“Where has she gone? What are they doing with her?”
Another weary shrug. “You’re asking the wrong person. I am merely in charge of guarding this place.”
“You must know something.”
The panic in Julien’s voice struck a chord. Some sort of human connection was made. “Look, I don’t know. All Jews are to be taken to an assembly point, then they will be transported to work camps. That’s all. Now, go away.”
“Where is she? Please tell me.”
He sighed. “They were all taken to the railway station,” he said impatiently. Anything to get him to go away. “And that’s where they will still be, I imagine.”
JULIEN RAN; he had never run so fast; the years of walking had made him fitter than he ever realized. At least once a policeman shouted at him to stop, suspicious of anyone running in the slow-motion country, but he paid no attention, and the man lost interest. He ran down the rue de la République, down what used to be the cours Jean-Jaurès, down to the walls, across the big boulevard that skirted them, and over to the station.
It was quiet; he tried to block out what that meant. As he ran in he started shouting uncontrollably. “Where is the train? Where is the train?”
The few people there paid him no attention, beyond curious looks. He ran to the platform, found a guard, and grabbed him. “Where is the train?”
The guard pushed him off roughly, and Julien lunged forward again, then tripped and fell heavily on the concrete. “Please,” he said, panting so hard he could scarcely speak, “I beg you, tell me.”
“What train?”
“The one that was here. With the people on it. The convoy.”
“The Jews, you mean?”
He nodded.
The guard paused, and looked down the line. Nothing here, his gesture seemed to say. “It was in the goods yard. It went ten minutes ago.”
He looked at Julien for a moment, considered offering him some help. Then he looked at the clock; his shift was over, he was late. It had been a long day. He flicked his cigarette onto the tracks and walked away.
OLIVIER TRIED to think, for a while, that something might be salvaged from the catastrophe, but knew he was fooling himself. He knew and understood nothing. Ceccani could feel the great sweep of history whirling around him, and thought in centuries; he had taken on the guardianship of the soul of Christianity. He was prepared to sacrifice, himself and others, to discharge his duties toward Christendom, and to obey the will of God. Daily, he grappled with mighty matters of an import Olivier could only guess at; the poet was a mere human, Ceccani something more than that.
Although he understood this much, it meant little to him. His universe was smaller, more petty and more circumscribed. Having buried Althieux, seen Pisano run away frightened for his life, been close when a man murdered his wife, smelled the charring of a riot, knowing that the plague threatened them all, he found he cared little for the future of Christendom, was indifferent to the power of the papacy. This was not his business. All he cared about was Rebecca and Gersonides, locked away, liable to be tortured and killed. His mind was insufficiently grand to see further than that. And indeed, he realized he was not even preoccupied with Gersonides; he felt—for now he felt only and could not think—that everything in creation, his soul and hers, the soul of all men, depended on her continuing to live.
He walked the streets all afternoon and into the night, the only person in the entire city mindless of the plague, knowing full well that it had no power over him whatsover; that although it might one day claim him for its own, it could not do so until he had reached the decision that he knew he must make sooner or later. He could bow to the wishes of his master, obey the laws of men as they were unwritten but understood. For Ceccani had given him everything—money, encouragement, a place in the world, even something approaching friendship. In return he expected loyalty; it was a fair bargain, freely entered into and universally recognized. No one would accept that throwing that over was justified. It was not self-interest, although the consequences of breaking the ties that bound him to Ceccani would be terrible enough. Rather it was a matter of honor, the simple fact that nothing could possibly justify what would be a breathtaking treason. Olivier was considering playing the part of Judas; a squalid little Judas betraying his master for no reason except for what the world would consider a base infatuation.
Nor was there anyone to talk to. Pisano would have talked him out of it with a laugh, made him see the absurdity of his conundrum, ridiculed him back to sense. Althieux would have been more considered, taking the argument through countless authorities, classical and biblical, before coming to the same conclusion. But one was on the road to Italy, the other was dead.
Olivier had only his own mind, filled with the metaphors of poetry and half-understood readings from philosophy. And the phrases of Sophia, relayed through Manlius, came back to him, hammering inside his skull. “Any amount of disgrace or infamy can be incurred if great advantage may be gained for a friend.” And again: “The action of virtue is rarely understood by those who do not understand philosophy.” Again: “Laws formulated without the understanding of philosophy must be constantly questioned, for the exercise of true virtue is often incomprehensible to the blind.”
He slept on the steps of Saint Agricole, along with half a dozen other beggars, and considered how he had first glimpsed Rebecca some two years before. He again saw her walking past in her heavy dark cloak and remembered the feeling that had torn through him as he looked. And he decided that the emotion that welled up in him that day was itself a sign from God, that he had to obey it.
Dawn came eventually; his companions of the night rolled over and groaned one by one, and as the light rose, Olivier stood up with a sudden surge of determination and walked off, pausing only when he got to the great walls of the palace. He considered going again to Ceccani, considered going to de Deaux, but dismissed both ideas. He thought of begging for Rebecca alone, saying she was not a Jew, but knew this was hopeless. Ceccani was reaching for the whole world; Olivier knew he could never deflect him with anything so simple.
He walked in through the huge gates of the palace, nodding familiarly to the guard, whom he had known for years, but wary lest some alert had been put out for him, in case Ceccani had managed to read the mind he had had such difficulty understanding himself. But all was well; nothing happened, there was no shout or running of feet. In the great courtyard he stood uncertainly, lost and bewildered once more until his confusion was broken into by the clear, pure sound of a bell ringing through the morning air.
He almost fell to the ground in thanks as he heard it. It was the sound for the musicians and the singers to leave their studies and gather in the chapel, dutifully waiting their master. For them to sing their hearts out before God’s earthly representative. Clement, frightened and blockaded in his tower though he was, could not live without music. It was his life and his greatest pleasure. Even the plague could not deflect him from it. Even as the bodies were carried through the streets, he had ordered that any musician who left the palace without his permission would be arrested. If they had to die for his tranquillity, then so be it. There were some things this strange man could not do without.
And as the bell tolled, he would be putting on his robes, descending the stairs, and processing through the great corridors and chambers of the palace to the chapel. He would be alone and isolated, for he had ordered that no man must come near him in case he communicate the plague. Then he would sit until the music had finished and he could scurry, refreshed, back to his protective chamber high in the sky.
Olivier hurried, taking all the shortcuts he knew by instinct after so many years. There was a side door to the chapel where the acolytes entered and left as the services demanded. Olivier got there before anyone else and ducked through it. Then he concealed himself behind one of the huge Flemish tapestries Clement had commissioned to make the place more pleasing to his eye. And waited.
At any more normal time, he would have had no chance of approaching Clement; the moment he stepped forward, the guards who always hovered nearby would have fallen on him and dragged him away. Clement had an affable persona in public, but took the prospect of neither injury nor insult lightly. True, he was at his least exposed in the chapel, the heart of his own palace where only his immediate circle was allowed. Still, the guards remained, for he knew well that men of God were not necessarily men of peace.
The plague had changed the great ceremonies; Clement wanted as few people as possible around him.
