“We need to talk, Simon.” Wilfred looked around for a place for the two of them to sit. He settled on the low kist, leaving the taller, flat-topped chest for his friend.
“May I take your cloak, Wilfred of Kirkenwood?” Simon remained standing by the door.
“Oh.” Wilfred blushed as he handed over the heavy and sodden garment.
“What portends?” Simon asked, settling his skinny bottom upon a pillow atop the chest, the place of honor.
“I... um... don’t know your customs well enough to do ought else, so I’ve come to ask your permission to marry your widowed sister Miriam,” he said all in one breath.
“No.” Simon refused to meet his gaze.
“What do you mean ‘no’!” Wilfred exploded, half-standing in anger.
“You are not one of us and never can be.”
Wilfred settled back into place, prepared to match Simon’s arguments with logic. “Miriam can become a Christian. I’ll sponsor her baptism.”
“Never!” Simon half rose in anger.
“Then I’ll ask Miriam directly. Certainly she has a say in the matter,” Wilfred’s tone turned as icy as the weather.
“Our women are sacred. We take our lineage through the mother. Any children Miriam births will be Jews, even if she becomes a Christian,” Simon insisted.
“Miriam!” Wilfred called into the back rooms, still eyeing Simon levelly.
She appeared from behind the curtain to the inner portions of the tall and narrow house. “Must I settle another political argument between you two?” She stood with her hands on her rounded hips, a lovely wisp of dark hair peeking from beneath her wimple. She wore knitted gloves with the fingers cut off to keep her hands warm while she worked with the other women of the household.
Wilfred jumped to his feet and gathered those hands in his own. “Miriam, forgive my bluntness. I have asked your brother for your hand in marriage. He refuses because I am not a Jew. I believe that we can overcome the differences of faith. I love you, Miriam.” He bent his head a little, expecting her to reach up and meet him for a kiss, a pledge of their love.
She stayed put and he had to bend further forward to capture her lips in his own. He found her willing enough, meeting him with gentleness if not outright enthusiasm.
“I would be proud to be your wife, Wilfred of Kirkenwood. But I must remain a Jew. I must marry a Jew.” She pulled away from him reluctantly.
“There is a way for you to become a Jew, Wilfred,” Simon said quietly. “But this is something you must not enter into lightly. This is more than a matter of upbringing and lineage. This is a matter of true faith.”
Standing so close to Miriam, holding her hands, seeing her breasts rise with each breath, Wilfred could not think beyond possessing her, body, soul, and mind.
“Teach me what it means to be a Jew,” he said. “Teach me so that I might believe.”
“Before you can marry you must attest your faith. You must submit to the extreme ritual of circumcision, to mark you as one of the Chosen,” Simon said.
Wilfred turned his head to face his friend, still holding Miriam’s hands. His own fingers grew icy and his palm moist. “But... but... isn’t that done only to young children?”
His manhood shrank and he instinctively held his thighs closer together.
“It is Jewish law. Only those circumcised can be Jews.”
Wilfred gulped and looked back to Miriam. She lifted her eyes to meet his, troubled and hesitant.
He needed to be with her, protect her, grow old with her, father her children.
He’d seen it in a vision. He would marry her.
“I’ve never been a good Christian. I think too much and disagree with the Church at every turn. Teach me to be a Jew.”
“There is more. You will lose your place at Merton College. Your family will denounce you. You will be subject to the king’s onerous taxes upon us to fund his military campaigns, his mistresses, and his jewels. If he cannot tax us he will demand we loan him money we no longer have. He has bled us dry. We dare not hope that he will ever repay any of his loans.”
“I have no money for him to tax or to loan. He cannot squeeze blood out of a turnip, though he will try. The boneheads at Merton College do not deserve my wisdom. As for my family...” He had to swallow deeply and blink back a tear. He didn’t know his nephew well, but he trusted the young man to guard the family honors and their heritage well. “My family has little use for me or my piddling talents. They nearly turned their backs upon me when I took myself off to Paris to study.”
“You must renounce your ‘piddling’ talents and never use them again. You might defy the Church by your little magical tricks and experiments with alchemy, but we will not brook such defiance. Should you use your magic again, you will be driven from our community and your marriage to Miriam dissolved. She will be as a widow, your children orphans.”
Now Miriam pleaded with him with her eyes and the firm grip of her fingers.
“How did you know about that?” Wilfred asked Simon.
“All of Oxford knows you dabble in alchemy. All of Oxford has seen you light the way through our dark streets with a ball of cold flame in your hands.”
“‘Tis a hard thing to give up my magic. But for Miriam I will do it. Teach me to be a Jew.”
And so his instruction began. They taught him the law. They taught him the Torah and the Talmud. He learned to speak the ancient prayers, he learned to eat the proper foods in the proper combinations. He learned to wear a cap and prayer shawl.
He learned to love Miriam more with each passing day. She tutored him, she held his hand, she loved him in return.
Six weeks later Wilfred of Kirkenwood sat down with his new family for the Passover feast. As the newest member of the family he took the part of the child and asked the questions of the Simon, the eldest. Why is this night special? Why do we drink this wine? Why do we eat bitter herbs? Why do we sing these songs? He knew the answers now, knew the stories, the history, and yet he felt as if he learned them all over again. Tears of joy and beauty filled his eyes.
Then all the family stood, each with a cup of wine and said together, “Next year in Jerusalem!”
Suddenly the room tilted and he saw the temple on the mount, sun baked brick, coarse roof tiles. He felt the sun upon his back and smelled the dust of centuries.
“Wilfred! What ails you?” Miriam clutched his arm and his face.
He looked down upon her worried countenance. Her eyes cleared when he smiled. “Next year we will be in Jerusalem,” he replied.
“You cannot know this, my friend,” Simon said. He too looked worried. “For centuries, all the Jews who have endured exile from our homeland have made this pledge of hope. Rarely do the Chosen return to their homeland. Rarely are we allowed to travel so far.”
“I may have renounced my magical powers, but they have not renounced me. I have had a vision. A true vision. Next year we will celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem,” he said with authority.
The rest of the family shook their heads and murmured in dismay.
The weather warmed at last. Spring and summer came to England in damp glory. Flowers bloomed, crops sprouted. Wilfred’s students ceased coughing.
At the end of term, Wilfred resigned his position at Merton college and moved in with Simon. The day before he was to undergo the painful but essential circumcision he received a letter sealed with heavy red wax and many dangling ribbons. The king himself, Edward Plantagenet, summoned him to court to answer for his treasonous and blasphemous intentions.
Reluctantly, Wilfred made his way to London. Alone. Without the solace of Miriam at his side.
At Windsor Castle, a page showed Wilfred into a private solar where King Edward, called Longshanks, and Lord Griffin of Kirkenwood studied a map of Gascony, where Edward had campaigned last year. Griffin’s wolfhound familiar rested by the hearth. She lifted her great head and gave a woof of greeting. Then she settled again, satisfied that her master was safe.
“Our Pendragon wishes you to return to the family fold,” Edward said as soon as the page had announced Wilfred and then withdrawn.
“I have no quarrel with my family. ’Tis they who have refused me access to Kirkenwood and the loving embrace of my relatives,” Wilfred replied.
The wolfhound opened one eye and seemed to stare at him in doggy mirth.
Wilfred winked back at her. They understood each other.
“If you have no quarrel with the family, why have you rejected us and God to become a Jew?” Griffin shouted. For a man of little more than twenty, he usually carried himself with better authority and dignity. His face purpled with anger and he pounded the map table until it shook. The map scooted free of its restraints and re-rolled with a snap.
The wolfhound lifted her head once more, alert to her master’s moods.
“I follow my heart and my faith. The Jews offer me what the rest of England cannot,” Wilfred said simply.
“The Jews have refused to loan Us necessary funds to pay for Our campaign in Gascony or for Our forthcoming crusade,” Edward said in an icy tone. “We can only presume that you have influenced the entire Jewish community to this decision with the magic inherent in your family.”
“There is no more money in the Jewish coffers, Your Highness. We cannot loan what we do not possess.”
“The Jews own property they could sell to raise the funds.”
“They did that last year and the year before. We now possess little more than the clothes upon our backs and the synagogues that no Christian will purchase. We have sold our houses and crowd in together until we have no more room to share.” Wilfred held firm. “If you had ever repaid any of the loans, then perhaps there would be money to lend you once more.”
Edward’s face grew as enraged as Griffin’s. “How dare you question your anointed monarch!” he shouted.
Griffin and Edward continued to shout and berate Wilfred and all of the Jews in England. They heaped blame upon them for every ill from the homeless outlaws that ranged throughout the country to the terrible winter and poor harvests, to the diseases that had felled many during the bad weather.
Wilfred kept his mouth shut. He could say nothing more without further complicating the situation.
“Will you renounce your Jewish connections and seek penance from the Church?” Edward finally asked.
“No. I have chosen to worship God according to the old and original ways of the Bible.”
“Blasphemy!” Griffin declared.
“Then you give Us no choice,” Edward said proudly. “Since the Jews can no longer meet Our needs, then every Jew in England, including you, Wilfred of Kirkenwood, has until the first of November to convert to Christianity or face exile from this land.”
Wilfred gulped. Never to see England again? He had given everything he was, everything he valued to become a Jew so that he could marry Miriam. Was she worth it?
A new peace settled on his shoulders. He had gained more than he had given up. More than Miriam. More than faith.
He had gained his rightful place in history and among the community of the Chosen.
“Please reconsider, Your grace,” Wilfred said quietly. “The Jews offer more to England than just loans of money to you and your nobles.”
“Our mind is made up. The official pronouncement will follow you to Oxford within the week. You are dismissed.”
“Think carefully on this, Your Highness.”
“Get out of Our sight! Get out of Our kingdom!”
“If you do this, Edward Plantagenet, then you are not worthy to be king.” Wilfred’s body began to shake as the words spilled out of him. He could not control the pronouncement if he wanted to.
“You deprive England of one of its most valuable resources,” he continued. “You deprive England of doctors and scholars and goldsmiths as well as money lenders. You deprive England of honor. You are pledged to protect the Jews. Now you break faith with your Coronation oaths and the Magna Carta signed by your grandfather John and reaffirmed by your father, Henry III.”
He had to stop speaking before Edward arrested him for treason. He had to stop.
The words kept rolling out of his mouth with the authority of all of his ancestors combined. All of his ancestors going back to King Arthur and to his Merlin. They spoke through him. They needed his voice and his mind to show England the vision and prophecy of their kind.
“If you do this, Edward Plantagenet then never again will England have a king worthy of the name Arthur. England will forget and take a long time relearning that law, justice, and peace work; that honor, truth, and promises kept mean something. England will suffer for this heinous act. Your enemies will gain.”
“So be it,” Griffin echoed, also with the weight of prophecy in his voice. “Never again will the likes of King Arthur rule this land. Never again will a king of England carry that beloved name.” He bowed his head sadly.
Wilfred left England along with his bride Miriam, his new brother-in-law Simon, and the rest of the family within days of the Royal Decree. They did indeed celebrate the next Passover in Jerusalem.
England never again in over seven hundred years has had a king named Arthur.
~THE END~
More to Truth than Proof
Here’s another story that sprang from the world of Merlin’s Descendants. Fans of the series should recognize some character names and of course, the beloved wolfhounds.
<<>>
“You see this line on your palm?” the old Gypsy woman rasped through a fog of incense in the shadowy carnival tent. She shook her head and closed her eyes. A pained expression crossed her weathered and lined face.
Gabrielle Whythe peered closer at her hand. Her arm ached from holding it stretched across the round table for so long. The light was so dim in the carnival tent that she could barely make out the damask pattern of moons and stars in the red tablecloth. Filmy curtains resembling brightly colored cob webs draped about, adding to the light diffusion.
Outside she could hear her dorm mates giggling. They’d each taken a turn at having their fortune told at the Beltane Renaissance Fair that erupted on campus every May. Gabby hadn’t cared about the mixture of physiological profiling and mystic fakery. But the other three girls had dared her.
Whythes never passed up a dare. Or so Grumpy, her great-grandfather had informed her many times.
“What about my life line?” Gabby asked in reply to the old woman’s question.
“It is broken. Three times. Then it cuts short here.” She drew a cracked fingernail the color of nicotine across the center of Gabby’s palm.
“So?”
“Your life will present you with many hard choices.” The Gypsy clamped her mouth shut and swallowed. Sweat broke out on her brow. Her throat apple bobbed several times. It protruded like a man’s.
Gabby suppressed a giggle. Maybe the fake Gypsy was also a fake woman.
“You will meet an interesting man who will change your life,” the old woman said hurriedly. She dropped her grip on Gabby’s hand and wiped her own palm on her multi-colored and threadbare skirt. She looked away furtively.
“And I’ve studied enough psychology to know you’re hiding something.” Gabby narrowed her focus to the pulse throbbing in the woman’s neck. Too rapid. Pale skin. Sweat. Definitely the telltales of a lie.
A whopping big lie.
“You... um... you are descended from one who helped my people many times.” She lowered her eyes and murmured something that might have been a prayer.
“Yeah, so what. My family traces their genealogy back to God or someone just as important, like King Arthur. Bound to be someone in there with a bleeding heart for the downtrodden.”
Gabby had documents taking the family back to 1774 and the Boston Tea Party. Before that the documents dried up, dissolved into family legend. Without cross-references and records, Gabby refused to believe her Grumpy’s stories. She’d accept DNA evidence, especially if there were records suggestin
g an ancestor had the deep blue eyes that permeated every generation of her family.
Blue eyes were supposed to be recessive. Not in her family. They tended to dominate.
Ancient history was just that, ancient. Gabby liked the rough and tumble frontier politics and survival society of western America. Give her fur traders and wagon trains and Native Americans any day over tired and shopworn myths of the old world.
The Gypsy’s eyes flew open. She glared at Gabby malevolently.
Gabby didn’t back down. She’d learned early how to out-stare her great-grandfather, who claimed all kinds of psychic powers. Including the ability to curse an enemy with boils and sores and other such nonsense.
“Your fate is written in the stars and reflected in your hand,” the Gypsy snarled. The tent grew quiet. All sound outside reduced to a background hum. The candles and incense seemed to stop flickering.
Gabby held her breath in expectation. She didn’t think she could breathe if she wanted to. Her pulse sounded loud in her ears, the only evidence of life and the passage of time.
“I don’t believe in fate. I make my own destiny,” Gabby said on a long exhale. She drew in another breath by sheer force of will.
“The life line in your palm does not lie,” the old woman continued in a sing song voice, almost a chant. “The interruptions reveal a broken path full of obstacles that you will stumble over. Sometimes even fall. And then you will die young. An ignoble death not worthy of your family’s fine heritage.”
“That’s a ball of crap!” Gabby exclaimed with glee. Her family might believe in this hoodoo voodoo stuff, but that didn’t mean she had to. “The broken parts are where I splattered acid during a chemistry experiment. And the life line stops because of scar tissue from a deep cut when I fell out of a tree when I was ten.” Another dare.
“Believe what you will. You cannot change your fate.”
The scene became blurry in Gabriel Griffin Whythe’s memory as a harsh bell jangled her out of a deep sleep. She had put that incident out of her mind at the end of her senior year of college. Right after it happened.
“Nonsense and crap,” Gabby muttered.
Fantastical Ramblings Page 13
