‘I wonder if I can be of help, Monsieur Moselle?’ a voice said at his shoulder.
He turned to see the figure of Lord York standing there with a glass of wine in his hand. Reuben breathed in relief. The English noble looked like a soldier, with his jutting chin and wide shoulders. The French soldiers were instantly more respectful.
‘This … captain is saying I am to be arrested, Lord York,’ Reuben said quickly, deliberately using the title. ‘He has not yet mentioned the charge, but I am certain there has been some sort of mistake.’
‘I see. What is the charge?’ York said.
Reuben could see the soldier consider an insolent reply, but then the man shrugged. It was not wise to irritate a man of York’s reputation and influence, at least not for a lowly captain.
‘Blasphemy and witchcraft, milord. He’ll have to answer at the court in Nantes.’
Reuben felt his mouth fall open in surprise.
‘Blasphemy and … This is madness, monsieur! Who is my accuser?’
‘Not my place to say,’ the soldier replied. He was watching Lord York, fully aware that the man could choose to interfere. Reuben too turned to the Englishman.
‘My lord, if you will have them return tomorrow morning, I am certain I can find witnesses and assurances that will reveal this for the falsehood it is.’
York looked down on him and his eyes glittered in the lamplight.
‘It does not strike me as a matter for English law, Monsieur Moselle. This is no business of mine.’
The captain smiled wider at hearing that. He stepped forward and took Reuben by the arm in a firm grip.
‘Begging your indulgence, monsieur. Come with me now. I don’t want to have to drag you.’ The grip grew stronger, giving the lie to his words. Reuben stumbled with it, unable to believe what was happening.
‘The magistrate is in my house, captain! Will you at least let me bring him out to you? He will explain it all.’
‘It’s not a local matter, monsieur. Why don’t you say something else and give me the pleasure of knocking your teeth into the back of your throat?’
Reuben shook his head, mute with fear. He was fifty years old and already breathing hard. The violent threat astonished him.
Richard, Duke of York, watched his host being taken away with something like amusement. He saw his wife come through the crowd to stand at his shoulder, her expression delighted as the elderly man stumbled out through the gardens with his captors.
‘I thought this evening would be terribly dull,’ she said. ‘That is the only way to deal with Jews. They grow too bold unless they are reminded of their station. I hope they beat him for his insolence.’
‘I’m sure they will, my dear,’ he said, amused.
In the main hall, they both heard a shriek as the news reached Reuben’s wife. Cecily smiled.
‘I think I would like to see the orangery,’ she said, extending her arm for her husband to guide her inside.
‘The charges are rather serious, my dear,’ York said thoughtfully. ‘I could buy the house for you, if you wish. Angers is splendid in summer and I have no property here.’
Her thin lips curled as she shook her head.
‘Better to have it burned and rebuilt, after the previous owner,’ she replied, making him laugh as they went in.
4
Reuben tasted blood in his mouth as he staggered sideways across the road. He could smell the unwashed crowd that bayed and spat at him, calling him ‘Christ-killer’ and ‘blasphemer’, their faces red with righteous indignation. Some of them threw stones and cold, wet filth that struck him on the chest and slithered inside his open shirt.
Reuben ignored the outraged citizens. They could hardly hurt him worse than he had been already. Every part of him was bruised or battered and one of his eyes was just a sticky blind mass that seeped a trail of fluid down his cheek. He limped as he was shoved along the street of Nantes, crying out as his feet bled through the wrappings and left red prints on the stones behind him.
He had lost something in the months of torture and imprisonment. Not his faith. He had never doubted for a moment that his enemies would receive the same punishments. God would seek them out and bow their heads with hot iron. Yet his belief in any sense of decency in men had been crushed along with his feet. No one had come to speak for him or claim him from the courts. He knew at least a dozen men with the authority and wealth to secure his release, but they had all stayed silent as news of his terrible crimes became known. Reuben shook his head wearily, washed through with fatalism. There was no sense to any of it. As if a man of his standing would spend his evenings drinking the blood of Christian children! Not when there was good red wine in his cellar.
The charges had been so monstrous that at first he had been certain they would be revealed as lies. No sensible man could believe any of it. Yet the city judges had screwed up their fat mouths as they stared down at the broken, battered figure dragged up from the cells. They looked on him with disgust on their faces, as if he had somehow chosen to become the shambling, stinking thing the court inquisitors had made of him. Wearing black caps, the judges had pronounced a sentence of death by flaying, with every sign of satisfaction at a job well done.
Reuben had learned a sort of courage in his cell, with the boot they made him wear that could be wound tighter and tighter until his bones creaked and broke. In all his life, he had never had the strength or the wind to fight. With what God had given him, he had made himself wealthy: with his intellect, secretly scorning those who paraded their ability to lift lengths of iron into the air and swing them. Yet when the pain was unbearable, when he had stripped his throat raw with screaming, he had still not confessed. It was a stubbornness he had not known was in him, perhaps the only way left to show his contempt. He had wanted to meet his execution with that shred of pride still intact, like a last thread of gold in a worn cloak.
The senior judge from Nantes had come to the cell after many days. Jean Marisse looked like a cadaver, holding a pomander of dry petals to his nose against the stink. Masked in dried blood and his own filth, Reuben had glared up at him through his one good eye, hoping to shame Marisse with something like dignity. He could not speak by then. His teeth had all been broken and he could barely take in the slop of porridge they brought each day to keep him alive.
‘I see the devil’s pride is still in him,’ Jean Marisse had said to the guards.
Reuben had stared in dull hatred. He knew Jean Marisse, as he knew all the officials of the region. It had once seemed a profitable enterprise to learn their habits, though it had not saved him. The man had a reputation among the whores of the town as one who preferred to whip rather than kiss. There was even talk of a girl who had died after an evening with him. Marisse’s wife would have been scandalized at the news, Reuben was certain. His mind had swirled with his own accusations, but there was no one to listen and his tongue had been pulled to its full extent and mangled with pincers designed for the purpose.
‘Your questioners tell me you will not confess to your sins,’ Jean Marisse had said. ‘Can you hear me, Monsieur Moselle? They say you will not sign anything, though they have left your right hand untouched for that purpose. Do you not understand this could all end? Your fate has already been written, as sure as sunset. There is nothing left for you. Confess and seek absolution. Our Lord is a merciful God, though I do not expect one of you Abrahams to understand. It is written that you must burn for your heresies, but who can say, truly? If you repent, if you confess, He may yet spare you the fires of hell.’
Reuben remembered staring back. He’d felt as if he could channel all his pain into his gaze, until it would strip away the man’s lies and flesh and open him down to the bone. Marisse already looked like a corpse, with his thin face and skin like wrinkled yellow parchment. Yet God did not strike him down. Jean Marisse had thrust out his chin, as if the silence itself was a challenge to his authority.