by Adam Gidwitz
“Once you are free from the city, do not go to Yehuda’s. If they suspect us at all, they may search for you there. Go as far north as you can, to Normandy. It will take you many days. At the monastery of Mont-Saint-Michel, on the coast, I have a friend. Brother Odo. He is in charge of the greatest scriptorium in France. Give him the books. He will copy them, and copy them again. Thus, the wisdom of the Talmud will be saved. At least, as much of it as you can carry.”
They sat in silence. The sun began to warm the day. The thin grass between their feet glowed with rays of the slanting sun.
“Well,” said Jacob, at last, “if this is the best plan we’ve got, I’m taking more than one book.”
• • •
The day had become warm, and it was made warmer by the crush of bodies on the south side of the old bridge. They had streamed across from the south bank—mostly university students, as well as their masters. There was also a large group of friars—Dominican monks in brown robes.
Jeanne, Jacob, William, and Gwenforte pushed through the throng until they were nearly at the front. The brown wool of the friars’ robes was scratchy, and the sun shone brightly on the children’s faces. They peered around the backs of the other spectators. Except for William, who peered over their heads.
In the middle of the bridge stood the pyre—a huge pile of logs, kindling, and hay. It was aching for a flame, like an unlit candle at dusk. No more than a spark would be needed to set it roaring to life. On the far side of the pyre, the children saw a clutch of nobles standing amid the merchants and Jews who had come from their homes on the north bank.
“Do you see him?” Jeanne whispered. William leaned down to bring his head beside Jeanne’s and Jacob’s and pointed around the brown sleeve of a friar. Standing head and shoulders above the crowd to the north was Michelangelo di Bologna. In the morning sunlight, his eyes were tiny red points of fire.
Jeanne took William’s big palm in her right hand, and Jacob’s small one in her left. Both were damp with sweat. The children peered at one another. “I think we should pray,” Jacob whispered.
“A Jewish prayer or a Christian one?” William asked.
“I don’t think it matters,” Jacob replied.
Jeanne looked surprised—and then she didn’t. She smiled.
So they closed their eyes—and Gwenforte, nestled between Jeanne’s legs, sat down—and William said, “O Lord God, we have tried to hear Your voice above the din of other voices. Above the heresy—and even above the orthodoxy. Above the abbots and the masters. Above the knights and even the kings. And though this world is confusing and strange, we believe we have heard Your voice and followed it—followed it here, to this place. Now please, God, hear us. Help us, watch over us, and protect us as we face the flames of hate. Please, God. Please.”
And they all said, “Amen.”
• • •
A single trumpet blared through the warm afternoon. It was followed by a platoon of horns, blasting a fanfare above the bridge and out over the glassy Seine. The friars and students around the children shifted eagerly and tried to peer over one another to see who was coming. On the north side of the bridge, the crowd was parted by palace guards. More guards followed, carrying a litter behind them—the sort of thing an ancient king might be carried around on. But instead of a king, this litter carried books. They were stacked high on the litter—half a dozen wide, a dozen deep, a dozen long. And then, behind the litter, there came another one. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And still, they kept coming.
Twenty-four litters in all.
Jeanne thought she might throw up.
Even from a distance, one could tell the books were beautiful. Some were richly decorated, their hammered-gold covers encrusted with pearls and emeralds. Others were bound in the finest leather, tanned to a deep mahogany, shining and oily in the sunlight. Others were worn, tattered, practically falling apart. To Jacob, these tattered ones were the most beautiful of all. They were not the property of some wealthy community, with money to bind their books in gold. But they were loved all the more, the only possession of a poor section of Jewish houses on the outskirts of some French town, passed down delicately from generation to generation, losing tiny scraps of leather and corners of parchment each year. Jeanne, too, noticed those first. They reminded her of Rabbi Yehuda’s thin bluish hands. Both Jeanne and Jacob silently resolved to grab as many of those old, tattered volumes as they could carry as soon as Michelangelo’s diversion began.
The books were dumped, like animal refuse out of a wheelbarrow, onto the pyre. William winced as each book landed, as if each were a sleeping infant being dropped. He tried to look away from the books, to the guards that were arraying themselves around the pyre. He wondered whether he could fight them all off with one hand, while he cradled half a dozen books or so with his free arm.
Another blast of trumpets. King Louis appeared on the far side of the pyre. Blanche of Castile took her place to his right, Jean de Joinville to his left. Joinville’s expression was mournful. Blanche, on the other hand, glowed with the certainty of a zealot. Jeanne indicated the queen mother with a finger and whispered to Jacob, “She scares me.” Jacob couldn’t even nod. His whole body felt frozen.
“Oyez! Oyez!” a fat man called, clad entirely in the blue of the palace. He looked like a berry. “Oyez! Oyez! Witness the cleansing of the books of the Jews! Their error will rise on the wind like ashes! Let them see their folly and give themselves over to the mercy of Christ!”
There were some scattered calls of support. “We hear! We hear!” and “Burn the heresy!” But the Jews on the north side of the bridge shifted silently, like buoys in a bay.
“Oyez!” cried the crier again. “The king would have it known that any Jew who converts to the True Faith on this day, here on the Old Bridge, shall receive from him a sum of forty gold ecus! Behold the king’s generosity!”
An explosion of murmurs on both sides of the bridge. The king would pay Jews to convert? “That’s preposterous!” a friar behind the children bellowed. A student leaned to his friends and said, “I’ll convert. You think I can pass for Jewish?”
The crowd quieted. Everyone strained their necks to see if a Jew would come forward to take the king’s offer.
Just a few days ago, William and Jeanne would have begged Jacob to follow Christ, and save his soul from damnation. Now the idea of it seemed ludicrous. If God would save their souls, surely, surely He would save Jacob’s, too. What difference was there between them, except the language in which he prayed? And the idea of converting here, on this bridge, for money? It would be as degrading as being publicly whipped. What was a Jew, that his faith could be bought?
And indeed, no one came forward. The crowd waited, hushed. A warm breeze swept over the Seine. And no one came.
Finally Louis waved a hand at the crier.
“Oyez! The error of the Jews shall be consigned to cleansing flames, that the kingdom of France shall—”
“STOP!”
The voice was loud and round like a cathedral bell.
“STOP!” It came again. Michelangelo di Bologna was pushing his way through the crowd on the north side of the bridge, past the nobles and then past the guards. He clambered in his black robes, his fat legs crawling over logs and books, up onto the pyre. “STOP!” he bellowed a third time.
Whispers whipped and cracked through the crowd.
“Michelangelo!” Joinville shouted. “Get down! Don’t be a fool!”
“These books shall not burn!” Michelangelo intoned. “They are the wisdom of God!”
The tension in the crowd built. The silence grew. It hung over the bridge like a cresting wave.
And then it broke.
Nobles threatened Michelangelo. The Dominicans shouted curses at the blasphemous Benedictine. Students laughed and pointed, revelin
g in the spectacle, the drama.
Jeanne, Jacob, and William had lost all use of their hearts and lungs. They stood, dumb, bloodless, and breathless.
“They will burn!” Blanche of Castile shouted, her voice shrill and thin. “And you will burn with them!”
“Mother!” the king exclaimed.
She pointed at the books, her sapphire ring flashing in the morning sun, and screamed, “Light it!”
It was not clear who obeyed her order. It may have been a soldier. It may have been a spectator, wrestling the fire from one of the palace guards. But a torch was thrown onto the pile of books and tinder. Michelangelo’s small eyes grew wide.
“No!” William cried. He lunged forward, past the Dominican friars. Two guards drew their swords to stop him. The flames crackled and roared to life.
“Now!” Michelangelo was bellowing. Or was he saying no?
Jeanne and Jacob were frozen. Staring. William was, too, the soldiers’ swords leveled at his neck.
But Gwenforte bolted forward, past the palace guards, and into the smoke and the flames.
Jeanne screamed, “Gwenforte!” She ran after her dog. Jacob ran after her.
Gwenforte had bounded up among the burning books to Michelangelo and was trying to grab his already-flaming robes. As Jeanne tried to leap onto the pyre after Gwenforte, a soldier caught her by the shoulder and turned her around. And then the soldier was stumbling sideways, his helmet crushed by William’s fist. Jeanne charged into the flames. Another soldier swung his sword at William. William raised his hand to protect himself—and the blade bit into his forearm. He bellowed in pain. Jacob, meanwhile, was collecting as many books as he could hold.
An instant later, Jeanne was carrying Gwenforte, singed and whining, out of the flames and toward the south bank. Jacob was running after her, his arms full of books, and William was behind them both, one huge fist raised in warning, while his bloody arm was cradled across his stomach. Everyone was shouting and pointing at them. One voice, high and shrill, rose above the tumult. “The children! Stop the children!” Soldiers began shoving people out of the way. William did not even see them. He was staring at Michelangelo. The great monk had fallen to his knees. The king looked on, horrified. Joinville was covering his face. Michelangelo’s robes were on fire. The soldiers were gaining. Blood had soaked William’s fine shirt. He turned and ran after Jeanne and Jacob.
Jacob swam through the crowd, his arms overflowing with books, trying not to trip, trying to see. “Hey! You!” a Dominican friar cried. And he grabbed at the books in Jacob’s arms.
“No!” Jacob shouted, wrenching them back. But another friar grabbed at them and tore them from the small boy’s grip. They tumbled to the paving stones at the foot of the bridge, the ancient leather splitting, pages of parchment flying. Jacob bent down to retrieve them. But William, fleeing the soldiers, stumbled into Jacob and shoved him forward.
“I dropped the books!” Jacob cried.
“No time!” William shouted. The soldiers were a yard away, shoving friars and students from their path. William pushed Jacob again, and they came down off the bridge into the muddy road on the south bank. Jeanne had already ducked down a narrow lane, and William guided Jacob after her. The big boy stole a last glance behind him; Jacob and Jeanne looked, too. A soldier stood at the end of the bridge, brandishing his sword, looking left and right. Another was collecting what was left of the tattered books from the ground, with the friars’ help, to bring them back to the pyre. And on the pyre, his legs trapped among books and flaming logs, his torso slumped over at a gruesome angle, the body of Michelangelo di Bologna burned.
“He’s dead?” I say. “Brother Michelangelo is dead?”
“Burned with the books of the Jews,” the nun replies.
Around the table, we are cradling our heads in our hands or rubbing our tired brows with shaking fingers.
“When was the burning?” I ask.
“Yesterday,” says Aron. “It was a day of great mourning for all Jews.”
“For all France,” says Jerome. “And now my William and his friends are hunted. Hunted by the king, his knights, and the queen mother. All for trying, and failing, to save a few books.”
“All for trying to save a few books,” Aron echoes.
“That’s the last the kids were heard from?” Marie asks the nun.
The sister gnaws on a fingernail and nods.
Brother Jerome stands up. He stretches his thin arms above his head, and his whole body, especially his white beard, quivers. Then he rubs his bald tonsure and says, “Well, I am expected tonight at the Abbey Maubuisson. I fear they will lock the doors on me if I don’t show soon.” He turns to Marie. “They have an almshouse, you know. They would let you sleep there, if you haven’t the money to afford these lodgings.”
Marie stands up. “Beats the bushes, which is where I figured I’d be sleeping.”
The brewster and the monk thank the innkeeper for his hospitality, bid the assembled company farewell, and head out into the night.
“I’ll retire as well,” says Gerald, pushing back his stool. “In the morning, perhaps we will see the king march by. I’ll record it for my chronicle.”
Aron the butcher stands up, too. His eyes are full and wet. “Twenty-four cartloads . . .” he’s muttering. “Twenty-four cartloads . . . What is that, twenty thousand books?” His voice is breaking.
I’ve done the math in my head. Twenty thousand sounds about right.
“I doubt there’s a single Talmud left in all of France.”
“I wouldn’t think that there is,” the nun agrees.
Aron closes his eyes and mutters, “My God . . . my God . . . why have you forsaken us?” Then he sighs and slouches off to one of the inn’s small bedrooms, to collapse on a pile of straw. Gerald the Scot does the same.
Now it’s just me and the nun sitting together. The innkeeper is collecting empty cups and swabbing the tables. There are a couple of men sitting off in a corner of the inn, and one drunk Franciscan friar, asleep on a table. That’s it.
“So that was their crime?” I ask. “Attempted larceny? Trying to steal some books, and failing?”
The little sister’s lips are ironic. “It was indeed a crime most terrible—in the eyes of the king and the queen mother.”
“And what happens next?” I say.
“Why would you want to know so badly?” Her eyes glitter over clasped hands.
I do not answer. After a moment, I say, “Do I really need to tell you? Or do you already know that, too?”
Her laughter is like bells. “Maybe I do,” she says.
“And you know what happened to the children after the burning.”
“Maybe I know that, too.”
“Tell me.”
She smiles at me coyly.
HAPTER 22
The Tenth Part of the Nun’s Tale
The sunlight was offensive. It made the infant green buds glow. It glimmered through branches and turned bare sod gold. It had no business shining so gloriously on such a miserable day as this.
Jeanne, Jacob, and William sat on the earth in the wood of Vincennes, their backs against the smooth bark of young trees. Gwenforte’s head was in Jeanne’s lap because Jeanne was crying the hardest. But even Gwenforte seemed to be crying. Yellow streaks ran from the corners of her eyes. It was not clear what could have caused them but tears.
After a while, Jeanne said, “I never got to say I was sorry.”
William wiped his face with a big hand. His arm was wrapped in yarrow and mud, thanks to Jacob’s quick work. “For what?” William asked.
“Calling him fat.”
“When did you call him fat?” said William.
“When I was four.”
William sniffed hard. “You also called him wicked, as I recall.”
“He deserved tha
t.”
William snorted, half laugh, half sob.
“It wouldn’t have been worth it,” Jacob muttered.
“What wouldn’t?”
“Michelangelo dying. Even if we saved every Talmud. It’s not worth it.” He started crying harder. He shed tears for the red, fat, wicked monk and tears that he had yet to shed for his parents, like one river flowing into another. Gwenforte got up, walked over to him, and tried to nuzzle her head under his chin. He let her, holding her soft white face close to his.
“Why?” Jacob whispered. The trees creaked in the mocking sunlight of the late afternoon. “Why would God let it happen?”
• • •
They slept that night against the honeyed walls of the Grandmontine abbey. They did not dare go inside, for while they had failed—utterly failed—to save a single book, still they had tried. For that, they were likely outlaws. False saints or pagan sorcerers. What had been their divine gift was now their mortal sin.
So they slept with their backs propped against the wall at the farthest point from the abbey door, and when dawn came golden and warm, they were up with the thrush and pushing north as fast as they could go.
But there was discord.
“We should go back to Saint-Denis,” Jacob announced, the thin branches creaking over their heads.
“We can’t go back there,” Jeanne said. “It’s where Michelangelo lives . . . lived.” Pause. After a moment, Jeanne said, “My village is safer.”
“They know where you’re from. Abbot Hubert knows for sure.”
“But they won’t ask him!”
“I want to see Rabbi Yehuda,” Jacob murmured.
“It’s not safe!” Jeanne insisted.
“But it’s safe to see your parents?”
Gwenforte acted as their scout, ghostly and white, leading them through the trees. They soon found the road but they avoided it, preferring instead the obscurity of the wood. Each child looked haggard, haunted by the image of Michelangelo, surrounded by books, burning alive.
