Feelings were mixed among the besieged Jews of the Tower: some men assumed that they were saved now that the King’s representative had returned; others of a darker cast of mind saw only reinforcements for our enemies.
‘At the least now we should be able to negotiate,’ said Reuben to me as we stood side-by-side, leaning on the battlements and looking over the bailey. He had brought his own breakfast and was munching on a crust as we surveyed the soldiers spilling into the courtyard. Directly below us the bodies of the dead lay undisturbed, except by the ravens who had gathered in their scores and who pecked at Christian flesh with a glassy avian disregard for human dignity.
‘May I see your sword,’ I asked Reuben presently. And he obligingly pulled the slim curved blade from its ornate scabbard and passed it hilt first to me. It felt light, too light in my hand. I made a few experimental passes in the air. It was like waving an ash wand; it had none of the brute power of my own weapon. But, by God, a man could strike fast with this blade. Then Reuben took a flimsy silk scarf from around his neck and asked me to hold out the sword at arm’s length. He held the scarf over the weapon and dropped it. The silk was cut in two, merely by its own weight. I was astounded. I had never seen a blade as keen in my life; I tested the edge of the sword and immediately cut deep into the ball of my thumb. Sucking the injured digit ruefully, I asked Reuben where he had obtained such a fine weapon.
‘It is a scimitar, in the Arabian pattern,’ he replied, not quite answering my question. ‘If we live through this siege and you travel with the King to Outremer, you will see many more swords of this type — and perhaps you may wish you had not. It is a common weapon in the great army of the warlord you Christians call Saladin.’
I asked him again, looking directly at him: ‘But where did you get it?’
He sighed. ‘Where do you think I am from, Alan?’
‘Why, York, of course. Although I have heard it said that you also have a dwelling in Nottingham.’
‘Look at my skin, my eyes, my hair — do I look as if I come from the north of England?’ he said.
‘Well, you are a Jew,’ I said, acknowledging the hazelnut hue of his face and his midnight eyes, ‘so I suppose that at one time your family must have come from the Holy Land.’
‘Do I resemble these others?’ he indicated the Jews at the battlements beside us.
‘Of course, well, a little… actually, not very much.’ I could not believe that I had not noticed it before but Reuben was much darker than all the other Jews; some of the crossbowmen at the battlements had red-gold hair, some even had blue eyes.
‘We are all equally the children of Israel,’ Reuben said, ‘but these good Jews are from northern France and their families lived there for many generations before they came to try their luck in England.’
‘So you are from Outremer?’ I asked. I was fascinated. I had never really thought about Reuben’s antecedents before, He had just been Robin’s friend, the Jew, the merchant and moneylender from York. To hail from Outremer, where Christ’s blessed feet had walked, the sacred land of John the Baptist, and Moses, and King David, and Samson and Delilah, and all those other figures from the Bible… it seemed impossibly exotic and mysterious.
‘I am of the Temanim, a Jew from the far south. I come from a land far beyond Outremer, which the Arabs call al-Yaman — it was once known as the land of the Queen of Sheba,’ he said, a note of pride in his voice.
This seemed even more fabulous. Beyond Outremer? He might have said that he came from the Moon. Tuck had told me the story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, but it had all seemed so long ago, so far away. A legend. It was as if I had just come face to face with a unicorn.
‘What is it like — al-Yaman?’ I asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar name, but imagining a perfumed land flowing with rivers of wine, where jewels grew in the earth like flowers, and sweet cakes grew on trees.
‘It’s a desert, mostly, sand and rock and merciless sun. But it is home, I suppose, in a way. Or it would be home if any of my family still lived.’
I said nothing at this point, and just stared at him, willing him to tell me the story; listening with my eyes. He smiled at me again, indicated that we should sit with a graceful wave of his hand, and then, settling himself down, with his back to the battlements, his beautiful sword across his knees, he began.
‘My father, may his soul rest with God, was a sword-maker. He made this very weapon,’ he said laying a hand reverently on the ornate silver-chased scabbard. ‘We were a wealthy family, business was very good, and for the most part there was harmony between the Jews of our town and the Arabs. I was trained in the use of arms by the best teachers my father’s money could buy; and taught languages — Greek and Latin — as well as history, philosophy, a little medicine and courtly manners. I was happy. It was my father’s dream that I should be a gentleman, a poet perhaps, or a musician like you, Alan, not an artisan, not a sword-smith such as himself, sweating over a forge fire all day in a leather apron. And I was content with that ambition; I attended the best parties, mixed with the sons of other rich men, and there was talk of a marriage between myself and the daughter of a wealthy merchant from a neighbouring town. Life was very good.’ He paused here and closed his eyes, savouring that youthful happiness for a moment or so. Then he continued. ‘When I was sixteen, a wandering Muslim cleric came to our town. He was dressed almost in rags, but his eyes burned with passion and he preached with great eloquence to the faithful in the local mosque. His preaching was considered sublime; people came from far and wide to hear his words. He was inspired by the Prophet himself, praise be upon him, the people said. But what he preached was purity. Only by keeping himself pure, he said, could a Muslim reach paradise at the end of his life. Only by living a saintly life and eschewing all defilement, could a true Muslim honour God in the proper way. All impurity was to be shunned; it must be swept away, banished, and if it could not be banished then it must be destroyed. And we Jews, said this so-called holy man, were impure.’
I was beginning to see where this story was going. There was a note of deep bitterness in Reuben’s voice, and I thought of the evening when Robin and I had arrived at his house to be greeted with a thrown knife. But I held my peace, and waited for Reuben to continue.
‘At first, the cleric merely preached avoidance of Jews, but in our town we had been living together peacefully for many hundreds of years. Jew lived next door to Muslim, we ate in each other’s houses; we respected each other, our children played together in the streets. And so, seeing that the majority of his flock was not heeding his message of separation, the cleric began preaching to the young Muslim men of the town. He met them at night, preaching almost in secret, and telling them that they had a holy mission to cleanse the town of Jews. He called it jihad.’ Reuben spat out the word as if it were poison on his tongue.
‘Most of the young men ignored this mullah, and drifted away; despite being so eloquent, he was clearly mad: how could the town be cleansed of a quarter of its population? Jews were part of its life, part of its very fabric, and always had been. But some of the young men, the wild ones, the unhappy ones, the lost souls, they listened. And they began to hate.
‘One night a gang of them, perhaps fifteen or twenty young men, came to our house; they were drugged on hashish and maybe a little drunk, too, and they burnt our house down and killed my father and mother when they came out to protest. My younger brother fought them, and killed two before he was overcome and killed himself. They burnt other Jewish houses too, and many families lost beloved ones that terrible night. I happened to be away, by chance, visiting friends in a town fifty miles away, and I suppose that saved my life. The very next day the mullah was driven from the town with stones and curses — both Jews and Muslim wanted him gone, and the young men who had committed the outrage submitted themselves for punishment to the elders of the town and were severely punished; two were executed, the ringleaders, and the others had one eye put out, as punishment and a mark of their shame. But despite this restitution, the town was never the same again. The seed of hatred had been planted, and it grew, watered by the tears of the families destroyed by the violence. Those whose sons had been half-blinded began to hate the Jews; the Jews whose friends had been killed by the young men began to hate and fear their Muslim neighbours.
‘I could not live in the town any more after the deaths of my family. I was afflicted with a great guilt; if I had been there I could have protected them, I told myself. It was not true, of course, and a part of me knew this too; I would have died with them but for my absence. But I felt the guilt of one who survives a catastrophe. I could not stay in that town, and I gathered the money, the horses and camels, that my father had left to me and took to the open road. For three years I travelled Arabia and the lands around. I visited Alexandria and Baghdad, Jerusalem and Mecca; I lived like the young prince my father had wanted me to be, travelling in great splendour, staying only at the best houses, spending a fortune on food and wine, perfumes and jewels — and then, one day, inevitably, the money ran out. And I found myself in Acre, a Christian city on the coast of Palestine; penniless and with no idea what I should do with the rest of my life.’
