A Conspiracy of Paper

NINE

IT WAS WITH ambivalent feelings that I met my uncle the next morning and proceeded to the Bevis Marks synagogue. Perhaps I should mention that not all Jews are so nice in their observation of the Sabbath as my uncle. Some are far more observant, of course, but an even greater number care little for this day of the week or that. Even my uncle’s short beard was thought by many Jews to be of ill fashion, for it was something of a truism that any Jew with a beard upon his face was either a rabbi or a recent immigrant.

Many of the Jews of Iberian origin had long ago been robbed of the knowledge of their rituals, forced, during the time of the Inquisition, to convert to the Catholic faith. These so-called New Christians were sometimes sincere in their conversions, while others had continued to practice their religion in secret, but after a generation or two they often forgot why they secretly observed these now-obscure rituals. When these secret Jews fled Iberia for the Dutch states, as they began to do in the sixteenth century, many sought to regain Jewish knowledge. My father’s grandfather had been such a man, and he schooled himself in the Jewish traditions—even studying with the great Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel—and he raised his children to honor the Jewish traditions.

I, too, had been raised with those traditions, but I had long since found them easier to ignore than to honor. For that reason I was not sure what I expected upon my return to the synagogue. Perhaps I had been making a point of expecting nothing, but I found myself somewhat comforted by the morning service. As when I was a boy, the presiding rabbi was David Nieto, grown much older than I remembered and looking fragile and thin, but still a venerable man who cut a striking presence with his enormous black wig and his wisp of a beard that covered but the tip of his chin.

In Jewish worship, men and women seat themselves in different areas to shield the men from the distracting allure of female flesh. I always believed this custom a wise one, for I have never known Elias to attend church and not return with tales of fashionable ladies and their finery. In the Bevis Marks synagogue, the men sit downstairs in a series of pews that rest perpendicular to the rabbi’s pulpit. The women sit upstairs, where they are meant to be shielded from men’s sight by a latticed wooden partition. The latticing is such, however, that one can see, if not perfectly, glimpses of fair femininity through the gaps.

The synagogue was crowded that morning—more crowded than I had remembered ever seeing it as a boy. There were perhaps three hundred men downstairs and close to a hundred women in the upper section. In addition to the worshipers, there was a pair of young English bucks who came in to observe the Jews at worship. These visits were not uncommon; I recalled having seen curiosity-seekers many times as a boy, and they generally behaved themselves reasonably well, though it was not uncommon for these men to find themselves restless when confronted with hours of Hebrew liturgy. Indeed, visitors rarely hid their perplexity with a service conducted almost entirely in a foreign language and in which men appear to engage in private contemplation as much as group worship. For my own part, I found myself struggling very little with the Hebrew of the prayer book, for I had read these prayers so often when I was a boy that they remained still firmly etched within my memory, and speaking them again made me happy in a way I would not have anticipated. I felt a kind of comfortable pleasure at having a prayer shawl, borrowed from my uncle, cast about me, and I saw him offer numerous approving glances in my direction throughout the long service. I could only hope that he was less observant of the frequent glances I cast upward toward the ladies’ section, where I could discern the beautiful if obstructed face of Miriam through the latticing. Indeed, there was something compelling about catching this anatomized view of her—now her eye, now her mouth, now her hand. The eye was in particular gratifying, for I could not but be pleased that it was cast in my direction as often as it was cast upon her prayer book.

After the conclusion of the service, Miriam and my aunt returned directly to the house, while I remained in the synagogue’s courtyard with my uncle. He engaged in chatter with men throughout the community, while I looked on, pretending to take an interest in discussions about who had moved into and out of the neighborhood. As I stood there, I heard my name called out, and I spun around to face a handsomely dressed man whose face, disfigured from far too many beatings and blade wounds, I instantly recognized. It was Abraham Mendes, Jonathan Wild’s man.

I have rarely been more astonished to see anyone in my life, and I only stared.

Mendes took some small delight in my confusion. He grinned at me like an impish child. “It is a pleasure to see you once more, Mr. Weaver,” he said, with an exaggerated bow.

“What are you doing here, Mendes?” I sputtered. “How dare you follow me here.”

He laughed. Not contemptuously, but out of genuine amusement. Indeed, there was something unaccountably charming about his ugly face. “I follow you, sir? You must think your business most interesting to suspect such a thing. I am here only to attend services for the Sabbath, and upon seeing an old acquaintance, I thought it incumbent upon me to greet you.”

“Am I to believe you are here only to attend the service?” I asked. “I find that incredible.”

“I might say the same of you.” He grinned. “But you may ask around if you misbelieve me. I once again reside in Dukes Place, and have done so for several years now. And though I may not come here every Sabbath, I come often enough. It is your presence that is something of an anomaly.” He leaned forward. “Do you follow me?” he asked in a stage whisper.

I could not help but laugh. “I am astonished, Mendes. You have utterly surprised me.”

He bowed, just as my uncle turned to me. “Shall we return home, Benjamin.” He bowed briefly to my companion. “Shabbat shalom, Mr. Mendes,” he said, offering the traditional Sabbath greeting to this villain.

“And to you, Mr. Lienzo.” Mendes grinned at me again. “Shabbat shalom, Mr. Weaver,” he said before making his way out of the crowd.

My uncle and I took a few steps before I spoke. “How is it you know Mendes?” I asked.

“There are not so many Jews in Dukes Place that one cannot know them all. I often see him about the synagogue. Not a devout man, I suppose, but fairly regular in his attendance—and in London that is something in itself.”

“But do you know what he is?” I pressed on.

My uncle had to speak more loudly than he liked, for a man selling pork pies had wandered toward the crowd exiting the synagogue to amuse himself by crying out his wares to the Jews. “Of course. Not everyone does. Ask most men, and they will tell you he works as a butler for some great man or other. But in my trade, you know, sometimes I may get a shipment of something or other that is not precisely legal to own, and if I have no buyer, Mr. Mendes can frequently offer me a fair price on behalf of his employer.”

I could not believe what I heard. “Do you mean to say, Uncle, that you do business with Jonathan Wild?” I all but hissed the name and spoke it so quietly that it took my uncle a moment to understood what I said.

He lifted his shoulders in a gesture of defeat. “This is London, Benjamin. If I wish to sell a certain kind of goods, I do not always have a choice of buyers, and Mr. Mendes has offered me assistance more than once. I have had no dealings personally with this Wild, and I am anxious to keep my distance from him, but Mendes has shown himself a capable factor.”

“Surely you are not unaware of the risks of having even indirect dealings with Wild,” I nearly whispered.

“Mr. Mendes likes to say that in certain kinds of trade, one cannot but deal with Wild. I have found that to be true enough. Certainly I have heard that Wild is a dangerous man,” he said, “but I trust Wild knows that I too, in my own way, can be dangerous.”

My uncle smiled not at all when he said these words.

WE RETURNED TO THE house for a luncheon of bread, cold meat, and ginger cakes, all of which had been prepared the day before. Miriam and my aunt served the food themselves, and when we were finished they placed the dishes in the kitchen for the servants to tend to after sunset.

I retired to the sitting room with Miriam, and I was somewhat surprised not to find myself followed by either uncle or aunt. Miriam looked radiant that day, wearing a striking indigo gown, offset with an ivory petticoat.

I asked Miriam if she would join me in a glass of wine. She politely declined and instead sat in an armchair, turning to a volume of Mr. Pope’s Iliad, of which I had often heard but had never inquired into. I poured myself a glass of Madeira from a handsome crystal decanter and, feigning a meditative mood, I sat across from her to watch the expression on her face as she made her way through the work. It was not my