A Bed of Spices (36 page)

Rica washed her father’s face with cool water and managed to get a little more ale in him and a few mouthfuls of the herbal infusion.

He started to speak, taking Rica’s hand. “Shhh,” she said, motioning to the waiting men to carry him up to his room. “First you rest, Papa,” she said as they lifted him. “Then we will talk.”

Helga could not be found. The vassal sent to fetch her had asked at all the peasant villages where she was known, and none had seen her.

Rica took up the watch herself, settling next to her father’s massive bed. He slept, but not restfully. His breathing was too labored. She gave him another cup of the decoction and read aloud from Psalms, then stitched a little at the tapestry.

A brace of candles burned in the room and a fire kept it warm, and through the long, silent hours of the night, Rica watched her father sleep.

If she had borne any doubts about the limit to his days, this last bout cleared them away. And yet, she still did not know what to do or how to approach him.

She studied his face—even in such an unguarded moment there was fierceness and power in the cut of his jaw and the set of his mouth. And yet, she also remembered how he had once hidden apples in his pockets for her to find, and how he never left the castle without bringing back some treat to his daughters.

And she was his child, not only the child of his blood and loins, but of his heart. He had fostered within her the same powerful bent of mind he himself owned, had passed on to her his stalwart spirit. When she made her dangerous journey to Cairo with Solomon, it would be with her father’s eyes that she would see the wonders of the world. It would be his heart, beating in her own chest, that gave her the courage to do it.

It grieved her deeply to know she must leave him to claim her own life. It seemed a steep and terrible price to pay. Her news would wound him deeply—and she’d only just found her way again into his good graces.

But she could not leave without bidding him farewell. Not for the world could she do such a thing. Not even for Solomon.

As if he heard the turmoil of her thoughts, he opened his eyes. “Ah,
liebling
! As usual you have cared well for me.”

“Pappi!” She leaned forward to touch his brow and found the clamminess gone. His color, though poor, was improving. “How do you feel?”

“Old,” he said. “It was all for naught. They deposed the council while we were yet meeting.”

“Helga told me.”

“How does she always know things?”

“She goes everywhere, sees everything. A midwife of her talents is privy to all secrets.”

His smile was wan.

She took his hand, biting her lip against the cold fear in her heart. “Is there nothing we can do, Papa?”

“No,” he said. “It is finished.”

Solomon argued with his father through the night. “We cannot wait until after the Sabbath!” he cried.

Stubbornly, Jacob remained unmoved. “At least I will have the joy of a Sabbath meal to warm me on our journey.”

Outside the house, there was a deep quiet, the still terror of the unknown threat that hung over all of them. One more day might be one day too many. There was madness alive in the streets of Strassburg.

But all day he had spoken thus, and Jacob was immovable. Solomon would not leave him.

He sighed. “All right, Papa,” he said. “On Sunday early, we leave for Mainz.”

On Friday, Helga left Strassburg sick at heart and rode directly to the castle. She found Rica in the solar with Charles, and the girl’s face brightened in hope.

Biting back the sorrow the expression gave her, Helga said abruptly, “Leave us, girl. I have private matters to discuss,” she said.

Rica seemed not to mind. She had been sitting there all night, no doubt. Kissing Helga’s cheek, she drifted out.

Helga watched her go and swallowed the grief she felt. Without preamble, she said to Charles, “They have arrested the lews.”

“So it begins,” he said heavily and buried his face in his hands. “May God have mercy upon them.”

Still Helga waited, staring at him, willing him to remember the young Jew who had come here only a week before.

And in time, he did. Lifting his head, he showed Helga bleak eyes. “Lock Rica in her room. Do not open the door for any reason.”

“I will see to it myself.”

Rica dozed on her bed. It was Helga, bearing a tray of ale and bread and cheese, who awakened her. The midwife put the food on a small table by the embrasure and said nothing.

Befuddled a little by sleep, Rica sat up. “What is it, Helga?”

Still Helga did not speak, but headed for the door, pausing only when she had reached the threshold. “I am sorry,” she said, and Rica heard a break in her voice. “So very, very sorry.”

Alarmed, Rica leapt from her bed, running for the door as Helga closed it. “Helga!”

She heard the lock slide home, and terror licked her heart. She pounded it with her fist. “
Helga
!”

There was no answer. Rica clutched her stomach, her mind racing through the reasons she would have been locked in her room. She had done no wrong—unless her father had somehow learned of her time with Solomon.

Frightened, she looked at the tray of food. Supplies, by the look of them. For a day, or more.

The order had come from her father, she was sure, after Helga had spoken to him “privately.”

Helga knows everything, sees everything.

A
bolt of pure horror weakened her knees, and Rica sank down before the crucifix on the wall of her chamber. “Oh, Mary!” she cried out. “Holy Mother, please do not let it be the Jews!”

She slept uneasily, waking suddenly through the night with a sense of panic strangling her. Each time, she rose and tried the door, only to find it still securely locked. Twice, she pounded on it, calling out in the darkness to be set free.

No one came.

At dawn, she opened the shutter and looked toward Strassburg. It looked ever the same, the rooftops struck with the first fingers of sunlight, the stone walls turning rosy. The Rhine ran by, serenely glistening in the morning.

Rica poured a cup of the ale, listening for sounds of life beyond her door. Her hands trembled a little, and she sighed, bowing her head. How could they have locked her in here, with no word of warning or a clue as to why?

She fought the knowledge that something had happened in the city, something Helga had witnessed, something unspeakable. Something, if Rica knew it, that would make her leave the castle walls in search of Solomon.

A long finger of sunlight angled through the embrasure and struck the silver-and-wood crucifix on her wall. The blaze of the metal caught her eye and she knelt before it. Sweet Jesus, himself a Jew, tortured unto death, his face weary with the weight of it. “Oh, dear Lord, can you not intervene?” she whispered, and pressed her lips together.

Again, she turned toward Strassburg, staring at the city as if to see some clue as to what went on beyond the walls.

And she remembered, then, that it was the Feast of Saint Valentine. The saint of lovers. How she had hoped to be with Solomon today!

A ripple of dread touched her. Solomon. Out there, in the madness.

No. She could not bear that thought. Would not even think it.

Through the morning, she prayed for the others left in the city. She knelt piously, praying to Mary and Jesus. For good measure, she said prayers to Saint Valentine, too, because it was his feast day and because he symbolized love. Enough love could curb a mob, could it not?

The prayers somehow calmed her. At Sext, she heard the jingle of keys in the lock. She jumped up. Perhaps they would let her go now, and she could hear the news, hear what manner of madness had flooded the streets of Strassburg.

It was Helga again, and she bore another tray of food, this time more substantial. “I thought you might need a little hot food, too,” she said.

Rica felt herself go still. “You have not come to let me go.”

A burly guardsman stood on the threshold, his arms crossed. The sight of him struck new terror through her. “Helga, why am I locked here?”

Helga raised her eyes, and Rica saw in the red rims and the ravaged flesh below the evidence of much weeping.

Rica sank to a bench. “No,” she whispered. “Please, Helga…”

The midwife only turned wearily away, her shoulders bent as if under a great weight, and she shuffled toward the door once more. Rica leapt on her, grabbing her arms. “No!” she cried. “Tell me what you have seen! Tell me what you know! Do not lock me away without even a word!”

A fresh glimmer of tears shone in the cornflower eyes as Helga turned. “Child, there is naught any of us can do.” She struggled a moment, her lips trembling. “Tis done.”

In horror, Rica stared at her, trying to take it in. Helga nodded to the man, and he turned sideways to let her pass, then slammed closed the door.

Rica stood in the center of the room for a moment, stunned, unable to work her mind around the words. ‘
Ti
s
done
.

Helga had been in the city, had seen something terrible. She had come here to tell Charles, and Charles had ordered her locked in her room, which Helga had done willingly.

She heard a strange noise on the wind and ran to the embrasure. And there, rippling like a demon into the clear blue sky, was a pillar of black smoke.

In Narbonne and Carcassonne, they are burning the Jews.

Rica screamed, clutching the stone embrasure until her fingers were bloody. “No!” she cried. “Oh, God, no!”

She stared at the billowing smoke and her mind was filled with the faces of the people she had seen there in the streets, the children chasing each other into an alleyway; the old man watching with amusement and guarded reserve as she dragged Leo out of the shop, the young women laughing together—

Now she could see a haze of heat bending the sky along the river. It was a monstrous fire, and the miasmatic smell of it blew toward her on a soft early spring breeze. The oily weight of it caught in her throat and burned her eyes.

She thought of Solomon’s father, explaining why he had beaten his son by telling how he’d held Solomon on his knee as a babe. “I do this to keep him alive, and you too.”

Rica began to weep. The smoke caught in her mouth and her nose and stung her eyes and she breathed it all the more deeply into her, tears running so thick from her eyes she could not see. Still she stared at the flames and malignant smoke.

And through her sobs, she began to pray aloud, the prayer of absolution and deliverance, for all the souls now winging their way toward heaven. She cried the prayer in a loud, strong voice, as long as she could remain standing.

After a time, her legs no longer held her upright, and sobbing helplessly, she slid down the wall, her hands still stuck to the embrasure.

Rica did not know
how long she had lain on the floor in her grief. At some point, spent, she must have tumbled into a world of half sleep, where the flames still belched into the bright sky. And somehow, those big flames had been transformed into tiny flickering lights that burned over a table that held the remains of her wedding feast.

Her eyes were grainy when she opened them, and there was something sharp pricking her cheek. The rushes. She struggled upright and rubbed the marks on her ear and jaw.

Night had fallen. The food sat untouched on her table. She stared at it with revulsion. Her throat was raw. Her fingers ached. Dully she spread out her hands to see that she’d broken several nails, and in three places, dried blood had caked onto her flesh.

There were no more tears left in her, only a wild, searing grief. Every corner of her was filled with it, an emotion black and sticky as tar. She could taste it against her tongue and smelled it thick in her nostrils. It held her, immobile, slumped against the wall in the darkness.

She did not know how long she sat there. A long time. It was thirst that drove her unsteadily to her feet, and the movement made her so dizzy she nearly fell again. The tankard of ale seemed too heavy to lift; instead she drank what was left in her cup.

Beneath her kirtle, she felt something move against her breast. Sinking to the bench, she pulled out her silver ring from Solomon, which she could not wear until her father had been told of the marriage. It gleamed in the darkness and Rica brokenly pressed it to her mouth.

She had tried not to think of Solomon in those flames, but now it was impossible to keep the thought away. She screamed. Screamed and screamed, feeling it tear through her chest as sharply as a knife.

And finally someone came to let her out of her prison—Helga, who knelt before her and took her in her arms, and rocked her as she wept. “I am so sorry, Rica, my sweet. So, so sorry.”

It was Helga who bathed her face with cool water, and gave her a sleeping draught to ease her, and stayed with her through the night, settling her back with cooing words when Rica bolted awake, over and over again. It was Helga who took the ring from around her neck and put it on her finger, patting her hand.

Rica awakened once, wild-eyed, and clutched Helga’s shoulders. “He wanted to go to Cairo! Perhaps he escaped in time.”

Helga only shook her head slowly, her lips pressed tight together.

In the aftermath of the disaster, Rica lost track of time. Day or night, she did not know and did not care. She could not eat; food stuck in her throat like pebbles. Matilda brewed possets and meat tiles to tempt her, but they remained untouched.

When people spoke to her, a vassal or a servant, Helga or her father, she stared at them blankly, unable to decipher what the words meant.

Only in sleep was there peace. In her dreams, Solomon lived to touch her sweetly. He teased her and kissed her and challenged her to long debates and laughed boldly.

In rare lucid moments, she prayed that she had conceived in those short, precious hours with Solomon. But even that hope was snatched from her. The flux came upon her with a violent rush one morning, so fierce Rica took to her bed.

Perhaps ten days after the burning of the Jews, the false spring disappeared and a dark sky moved in with foreboding bleakness over the countryside. Rica sat by the embrasure of her room, watching as it began to snow.