the front of his cloak. ‘This badge will no longer be our badge of shame; it will be our symbol of triumph.’
In the distance the church bells of Norwich began tolling for the evening service of compline. Aaron was prancing around the room holding the stone above his head like a banner.
Isaac caught his arm. ‘It’s late. Your father will be here soon, Aaron. We’d better go before he arrives for evening prayers.’
Aaron grimaced. ‘Prayers! “Have patience and pray for the Messiah to come, my son”,’ he mimicked. ‘All these centuries watching our people get slaughtered, and we are still waiting. My father will still be praying when the Gentiles are setting light to the bonfire under his feet. The Jews of Norwich will never stand up for themselves as long as my father is rabbi. We have to find a way to destroy our enemies before we all end up like poor Jacob. And this! This-’ he brandished the stone again ‘-will show us how to do it.’