Standard of Honor

Roman eyes. It contained nothing of the kind of mindless hatred that Christians show towards the Jews today.”

He sipped at his wine and rolled it around his tongue, savoring it for a while before adding, “The Jews gave us their One God, Andre. People tend to forget that. The God we worship came to us directly from the hands of the Jews. We should be grateful to them for that, for giving us our God. But no, we choose to shun them, when we are not abusing and persecuting them.

“Karel told me once that he had known several families of Jews throughout his travels, and he believed that they were ordinary people just like Christians, save that they believed differently about how their God expected them to behave. After all, Jesus was a Jew. No getting around that, Karel used to say. So where did the breakdown occur? When did the breakaway happen? When did it become perfectly acceptable for Jesus to have been a Jew all his life and for all eternity, for His Father to have been the God of Israel, and for Christian people to dream and speak of returning to Sion—which is Jerusalem—and to speak glowingly and lovingly of biblical Israel, yet hate all Jews? Where, he would ask—and he would ask anyone and everyone who showed the slightest interest in what he had to say—where was the logic in that?”

He glanced at his son, as though in the hope of hearing an answer, but when it was clear that none was forthcoming he went on, raising both hands almost apologetically and spreading his fingers wide to indicate that these thoughts were Karel’s and not necessarily his own.

“Well, his own answer to that unanswerable question was that the logic was priestly—‘sacerdotal’ was the word he used—and because of that, it was invisible and incomprehensible to ordinary men, since it lay in the repository of most of the other logic of priests everywhere: deep in the lightless tunnels of their rectums.” Sir Henry laughed aloud. “I used to love it when he said things like that. I was always afraid that some band of scandalized bishops might come leaping out of hiding and condemn the two of us for heinous and unforgivable behavior.

“He used to say—and he was insistent—that priests were seldom clever and even less often intelligent, but that most of them were cunning and all of them selfserving. The majority of priests, he held, those mediocrities who were destined never to be bishops or prelates or princes of the Church, owed their positions to being born as younger sons to parents who could not support them, which meant that, as young men, they had all faced the same limited choice: become a knight, or take the Church’s cloth. For all of them, and probably for a wide range of reasons, the thought of a military life with all its brutal hardships had been abhorrent, and so they had opted for the easier way, a life lacking in general hardship and supported by the contributions of others. They entered the priesthood.”

Henry sat up, gulped the wine remaining in his cup, then rose to his feet and crossed smoothly to the table, where he set the goblet down.

“And that, my son, is all that I can tell you about my peculiar beliefs regarding the treatment of Jews,” he said, turning his head to glance over to where Andre sat watching him. “Has anything I have said been of assistance to you in your dilemma over Richard’s behavior?”

“I have no dilemma, Father. I have a revulsion.”

Something that might have been a tic of annoyance flickered between Sir Henry’s brows. “That’s a strong word,” he said.

“And I don’t use it lightly,” Andre replied. “This is not simply anti-Jewish sentiment on Richard’s part, Father. I am talking about mindless and inhuman cruelty, inflicted for the sheer pleasure of doing so and observing the results.”

That caught Sir Henry by surprise. He looked keenly at his son, trying to read his face, but seeing nothing he could identify, he slowly made his way back to the fire. “Very well, then, tell me what you mean by that, because it is a very strong indictment. ‘Inhuman cruelty inflicted for the sheer pleasure of doing so and observing the results.’ I would expect to hear something utterly infamous in the way of charges to back such a statement up.”

“Well then, would you accept a report of the King’s guards being sent out into the streets to arrest any Jews they find and bring them back for the entertainment of the King’s guests at dinner? That in itself might not qualify as infamous, unless you consider that the entertainment consists of their being pinioned by men-at-arms and held erect while their teeth are pulled out with pliers … all their teeth.” The silence that followed seemed vast. Andre sat tensely, leaning forward in his chair and waiting for his father to respond.

“You saw this? You were there?”

“No, sir, I was not. It would appear that I have a happy knack of being absent on such occasions. But it has happened more than once, and I have been told of it each time by people who were present and whose word I trust.”

“What people?”

Andre shrugged. “The knight you met today, for one, Bernard de Tremelay.”

“You trust him, you say?”

“Implicitly, Father. I have known him now for eight months and he is become my closest friend, almost from the moment we first met.”

Sir Henry looked steadily at his son, one eyebrow rising slightly. “I find that strange … you tend not to make friends that quickly.”

“I know. But we liked each other from the outset, probably because of how we met, if truth be told. We were the only two young men in one particularly large and grave gathering of humorless graybeards, and I fear we found companionship in quiet laughter. He was the one who gave me the most detailed description of the abuse of one unfortunate Jew … the first one to suffer that way, I believe. I was away from London at the time, but Bernard told me all about it, in great and lurid detail, when I returned. He was sickened, and he sickened me, too, with the telling of it.”

“And you say Richard condones such things?”

Andre barked a sound that could have been the truncated start of a laugh. “Condones them? Better say foments them. Father, this is Richard’s notion of a wondrous way to keep his friends amused.” He looked away for a moment and then looked back to where his father stood thunderstruck. “As I understand it, the first occasion was almost accidental, one of those things that simply comes about unplanned. One of the Golden Clan made a comment to the effect that he was having trouble with a Jew to whom he owed money—”

“The Golden Clan? What does that mean?”

Andre frowned and shook his head. “Forgive me, Father, it is not something I would expect you to know about and certainly nothing you would ever approve of. The term is a pejorative, recently coined in England, a name used to indicate certain of King Richard’s cronies. The unnatural ones who have no use for women. They were originally called the Gilded Geldings, until someone pointed out that they were anything but gelded.”

“Quite. So what did this fellow say about the Jew?”

“Something about the fellow having his teeth in him. Whatever he said, it was evidently enough to spur Richard to shout, ‘Then let’s have the whoreson’s teeth out!’ and he sent his guards to arrest the Jew at his counting house and bring him back to the King’s Hall at Westminster. They pulled his teeth publicly that night, at dinner, apparently with such notable success that the entertainment has been repeated at random several more times, whenever the King or any of his guests feels bored. He simply sends his men out to find a Jew. Their Jewishness alone is condemnation enough to justify their so-called punishment.”

“God in Heaven!” Sir Henry’s jaw dropped and he groped for the back of his chair, then lowered himself back into his seat “That is …” His voice failed him; his mouth moved, but no words emerged until he stopped trying, swallowed, and shook his head slowly. “That is infamous. And no one has complained? What about the bishops?” He slashed his hand in dismissal as soon as he spoke. “No, that would be a waste of time and effort. They would do nothing, except perhaps to bray encouragement. But surely some of the nobles must have complained of such outrages.”

“Complained?” Andre St. Clair sounded as though he might either laugh or weep. “To whom should they complain, Father? To the King, about his own conduct? Would you dare that?” He held up a hand, palm outward, to silence a response. “Yes, you probably would, but what would you achieve? At best you would draw down his rage for offending him and his sensibilities. And at worst, what? Who knows? This is Richard Plantagenet … Besides, if you spoke out everyone would think you mad, to champion a Jew in any way. No one would have any sympathy for you, no matter what Richard did to you. You would stand alone, and you’d stand condemned.”