Paris: The Novel (26 page)

Then Naomi spoke.

“I am not surprised at all.” She looked steadily at her father. “The Church is corrupt. You have told me so yourself. I don’t think the Church has anything to do with God at all. In fact, it disgusts me.”

“Don’t speak to your father like that,” said Sarah sharply.

But Jacob was not angry. He was grieved.

“You must be careful what you say, Naomi,” he said quietly. “Such words are dangerous. And for a convert, they are more than dangerous.”

“I am not a convert,” Naomi cried bitterly. “It was you who made me a Christian.”

“But you are a Christian now. No one, not even a servant in this house, must hear you say such a thing. It could place us all in great danger.”

Naomi was silent for a moment.

“I will say nothing,” she answered. “But now you know what I think, Father, and that will never change.” Then she went out of the room.

What could he do? There was nothing he could do. He understood her feelings. In many ways he shared them. She was shocked at the corruption. So was he.

And she was young. By the time she reached his age, she might accept that the best to be hoped for were small adjustments to an imperfect world. But for the time being, her mind was made up, and he must respect it.

He was grateful also that she kept her promise not to reveal her feelings. She went about her daily business, helping her mother, in her usual quiet and cheerful way. She accompanied her family to church without complaint. She still joined him when he told stories to little Jacob, and she even started to teach the child to read and write herself. He would have preferred to reserve this task for himself, but he was pleased if it gave her an occupation, especially in the dark winter months.

For her greatest pleasure was to go out. She took little Jacob for a walk
each day. Whenever her father went out to his orchard, she would always gladly accompany him. She would walk across to the Île de la Cité and light a candle in Notre Dame. And since these visits appeared to the world as acts of religious devotion, her father did not discourage them.

“I think it helps her to get out of the house,” he remarked to Sarah.

And so their family life continued quietly, through the winter and into the spring. As the weather grew warmer, Naomi was able to walk a little longer. One day, she told him, she had crossed over to the Left Bank and visited the lovely Church of Saint-Séverin. With the warmer weather, her mood also seemed to lighten. Perhaps she had gotten over her shock of the previous year.

“The time is approaching,” Jacob said to his wife one day, “when we may have to start thinking about a husband for her. As long,” he added uncertainly, “as she isn’t going to start airing her views on the pope to any prospective husband.”

The visit from the rabbi came in the middle of June. He arrived at Jacob’s house a little before noon. Naomi was out with her little brother.

The rabbi had put on weight in the last few years. He sat down heavily on the bench in Jacob’s counting house.

“What can I do for you?” Jacob asked warily.

“What can you do for me?” The rabbi stared at him. “What can you not do for me?” He sighed, and shook his head. “You do not know why I have come to your house?”

“I do not.”

“The wise man does not know.” He nodded. “I am a fool!” he burst out suddenly. And then, very quietly: “But I know.”

Jacob waited.

“Your daughter, Naomi, goes walking by herself quite often,” the rabbi continued.

“Yes. What of it?”

“Where does she walk?”

“It depends. Sometimes to Notre Dame, or some other church.”

“And what does she do when she gets there?”

“Lights a candle. It is the custom. What is this to you?”

“Because your daughter does not walk to Notre Dame. She walks to other places.”

“Where does she walk?”

“She can walk to Aquitaine for all I care! But she is walking with my son Aaron. That is why I am here.”

Aaron. Her childhood friend. A stocky boy, some years older than Naomi. Nothing special. Jacob hadn’t given him a thought in years.

So Naomi’s outburst had caused her to start seeing her Jewish childhood friends again. He could understand her doing so, but it was not wise, especially to be seen in the streets with the rabbi’s son. It could give rise to misinterpretation. He wondered what other Jews she might have seen, and what she might have said to them.

“I did not know this. I will tell her she should not meet him anymore.” He almost reached out his hand to touch the rabbi’s arm, but decided not to, instead giving him what he hoped was a conciliatory smile. “I am sure Aaron is a good young man. But in our situation …” He shrugged sadly. “Their old friendship is no longer wise.”

“You have not understood,” said the rabbi. “They want to get married.”

“Married?”

“Yes, Jacob ben Jacob. Married. Your daughter wants to return to the faith of her fathers. She wants to marry my son and be a Jew again.”

Jacob gazed at him. Then he bowed his head.

So. She had deceived him. Completely. For a moment it was like a blow to the pit of his stomach. He sagged forward.

She had turned away from him. She was no longer his. Did her mother know? Had his whole family secretly deserted him? He took a deep breath.

She was young. He must remember this. She might read and write, and think for herself, and show wisdom. But she was still young, and probably in love. He told himself this quickly, before the pain grew too great to bear.

“You are sure of this?” he asked, without looking up.

“Yes. My son has spoken to me.”

“Such a thing is impossible.”

“Of course it is impossible.”

“Does she not realize that this would put her whole family in danger? My own conversion would be questioned.”

“Your family?” The rabbi leaned forward, and began to speak, in a low voice that was intense with anger. “Less than thirty years ago, Jacob ben Jacob, a Christian in Brittany converted to Judaism. Such a thing is
very rare. We do not encourage it. But it happens. And when that convert died, he was buried as a Jew, in the Jewish cemetery. And do you know what the Inquisition did? They burned the rabbi at the stake. Because he let that man die a Jew, when he should have been buried in Christian, consecrated ground. Does this make sense? Not to me. But that is what they did.” He paused. “So what will happen to me and my family if the Inquisition says that we are stealing a Christian convert back to Judaism? Who can tell? But for taking your daughter’s soul into our evil clutches, they will probably burn me and my son as well. Our risk is not less than yours, Jacob. It is greater.”

“What have you told your son?”

“That I forbid him even to think of it.”

“And what does he say?”

“That he will marry no one else. I told him: ‘Then you will marry no one.’ ” The rabbi threw up his hands. “He thinks that they can go to live in another city where they are not known. Arrive there as a married couple. This is foolishness. I have told him no. But … I don’t know what they may do.”

“You don’t think …?”

“That there is a child on the way? No. Thank God. He says they have not … But we had better be careful. You must lock your daughter up, Jacob, to stop this madness.”

“It is what I will do,” he said.

He tried to reason with her first.

“My child, do you think I do not understand?” he cried. “When you are in love, the skies open, you think you see angels. Everything seems possible. But there are darker forces at work in the world, and I am trying to protect you from them.”

She listened to him. But when he asked her to promise never to see the young man again, she would not do it. And even if she had, he wasn’t sure he would have believed her.

From that day, despite all her protests, Naomi was kept in the house. She could not even take her little brother for a walk. Jacob told her that she could come out with him, if she wished. But she refused, because she would not speak to him.

Though he was under close watch himself, Aaron tried to see her, and three times tried to sneak a letter in to her. But Jacob and the rabbi managed to prevent all these attempts from succeeding.

In the home, the atmosphere was tense. Jacob was not sure how long the family could continue to live like this.

“I have men with whom I do business in other cities,” he suggested to Sarah. “Perhaps she could go and live with another family for a while.”

“And what might she do then? Will you have them keep her under lock and key?”

There seemed no solution to the problem. A month passed. In the Jewish calendar, they came to the fast day of Tisha B’Av.

King Philip the Fair was both ruthless and efficient. He’d shown it in getting a pope of his own. Now, on the twenty-second day of July, in the year of Our Lord 1306, which was the day following the Jewish fast of Tisha B’Av, he showed it again.

The preparations had been immaculate. No word of his intentions had leaked out. Renard the merchant had heard nothing. Every street, every house was known. The cordons were ready and moved into place during the night. And at dawn, his men struck.

The success was total. Every Jew in Paris was arrested. They, their wives, their children. Not a one was missed. By early morning they had been marched through the streets to the awaiting jails. There they were given the news.

They were to leave France at once. They might take with them the clothes on their backs and the paltry sum of twelve sous. Everything else was forfeit, to the king.

In the middle of the morning, Jacob met Renard in the street. They looked at each other.

“It came after all, then,” said Renard quietly.

“Yes.” There was no need to say more.

By mid-afternoon, much was known. The same thing had happened in every town in France where there was a Jewish community. They were to leave every territory that King Philip controlled. The usual reasons were given for the arrests—the Jews’ religion, their practice of usury—but nobody was fooled for an instant. Jacob was in a group of merchants whom a royal councillor addressed in the market of Les Halles.