that,” the ruffian continued in a much-softened voice, “ ’e tried to pick me pocket, ’e did.”
“Do you have witnesses?”
“Aye,” he said, again in his mountebank voice, “these good people. They saw it all.”
Again, laughter and cheering, now joined by shouts calling for the Jew to be tarred and feathered, crucified, have his nose slit, and, inexplicably, to be circumcised.
I held up my hand to silence the crowd, hoping my performance of authority would have some sway with them. It seemed to for a moment. “Hold with your rough music, friends,” I said. “If there is justice to be done, I’ll not stand in your way. But let me hear what the peddler says.”
I reached down and helped the man to his feet. He looked around, his eyes hard and bloodshot. I suppose I expected him to stand with quivering lips, like a child trying not to cry, but he only looked like a man out in the cold with insufficient clothing, braced against the elements, knowing he could do naught but endure them.
“Tell me the truth, old fellow,” I said. “I shall do my best to see that it goes as easy as possible with you. Did you try to pick this man’s pocket?”
He turned to me and began to speak excitedly in a language I did not understand. It took me a moment to realize that he spoke Hebrew, but with the strangest accent I had ever heard. True, had he spoken it with an orator’s clarity, I should have had some trouble understanding him, but in his frantic speech I managed to fix upon a few words:
He saw that I could not easily understand him, and stopped speaking in the ancient language, again reverting to gesture. He once more put his hand upon his heart. “I take nothing,” he said.
His denial could not have surprised me. What else would he say? In my heart I knew that there was at least the possibility that he had committed the crime. Because he was a kindly old man did not mean that he could not have attempted to pick a pocket. I cannot say it was the way he spoke or the look in his eyes or the desperately earnest way he held his body that convinced me—not so much as it was my desire to protect him from this senseless mob—but I believed him as I would have believed him had he told me that the sun shone above.
“This man,” I announced in the most commanding voice I could muster, “says he tried to steal nothing. What we have here is a simple misunderstanding. So go about your business, and I shall see that he goes about his.”
The crowd was still, and for a moment I thought that I had triumphed, but I saw that the matter was now a contest, not between man and mindless throng, but between two men.
“It’s you that’ll be about yer business,” the mustache told me in a shrill if commanding voice. “Or we can take care of two as easy as one.”
He began moving toward me, and I knew that it was time to set aside my more gentle nature. I took from my pocket a loaded pistol, and with a strained gesture I pulled back the hammer with my thumb. “Disperse,” I said, “before someone gets himself hurt.” I backed up a bit, grabbing the old man’s arm and pulling him with me.
The crowd moved forward, as if they were all one being controlled by a single will. The tone of the confrontation now changed dramatically. They were not angry or enraged anymore—they struck me instead as brute beasts that, once set upon a certain course, had not the capacity to alter that course.
“You can’t fire upon us all,” the mustache said with a forced sneer. It was incumbent upon him to be brave, as the gun was aimed at his chest.
“True enough, but someone must die first, and I suspect it shall be you. And once I discharge this pistol I still have this hangar at my side. You’ll win in the end; I’ve no doubt of it. The mob shall have the old peddler. These is no question of who shall win the battle, only the number of casualties.”
The mustache was quiet for a moment and then told the old man that he should consider himself warned. He then turned on his heel and, grumbling loudly about the enslavement of the Englishman in his own country, he turned away. In a moment the crowd disbanded as though they had all just awoken from dreams, and I stood alone with the Tudesco, who cast a glazed stare upon me.
“I thank you,” he said quietly. He sucked in his breath in an effort to calm himself, but I could see that he shook violently and was on the verge of tears. “You give my life.” Scattered about his feet, his trinkets looked to me like a child’s playthings overturned by a petulant temper.
I shook my head, denying his words and the swell of passions I held at bay. “They would not have killed you. They would only have roughed you up a bit.”
He shook his head. “No. You give my life.”
With quiet dignity he stooped to collect his goods. Overcome with sadness, I dropped some silver in his tray—I don’t know how much, it might have reckoned in shillings or pounds—and turned toward the milliner’s shop to find Miriam, but as I turned she stood directly behind me.
It was hard to read her face. She might have been horrified at the violence she had been witness to, impressed by my response to it, relieved that no real harm had been done.
“Why are you not in the shop?” I snapped. Perhaps I responded too strongly, but my sense of perspective had abandoned me.
She let out a little laugh, which she used to hide her embarrassment. “I thought this would be my last opportunity to see the Lion of Judah fight.”
My heart was still pounding from the encounter with the mob, and I had to concentrate to keep from growing furious. “Miriam, I cannot take you with me to the theatre or anywhere else unless I can be certain that you will listen to me should there be a threat.”
“I am sorry, Benjamin.” She nodded solemnly, perhaps for the first time thinking seriously on the danger. “You are quite right. Next time I shall listen. I promise.”
“I should hope there will be no next time.”
When I turned back to the old man, he had gathered up his things and begun to hurry along to whatever decrepit hovel he called home, where he would try to forget what had happened.
“His kind are used to far worse,” Miriam said. “And they’re not used to being pulled from the flames. Your friend will remember this as a good day.”
Unsure how to respond, I told her it was dangerous to linger. We headed away from the crowd and I saw her home to safety.
Once I had discharged myself of her, I remembered the envelope in which she had returned the money she claimed not to have asked of me. I marveled at its lightness, for it could hardly contain even one of the coins I had sent her. I tore it open and discovered a negotiable Bank of England note for the amount of twenty-five pounds.
I folded the note and put it into my purse, but I could not help but wonder. Why did she not merely return the silver I had given her? And if she had so little money, as she had claimed, how did she obtain this note?
TWENTY
I WAS VERY SHAKEN by my encounters that day, and the hour had grown too late for business, so instead of visiting South Sea House, I took to wandering. I walked, with no particular destination in mind, avoiding the gauntlet of beggars as I passed London Wall and the Bedlam Hospital, where the insane were locked away, and where I feared I might be driven if I did not soon discover more about these strange dealings.
I stopped into a tavern and took myself a mug of ale, ate some cold meat, and passed an hour or two by conversing with the friendly tapman, who recollected me from my days as a pugilist. When I stepped outside into the smoky air of the late afternoon, I realized that I was upon Fore Street, but very close to Moor Lane, where Nahum Bryce, once my father’s printer, kept his shop. Cheered by the thought that I might indeed put my time to good use, I walked briskly to Moor Lane and found the shop at the sign of the three turtles.
During the height of the day sunlight would flood this spacious shop, but now, in the approaching dusk, candles had been struck throughout, making it bright enough to read comfortably. The shop was long and a bit narrow, the walls almost entirely lined with volumes, and in the back stood a spiral stairway that rose to a second level of bookshelves. I was nearly overwhelmed by the scents of leather and wax and flowers, for there was a great abundance of tulips in vases near where the clerk stood behind his counter.
I passed by a few browsers—an old gentleman and a pleasing girl of about seventeen with an older lady I took to be her mother—and I approached the clerk. He was a boy of perhaps fifteen or so, probably an apprentice, and I could see that anything I might say to him should be vastly less interesting than watching the young lady leaf
