‘Did you see it?’ Judith asked
Benedict shook his head. ‘I felt something, a force. It was as if I was hollow and a great wind had roared through me, and for a moment I felt such… but I saw nothing. There was nothing coming to our aid,’ he added bitterly. ‘Isaac wants to try again. But he is not as skilled in the art as Aaron. And it’s dangerous to attempt these things alone. Your brother doesn’t have the strength or knowledge to control what he might raise, and such a powerful spirit can take possession of you or even destroy you if you cannot master it.’
Judith leaped up. ‘We have to stop him. But I can’t find him. He didn’t come home, and he’s not in the study chamber.’
‘I think he will try to raise the spirit somewhere in the heart of the Christians’ world, so that it can destroy them. He will have used the words as a sign of where he should go.’ Benedict rifled through the lists, then he pounced on one and held it up. ‘This is the one. Cup — that is 170, gold, 14, temple, 65, idol, 148, daybreak, 508. They all add up to 905, the same number as the letters on the stone.’
Judith frowned. ‘But the value of the letters in HaShem is only 345. I worked that out myself. Never mind how I know,’ she added impatiently, seeing the astonishment on Benedict’s face.
Still staring at her in disbelief as if she was a cock that had laid an egg, Benedict said slowly, ‘Isaac was using the mystic numbers. If Mem is a final letter it has a greater value — 600, instead of 40.’
‘But even if these words add up to 905, what do they mean?’ Judith asked. ‘ Temple, cup, idol and gold — that could be a church; they have statues, gold and chalices in the churches, but there are fifty or sixty churches in Norwich. We can’t search them all.’
Benedict studied the words again. ‘ Daybreak.’ He shook his head. ‘ Cup — that must be it,’ he said finally. ‘All churches have chalices, but the cup is the specific emblem of one of their saints, John the Evangelist. There is only one church in the city with that name, and it’s in Conesford Street, not far from Jacob’s house.’
‘Then we must go there at once.’
‘This is no task for a woman,’ Benedict told her firmly. ‘You shouldn’t even know about the stone, much less the numbers. Alone, I can reason with Isaac quietly. If you’re there, his pride might make him do something foolish. You go home and wait for us. I’ll find him and bring him to you.’
As if to show that he would not be swayed on this, Benedict walked ahead of her out of the room, holding the lantern. Without really thinking what she was doing, Judith scooped up the pieces of parchment and followed him outside.
‘You will find him?’ she begged. ‘Whatever evil he’s done, he’s still my brother and I love him. He can’t have meant to kill Nathan. He must be ill or maybe whatever was conjured in the room that night..’
Benedict squeezed her shoulder. ‘Go home. I have to hurry!’
Judith crossed to the casement for the hundredth time that night, but there was still no sign of Isaac and Benedict. The curfew bell had long since sounded, signalling that all house fires must be damped down for the night and made safe, but still her brother had not returned.
Suppose Benedict had been too late or had gone to the wrong place? Could cup mean something else? But she couldn’t think what else it could mean. Frantically, Judith pored over the lists again. If only Aaron was here — he was more skilled in the art of the mysteries than any of them. She wondered where he was sleeping tonight. She prayed he was safe and the silver hand amulet would protect him; if only Isaac had such protection.
She began adding the words again, looking at each list in turn. None of the other lists added up to 905. Then finally she saw it: there was a second list that added up to that number. She’d almost missed it because of the repeated crossings-out. Two words on this other list were the same as the first, gold and daybreak, but the others were different. To cross, or pass over: the number 272 had been written beside this; and next burned offering: against that had been written 111.
To pass over, to cross: what did you pass over? A river, a bridge. You crossed over a river using a bridge. But which bridge? Coslany, Blackfriars, Fye, Whitefriars, Bishop’s Bridge? They were scattered right across Norwich. She stared at the other words, gold, burned offering, daybreak. These weren’t the names of any of the bridges. A bridge of gold? None of the bridges was made of anything but wood and stone, though some said the Bishop’s Bridge was paved with gold, given the money he gathered in tolls from those entering the city. That had to be the answer! Bishop’s Bridge was the only one of the bridges that formed an entrance to Norwich. And the tolls from this entrance went not to the city but straight to the bishop’s coffers. That’s what Isaac would want to destroy, not some little church. Benedict had gone to the wrong place.
Judith snatched up her cloak and a lantern and rushed out into the streets. Most of the houses were in darkness, though here and there a pinprick of light shone between the cracks of the shutters. The alehouses had long since emptied, and the brothels were silent. Norwich was sleeping. A mist was creeping up from the river and ditches, rubbing and curling around the houses. There was a squeal behind her and Judith whirled around, but her lantern caught only the great green eyes of a cat with a mouse dangling from its mouth. The cat glared at her before bounding lightly over a wall and disappearing.
Fog hung over the river like a white prayer shawl. Judith could hear the water rushing below her, but she couldn’t see more than an arm’s length in front of her. She crept as quietly as she could across the bridge, clinging on to the side to guide her way in the mist. Below her was nothing but swirling whiteness, as if the stones were floating on clouds. The bridge had never seemed as long as it did now. She hadn’t thought the river so wide.
Judith stopped with a gasp. She had almost walked straight into the wooden hurdles on the far side. Two of the bishop’s soldiers lay with their backs to her on the other side of the hurdles, their task to see that no one entered or left by that bridge until after prime in the morning when the tollbooth was open for business. She could hear the men snoring, confident in the knowledge that no one could drag those hurdles aside without waking them.
Judith backed away as quietly as she could. She had been so sure that Isaac would be here. How could she have been so arrogant as to think she had worked out what Benedict could not? He had already shown her to be wrong once that evening over the number. There was nothing for it but to return home and wait, as he had instructed her.
Then, as she had almost reached the city end of the bridge, she heard a scraping as if something heavy was being dragged over stones. She stopped and listened hard. For a moment or two she could hear nothing more over the sound of the rushing river, then she heard the noise again. It was coming from beneath her feet. It was probably just a piece of driftwood being ground against the pillars of the bridge by the force of the river. All the same, suppose Isaac was under the bridge, not on it.
Where the bridge joined the road on the city side, Judith left her lantern hanging on a tree and scrambled down the bank, sliding on her bottom until her foot encountered solid ground. Pressed against the wall, she edged forward gingerly. The mist billowed in waves, curling away, then closing in again. She thought that she could see a thin strip of flickering yellow light and someone or something moving. But each time her eyes fastened on the shape, the mist would obliterate it again. She edged forward, afraid that she would walk straight into the river, but just at that moment the white fog parted.
Hard against the bridge, a small wooden jetty projected out from the bank into deeper water to enable the boats to unload their cargoes when the river was low. Someone was standing on that jetty muttering to himself in a slow rhythmic chant, as if he was breathing every syllable. Ha-Sh-em. Ha-Sh-em.
‘Isaac, no, don’t. Please don’t try to conjure it,’ Judith whispered, trying to make him hear without her voice carrying to the two guards at the far end of the bridge.
Startled, the man whipped around, but it was not Isaac’s face she saw staring at her in alarm, but Benedict’s. His hands were trembling.
‘Go home, Judith. You shouldn’t be here. This is too dangerous. I don’t want you to get caught.’
‘But what are you doing here? I thought you were looking for Isaac at the church.’
Benedict sighed. ‘I couldn’t tell you, because I wanted to keep you safe. Isaac doesn’t have the stone. I do. It was me who wrote those lists of words. Aaron was right: we have to stand up for ourselves. We have to show them that we can fight back. The Eternal One is supposed to defend the innocent, but where was He the day they hanged my father in front of a jeering crowd? I learned something that day. Heaven will not send down fire to slay our enemies or part the water to save us unless we first do something for ourselves. We must fight for our own survival. If we fight, He will give us victory, but if we simply sit there praying and wailing, He will not hear us.’
‘So you mean to conjure up a spirit to destroy your father’s murderers?’ Judith asked.
He shook his head impatiently. ‘I am no more skilled than Isaac, as I told you. Even if I did possess Aaron’s
