Bristol House (9 page)

They’d never lived together, almost no one knew they were married, and she hadn’t seen him in months when their son was born; nonetheless she couldn’t bear to write “father unknown” on Ari’s birth certificate. She told the truth. So Zak had standing and the court granted him custody. It was an absolutely logical thing to do.

“Kick the booze, Annie,” Zak said on the courtroom steps. “Find a program. Go into detox. Whatever works.” The social worker was waiting for him, holding in her stranger’s arms a three-year-old Ari who struggled to escape and cried for his mother. “Straighten up,” Zak said, before he turned away, “then get in touch. We’ll work something out.”

She had tried, a little bit at least. Nothing took. Instead she had used that searing, unspeakable loss as an excuse for six more years of drunken havoc. Then four years ago she had walked into an AA meeting in Boston, and by some miraculous gift of undeserved grace she was saved. But by then what Ari wanted mattered as much as any arrangement she and Zak might make. And what he wanted was not her.

Never again, she had promised herself, absolutely never again would she lose herself in that way, cede control of her life. She was not about to break that vow because of a ghost.

Around four she got up to make herself a sandwich. That’s when she closed the kitchen door facing the back hall. From now on she’d only go into the kitchen from the dining room.

She carried the sandwich back to the bedroom and ate it while walking up and down in front of the remarkable black and white mural with its jumble of tiny, detailed London scenes. If she focused on just one, she could sometimes identify a corner of Trafalgar Square or a bit of Piccadilly Circus. The scenes, however, occurred in no order and with no discernible pattern, making it impossible to maintain concentration on the mural for any length of time. Moreover, she was, she realized, acutely aware of the chest in the drawing room that contained two bottles of scotch, one of gin, one of sherry, and three of wine.

“Do feel free,” Mrs. Walton had said.

Annie went into the dining room and sat down at her laptop. She’d looked up a schedule of Holborn AA meetings before she left New York. There was one at 7:45 p.m. on Wednesdays. It was a short walk away on Emerald Street, which, according to Google Maps, was closer to Geoff’s place than hers. She worked out a route that bypassed his house.

***

Thursday morning she wrote another postcard to Ari and took it out to mail when she went for a run. South to Covent Garden this time, as if a new route might intensify the endorphins and deliver a more potent sense of well-being. When she got back, she showered and changed and headed for the British Museum. She’d be working on her own since Jennifer was on vacation, but the Shalom Foundation had recommended the archivist only as a resource.

Annie didn’t actually need her.

Weinraub had been full of praise for Annie’s skills the last time she saw him. She’d been scheduled to leave for London that evening, and gone to Shalom’s Lower Manhattan office to pick up the hard copy documents and her ticket.

In New York terms, the building was plain vanilla—no prestige and no glamour—but from where Annie was sitting, she had a fantastic view of the harbor. The Statue of Liberty had loomed over Weinraub’s shoulder while he spoke. “I have no doubt you’re going to do great things for us, Dr. Kendall. The academic world will be set on its ear. Judaica from the Second Temple! Who would imagine we might be able to confirm the existence of such things?”

She’d started to protest again that such a provenance was bound to be impossible to prove, but he’d waved away her concern. “No, no, I understand. A connection of that sort would be only a bonus, and we’re unlikely ever to document it.” He’d shrugged. “That doesn’t matter for our purposes, Dr. Kendall. It’s the source of the Jew of Holborn’s gifts we’re after. A clue as to where he found his treasures. The items we’ve discovered, the links between them, went unnoticed for centuries. Who’s to say there isn’t still more ancient Judaica to be located?” The words were accompanied by another shrug. “Perhaps other types of pans they used for carrying the coals for burnt offerings. There’s one called a
seer
in Hebrew. And there are other basins and bowls connected to the sacrifice. Or why not some ancient mezuzah? That’s the case with the parchment inside. Jews fix them to their doorways. Like that one.” He gestured to the mezuzah on the door frame of his office.

Annie had turned to look, but only to be polite. “I’m familiar with them, Mr. Weinraub.”

“Yes, of course. I’d forgotten. Your doctoral dissertation was about religious symbols on doors and doorways, wasn’t it?”

Annie hadn’t made that association. It surprised her that he did. “Christian symbols,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter. You’ll be sensitive to the possibility.
Mezuzot
have been part of Jewish life since the time of Exodus. And they are small, easy to transport. Also easy to overlook.”

“I take your point.” She didn’t really. Discovering some actual ancient artifact seemed to Annie extremely unlikely. Finding out something about the man himself, the improbable Jew of Holborn—that she believed she might do.

They had sat for a few seconds without speaking, Weinraub seeming to look through her. The sun was going down over the harbor meanwhile, turning the Lady’s crown to gold. “I’ll do my best, Mr. Weinraub,” she said when the silence was becoming uncomfortable. “I promise you that.”

He nodded, still pinning her with his dark-eyed gaze. “I have no doubt, Dr. Kendall. I am sure you will not fail me.”

***

As promised, Annie’s orange-bordered pass got her into the staff sections of the British Museum, no questions asked. After she let herself into Jennifer’s temporary domain in the subbasement bowels, things became more difficult.

She knew she had to locate her mysterious Jew if she were to have any hope of unearthing his secrets, and that meant starting with Holborn in the 1530s. Back then it was pretty much all fields and meadows, but according to the Scranton map, a few houses hugged the banks of the now-covered-over River Fleet. With Jennifer away, she couldn’t see Scranton’s drawing again, so she spread a large-scale modern map on the table, then—painstakingly, using a number of different reference books—drew in the river as if it still traveled aboveground. A little before noon she went out to try to walk along the banks of the Fleet as it flowed through Holborn.

She never got a decent start. Her cell was in the pocket of her jeans, and it vibrated against her hip while she was passing Russell Square tube station. Geoff had sent her a text: “Why boiling pot?” She texted back a series of question marks while she waited to cross Bernard Street. The phone rang in her hand. When she answered, he said, “I’ve been looking at the other enlargements my techie mate sent back. Next to the Tyburn gallows there’s a huge cauldron sort of thing with a fire under it. What’s it for?”

“Oh, that.” She looked the wrong way before stepping off the curb. A cabbie leaned on his horn. Annie jumped back. “It’s for parboiling the parts of the bodies after they’re hacked up. Human flesh lasts longer if it’s not entirely raw.” The jaw of the woman standing beside her dropped about three inches. Annie grinned at her. The woman turned and ran.

“Jesus,” Geoff said. “Where are you?”

She told him.

“Head up Guilford Street toward the entrance to Coram’s Fields. I’ll find you.”

***

She didn’t see him coming, didn’t know he was there until minutes later he slipped his arm through hers. “Good morning. Look, it’s a miracle.”

“What is?”

He nodded toward the entrance to the park on their left. “There’s no gatekeeper on duty. C’mon.”

“Why should there be—”

“Don’t talk. Hurry.” They ducked into the park.

***

It was perfect weather, sunny and warm. The park was filled with children playing. Geoff, however, looked grim. And everything she told him about Tudor justice seemed to make it worse. “After they cut out the heart,” she said, “the victim was dead.”

“I suppose,” he said.

“Then they cut off the head, to be displayed on the city walls, and divided what was left into four parts. That was the quartering. It was those four parts they parboiled in the cauldron. Before they tacked them up around the town.”

“You keep saying parboiled. As if it were a recipe.”

“It sort of was,” she agreed. “You’re a cook.” He’d said he bought the house after his wife died—he wouldn’t have put in a kitchen like that if he didn’t cook. “You must know what happens to flesh if you boil it for too long.”

“Falls apart.”

“Exactly. They only wanted the body parts not to be bloody. Semipreserved.”

“So they’d last longer.”

Annie nodded. “Making a public show of the victim in as many places as possible was very important. The entire operation was about deterrence.”

“When I first saw the pot, I thought they were boiling people alive. Like cannibals.”

“Not at Tyburn.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. You mean sometimes they did?”

“Sometimes. How come you didn’t know? I thought English schoolboys took all this in with mother’s milk.”

“Not this schoolboy. And it was no part of Maggie’s milk.”

Maggie must be his German mother. Annie remembered him explaining his thoroughly nonmonkish Portsmouth background, and how his mother had been sent to England at age nine to escape the Nazis. “Boiling alive was not a regular Tudor thing,” she said, “but there are a few instances. If I tell you how they did it, I’ll really freak you out. It was a punishment reserved for the most heinous crimes. Poisoning nobles at their own tables, that sort of thing.”

Geoff started to say something. A soccer ball flew toward their heads. Annie ducked. The ball missed her and bounced a few times on the pavement a short distance away. A small boy shouted an apology and ran to get it. Geoff stood up and got there first. Annie thought he’d pick the thing up and throw it to the boy, but instead he dribbled it back onto the grass, the ball dancing at his toes as if it were attached with strings. After a few seconds he called out, “Yo! You there, blondie,” and kicked the ball straight to the feet of one little boy. The child shouted something, obviously delighted, and passed the ball back to Geoff. Another boy, dark and considerably bigger, tried to take it away. Geoff put the ball through the second kid’s legs, took control of it again behind his back, then kicked it some twenty feet into the goal. There were more shouts. A number of the boys raised their hands above their heads and clapped in appreciation.

Geoff came back and sat beside Annie on the bench. “I suppose like most Americans you don’t know the first thing about football, so you’re not in the least impressed.”

“I’m sorry.” She felt the flush crawl up her neck to her cheeks.

“I love the way you blush.”

“I can’t help it. Redheads do. Are you very good at the game?”

He laughed. “At my age? Not on your life. I was pretty good once upon a time, and I can still come up with a couple of flash moves”—he nodded to where the kids were again playing intently—“but only if the competition’s nine years old.” He put his arm along the back of the bench and twisted one of her curls around his finger. Their hands had met a few times when they passed things back and forth, and earlier today he’d taken her arm to guide her along the street. This was the first time he had touched her for no reason except, apparently, that he wanted to. “How are you, Annie? Since the other night, I mean.”

“Fine.”

“No more bright white lights?”

“None. But I saw it, Geoff. It was not my imagination.”

“As I said before, I believe you.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He grinned. “Is that an alternative to just saying thank you?” And before she could reply: “Look, in my business I meet a lot of very bright women, some of them almost as pretty as you”—his fingers were still tangled in her curls—“but with most, even socially, it’s a constant contest. They never stop being warriors. You, on the other hand . . .” He stopped speaking and took his hand away. “Will you understand if I say that, despite how tough you must have had to be to overcome devil booze, you strike me as being tender at the bone?”

“I’m not sure. I am tough, Geoff. A warrior if you will. I’ve had to be.”

“Let it lie,” he said. “I like being with you. That’s enough.”

More than enough. But she didn’t say so. “I do want to say thank you. For believing me.”

“Don’t mention it. Now can I ask a personal question? All the details you know, about the things these folks did, the Charterhouse and the monks—I realize it’s professional expertise, but are you a Catholic?”

“Ah,” she said, “a gap in the Annie file. My parents were committed Catholics. In fact my father was John Kendall. You’re probably not familiar with him, but he was a well-known church historian. And my mother taught Latin at a Catholic college in Boston.”

“That sounds like they’re both gone.”

She nodded. “Killed in a plane crash when I was eleven. Afterward I was sent to live with an aunt in New York.”

“Tough,” he said. Then, taking her hand so her bracelet caught the sunlight: “What about your twin?”

“Aunt Sybil, the New York aunt, was supposed to take us both, but after a few weeks she decided two were too many. She sent Ari to our other aunt in Los Angeles. The one my parents hadn’t put in their will because they thought she was a flake.”

“So first you lose your parents, then your twin. Doesn’t sound like fun.”

“It was not.” Sybil kept a bottle of sherry in the kitchen and usually had a glass before dinner. Eleven-year-old Annie began taking sips just to spite her. “But it’s not an excuse, Geoff. If there’s anything you learn at AA, it’s not to make excuses. And in answer to your original question about my religious beliefs, AA is all the church I need.”

“I get that.”

No, he did not. Because unless you’ve been there, walked the walk, you have no idea. People on the outside, civilians as Sidney called them, always thought if you were intelligent and well educated—as well as being a drunken bum—you put up with the slogans and the hand holding and all the rest. Took what you needed and discarded the kitschy rigmarole. That was not so. “I believe in it all,” she said. “Passionately. With my whole being. One day at a time. Accepting the things I cannot change. Asking a Higher Power to grant me serenity. I drank every drop of the Kool-Aid, and I keep going back for more. It keeps me alive. And sober. Which for me is the same thing. I’m sunk otherwise.”