What do you do if you see something like that? You can keep your peace, which is what most people did. You can plot to overthrow the king for his shocking, unnatural vice. But in the court of King Charles of the Franks, nobody dared to do that. In any case, morals had sunk to such a low ebb that few were as shocked by this as you might imagine. The third thing is you can plot to lure him away from his vice. That is what a group of courtiers and soldiers, led by Duke Bohemond of Rennes resolved to do.
There was a Jewish banker in town, Abraham of Milan, who occasionally did business with the royal treasury. His daughter was rumoured to be amazingly beautiful, though I have to say that in Aachen in the Dark Ages, that wasn’t too difficult. Having both eyes, a nose, and half your teeth would make a Cleopatra of you. Bohemond, who had been one of Pepin the Short’s most loyal servants, was disgusted by Charles’ incest and determined to lure the king from the bed of his sister. Anything was worth a try, so he and his cronies threatened to kill Abraham and all his family if they didn’t get a look at the girl. I was the one who got to take this message to the old banker.
Abraham immediately agreed to help out, and emphasized how delighted he would be to allow a dozen heavily armed knights into his house to check out his daughter.
The girl’s name was Deborah, and the rumours about her were not wrong. Bohemond and his friends turned up and found she had the most beautiful, unblemished complexion you ever saw, blooming like the skin of a healthy baby. Her hair was long and very dark, but not as dark and deep as her eyes. She was fifteen years old and shapely. Every man in that room would gladly have hacked off his right arm with an axe to possess the beautiful Deborah.
Deborah, being a good girl, did as her father commanded and took her clothes off and submitted to inspection. Duke Bohemond, who normally delegated everything, took it on himself to ensure that the girl was in good health all over and was indeed a virgin.
Having been passed fit, she was brought to court at once, masquerading as a servant to Bohemond’s wife. Charles noticed her quickly and, better than we dared hope, went wild for her. But Deborah said that there was no way he could have her unless he married her. And there was no way he could marry her unless he became a Jew.
This she said to him for two years. Every spring, Charles quit his freezing castle to go to war against someone. Each autumn he returned to find Deborah grown more beautiful. And more devious. Deborah would only see the king in the presence of chaperones. “Convert, marry me and I’m all yours,” she kept saying.
This was a problem for Charles. Like all the Frankish nobility, he had been a worshipper of Mithras all his life. He feared a terrible vengeance would be exacted on him if he renounced his fealty now. But, at the end of the second winter, after giving the fair Deborah fabulous gifts, after elevating her father to the position of Royal Treasurer, after giving offices and honours to both the able and the worthless hangers-on in her family and still being unable to get beneath the girl’s velvet skirts, he gave in.
The King’s coarse English wool drawers were bursting. His balls were swollen to the size of two men’s heads, his prick was hard enough to poleaxe the bullocks whose blood he once bathed in. “Yes, my love,” he said, steam rising from his breeches, “I will become a Jew.”
Do I sound bitter? No wonder. Deborah and her husband destroyed the one true faith. Because of them I am the last Christian on the face of the earth.
Charles submitted to a Beth Din, in which the dayanim quickly agreed to consider him for conversion. They were pious men I do not deny, but they were also in fear for their lives. They also had to consider the safety of the large number of Jews in town who had been attracted by stories of all the well-paid jobs to be had at Charles’ court. But the dayanim could not, in all decency, allow Charles’ conversion right away. They told him, as was the tradition, to start living as a Jew, they gave him instruction in the Jewish faith. That spring, he left to campaign against the Avars of the east, with a group of Jewish teachers in his baggage-train. And no pigs.
While Charles was off fighting, Duke Bohemond had Iolande ambushed while she was out riding. A couple of heavies jumped her in a quiet corner of a forest and broke her neck, making it look like she had a riding accident. Then the assassins themselves were killed, just to make sure nobody told tales. I should know, I held their horses, and had my throat cut.
That spring and summer, Charles, King of the Franks, learned to read Latin and Hebrew, captured territories the size of Italy, won three major battles and enslaved 150,000 Avar men and women. The news of his sister’s death did not bother him. He returned to Aachen convinced he was ready to become a Jew. And who were the dayanim to argue with him?
The person I felt sorry for was the poor fuck who had to circumcize him. He was the most powerful ruler the West had seen in centuries, he had just slaughtered thousands of people, and the only thing he wanted in the world was to get on with his wedding. Someone had to hold a razor to the prick of this lust-bothered tyrant. I often think about the mohel. I don’t know what his name was. I should have taken his place. One little slip of the knife and I could have changed the course of history. But having been killed — again — I was still in the process of walking back from Mongolia.
Back in Aachen, everything went smoothly. Charles was dipped into the mikveh, which wasn’t such a bad idea because he never washed much, and emerged a fully fledged Jew. I’m not joking when I say the wedding ceremony began before he was dry and before the scab had fallen from his dick.
Even now, Deborah connived to deprive the king of his conjugal rights. For, as he discovered on retiring, it was her time of the month. She could not, she swore, have foretold this. Her menses were irregular, she said. Deborah was, he had to understand now that he was Jewish, in a state of niddah while her period lasted and for seven days afterwards.
You could go up to the royal bedchamber and see the marks the king’s teeth made on the bedpost that first night.
I suppose it made his joy all the more profound when eventually she did let him into her bed. No one saw either of them for a fortnight.
Over the next few years, Charles destroyed the Lombards and took northern Italy. He stormed through the Pyrenees mountain range and defeated the Visigoths and the Sueves, taking the whole of Spain. He moved north and defeated the Saxons and made them his subjects, he took Bavaria and thrust east to push the Avars further back. He was stupendously successful, and even if you want to be mean-spirited about it and point out that there was no serious opposition to him in a lot of the lands he conquered, he alone controlled an area that was now bigger than the old Western Empire. And all the while Deborah was driving him on.
Deborah wanted to start a great dynasty, and for this she had to make something that would last. Charles could hold his Empire together for as long as he lived, which was good enough for him, but was not good enough for Deborah. She soon won him over to her way of seeing things, especially when she started bearing his children.
First, she persuaded him to capture Rome, which was no difficult feat since this place was at that stage owned by some petty princeling who was easily knocked aside. Then in a great ceremony at Hanukkah, Charles was crowned a second time. His title was to be Carolus Maximus, Charles the Great, and he was declared Roman Emperor. This gave people great hopes that the new Empire would revive the peace and prosperity of the old one. Charles moved his capital to Rome from Aachen. In a very real sense, that’s why we’re here now.