Judith knelt down on the rush-strewn floor and stroked his arm gently. She could feel his whole body shaking. ‘What happened, Aaron? Just tell us from the beginning.’
He took another gulp of wine and sat staring at the table. ‘I.. I went back to the study chamber on Erev Shavuoth after we parted. I wanted to try the meditation again on my own. Just as I got there, I saw someone hurrying down the stairs. I could see it wasn’t one of you. The figure was too tall, walking all hunched over, and he was wearing a long robe, though I couldn’t make out its colour in the dark. So I hid, but just as he drew level with me Nathan came staggering out of the chamber holding the side of his head. He was standing at the top of the stairs yelling, “Thief, thief.” The man took to his heels. I chased after him and managed to grab him on the corner of Little Orford Street. As soon as I turned him round, I realized he was a friar, a Black Friar, and he was trying to stuff the stone into his scrip. I told him to give it back and I’d let him go, but he just laughed. He said he’d rather destroy it than let a Jew have it. The whole story burst out of him like pus from a boil.
‘Apparently, the Black Friar had heard rumours about the stone in Exeter. A pedlar was spreading the word among the Jews, wanted to sell it to the highest bidder so that he could buy passage on a boat. The friar arrived just an hour too late. The pedlar told him that Jacob had already bought it and was on his way home. The friar knew that Jacob wouldn’t sell it to him, but he thought that once Jacob was home he could talk his way into his house and steal it.’
‘Jacob would never have allowed a friar across his threshold, not unless he had soldiers with him,’ Isaac said.
‘That’s what I told him, but he said Jacob would let him in if he thought he was a Jew. I laughed. That’s when the little weasel told me.
‘He said, “Do you think I’ve always looked like this? I was born one of you, a Jew. My fool of a father scraped a living from the leavings of the Gentiles all his life and still they spat on him in the street. You think I wanted to spend the rest of my life being kicked out of the way and treated like pigswill? I knew there was only one way out: if you can’t beat them, become one of them. So I converted to the true faith and joined the order as soon as I was twelve. They were pleased to have me at first, a convert plucked from the burning, but that didn’t last long. They were never going to let me forget I was born a Jew. But if I bring them the stone they’ll have to accept me. We’ll destroy it and then we’ll destroy the rest of you vermin. When there isn’t a Jew left in England, then they will forget I’m one of the accused tribe.” ’
Aaron clenched his fists. ‘I pulled my knife. I didn’t mean to use it, just to threaten him, but he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t give up. He just kept taunting me. There was a struggle. The ground was slippery from the rain. I don’t know if I pushed the knife into him or if he fell on it, but the next thing I knew he was dead.
‘I didn’t know what to do. I was about to run off when it occurred to me that if I stripped him, it might take longer for them to work out who he was and buy me a little more time. Besides,’ he added savagely, ‘I wasn’t going to let them find a Jew in a friar’s robes.’
Tuesday 28 May, the tenth day of Sivan
Judith stood in the doorway of their house, throwing the crumbs from the morning bread to the squabbling chickens in the yard. The pale primrose light gave promise of a fine day to come, which was as well for she needed to tend the synagogue garden. Weeds were sprouting everywhere after all the rain.
As if he could read her thoughts, Isaac paused in the act of pulling on his worn leather shoes. ‘Promise me you’ll stay out of the study chamber today. I don’t want you going back in there until I’ve had a chance to straighten it. We don’t want you imagining any more bodies or demons, do we?’
Judith rounded on him furiously. ‘I didn’t imagine it and Nathan is still missing, isn’t he? And his poor mother’s going out of her mind with worry.’
Isaac raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Give me patience. You heard Aaron last night. He said Nathan was standing on the stairs yelling, “Thief.” So the Black Friar can’t have killed him when he stole the stone. And before you start accusing him again, Aaron couldn’t have done it either; he was too busy chasing after the friar. Look, little sister, I didn’t want to tell you this, but Nathan has been seeing a girl, Eleanor. He’s besotted with her, but she’s a Christian, so they have to meet in secret. Nathan’s mother would kill herself if she found out about it.’
‘You think they’ve run off together?’
Isaac shrugged. ‘It’s more than possible, especially if the girl’s father got wind of it. He’d hardly give the couple his blessing, now, would he? But I can’t tell Nathan’s mother that. So be a good girl and stay out of that room. I don’t want you upset again. We’ve enough to worry about with a real body, without worrying about imaginary ones. If the authorities realize that corpse was a friar, not a Jew, they’ll turn this town upside down looking for his killer.’
Judith swallowed hard. She hadn’t dared tell Isaac that she had drawn the bailiff’s attention to the man’s tonsure. She prayed that the bailiff would dismiss what she said, as he did all Jews.
Beads of sweat prickled on Judith’s forehead. Although the afternoon sun was warm for May, she was hoeing with unnecessary vigour between the bushes of rosemary and hyssop in the synagogue garden to try to keep her thoughts off that study chamber. But it wasn’t working, and she kept glancing up at the casement. Isaac was right; the most likely explanation for Nathan’s disappearance was that he and this Christian girl had fled the city together.
As a little child, Judith been too terrified to cross the yard at night, convinced that she could see a demon with glowing eyes lurking in the corner, though her father had shown her it was just the light from her own lantern glinting off a piece of metal. Even now she sometimes thought she saw her mother sitting hunched in the chair before the fire. Perhaps she had imagined Nathan’s body, too. If she could just see what it was in that room — a shadow, a piece of cloth, something that had made her think she’d seen Nathan — she could forget the whole thing.
Judith’s heart gave a lurch of relief as she pushed open the door of the chamber. She’d half expected to see Nathan crouching there again, but the corner was empty and bare. Almost at once, relief was replaced by disappointment. Someone had already tidied the room, her brother or Benedict, no doubt, for it was a man’s hand that had tidied it, she could see that at once. Tables and benches were now upright, but not neatly aligned, and armfuls of books and parchments had been scooped up and stacked in drunken piles without any attempt to sort them or put them back in their places on the shelf. It was as if someone had straightened things just enough to create a space to work. Several sheets of parchment lay spread out on one of the tables, close to a candle stub with a quill pen and pot of black ink.
Judith lifted one of the sheets. It was a random list of words written in Hebrew — gold, fire, citadel. Other Hebrew letters were written beside each word, but these letters didn’t make words. Judith glanced at the rest of the table, searching for the book or scroll that the person had been studying. It was the custom to take a passage from the Torah and study each word and phrase in depth, looking for the different meanings. Usually that passage would be in front of the scholar as he studied, but there were no scrolls or books on the table.
Judith glanced up sharply as she heard footsteps pounding up the wooden steps outside, but before she could cry out the door burst open and Aaron rushed into the room. If anything, he looked paler than he had done the day before, and he was certainly trembling as much.
He doubled over, gasping for breath. ‘Isaac… Benedict… where are they? I… thought they might be here. They said at the tailor’s that Isaac had gone to the warehouse at the river to fetch cloth, but I thought he might have come here.’ He glanced repeatedly at the door as if he was fearful that someone might be following him.