I was beginning to see where this story was going. There was a note of deep bitterness in Reuben’s voice, and I thought of the evening when Robin and I had arrived at his house to be greeted with a thrown knife. But I held my peace, and waited for Reuben to continue.
‘At first, the cleric merely preached avoidance of Jews, but in our town we had been living together peacefully for many hundreds of years. Jew lived next door to Muslim, we ate in each other’s houses; we respected each other, our children played together in the streets. And so, seeing that the majority of his flock was not heeding his message of separation, the cleric began preaching to the young Muslim men of the town. He met them at night, preaching almost in secret, and telling them that they had a holy mission to cleanse the town of Jews. He called it
jihad
.’ Reuben spat out the word as if it were poison on his tongue.
‘Most of the young men ignored this mullah, and drifted away; despite being so eloquent, he was clearly mad: how could the town be cleansed of a quarter of its population? Jews were part of its life, part of its very fabric, and always had been. But some of the young men, the wild ones, the unhappy ones, the lost souls, they listened. And they began to hate.
‘One night a gang of them, perhaps fifteen or twenty young men, came to our house; they were drugged on hashish and maybe a little drunk, too, and they burnt our house down and killed my father and mother when they came out to protest. My younger brother fought them, and killed two before he was overcome and killed himself. They burnt other Jewish houses too, and many families lost beloved ones that terrible night. I happened to be away, by chance, visiting friends in a town fifty miles away, and I suppose that saved my life. The very next day the mullah was driven from the town with stones and curses - both Jews and Muslim wanted him gone, and the young men who had committed the outrage submitted themselves for punishment to the elders of the town and were severely punished; two were executed, the ringleaders, and the others had one eye put out, as punishment and a mark of their shame. But despite this restitution, the town was never the same again. The seed of hatred had been planted, and it grew, watered by the tears of the families destroyed by the violence. Those whose sons had been half-blinded began to hate the Jews; the Jews whose friends had been killed by the young men began to hate and fear their Muslim neighbours.
‘I could not live in the town any more after the deaths of my family. I was afflicted with a great guilt; if I had been there I could have protected them, I told myself. It was not true, of course, and a part of me knew this too; I would have died with them but for my absence. But I felt the guilt of one who survives a catastrophe. I could not stay in that town, and I gathered the money, the horses and camels, that my father had left to me and took to the open road. For three years I travelled Arabia and the lands around. I visited Alexandria and Baghdad, Jerusalem and Mecca; I lived like the young prince my father had wanted me to be, travelling in great splendour, staying only at the best houses, spending a fortune on food and wine, perfumes and jewels - and then, one day, inevitably, the money ran out. And I found myself in Acre, a Christian city on the coast of Palestine; penniless and with no idea what I should do with the rest of my life.’
Reuben closed his eyes for a moment, remembering.
‘So what did you do?’ I prompted. He sighed.
‘You must understand that I am ashamed of this, Alan, and while this is no excuse, it might help to explain: I was still in despair over the deaths of my parents, and I had no clear direction in which to travel, no goals, and no money and so, for a while I became a brigand, a thief, robbing the rich camel-trains on the roads of Outremer. I took many innocent lives that year, and I got to know the secret ways of the desert. After a season, though, I was thoroughly sickened by my profession and I hired myself out as a guard on the caravans that plied the dusty roads all the way south to al-Yaman. I was, you might say, a poacher turned gamekeeper, an outlaw who became a forester. I felt that if I could protect the merchants that I had previously robbed I would somehow, in God’s eyes, be making amends for my sins.
‘After two years of eating caravan dust, and seeing off would-be predators - many of them calling themselves Christians, I might add - after two years of saddle blisters and thirst, and half-healed wounds, I tired of that too. I happened to be in Acre once again, unemployed, and I was resting out of the hot sun in a beautiful garden, with neatly clipped grass, and trimmed orange trees that perfumed the air. It was so green, so soothing. A fountain was bubbling nearby and I felt a deep sense of calm. I could hear Christian monks chanting, a beautiful sound, pure and Godly; although, believe me Alan, I have never been tempted to abandon the faith of my fathers. But I admit felt close to God in that Christian garden. I looked down at my feet - they were dirty, scratched, distorted with callouses and scars and one sandal had a broken strap - and I came to a realisation. I wanted two things from this life. I wanted to live somewhere where it was not always so hot; and I wanted to be rich.’
‘So you came to England?’ I suggested, with a note of incredulity in my voice.
‘As you say, young Alan,’ Reuben replied. ‘I came here. It took me two years to get here, and I was penniless when I arrived, and reviled by almost everyone as a wandering Jew, but I have prospered since then.’
I knew what he was going to say next before he said it. ‘It was Robin who first helped me, actually. And I will never forget his kindness. It was Robin who advanced me the initial money to set up my business, and I honour him for it. For what it is worth, he will always have my loyalty and my friendship, no matter what he may do.’
‘Usury,’ I said, with a touch of asperity. It was a mortal sin, and I did not like the fact that Robin was mixed up in it.
‘You disapprove? What else could I do? As a Jew, I am barred from almost every other profession. I have a good deal of medical training, but I cannot treat Christians as a doctor; I have been trained to fight, but I would not be welcome in the ranks of Christian men-at-arms. So, yes, usury.’ He looked at me directly, brown head tilted on one side. ‘Think of it as a service,’ he said. ‘People need to borrow money from time to time and I provide that service.’
I was not disposed to argue with him after he had so generously shared his life story with me - and I was saved from making a comment by the blast of a trumpet. As we scrambled to our feet and looked out over the parapet, I saw that a delegation of mounted knights and men-at-arms was coming across the bridge, under a white banner of truce. In front of the cavalcade was a richly dressed knight, in the full shining panoply of war. It was Sir John Marshal. And beside him, on a raw-boned piebald destrier, was the tall form of Sir Richard Malbête.
The Sheriff of Yorkshire halted his horse a few yards from the door of the Tower, well within range of a crossbow bolt but confident that his white flag would protect him, and he stared up at the ramparts.
‘Jews of York,’ he shouted. ‘You must release the Christian children that you hold and come down from the Tower. We will spare your lives if you accept baptism into the True Faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ.’
Beside him Malbête looked up at us and gave a little smirk. And I shuddered and remembered the ‘baptism’ in boiling water that the little Jewish girl had suffered the night before.
‘Why do they keep talking about children?’ I asked Reuben. He looked at me hard. ‘Evidently, someone has been libelling us. It is not unusual. They are no doubt saying that we have kidnapped a couple for children to eat as a light snack before supper; and these Christian fools believe it.’
I saw that Josce was standing in the centre of the battlements, looking down on Sir John Marshal. Robin was nowhere to be seen. I assumed he was deliberately staying out of Sir John’s sight.
‘As I told your henchman, Sir Richard Malbête, we have no Christian children here,’ the old Jew shouted. ‘And we will not abandon our faith. What guarantees can you give us for our safety if we come out? Can you protect us against them?’ He gestured beyond Sir John and his troops, to where the townspeople of York had been gathering in a mass at the far side of the causeway. The crowd looked ugly, many sporting bloody bandages or walking with crutches. Most were armed. There were some angry shouts, and fists shaken, in reply to Josce’s words.
‘This is the King’s Tower. I order you in the name of the King to come down and hand over your weapons. Or I will expel you from royal property by force of arms. I say for the last time: surrender and hand over your weapons.’
‘Come and take them,’ muttered Reuben and then he said something in a strange tongue that I didn’t understand:
‘Molon labe,’
he said,
‘Molon labe,
you bastards.’
Josce was conferring with an elderly rabbi, as the priests of the Jews are called. He leaned over the parapet and said: ‘We cannot surrender our weapons unless we receive guarantees for the safety of our families.’
‘You have until noon to come out, unarmed, under a flag of truce; after that I will expel you by force,’ shouted Sir John angrily, and he turned his horse and rode back over the causeway. Sir Richard Malbête vouchsafed us one last smirk and followed him back into the bailey.
I looked at the sky; it was mid-morning. And once again, in the bailey courtyard, the hammers began to ring out.
In the permanent gloom of the ground floor of the Tower, a furious argument was in progress. Half a dozen Jews were shouting at the tops of their voices, none listening to the other, some wringing their hands in despair, other gesticulating with raised hands. Robin and I sat apart from the tumult, sharing a loaf of bread on a bench in a corner and feeling alien in this chaos of shouting Jewry. Finally Josce managed to establish some sort of order, after bellowing for silence and hammering on a table with a pewter mug.
‘Brothers,’ he said, when he had at last managed to achieve some quiet. ‘Pray be quiet and listen to what our revered Rabbi Yomtob has to say.’
The old Jewish holy man, who had been sitting quietly at the table, rose with difficulty. He was an aged man, grey and full bearded and venerable, with red-rimmed eyes that seemed even older even than his bent body.
‘My friends,’ he said quietly, and the noise in the Tower ceased immediately as people strained to hear his words. ‘I was born a Jew. I have lived all my life according the Commandments of Moses and the laws of the Torah; I will never give up the faith of my fathers. This talk of baptism, of the Christians’ forgiveness, is a lie; if we leave this place, today, tomorrow, we will die, our wives will die, our children will die. We may not all suffer unspeakable torture before we die, but die we will. And I would rather die as what I have always been, a devout Jew, than suffer the indignity of death at the hands of these blood-crazed maniacs. Remember our forefathers at Masada, the followers of Elazar ben Ya’ir; when they were surrounded by the forces of the mighty Roman Empire they chose to take their own lives, as free Jews, rather than accept slavery or a degrading death at the hands of their oppressors. I plan to follow their example.’ I noticed Reuben, on the other side of the room, staring at the rabbi intently, his dark face strangely pale. The whole Tower now seemed as silent as a tomb.
‘Tonight, as we all know, is Pesach,’ the old man continued, ‘the holy night when, through the protection of the Almighty, the Angel of Death took the first-born sons of Egypt, but passed over the sons of Israel, and gave us our freedom from slavery. Tonight, after we have eaten our matzo bread, and drunk a glass of wine, I will take a knife and take the life of my own first-born son, Isaac there’ — a frightened-looking young man in the throng took an involuntary step backwards - ‘and I will take the life of my beloved wife of fifty years, and my daughter. I invite all of you to do the same. And then we will draw lots as to who should kill whom, among the surviving men. Tonight we shall all be Angels of Death, and give freedom to our families, and I pray that the Lord God of Moses and Isaac will forgive us. I have spoken.’ And he sat down.
For a few heartbeats the silence was held, and then there was bedlam. Half the Jews were wailing, lamenting Rabbi Yomtob’s extraordinary words, some were weeping, others were angrily shouting about fighting to the death, taking Christian dogs with them. Robin took me by the arm and said: ‘Let us go up to the roof.’
I was dazed by Rabbi Yomtob’s speech; it seemed to rob me of breath as I climbed the stairs. It was an extraordinary, and grossly sinful attitude to take, I felt. I had been in hopeless situations before - well, one at least, at Linden Lea - but it would never occur to me to take my own life.
On the roof, I took up my familiar position overlooking the bailey, and my heart sank even further.
‘Do you know what that is?’ asked Robin, pointing out into the bailey, where a huge wooden structure was being erected by many busy craftsmen from the town. It was not a question that required a reply. The hammering once again was giving me the most colossal headache. The workmen had finished the frame, a square of foot-thick beams, nailed and lashed together and set on solid wooden wheels. The upright bars were in place, too, topped by a cross piece looking for all the world like a gibbet. In the centre of the structure, in a spider’s web of thick ropes and pulleys, was a great wooden arm, with what looked like a giant spoon attached to the far end. I knew what it was, all right. And I shuddered. It was a mangonel, a siege weapon capable of hurling huge boulders at the Tower, a sort of catapult that I had seen reduce the stout palisade of a fortified manor house to kindling.
‘Once they start with that,’ said Robin, ‘we have only hours before this place is falling around our ears.’ He sounded completely detached, almost relaxed, as if just idly remarking on an interesting phenomenon.
‘What are we going to do,’ I asked him, trying to keep my voice firm and practical, though a sick feeling had lodged in my stomach.