done.
Reuben had learned a sort of courage in his cell, with the boot they made him wear that could be wound tighter and tighter until his bones creaked and broke. In all his life, he had never had the strength or the wind to fight. With what God had given him, he had made himself wealthy: with his intellect, secretly scorning those who paraded their ability to lift lengths of iron into the air and swing them. Yet when the pain was unbearable, when he had stripped his throat raw with screaming, he had still not confessed. It was a stubbornness he had not known was in him, perhaps the only way left to show his contempt. He had wanted to meet his execution with that shred of pride still intact, like a last thread of gold in a worn cloak.
The senior judge from Nantes had come to the cell after many days. Jean Marisse looked like a cadaver, holding a pomander of dry petals to his nose against the stink. Masked in dried blood and his own filth, Reuben had glared up at him through his one good eye, hoping to shame Marisse with something like dignity. He could not speak by then. His teeth had all been broken and he could barely take in the slop of porridge they brought each day to keep him alive.
‘I see the devil’s pride is still in him,’ Jean Marisse had said to the guards.
Reuben had stared in dull hatred. He knew Jean Marisse, as he knew all the officials of the region. It had once seemed a profitable enterprise to learn their habits, though it had not saved him. The man had a reputation among the whores of the town as one who preferred to whip rather than kiss. There was even talk of a girl who had died after an evening with him. Marisse’s wife would have been scandalized at the news, Reuben was certain. His mind had swirled with his own accusations, but there was no one to listen and his tongue had been pulled to its full extent and mangled with pincers designed for the purpose.
‘Your questioners tell me you will not confess to your sins,’ Jean Marisse had said. ‘Can you hear me, Monsieur Moselle? They say you will not sign anything, though they have left your right hand untouched for that purpose. Do you not understand this could all end? Your fate has already been written, as sure as sunset. There is nothing left for you. Confess and seek absolution. Our Lord is a merciful God, though I do not expect one of you Abrahams to understand. It is written that you must burn for your heresies, but who can say, truly? If you repent, if you confess, He may yet spare you the fires of hell.’
Reuben remembered staring back. He’d felt as if he could channel all his pain into his gaze, until it would strip away the man’s lies and flesh and open him down to the bone. Marisse already looked like a corpse, with his thin face and skin like wrinkled yellow parchment. Yet God did not strike him down. Jean Marisse had thrust out his chin, as if the silence itself was a challenge to his authority.
‘Your property is forfeit, you understand? No man may profit from an association with the devil. Your wife and children will have to make their own way in the world. You have made it hard enough for them with your rites and secret magic. We have a witness, Monsieur Moselle, a Christian of good standing and unimpeachable honour. Do you understand? There is no hope for you in this world. Who will take in your family now, when you are gone? Shall they continue to suffer for what you have done? Heaven cries out, Reuben Moselle. It cries out against the pain of innocents. Confess, man — and this will end!’
In the street, Reuben staggered against a shouting peasant, his broken foot betraying him. The burly apprentice struck out immediately, cracking Reuben’s head back and sending a fresh flow of blood spattering from his nose. He saw bright drops of it gleam on the straw and filth that made up the road to the town square. One of the guards snarled at the apprentice, shoving him back into the crowd with a pike pole held across his chest. Reuben heard the man cackle even so, delighted to be able to tell his friends he had landed a stroke on the Jew’s head.
He staggered on, his mind fluttering in and out of clarity. The road seemed to go on for ever and every step was lined with townspeople come to see him die. Some snot-nosed urchin stuck out a foot and Reuben fell with a grunt, his knees striking the stones so that a lance of pain went up his legs. The crowd laughed, delighted that some part of the scene would play out in front of them. The ones pressed six-deep along the route at that stage could not afford to bribe their way into the main square.
Reuben felt a strong arm lift him up, accompanied by a smell of garlic and onions that he knew well from the prison. He tried to thank the guard for his help, but his words were unintelligible.
‘On your feet,’ the man growled at him. ‘It’s not far now.’
Reuben remembered Jean Marisse leaning over him in his cell, like a crow examining a body for some part still worth eating.
‘There are some who wonder how a Jew could carry out such filthy spells and rituals without his wife and children knowing. Do you understand me, Monsieur Moselle? There are some who whisper that the wife is surely as guilty as the husband, that the children must be as tainted as the father. They are saying it would be a crime to let them go free. If you do not confess, it will be my duty to bring them here to these cells, to put them to the question. Can you imagine what it would be like for a woman, Monsieur Moselle? Or a child? Can you conceive of their terror? Yet evil cannot be allowed to take root. Weeds must be torn out and cast on the fire before they spread their seed on the wind. Do you understand, monsieur? Sign the confession and this will end. All this will end.’
Just a year before, Reuben would have laughed at such a threat. He’d had friends and wealth then, even influence. The world had been an ordered place where innocent men did not find themselves held down and screaming as strangers worked on them, with no one coming to help, or one word of comfort to be had. He’d learned what evil really was in the cells beneath the prison yard at Nantes. Hope had died in him as his flesh was burned and broken.
He’d signed. The memory was clear in his mind, looking down on his own shaking hand as he put his name to lies without bothering to read them. Jean Marisse had smiled, his lips peeling back from rotting teeth as he’d leaned close. Reuben still remembered his warm breath and the fact that the judge’s voice had been almost kind.
‘You have done well, monsieur,’ Marisse had said. ‘There is no shame in telling the truth at last. Take comfort in that.’
The town square was packed with onlookers, leaving only a narrow path between ranks of guards. Reuben shuddered as he saw cauldrons of bubbling water on either side of a raised platform. The manner of his death had been described to him with relish by his torturers. It had amused them to make sure he understood what awaited. Boiling water would be poured over his skin, searing it from the bones and making it easier to strip long pieces of steaming flesh from his arms and chest. It would be hours of impossible torment for the pleasure of the crowd. Reuben knew with a shudder that he could
Even the thoughts of his enemies had to be squashed down to a small corner of his mind. He was half- certain he knew the architect of his fall, for all the good it did him. Duke René of Anjou had borrowed fortunes in the months before his arrest, against the security of Saumur Castle. The first tranche of repayment had been due around the time the soldiers came to arrest him. Reuben’s wife had advised against making the loan, saying it was well known that the Anjou family had no money, but then a lord like René of Anjou could ruin a man just as easily for a refusal.
As Reuben was bound to poles facing the crowd, he tried to resist the gibbering terror that screamed inside him. It would be hard, as hard as they could make it. He could only wish for his heart to give way, the frightened, leaping thing that pounded in his chest.
The men on the platform were all locals, paid a few silver deniers for the day’s work. Reuben did not know any of the faces, for which he was thankful. It was hard enough to have strangers howling and raging at him. He did not think he could stand to see the faces of men he knew. As his limbs were fastened in place with harsh tugging, the crowd pressed in to see his wounds, pointing them out in fascination.
His gaze swept across the empty, roaring faces, then stopped suddenly, the mist clearing from his good eye. A balcony hung over the square and a small group of men and women rested there, watching the proceedings and talking amongst themselves. Reuben knew Lord York even before the man saw him looking and met his stare with interest. Reuben saw the man catch his wife’s attention and she too looked over the railing, pressing her hand to her mouth in delighted awe as his bony chest was revealed.
Reuben looked down, his humiliation complete. The men on the platform had stripped his shirt away, revealing a mass of colourful bruises in all shades of yellow and purple, down almost to black where his ribs had
