“But Crispin.” She pushed him back. Worry lines replaced the kiss he had bestowed there. “What of the Golem? You must first see to that.”
“That was no Golem,” he said, pulling her back against his chest. How he liked the feel of her there. He wondered what her hair would look like grown out and down to her hips. “It was a man. A potter. A strange man, true, but—”
“No! There is a Golem!”
He clutched her tighter. “Julianne, there is nothing to fear. You heard your father. I tell you there is no Golem. It is only your fanciful imagination. It was a man. I spoke with him.”
“But there is!” She shoved him back hard. Wildness radiated in her eyes. “There is!” she insisted. “I made it.”
His head. It must still be throbbing from the thrashing he’d gotten. “I . . . I don’t understand.”
She sighed with both shoulders. “When my father’s papers were stolen, it gave me an idea. I stole the parchments of Creation myself and studied them carefully. I went to the potter’s row and bought the clay.”
“But . . . when would you have had time? Your father says—”
“I was in my menses. For a Jew, a woman in her menses is unclean. It was a good excuse to hide away. I created the Golem in the unused mews at the end of the stables at the palace.”
The shadows played with her face, changing her angelic features to those of a darker angel. His gut felt as if a stone now sat there, hard and solid. “You . . . you can’t have.”
“I spoke the words of Creation.” She turned her hands, looking down at them. “I carved the word on its chest, gave it life. It moved for me, did as I bid. But when I returned the next day, the Golem was gone. And the murders began.”
“A man murdered those children,” his voice said dazedly.
“I never meant for children to die.”
“Then who did you mean?”
“Christians, of course.” He took a step back. The cold stone in his gut grew heavier. “My revenge,” she was saying, though her voice sounded far away. A ringing started in his ears. “You do not know, Crispin. You do not know what Father and I have endured over the years. The Golem was to teach them a lesson.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Oh . . . but Crispin. You are not like them. You’re different.”
“More like them than you seem to realize.”
She studied his face, squinting from the faint light. “Crispin?” She reached for him but he pushed back those hands, hands he had desperately wanted to caress him a mere few moments ago.
“How could you have done such evil? And then to allow me to—”
“Evil? Like the evil that has been done to us!”
“An eye for an eye, is that it?”
“Yes!”
He shook his head. The cold stone made the bile rise to his throat. “You don’t know me at all.”
“I know you are a fool for helping those people when they do you wrong. But I can overlook that.”
“Can you? And yet I cannot overlook this evil you would set upon London. Where is this Golem now?”
“I don’t know. It vanished. But you said you encountered it.”
Crispin tried to think, tried to distinguish the times he had seen the Golem. Had it truly been Odo all those times? What of that clay-smeared wall in the palace? Was it Odo who killed Radulfus? He hadn’t seen its face at the time.
“It’s no matter,” she said. “When it rains he will wash away. Without the symbols etched on his chest he will cease to exist. You don’t have to worry. He will melt into the pile of clay from which he was made.” She reached for him again but he slapped her hands away.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Julianne!” cried Jacob, standing unsteadily in the doorway, his white face older by some years. “Is this true? Did you let loose the Golem?”
“Father, you don’t understand—”
“Let the man go.”
“No! Father! He’s not like the others. Make him see—”
“Julianne! No. Go to the chamber.”
“But Father!”
“GO!”
Julianne hung her head. Wringing her hands, she obeyed Jacob at last, retreating sullenly into the darkened room.
Jacob silently closed the door. With his trembling hand laid against it, he did not turn to Crispin. “I have committed many sins, it seems,” he said brokenly. “To raise a daughter like a son was a grave sin indeed. I am just now paying the price. That I see with clarity. There is no need to regret this episode, Maître Guest. We will leave England as soon as possible. I will send my regrets to the queen. It was a mistake to come here. I was only trying to do my countrymen a mitzvah. A good deed. But I see now that I have only cursed them all.”
Crispin had no words of comfort. If he opened his mouth, he did not know what would come out. Instead, he turned away, tight-lipped, and left.
The next day Crispin and Jack returned to London with Wynchecombe’s borrowed horse, neither of them speaking of Jack’s harrowing experience. The days passed, and Crispin tried to forget short-cropped hair and green eyes. He thought of venturing back to the potter’s row to tell Berthildus the fate of her son, but he could not bring himself to do it. It was by mere chance that the astrologer had chosen Berthildus from whom to buy the clay, and her poorer luck that she had a young son. No, he could not tell her.
He did send an anonymous message to Matthew Middleton the goldsmith, warning him that the Church knew of their secret. A fortnight after that, there was a sudden selling of many properties near the Domus and several of London’s most successful citizens had departed the city for parts unknown.
Advent passed and Christmas day dawned, just like any other. He went through the motions of the day, shaving, brushing down his cotehardie, taking turns with Jack adding fuel to the fire. He admonished Jack to go to mass, but the boy would not leave his side. When the bells tolled for Sext, Crispin reminded Jack that he was expected at Gilbert and Eleanor’s table.
Sullenly, Jack adjusted his cloak and rested his hand on the door ring. “Master, I think you should come.”
“I believe we’ve already had this discussion, Jack.”
“But Master, of all Christmases, don’t you think you deserve a little cheer? Some reward?”
“My reward is that, apparently, I won’t hang for Giles’s or Cornelius’s murders.”
“But Master Crispin—”
He laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Jack, I appreciate your concern. But I cannot go with you. Give them my greetings.”
Jack scowled and grumbled to himself, but he pulled open the door and stumped noisily down the stairs.
The smells of good cooking soon wafted up the stairwell. His landlady, Alice Kemp, was doing her best for the tinker and their daughter, Matilda. All around him, in fact, people were gathering for their Christmas feast, whether it be humble or not.
After a time, the brooding silence began to aggravate. Crispin threw on his cloak and hit the stairs. He made it to the street and tucked his hood over his head. Snow was falling in feathery flakes and mist made midday seem much later. He felt the cold nip his face and was grateful for it, grateful to be alive, though he couldn’t put the image of the burned-out shell of his ancestral home out of his mind. Well, there was nothing to be done about it. Gilbert was right. They had been lost to him for years, and now they were gone for good.
He watched as people tramping in the street dragged greenery behind them, some even carrying large Yule logs. For a moment, Crispin wished he hadn’t been unreasonable and turned down the kind offer of his friends at the Boar’s Tusk. Why didn’t he just go? They had certainly asked him often enough. With a sigh that turned to a puff of gray, Crispin had no real answer. Only that, for the last seven years, he did not feel fit to join in with the celebration of others. Call it part of his personal penance.
The people on the street were thinning to just a few here and there. The trampled snow told him that the proce
ssions had ceased and all had been blessed by their parish priests. Shops were closed and it began to feel lonelier. As it should, he reminded himself. A traitor such as himself had no right to feasts and joviality, but wallowing too much was also uncalled for, at least that’s what Gilbert had told him. God loveth a cheerful giver. He snorted at that before he nearly ran into a woman idly walking near the closed shops.
“Pardon me,” he said with a bow, and when he looked up, a familiar face looked back out of the hood. “God’s blood! John Rykener!”
“Crispin! Oh this is my lucky day! My Christmas blessing.” He scooped up Crispin’s arm before he could protest and began to walk with him.
“Let go of me,” he hissed, trying to wrench his arm away.
“I worried over you, Crispin. There were rumors of all sorts.”
“What are you doing on this side of the Thames?” he asked, still struggling.
“I fancied a change of scenery. I do like it better here. I imagine I will find myself living on this side from now on.”
“Too many arrests?”
“Alas. I am known there.”
They walked on in silence for a time, the snow crunching under their feet. Crispin did not try to push the man away after a few more unsuccessful attempts. He may like to dress like a woman, but Rykener had a strong arm.
“You shouldn’t worry over me,” said Crispin, hating the silence. “I always seem to survive.”
“Like a cat. You land on your feet every time.”
“Not every time.”
They passed a house where the smoke from the chimney slithered down the stone wall. John sniffed the air. “Mmm. Smells like Christmas. Where are you bound, Crispin? Some fine feast with your companions?”
“No. I make it a habit of spending Christmas alone.”
John stopped, bringing Crispin up short. “Crispin Guest! How abominably morose of you. Do you also wear a hair shirt?”
Crispin frowned. “No. This is none of your business, John.”
“Of course it isn’t. That is why it so intrigues me.”
“Then what of you? Do a bit of whoring before you gather around the Yule log, do you?”
He jabbed Crispin hard with his elbow. It took the wind out of him for a few moments. “Don’t be crass. But as a matter of fact, yes. I find myself woefully without funds.” John jerked to a halt and turned his head, squinting down a gloomy alley. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“I thought I saw something. Something . . . large.”
Crispin looked with that familiar tingle scraping across the back of his neck. “Like a man?”
“Couldn’t have been a man. It was too big.”
It was quite possible it was the potter Odo skulking about in London. And yet. It was also quite possible . . . No. No, he refused to entertain the notion.
John had a stark look on his face, even under the curls of hair just at his temple.
Crispin glanced in the other direction down the gray street. They weren’t far from an alehouse. And a warm fire and wine did sound pleasing. “John, would I embarrass myself too much by buying you some Christmas cheer?”
John’s face brightened. The hulking figure was forgotten, though the tingle at Crispin’s neck remained. “I thought you spent Christmas alone?”
“Perhaps . . . that is a tradition I can do without this year.”
John smiled. “They don’t know me here. They will think I am a woman.”
“Then . . . Eleanor . . . shall we?” Crispin always suspected he was a bit mad but he didn’t know how much until he held the alehouse door open for his unusual companion.
Afterword
It is a wild notion indeed to write about a medieval serial killer, and especially one who murders and defiles children, using their blood and entrails for summoning demons. This surely is the stuff of gothic horror fiction of the most melodramatic kind.
Unfortunately, it might have inspired gothic horror fiction, but this was definitely not fiction. This is the retelling of the very real and very strange tale of the fifteenth-century serial killer, Gilles de Rais, in all its horrific detail.
De Rais lived in France about one hundred years after the action of this novel. He was a contemporary of Joan of Arc. In fact, he served with her in her army. Too bad he wasn’t influenced enough by her life to follow in her saintly footsteps. He and his cronies indulged in their perversions by using the excuse that they were summoning demons to do their bidding, mostly for riches. De Rais sought his wealth and status through his own special grimoire, written in the blood of the hundreds of boys and girls he slaughtered. If he had not run afoul of the Church he might never have met his justice.
Eventually, he did meet a grim and well-deserved end.
A medieval serial killer is one thing, but to include a medieval cross-dressing male prostitute? John Rykener did, indeed, exist in Crispin’s London. We know little about him except what is found in one court document when he was arrested in 1395. What he explained in the story is strictly from those documents: He used the name “Eleanor” when he dressed as a woman and was arrested for his attire as well as soliciting sex. He confessed that his clients were made up of priests, scholars, monks, women, and nuns, but he preferred priests because they paid him more!
Homosexuality was certainly little understood in the Middle Ages, though Rykener appears to have been more vilified for his gender-bending attire than for his interest in men. According to historian John Boswell in his book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, the penalties for homosexual behavior were erratic. More often than not, punishments came in the form of ecclesiastical penance rather than civil penalties, but these actions by the authorities were by no means universal or unduly obsessive. The idea that the Church or civil authorities were “getting medieval” on homosexuals in the Middle Ages might have come to us from criminal records in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when harsher punishments and prison time was meted out for acts of sodomy. “Homosexuality,” says Boswell, “is given no greater attention than other sins and, viewed comparatively, appears to have been thought less grave than such common activities as hunting.” Still, between the law courts and the Church, it was best to keep a low profile.
As for the tale of the Jews in England, Edward I exiled them in 1290, but those that remained—the converted—were scarcely received with open arms. Many were ghettoed in the Domus Conversorum for their entire lives. Others did strike out on their own and eventually blended into the society at large, marrying Gentiles and disappearing from sight. Did many convert in name only, remaining secret Jews? In the 319 years that Jews were officially barred from England, the documents of the Domus record a regular succession of Jews arriving on English shores. According to those documents, there were still thirty-eight men and ten women admitted into the Domus even after expulsion, but more, surely, had entered England than had converted and lived in the Domus. There are no exact records to document it, but there had to be many Jews who remained, even forsaking their dietary restrictions in order to blend in. Some continued to live as secret Jews and some even lived openly as in the case of Nathanael Menda of London and Johanna and Alice of Dartmouth, though they eventually ended up in London’s Domus.
Records of the Domus inhabitants end in 1609. The Master of the Rolls actually continued to receive his stipend for being Keeper of the Domus well into the nineteenth century. In 1891 the post of preacher of the Rolls Chapel was finally abolished by Act of Parliament and the buildings in Camden were used as a storehouse for the rolls of Chancery.
Jews were not officially allowed back into England until 1655 under Oliver Cromwell (even though they were residing in England openly as Jews at this point, and performed bravely in the Jacobean conflict), but it wasn’t made law until the Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753. That act was repealed the next year, but it didn’t stop Jews from immigrating back to England.
The bishop in this piece is modeled on the later
Spanish Inquisition of 1478 (and, of course, according to Monty Python, no one expects that!) that made its mark by rousting out the converted Jews still secretly practicing their faith, leading up to the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain. The northern countries of Europe seemed mostly spared from Inquisitions, including England, which only had a Templar trial (perhaps because they had already ousted their Jews). But anti-Semitic sentiment was certainly fired up in the medieval world, especially the blood libels that seemed to easily stir the rabbles. Yet there were still staunch men who protected Jews from the mobs, including the sheriff of Norwich in the days of Saint William of Norwich. The sheriff gathered the Jews in Norwich castle and refused to allow any trial that he well knew would end in Jewish bloodshed. Despite Thomas of Monmouth’s writings, there were many such men who did not believe that Jews were responsible for the deaths of children. Blood libels reached such a peak—insisting that Jews ritually crucified a Christian child and drank their blood and ate their flesh during the Passover—that in seventeenth-century Poland, only white wine was served at Passover so there could be no suspicion that the wine was instead blood!
Anti-Semitism had its proponents in the Middle Ages, even from the highest of authorities. Quotations from such worthies as Pope Innocent III (“The Jews, like the fratricide Cain, are doomed to wander about the earth as fugitives and vagabonds, and their faces must be covered in shame. They are under no circumstances to be protected by Christian princes, but, on the contrary, to be condemned to serfdom. . . .”) and Saint Thomas Aquinas (“Since the Jews are the slaves of the Church, she can dispose of their possessions. . . .”) fueled expulsions until Jews either remained in the Muslim world, or fled to the farthest reaches of eastern Europe.
However, Avignon was a place that allowed Jews to flourish, many becoming physicians and enjoying any number of trades in crafts and the arts, some even welcoming the patronage of the popes who had moved their residence to Avignon during the fourteenth century. This was not to last, and though they became wealthy in their many vocations, they could not buy chateaus outside the Jewish streets called the carriers that soon became their ghettoes.
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