Bristol House (16 page)

She reached for her sketchbook and pencil.

12

“I sketched it,” Annie said. “But it’s more authentic if you can see it in the picture of the drawing.”

Rabbi Cohen slipped on his glasses and leaned forward so his face was a few inches from his computer screen. The image was upside down, which was how she’d sent him the attachment. “I am to look at it like this?”

“Yes. That’s the only way you can see the letters. They’re in the stippling. That’s the device the artist used to indicate shading on the stone. He was working in iron gall ink, so he couldn’t use his finger to do it.”

Cohen turned to look at her. “That’s interesting. Torah scrolls are frequently written in iron gall ink, because it doesn’t fade but can be scraped off. During their use in a synagogue, the scrolls are unrolled and rolled all the time, so sometimes a letter cracks. That makes the Torah not
kosher,
ritually pure. So the
sofer,
the scribe, must scrape it off and replace it. The scrolls are vellum. Your drawings . . . ?”

“Rag paper. Most likely produced in the Rhineland. Commercial papermaking didn’t get started in England until the 1580s. Considerably later than these drawings.”

“Fifteen thirty.” Cohen peered again at the computer image. “Why do you think an artist would date his work but not sign it?”

“I can’t be sure, but I think an effort was made to keep these documents from looking like what they were.”

“Which is?”

“I suspect they were indictments.”

Cohen sighed. “Of Jews,” he said. “
Domus Judaeorum.
I should have guessed.”

“In Tudor times,” Annie said, “Latin was reserved for a small segment of official documents. These drawings were clearly not official, and their Latin inscriptions are crude and incorrect.
Acqua
Fleet
for ‘river Fleet’ is nonsense. The word for ‘river’ is
flumen—acqua
simply means ‘water.’ I think the artist was a fine draftsman but not educated. Working for someone else. Maybe fulfilling a commission to identify the homes of Jews, some of those you were talking about the other day, who lived here secretly.”

Cohen turned back to the computer. “Tell me again what I’m supposed to see.”

“Letters. Marked out in the stippling as long as you’re looking at it upside down. Some of the dots are lighter than the rest, and some are missing.”

“Ah, I understand. Like one of those tests for color blindness,” he said. “I’m color-blind, I can’t distinguish purple from red, and on the test paper they show me, everything looks the same. I can’t identify a number picked out in purple.”

“Exactly like that,” Annie said. “But in this case, it’s tone, not color. What you’re looking for is a strip that’s lighter than the rest.”

“That I should be able to see.”

Her sketchbook was in her lap, and she had written out the letters hidden in the drawing, but she waited to see if he would see them for himself. “It’s like looking at an optical illusion,” she said. “Sometimes you have to consciously switch your focus for it to work.”

Cohen sat forward, then pulled back. Annie saw him close one eye, then both, then look again. Finally, “Aha! Of course. You are absolutely correct . . . c-n-d-l-s,” he spelled out. “Then a space followed by g-t-r-n-g. Finally f-r and n-t.” He paused and took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.

“I have the whole thing right here,” Annie said. “I just wanted you to see the technique for yourself.” She passed him the sketchbook. “I’m not at all sure what it’s supposed to mean, but this is what’s written in the drawings.”

“An example of graphic code making,” he said, still focusing on the screen. “I’ve never seen anything exactly like it.” He turned to her sketchbook, then reached for a pencil and paper and began making notes of his own. “However, once you get to what we used to call pay dirt . . . As codes go, this one is very crude. It’s the way it was hidden that was clever.”

“Yes,” Annie agreed. “I think the first word is
candles
. The second I don’t know. The third could be
from
or anything else, but—”

Rabbi Cohen held up his hand for silence. He made a few more notations. “Not
from,
” he said. “F-r stands for
Friday
.”

Annie leaned forward so she could see her sketchbook, still on his desk. “Yes, I see that. Then n-t . . . perhaps it means
night
. But what’s g-t-r-n-g?”

Cohen didn’t answer. He’d moved on to the message contained in the second drawing. “The next sequence is possibly even more damning. T-h-d-y is
Thursday
and I’m betting s-l-d is
soiled
. Could k-r-t-l be that old word
kirtle
? An undergarment of some sort?”

Annie’s eyes opened very wide. “Yes, of course it could. A kirtle was either a tunic a man wore under his outer shirt, or a woman’s top petticoat. But what can be damning about a kirtle?”

“You believe the artist to be offering proof of the claim that Jews lived in these houses, correct?”

Annie nodded. It was why she’d contacted him rather than Maggie; the history mattered as much as the code.

“Well, my dear, since you’re an expert—tell me. In households such as these look to be, in Tudor times, how would most candles have been put out?”

“With a candle snuffer.”

“That was my guess. But if you light ritual candles on a Friday night to usher in Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, you would not snuff them out. That would be contrary to
Halakah,
Jewish law and jurisprudence. On Shabbat you must allow the ritual candles to burn out on their own.”

“To sputter and spark,” Annie said quietly. “To gutter. G-t-r-n-g stands for
guttering
.”

“Yes. So one proof that the people living in the house were Jews was candles guttering on Friday night. He’s watching from outside, and he sees them flicker, then die rather than go out suddenly. And, he says in the other drawing, the residents wash their kirtles on Thursday. Something he also sees from outside, because most of the time they would be hung out a window to dry. These people want a clean kirtle on Friday, when at sundown Shabbat begins. Christians were likely to want clean undergarments on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. So to wash your underwear on Thursday rather than Saturday is proof positive that you’re a Jew. In Spain the Inquisition frequently cited such evidence to prove that Marranos, forced converts, had reverted to Jewish practice. It inevitably meant the stake.”

“Good God,” she whispered.

“Sometimes,” Cohen said, “we can be forgiven for wondering.”

Giacomo the Lombard, known also as the Jew of Holborn

From the Waiting Place

Word came that I was to go to Master Cromwell’s apartments in the Palace of Westminster. “Why does he want to see you?” my daughter asked.

“I don’t know. Perhaps he is disturbed that I have not lately presented him with any treasure.” Which was true only because I had not recently managed to make anything approaching the level of craftsmanship of the treasures in the pit, but that I did not say.

“It cannot be your fault,” Rebecca said, “if you do not find what is not there.”

“With Master Cromwell,” I said, “fault and virtue are whatever he wants them to be.”

After that Rebecca helped me into my city finery and hung around my neck the pendant that said I belonged to the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. Wearing it not only granted me the freedom of the city, it forgave the toll for passing through the Holborn Bar.

I set out from my simple country dwelling with calm, but once through the bar, my composure deserted me and I all but staggered through the London streets. After four years of living outside the town, I felt confused by the din and the incessant press of people. I managed to keep some control of my senses by following the Fleet and finally found enough wit to summon a boatman and ask to be taken to the palace.

It was a short journey down the Fleet to the Thames, and having come to the confluence of both rivers, we turned left and headed upstream. The tide ran with us, and I was in good time deposited at that entrance to the palace reserved for those who were members of the Livery Companies, my pendant again being the pass required. Finally I was in the antechamber of Master Cromwell’s most private reception room, and I could smell the dead rodent stink I had come to loathe as much for what it represented as for its propensity to make a man gag.

The pox-faced secretary appeared soon after and motioned me forward. I followed him into the chamber, where Master Cromwell was standing by an open window, holding a pomander to his nose. He did not move from that spot when he bade me good day and told the stinker he could leave us. Pox Face bowed himself out of our presence.

“It’s not the poor fellow’s fault,” the master said when the door shut behind his stinking secretary, all the while wafting his hand in the air to drive the stench out the window. “He has a disease of the skin that no doctor has been able to cure.”

Finally, the smell having dissipated, the master pulled the window shut and seated himself behind his table, only then putting down the pomander. He bade me to sit as well, pointing to the seat opposite him and remarking that I should be comfortable and smile. “Do not look so glum, Giacomo. We are met on a happy affair.”

My stomach churned. I had anticipated trouble since the summons to Westminster arrived. Now I was sure it would be truly terrible. For Thomas Cromwell to display such good humor was a thing that boded ill.

“Your daughter,” he said, when I had managed to stretch my face into something approaching the smile he demanded, “she is well?”

“She is.” I could barely keep from shitting myself like a napkined babe. My bowels had become water, and I feared now that I knew too well the purpose of this meeting. Henry’s taste for beautiful virgins was well-known. She would be worth nothing when he was through with her.

“Tell me,” Master Cromwell asked, “I’m not mistaken, am I? Mistress Rebecca will be fifteen her next birthday.” He added that he knew that to be the marrying age of Lombard women.

I was thrown into a panic. Henry would fuck her, not marry her. “Forgive me, master, you are mistaken. She will be fourteen.” It was not particularly clever, but it was the first thing that came into my head.

“No, Giacomo. Fifteen. I am quite sure of it. I have in fact a statement from the midwife who delivered Rebecca. She swears the date of the child’s birth to be July of the year 1519.”

It was true I had lied, but it did not matter. Nor did he actually need to produce any such oath from a midwife I myself could barely remember. In the matter of Thomas Cromwell, truth was what he said it was. “Possibly I am mistaken.” I spoke the words into my beard, thinking he might not hear them, though what difference that might make was unclear.

“Indeed, Giacomo, I am sure you are. Or perhaps you bend the truth because of your great affection for your only child. Don’t worry, old friend. Rejoice. You will be delighted to know I have agreed that Timothy Faircross may marry her.”

Timothy Faircross was the name of the pox-faced stinker.

I had long puzzled over the fact that Cromwell kept the creature in his employ. At last I had the answer. The stinker was a weapon in Master Cromwell’s arsenal. In this circumstance, he was more to be feared than any crossbow.

“You will be happy to know,” Cromwell said, “that Faircross has a fine future as my trusted secretary. What more could you wish in a son-in-law?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

Master Cromwell smiled and we talked some more, but I do not remember what we said. I was so sick at my stomach that I wanted only to get out of that room and find a place where I could relieve my bowels. As for what I would tell Rebecca, I did not think words would convey the message. Rather, I knew the leather strap with which I belted my winter tunic would be required. Ultimately she must accept that she had no choice but to comply, and nor had I.

Even as I reached that conclusion, her mother’s sweet voice seemed to echo in my mind, and I fancied the tears that wet my cheeks were not mine but hers.

Dom Justin

From the Waiting Place

As we expected, the Venerable Father’s carcass fell from the place above the gate where it had been nailed, and two lay brothers carried the precious burden into the monastery. Then they threw on the ground outside the disjointed bones of the carcass of a sheep, that any who passed by might believe the prior’s remains to lie where they had fallen.

We monks now had possession of our treasure.

We packed the bones (picked clean of mortal flesh by the birds of the air and whitened by the sun and the wind and the rain) into a small chest that the brother blacksmith had been preparing for the purpose—it was forged metal covered in horsehide and would defy all moisture and rot.

What to do with it after that?

We found a temporary hiding place beneath the St. Joseph altar in the church, a place where two stone walls meet. When the chest was shoved all the way to the back of that corner, it was in some measure invisible. But not even the most unworldly among us thought it to be sufficiently safe for such times as those were in England.

Dom Hilary asked if I remained convinced the man known as Giacomo the Lombard could be trusted to guard this great treasure on our behalf. I assured him that was so. My opinion, I repeated, was based on my having known him before I entered the Charterhouse.

The old man looked at me for some time without speaking, and once again I felt his eyes boring into my soul. “If you are certain,” he said at last.