sainted innocent, a martyr to the True Faith.
Ranulf had not believed the Norwich accusation, either. He’d never shared the view so many did, that the Jews were Christ’s enemies in their midst, doing the Devil’s bidding to corrupt unwary Christians. For if they were truly so evil, he reasoned, his father would not have protected them. And the old king had, granting them a charter which gave them the right to live freely in England, to hold land, to have recourse to royal justice. If his father, a man so quick to suspect the worst, had not feared the Jews, why should he?
And yet…and yet, they were still aliens and infidels. They might look like their Christian neighbors, speak French as well as any Norman baron, but the fact remained that they were dangerously different. They rejected the concept of Original Sin. They did not believe in the Holy Trinity. They denied the divinity of Our Lord Christ. They faced the horror of Eternal Damnation without flinching, without fear for their immortal souls.
For an unnerving moment, Ranulf felt an instinctive unease; he was, after all, utterly at their mercy. But then common sense reasserted itself. These men had saved his life. They had chased after his horse, bandaged his wound, even buried his dog. What more proof did he demand of their goodwill?
“I have my vices,” he said, “but ingratitude is not amongst them. I admit I was taken aback, merely because I’ve never known any Jews. But if it did not matter last night, it ought not to matter today.” He smiled wryly. “I do not remember your asking if I was a Jew ere you came to my aid. I am deeply grateful to you both, owe you a debt I can never repay.”
The elder of the brothers smiled, too. “I’ll settle for a name. I am Aaron of Bristol. Josce, as you know, is my brother. What do men call you?”
“Ranulf…Ranulf Fitz Henry.” Ranulf’s new identity was not assumed for their benefit. He’d stopped calling himself the king’s son the day he rode away from Devizes.
Aaron and his brother were indeed peddlers, as Ranulf had guessed. Filling their cart with woolens imported from France, with needles and thread and metal mirrors, they routinely made the perilous journey from Bristol up to Chester. They were on their way back to Bristol when they’d stumbled onto the ambush, and Aaron insisted that Ranulf ride with them till he recovered his strength. They’d cleansed his wound with honey, applied a plantain poultice to stop his bleeding; they were, of necessity, knowledgeable in the healing arts and well supplied with life- saving medicinal herbs. But he still needed a doctor’s care, Aaron stressed, for the danger of infection was always hovering close at hand. Fortunately, the knife blade seemed to have missed any vital organs. Ranulf had been amazingly lucky, Aaron concluded, and Ranulf heartily concurred.
Ranulf slept through most of the day and the night that followed. The next morning they made him as comfortable in their cart as they could, and headed for home. They were both Bristol-born and-raised, and very thankful that Bristol had so far been spared the suffering of Winchester and Oxford and Lincoln and the other English cities caught up in this accursed civil war. Aaron had a wife and young son awaiting him at home, and he cheerfully passed the time extolling the virtues of his Belaset and their two-year-old Samuel. Josce walked alongside the wagon, brusquely declining Ranulf’s offer to ride his stallion, leaving it to his brother to carry the conversational burden.
Aaron was happy to oblige, and Ranulf found himself being given a rare glimpse into a hitherto hidden world; what surprised him the most was that it was, in so many ways, a familiar world, too. Aaron’s concerns were those of any Bristol citizen: pride in his son, worry over the war, anxiety lest the new Earl of Gloucester not prove himself to be the man his father was, for Bristol’s continuing safety depended upon his strength.
Slowly, though, distinctly Jewish details began to emerge. Ranulf learned that Jews did not eat pork, which was considered unclean. The Jewish Sabbath was not Sunday as in the Christian faith, but sundown to sundown, Friday to Saturday. And dogs were not often found in Jewish households; their formidable Cain was an object of curiosity back in the Bristol Jewry. Although Aaron didn’t say so, Ranulf was sure that the dog’s name had come from Josce, a sardonic swipe at those who claimed all Jews bore the Mark of Cain.
Ranulf had never ridden in a cart before. It was an experience he could have done without, so jolting and rough a ride that he soon scrambled out to walk beside Josce, fearing that the constant jouncing might break his wound open. After that, Aaron insisted upon pausing frequently, ostensibly to rest their horse, and Ranulf gained new appreciation for his tact.
As they grew more comfortable with Ranulf, the brothers began to talk more frankly of politics. Aaron praised the old king for keeping the peace and putting his Jewish brethren under the protection of the Crown. Josce pointed out, though, that the king profited handsomely from the presence of the Jews in his realm. “Think of us,” he said sarcastically, “as a herd of milch cows, which the king alone has the right to milk.”
Aaron’s opinion of Stephen was one Ranulf had often heard voiced in the Christian community, too, that he was “good-hearted, but as easily swayed as a weather vane.” On the whole, he said, Stephen was favorably disposed toward the Jews, but he could be most unfair when his pride was pricked by the Lady Empress, his foe. And he told Ranulf of the experience of the Oxford Jews. When the empress held the city, she’d imposed a levy upon the Jews there, and when Stephen recaptured Oxford, he demanded that they pay three and a half times the amount of her levy, as punishment for obeying her unlawful command. Ranulf remembered when Maude had decided to impose that levy; it had seemed a good way to raise much-needed money. He’d never given a moment’s thought to Oxford’s hard-pressed Jews. Listening now to Aaron, he wished that he had.
They did not debate theology; that was too inflammatory a subject. Aaron said only that Jews and Christians shared a belief in the same God, the God of Israel, and by unspoken consent, they ventured no further. But as Josce slowly thawed toward Ranulf, he could not resist regaling him with facts sure to startle.
It was eye-opening to Ranulf to learn that Jews were by their own laws forbidden to break bread or drink wine with Gentiles. Obviously this was not strictly enforced, for the brothers had been sharing their meals with him for two days now. But it was disconcerting, nonetheless. He was surprised, too, by Josce’s revelation that English Jews, no matter where they lived, could be buried only in the Jewish cemetery in London; he had to admit that seemed like an undue burden to impose upon people already mourning a loved one.
What Ranulf found most astonishing, though, was Josce’s mischievous description of the Rite of Abraham, which involved snipping away the foreskin from the most vulnerable part of the male anatomy. By now he’d discovered that Josce’s humor was as perverse and unpredictable as Geoffrey of Anjou’s, and he half suspected that he was being teased, until Aaron confirmed that they did indeed circumcise their young sons. It was, Ranulf decided, one more reason to be thankful he’d been born into the True Faith, but he did not let himself pursue that line of thought. He did not want to think of Aaron and Josce as Jews, for he did not want to think of them as doomed, forever lost to God’s Grace.
It was a strange interlude for Ranulf, the first time in two months that he’d formed any bond with another human being, other than an occasional tumble in a harlot’s bed. It did not seem real somehow, that so much could have happened-have changed-in such a brief time: that he’d come so close to death, that he’d lost Loth, that a good Christian could look upon Jews with respect, even friendship. The respite ended that night, though, as they made ready to bed down by the fire. It was then that Aaron mumbled sleepily that with luck, they might be able to reach Shrewsbury on the morrow.
Ranulf jerked upright, brought back to reality with a jolt. “I cannot go to Shrewsbury!”
They sat up, too, regarding him curiously in the flickering firelight. “Ranulf, I’ve told you from the first that you need to have that wound tended by a doctor. There is one in Shrewsbury, also a monk at their abbey said to be skilled in the use of healing herbs. But we’ll not find another one till we reach Hereford or Gloucester, and it would not be wise to wait that long.”
“I cannot go to Shrewsbury, Aaron. Wise or not, I cannot.”
“Why not?”
Ranulf hesitated. He could not tell them about Annora, the unforgivable botch he’d made of his life. But he owed them more than evasion or rebuff. “I was not completely truthful with you ere this.”
“What a surprise,” Josce murmured dryly, and his brother scowled in his direction.
“Not now, Josce. What did you lie about, Ranulf?”
“It was not a lie, more like a…a sin of omission.” Did Jews know about such things? Now was not the time, however, to elaborate upon the finer points of Christian doctrine. “When I called myself Ranulf Fitz Henry, that was indeed my father’s given name. What I omitted was his title-Fitz Roy.”
There was a brief silence as they absorbed this. Josce whistled softly, and Aaron said carefully, “You are saying, then, that you are one of the old king’s…natural sons?”
“One of his bastards,” Ranulf said bluntly. “No need for delicacy, Aaron. But you see now why I cannot go
