Judith swallowed hard. She hadn’t dared tell Isaac that she had drawn the bailiff’s attention to the man’s tonsure. She prayed that the bailiff would dismiss what she said, as he did all Jews.
Beads of sweat prickled on Judith’s forehead. Although the afternoon sun was warm for May, she was hoeing with unnecessary vigour between the bushes of rosemary and hyssop in the synagogue garden to try to keep her thoughts off that study chamber. But it wasn’t working, and she kept glancing up at the casement. Isaac was right; the most likely explanation for Nathan’s disappearance was that he and this Christian girl had fled the city together.
As a little child, Judith been too terrified to cross the yard at night, convinced that she could see a demon with glowing eyes lurking in the corner, though her father had shown her it was just the light from her own lantern glinting off a piece of metal. Even now she sometimes thought she saw her mother sitting hunched in the chair before the fire. Perhaps she had imagined Nathan’s body, too. If she could just see what it was in that room — a shadow, a piece of cloth, something that had made her think she’d seen Nathan — she could forget the whole thing.
Judith’s heart gave a lurch of relief as she pushed open the door of the chamber. She’d half expected to see Nathan crouching there again, but the corner was empty and bare. Almost at once, relief was replaced by disappointment. Someone had already tidied the room, her brother or Benedict, no doubt, for it was a man’s hand that had tidied it, she could see that at once. Tables and benches were now upright, but not neatly aligned, and armfuls of books and parchments had been scooped up and stacked in drunken piles without any attempt to sort them or put them back in their places on the shelf. It was as if someone had straightened things just enough to create a space to work. Several sheets of parchment lay spread out on one of the tables, close to a candle stub with a quill pen and pot of black ink.
Judith lifted one of the sheets. It was a random list of words written in Hebrew — gold, fire, citadel. Other Hebrew letters were written beside each word, but these letters didn’t make words. Judith glanced at the rest of the table, searching for the book or scroll that the person had been studying. It was the custom to take a passage from the Torah and study each word and phrase in depth, looking for the different meanings. Usually that passage would be in front of the scholar as he studied, but there were no scrolls or books on the table.
Judith glanced up sharply as she heard footsteps pounding up the wooden steps outside, but before she could cry out the door burst open and Aaron rushed into the room. If anything, he looked paler than he had done the day before, and he was certainly trembling as much.
He doubled over, gasping for breath. ‘Isaac… Benedict… where are they? I… thought they might be here. They said at the tailor’s that Isaac had gone to the warehouse at the river to fetch cloth, but I thought he might have come here.’ He glanced repeatedly at the door as if he was fearful that someone might be following him.
‘What is it? Has something else happened?’ Judith asked, beginning to feel as scared as he looked.
Aaron took a deep breath. ‘I need to show you something. Come, please come.’
‘Where to?’
Aaron shook his head as if he couldn’t trust himself to speak, and after an anxious glance through the half- opened door he urgently motioned her to follow him. Judith was outside before she realized she still had the pieces of parchment in her hand and quickly stuffed them in her scrip before running after Aaron.
He strode rapidly, his hood pulled far down over his face as if he feared to be recognized. Judith had to keep breaking into a trot so as not to lose sight of him. When they reached Conesford Street, Aaron finally stopped. The breeze from the river was stronger here, and Judith was glad of it for she could feel the sweat running down her back.
They were standing in front of Jacob’s house, a fine stone building with a heavy oak door guarding the entrance. Aaron withdrew a large iron key from under his cloak and slid it into the lock. As the door swung open, he pushed Judith through the door, locking it behind them. It was dim inside the small entrance chamber. All the shutters were closed, and the only light came from two small slits in the thick stone walls either side of the door. Judith shivered. It had been just a week since Jacob’s death, but with no fires lit in the house the air felt damp and chill.
She rubbed her arms uneasily. ‘What are we doing here, Aaron?’
‘Upstairs… please,’ he begged her.
He led the way up the stone steps to the upper hall. A huge fireplace occupied one wall, but the logs in it were blackened and dead. A long table stretched down the centre of the room, set about with chairs. Chests and side tables were ranged along the walls. The lower half of the walls was wainscoted with timber panels, painted green and dotted with gold stars, while the stones on the upper half were lime-washed white. At the far end of the room was a wooden partition.
Judith hovered uneasily by the door. ‘We shouldn’t be in here. How did you get the key?’
‘I went to Nathan’s house to find out if there was any news of him. I saw the key on a shelf and guessed what it was. It was too big for any lock in that cottage. Nathan’s mother must have taken it home with her for safe-keeping when she dismissed Jacob’s servants after his death. I suppose the house would come to Nathan, in due course, unless Jacob bequeathed it to another relative.’
‘So Nathan’s mother knows you are here.’ Judith felt more comfortable knowing that.
Aaron looked wretched. ‘I took… borrowed the key when she was out of the room. No, wait, please, Judith,’ he pleaded. ‘Rumours are beginning to spread that the corpse was a monk. I even heard someone say he was a wealthy abbot. If the justices believe that, they won’t rest until his killer is caught. I have to get out of England. But I need money to buy a passage.
‘I can’t go to my father. He always puts his principles before anything, even his own son. He’d hand me over to the bailiff himself. I was sure Jacob would have something valuable in the house. I persuaded myself that Jacob didn’t need it any more and Nathan had run off with Eleanor. Who knows if he would ever come back to claim his inheritance? I wasn’t going to take much, just a few coins or something I could sell. But I couldn’t find anything small enough to carry. Nathan’s mother probably took anything of value to her own house in case of thieves breaking in.’
‘And it seems she was right to do so,’ Judith said pointedly, but Aaron ignored her.
‘Then I remembered once, when I was a child, I was playing here with Nathan and your brother and Benedict. Old Jacob was out and Nathan showed us the place where his grandfather hid his most treasured books. I thought there might still be something in the old hiding place.’
‘And was there?’ Judith asked.
Aaron nodded. Without saying anything more, he led the way behind the partition. Here a large bed, draped with hangings against the cold, occupied most of the centre of the room. Aaron went to the far wall and paused in front of the wooden wainscoting. Taking a deep breath, he ran his hands over the panelling until he found what he was searching for, then lifted the section away. There, set into the stone wall, was a long, low recess lined with wood, an ideal place in which to conceal books or anything else of value.
And it was filled with something covered in sacking, but from her position at the end of the bed Judith couldn’t make out what it was. She was aware only of a terrible stench filling the room. Her guts had turned to iced water, but she forced herself to move closer and then stifled a scream as she caught sight of what was lolling out of the top of the sack. The face was blackened now where the blood had congealed, the skin was beginning to peel, but for all that there was no mistaking that the body in the hidden recess was that of Jacob’s grandson, Nathan.
Judith didn’t know how long she stood there staring at that nightmare vision, but then cold fear pushed her into action. She’d been right all along. Aaron had killed Nathan and now he was going to do the same to her. That’s why he had lured her to an empty house. She ran back through the hall towards the stairs and clattered down them, slipping on the final steps in her haste and having to grasp the rail with both hands to stop herself crashing backwards on to the stone. She flew at the door, twisting the great iron handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. She could hear Aaron pounding down the steps behind her and she turned, trying to make for the door to the lower chamber, but at that moment Aaron reached the bottom of the stairs and stood barring her way.
He held out his hands. Terrified, she backed away. A look of bewilderment crossed his face.
‘I’m sorry, Judith. I should have warned you instead of showing you, but I didn’t know how to say it. I thought you wouldn’t believe me unless you saw for yourself. Judith, you’re the only one I can trust now. I must leave today, before the city gates close. I’d take you with me if I thought you wouldn’t be in even greater danger if they come after me, but I couldn’t leave you here with them without warning you.’
