Bristol House (40 page)

“Some of them,” Cohen said. “Not all. But this—” He gestured to the mezuzah still lying on his desk. “It might have some particular meaning.”

“Open it,” Geoff said.

31

The finials of the mezuzah appeared to have been forged separately from the body, but neither was easy to pry away. Cohen tried repeatedly, albeit very gently. “Solid silver is soft, they tell me,” he murmured. “And something this old . . .”

Annie was holding her breath. She thought Geoff might be doing the same, but as usual, he was the practical one. “For it to open,” he said, “you need to find the proper torque. The fulcrum.”

“An engineer,” Cohen said, “I am not.” He looked up. “Here, it’s yours. You try.”

Geoff kept his hands in his lap. “You’re suggesting a genetic propensity? For opening
mezuzot?”

Cohen smiled.

“Don’t look like that,” Geoff said. “Annie taught me the word.”

The rabbi’s smile grew broader. He continued to hold out the mezuzah.

Geoff took it. Tiny silver knobs topped off both ends. Geoff grasped each one and turned them clockwise. Nothing happened. Nor did counterclockwise produce a result. When he turned them in opposing directions, however, the section carved to look like the tablets pulled out and came free.

Both Annie and Rabbi Cohen jumped as if they’d been startled by a loud noise, though there had been no sound. Cohen half stood and leaned over his desk, trying to see inside the hollow case. “The parchment—” he began.

Geoff held the mezuzah up to the light coming from the window behind him. “No parchment,” he said, squinting into the interior. “At least, that’s not what I think it is.” He handed the mezuzah back to Cohen. “Your turn,” he said. “This part is your speciality.”

Rabbi Cohen took the silver case and squinted into the interior. He frowned. “I don’t . . .”

Annie waited, but Cohen didn’t say anything else. Instead he produced what looked like a pair of tweezers, also silver, probably meant for the task.

What he extracted looked like a very small sachet. It was made of red cloth—silk, Annie guessed—and was roughly heart shaped. But not like a valentine—it was more elongated and anatomically accurate than anything done by Hallmark. There was an embroidered design on one side, and the heart appeared to have been made by stitching two pieces of cloth together. The thread used to do the sewing had rotted away. As soon as Cohen laid the thing on the piece of velvet in which the mezuzah had been wrapped, the heart divided, revealing a small flat something. About the size of a dime, Annie thought. Or a British twenty-pence piece.

“I have no idea what this is,” Rabbi Cohen murmured. “But it’s certainly not a
klaf.
”

“I think I know.” Annie picked up the silver tweezers and used them as a pointer. “If I’m right, the embroidery on the front of the heart tells the whole story.” The tweezers traced a pattern in the air. “I think this is meant to be a lamb.” Both men nodded. “What’s inside”—she moved the tweezers to indicate the small flat disk—“is what Catholics call an Agnus Dei
,
a reference to Saint John the Baptist who said of Jesus, ‘Behold the lamb of God.’ It’s an ancient sacramental. Made from—”

“Whoa,” Geoff held up both hands. “You’re going way too fast for me. I thought a mezuzah was Jewish. And what, pray, is a ‘sacramental’?”

“I can’t tell you what an Agnus Dei
is doing in a mezuzah case, but a sacramental . . .” She hesitated. “It’s a symbol. Something that’s supposed to remind you about God and religion. Like rosary beads or pictures of saints.”

“Holy tchotchkes,
”
Cohen said.

“Exactly,” Annie agreed. “But an Agnus Dei
is a really old tchotchke
.
They were first made back in the third century. Only a pope can create them, and he only does it during the first Easter after his election.”

Annie held the tweezers over the strange little something that had been inside the silk heart. It was an uneven lump, grayed as if by touch. A long time ago, Annie thought. The tweezers slipped a bit in her fingers. Nerves, she thought, and held them tighter. “This is made of wax that comes from an Easter candle blessed by a new pope.” She looked up. Both men were watching her. “The drippings are gathered up and shaped into a number of little round disks of this sort. Then each one is stamped with the name of the pope who blessed it in the first year of his reign.”

Geoff bent over the circle of wax. “I can’t see anything written here. Maybe it’s on the other side.”

“Do you want me to turn it over?” Annie asked. “It may disintegrate if I do.”

He shrugged. “I’m interested in what it means, not that it’s a holy tchotchke
.
”

Annie touched the wax disk with the tweezers. They vibrated in her fingers. “Something . . .” she said.

“What?” Geoff asked. “Something what?”

She was aware of Rabbi Cohen watching her. “Nothing. My imagination.” She grasped the tweezers more tightly and flipped over the tiny lump of wax. It held together.

“Ah,” Geoff said. “We’re away. There’s definitely some writing impressed on this side.” He bent closer. “Damn. I can’t read it.”

Cohen used a magnifying glass, but he had no luck either. “It’s still too small for my old eyes.”

Annie put down the tweezers. They stopped vibrating as soon as she moved them away from the disk. She reached into her tote, came up with her jeweler’s loupe, and screwed it into her eye. “Let me try.” The men backed off so she could crouch directly over the wax and study it from barely an inch away. “Clement VII,” she said finally. “And something else . . . Starts with an
A
, but I can’t see . . .”

The loupe was warm. Getting warmer as she bent closer.

“A, A, A,”
Geoff said softly.

Cohen nodded.

“This time it’s A-v-i-g . . . Avignon,” Annie pronounced in triumph, standing up and taking the loupe out of her eye. The loupe was almost hot to her touch. Nerves, she told herself again. Because she was starting to get this. “Clement VII,” she said with a restrained note of triumph. “Pope in Avignon.”

“When?” Geoff asked.

She thought for a moment. “One of the Medicis became Clement VII in 1523. But in Rome, not Avignon. So . . .” She hesitated, then: “I think this has to be the much earlier Antipope Clement VII.”

Cohen swung around to his computer and executed a series of rapid keystrokes. “Exactly. Antipope Clement VII elected in Avignon in 1378.”

“And that’s the connection,” Annie said. She tucked the loupe away—it was cool now, normal—concentrating instead on the release of the knot of tension in her belly. She wasn’t speculating any longer, she knew. “The Antipope Clement VII was the first pope of the fifty-year Great Schism. And the splinter group in Avignon who elected him gave rise to the sect known as the True Obedience.”

“Whose leader,” Geoff said, staring at the deconstructed mezuzah on Rabbi Cohen’s desk, “was known as the Speckled Egg.”

“I don’t know about the egg, but the Catholic Encyclopedia”—Cohen was peering at the screen—“agrees with Annie. Later there was a legitimate Clement VII in Rome, but the one elected in Avignon was an antipope. ‘Supported by a strong faction of cardinals,’” he read aloud. “‘Said to have created a cult of persistent sedevacantist schismatics
convinced that since his death the chair of Peter has been vacant because the popes in Rome no longer come down in a straight line from Saint Peter.’ Your father was John Kendall, Annie, was he not?” When she nodded, he added, “One of his books is cited as a source document.”

“I’m not surprised. Apparently he was something of an expert on the subject. But the book’s out of print, and so far I haven’t managed to find a copy.”

“And the Dominican priests,” Cohen asked, “the experts on hounding heretics?”

“I’m told,” Annie said, “the man I should see is on retreat. Meaning he’s totally incommunicado. He’s due back in a few days.”

“So,” Geoff said. “Exactly what have we got?”

“Étienne Renard was from Avignon,” Annie said. “Did we tell you that, Rabbi?”

Cohen shook his head.

Geoff explained about Agence Investigations Mme Defarge.

Annie only half listened. She stood up, stretched, began pacing the perimeter of the crowded room. Like Maggie’s Primrose Hill flat, it was so jammed with things you never seemed to see them all. God knows what some place the two of them lived in together might have looked like.

The bookshelves that lined the study walls were stuffed to overflowing. Pictures and various
objets
were slipped in and around the books. A gilt frame held a series of tiny watercolors displayed together in a line.

“That was a gift,” Rabbi Cohen said, noticing her focus. “From a friend who’s interested in heraldry. It’s supposed to be the coats of arms of the twelve tribes of Israel. As they would have been if heraldry existed in biblical times.”

Heraldry.

Dog whistle.

No, better than that. There was a siren going off in her mind. Annie made a conscious effort not to shout. “Geoff, remember Maggie telling us your grandfather, her father, was a silversmith in Freiburg?”

“Yes, of course. I knew that anyway. That’s why her maiden name was Silber, German for silver.”

“Heraldry on the other hand,” Annie said, still keeping her tone neutral, “uses French words to describe the official background colors of the field in a coat of arms.
Or
is gold and silver is
argent.”
She turned to face the two men. “What if the mural and the code tell where the mezuzah Weinraub’s after is to be found, just as we suspected? What if
A, A, A
means the mezuzah can be found among the Silver or Silber family?”

Dom Justin

From the Waiting Place

Rebecca and I traveled mostly by night and did not speak much, and the farther we got from London, the safer we felt. She continued to wear the plague cloak. Beneath it her father’s treasures rested over her belly. He had wrapped the thing so it was a smooth and rounded parcel and enhanced the image of a woman swollen with child. It was not the most clever of ruses, but we could think of none better. And while it was undoubtedly true that robbers would have risked the fever to see what booty they might snatch from two such unprotected wanderers, we met none. I came to believe that we were led by some unseen angel sent by Almighty God.

That first night we went to Mistress Grindal, and she at once knew us and sheltered us and sent us on our way with provisions for two days. She said it was for love of the Lord, and the Speckled Egg. On three subsequent occasions during that early part of our journey, Rebecca hid in the woods while I went alone into a village, choosing always one where it was market day. It was easy at such times to pass unnoticed among the crowds, and I used the money Rebecca doled out to purchase enough bread and cheese to keep us alive. For drink we had the streams of the forest. Occasionally there were berries, and once we came across a clutch of goose eggs and ate them raw, fearing to make a fire.

After ten days we reached Dover and secured passage across the channel, and so without incident we found ourselves in the Pale of Calais, where many spoke our English tongue, Henry was king, and Thomas Cromwell’s writ ran. But here England’s claim was disputed by both the Emperor of France and the Dukes of Burgundy, and the locals had learned that to be desired by the powerful does not make for a peaceful life. We remained fugitives, but none paid us much mind. For us, Calais felt like safety, a foreign hurly-burly of new smells and sounds and sights that clothed us in anonymity. Rebecca and I sensed we were following a destiny beyond our understanding. We were like the Children of Israel wandering in the desert and being led to the Promised Land by a pillar of fire. We could not, however, rely on manna from heaven to feed us.

“Have you coins left?” I asked. Years before, when I called Cromwell master and lived beneath his roof, I had seen a map of the Frankish lands hanging on the wall of his study. To get to Metz—the first of the cities where the Jew of Holborn said we would find sanctuary—we faced a trek across almost the whole of the kingdom’s border with the Low Countries. “We shall need money, for we have still a great distance to travel.”

“Only one coin,” she said, “but it does not matter.”

“Why not?”

“Because, Geoffrey”—she spoke my former name as if to taunt me with it—“while you gazed at the sea or slept on the deck, I made provision for our future.” She had met a man, she said, another Lombard. He and his servants were also on their way to Metz. “They are well armed,” she said. “And we are to travel with them.”

“Why does he make us this offer?” Dom Hilary had promised to send assistance for my journey, and he had been proved right in the matter of Mistress Grindal, but Hilary could not have known which boatman would carry us across the channel, nor even which was the port from whence we would sail. It could as easily have been Rye or Hastings as Dover. “Is this Lombard also a Jew?”

“I do not know, but I think not.”

“Then why should he offer us assistance?” Even as I asked the question, I knew the most likely answer. Despite the peril and travail of our flight from the pit, Rebecca’s incredible sea-colored eyes sparkled, her black hair gleamed, and her cheeks were rose pink. She had even found somewhere a silver clip with which to fasten closed the black cloak, making it look less like the livery of death. (And in any case, in these parts the uneven pointed hem of the plague cloak did not seem to have the same meaning, whilst Rebecca had long since removed the bells.)

“The Lombard told me,” Rebecca explained, “that his wife died a month past, and his two motherless daughters are in need of a woman’s comfort.” She patted her belly. “And since I am also widowed, he thinks it wise we journey on together.”

“And what did you tell him of me?”

“The simple truth,” she said, and seeing my expression, added, “that you were my servant and would be content to travel with his, being as rough and unlettered as are they.”