The Wicked One, as she had called herself, stared at William suspiciously. “Why would we want your robes?”
“No reason!” William replied quickly, and then he looked away into the trees.
The fiend grinned, showing off teeth as yellow and coarse as horns. “Well then, let’s have your robes!” she rasped.
“Fine,” William grumbled. “I guess you can have my robes.” He began to pull them up over his head. “As long as you don’t take my underwear.”
The Wicked One laughed harshly. “Why would we want your underw—” But then she stopped. For as William pulled up his robes past his midsection, she saw, holding up his underwear, a belt inlaid with looping whorls of gold.
“He has an underwear belt of GOLD?” I exclaim.
“Does he not?” the nun replies, looking to Jerome.
Jerome claps his hands. “Indeed he does! Indeed he does. It’s the only thing he has from his mother. Crafted by the goldsmiths of Cordoba. It wasn’t intended, of course, as an underwear belt. And he was not allowed to wear it at the monastery. He must have been thinking of that belt all along . . .” Jerome smiles, shaking his head. “But what a dangerous idea!”
“What idea?” I ask.
Instead of answering, Jerome turns back to the little nun.
When the Wicked One saw the belt inlaid with gold, she cackled, “Oh ho! Now I see! Keeps his treasure in his underwear, does he? Well, give it over!”
“Ah,” said William, sighing, “but I can’t do that. To be naked before strangers is a sin.”
The Wicked One grinned. “Oh, you fools with your morals and your sins. It doesn’t much matter. We were going to kill you anyway. We’ll take the belt after you’re dead.”
“Oh,” said William. “I hadn’t thought of that. In that case, instead of my underwear, what if I give you this?”
William reached out and grabbed the heads of the two nearest fiends in his great palms. And he smashed their heads together with all his might. They exploded like melons. Deep red blood erupted from the collision, spattering William’s bare skin.
For one instant, no one moved. The two fiends dropped, headless, to the earth.
William was as surprised at the explosion as the rest of the fiends. But he collected himself enough to say, “Anyone else want something from me?”
The Wicked One’s pink eyes stared. Then she opened her hideous mouth and screamed, “KILL HIM!”
And the fiends converged on the enormous, nearly naked young monk.
William swung his mighty fist and a fiend’s skull caved in on itself. He thrust out a leg like a horse would, straight back, and connected with a fiend’s stomach, pulping its organs. Another fiend swung a hatchet with both hands. William caught the hatchet by the handle, gripped the fiend’s arm, and broke it. He grabbed another by its long, sinewy neck and began swinging it around, knocking others to the earth. Around and around the fiend went, screaming to the treetops of Malesherbes. At last, William let go. The fiend flew over the heads of its comrades and smashed into a tree, and then slid down, leaving a streaked bloodstain on the bruised bark. Finally one last fiend ran straight at William. William punched him in the face so hard that the fiend’s neck snapped straight back, and he crumpled, lifeless, to the ground.
The fighting stopped. William stood in the center of the road, shoulders heaving, deep red blood spattered across his skin and face like war paint. Along the edges of the path, the fiends had fallen back, panting and staring. The Wicked One held an arm out, to stop the assault.
“You are strong,” the Wicked One rasped. “Strong indeed. But may I ask—does your flesh repel arrows?”
Beside her, three fiends raised their short bows, arrows nocked, and aimed them at William’s heart.
William took a step back. On the ground behind him lay a thick mace. He began to slowly reach for it, keeping his eyes trained on the archers.
And then he remembered the words of his abbot. No weapons. Nothing but flesh and bone.
William took a step back.
The bowstrings creaked.
Another step back.
The bows could not be pulled tighter.
William was up against the donkey now.
“FIRE!” the Wicked One screamed.
Just as she did, William reached down and grabbed the donkey’s leg and yanked it as hard as he could.
The beast’s leg was torn clean off its body.
Which sounds utterly horrific. But you will be glad to know that the donkey did not feel a thing. It just stood there, gazing into the trees.
Quick as a flash of lightning, William whipped the leg around. The arrows thudded into the donkey’s flesh.
The fiends were stunned. The donkey hobbled away placidly on three legs, to crop the ferns at the edge of the road.
William swung the donkey’s fourth leg above his head and advanced on the fiends.
Brandishing his weapon. His weapon of flesh and bone.
Instantly, William was upon the fiends, swinging the leg like an enormous club. He smashed it across the right-most archer and sent him careening into the other two. Fiends closed around him again, and soon all anyone could see was a bristling mass of bodies and weapons and the donkey’s leg rising and falling and the regular spatter of bright red donkey blood and deep red fiend blood.
Finally the Wicked One stood alone in the midst of the path.
William pulled the donkey’s leg behind his head. He hesitated. “Well?” he said. “What do you say now?”
But the Wicked One didn’t say anything. She just turned and ran.
So William stood there, amidst the carnage of fiends, wearing only his underwear and his golden belt. He looked around, said a prayer for the souls of the dead, picked up the blood-spattered leather satchels, and finally walked over to the donkey. He pressed the donkey’s leg to the place where it had once been.
It reattached itself. Instantly.
And then William wandered out of the forest of Malesherbes, leading the contented donkey behind him, and they continued on their way to Saint-Denis.
Silence settles over the table. I say, “That did not happen.”
The little nun shrugs. “Indeed it did.”
“He beat them to death with a donkey’s leg?”
“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard,” Marie puts in.
I try to sound nonchalant when I turn to the old monk. “Jerome, you’re a man of God. Do you consider what William did—a miracle?”
He shrugs. “What else could you call it?”
Now I need to tread delicately. “Does that mean you think he’s a saint?”
Jerome rubs his white beard. “Well, it takes a lifetime of miracles to be a saint,” he says. “And then it requires death.”
“Yes,” I say. “It does.”
“So we shall see when he dies, I suppose,” Jerome concludes.
“If the king has his way, we may see rather soon.”
The innkeeper puts his hands on Jerome’s thin shoulders and announces he’s bringing another round of ale.
“There’s a third child, another boy,” I say. “Does anyone know about him?”
At a nearby table, a thick man with heavy jowls and rough hands stands up. His beard is dark and curly. He strides over to us. “The third child, as you call him? Jacob is his name.”
“You know him?”
“Why wouldn’t I know him? Didn’t he grow up in my village? Didn’t he save my life, a week ago? I know him.”
“What’s your name?”
“My name? Aron. I’m a butcher in Nogent-sur-Oise. The Jewish side of town.”
“Please,” I say, “tell us about the boy.”
So he does.
HAPTER 6
The Butcher’s Tale
First, let me s
et the scene: We’re in the small house of Bathsheba and Moisé, and their son, Jacob. The wanted one.
I must tell you this about Jacob. He is not the most popular boy in our village. He’s very gentle. He’s very polite. But he’s a little strange. Finds it easier to talk to adults than to other children, I gather. Anyway . . .
Who else is there? I’m there. Rabbi Isaac is there. And a young father called Levi, with his little boy.
Levi is nervous. His boy, no more than four years old, has a problem. This is why we’re all gathered here. To see if we can help.
Levi is rocking back and forth from his heels to his toes. “He’s done this for months now. I don’t understand it. His mother doesn’t understand it. Her mother doesn’t understand it, and she understands everything.”
Then it happens. The little boy, Levi’s son, blinks hard, and then opens his eyes very wide, like he’s peering into another world.
“There!” his father shouts. “He’s doing it!”
We watch, and I will admit, it looks so strange, so . . . unnatural . . . that we’re afraid.
“Does he do this often?” I ask.
“All the time,” says his father.
Rabbi Isaac is chewing on the end of his beard. “I fear to say it,” says the rabbi. “But he could be possessed.”
Levi moans and rocks harder, on his toes, on his heels, on his toes again.
But Bathsheba shushes the rabbi. “For shame! Superstitious old man! He’s a little boy! He’s not possessed!”
“He could have been possessed at night!” the rabbi replies. “An evil spirit could have slipped in through an open window!”
“Foolery!” Bathsheba scoffs. “Why would a spirit need to come through a window?”
Moisé murmurs, “The Christians speak of fiends in these forests. A race of men, older even than we, who steal infants and raise them as slaves, and leave their own wretched offspring in the infant’s place. It could be a peasant’s tale, but one never knows these days . . .”
“Are there evil spirits or fiends in the Torah?” Bathsheba objects. “What, God makes new plagues for us? The ancient ones weren’t good enough?”
“There!” Rabbi Isaac points at the boy. Sure enough, he’s doing it again. Blinking hard, then opening his eyes so, so wide. I swear to you, the boy had to be possessed. What other explanation could there be?
We, the elders of the village, stood there, yanking on our beards. The rabbi chewed and chewed and chewed on the end of his.
“May I ask something?”
It’s a small voice, from one of the dark corners of the room.
It belongs to Jacob.
The rabbi frowns. “What is it, my child?”
“I have a question.”
“I have many questions, Jacob. You have but one? What is it?”
But Jacob says, “It’s not for you.”
The rabbi looks offended. Jacob pushes past him and past me and past Levi, until he’s standing in front of the little boy. He looks at him for a long time. And then Jacob says to the little boy, “Where’s your beard?”
“What kind of question is that?” Levi exclaims.
“Moisé, please,” the rabbi objects. “What is this?”
But Jacob reaches out and rubs the little boy’s face. “I mean it! They all have beards. Why don’t you?” He is squinting and looking very seriously at the little boy.
“I don’t have one,” the boy says.
“I can see that. But why not?” Jacob puts his hands on his hips like he’s very confused.
The rabbi rolls his eyes. But the boy smiles. “Because I’m just a little boy!” he says.
“You look pretty big to me,” says Jacob.
“Not that big!” says the boy.
“So no beard yet?”
“No!”
“Soon?”
“No!” The little boy is laughing now, his dark eyes shining in the light of the fire. We’re all getting impatient. What is Jacob doing?
Jacob shrugs. “I guess you just look older than you are.” The little boy beams at him.
And then he does it. He blinks hard and opens his eyes very wide, like he’s peering into some distant world.
No one moves a muscle.
And then, very quietly, Jacob says, “Tell me—why do you do that?”
The little boy shrugs.
And then he says, “My eyelashes get stuck together.”
Not a word. Not even a breath in the little hut.
And then, everyone is laughing. We’re laughing louder and louder. We can’t believe it.
“His eyelashes!” we roar.
“Levi, his eyelashes!”
“You never asked him?”
“For this the sages of Nogent are cast into confusion? For eyelashes?”
We’re making such a racket, the little boy starts to cry. Jacob puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Shh . . . ,” he says. “They’re not laughing at you. They’re laughing at each other, for not knowing something a little boy knew all along.” Jacob rubs the boy’s cheek. “See? You should have a beard. You know more than all these old men put together.”
And I hear Bathsheba whispering, “That’s my boy. Thank you, God, that’s my boy.”
“But that’s not a miracle!” I say. “Smart, yes. Empathic, absolutely. But the other children performed miracles. At least, so you all claim.”
All Aron says is, “Wait.”
The torches came that night. Jacob was curled up in the straw between his parents—I know this because he told me, later. He was listening to their breathing, when he heard, in the distance, an altogether different sound.
Voices were shouting. Young voices. They were laughing.
Then, he heard other voices crying out and livestock braying and the crackle of flames.
“Oh no . . . ,” Marie mutters.
I look at old Jerome. He’s covering his eyes.
Jacob leapt from the bed. “Wake up!” he cried, and immediately his parents were on their feet. He ran to the door of their house and threw it open.
Two big boys sprinted through the lane. Jacob looked at them, hard, and then, like a flash of lightning illuminating the sky, he understood. Christian peasant boys. From the other side of town. They were laughing, but they were scared. This was some sort of prank, some sort of dare.
An eerie, flickering light illuminated the sky. Jacob looked up. The roofs were aflame.
They had dared each other to set our town on fire.
Bathsheba yanked her son back into the hut. Jacob looked at his parents. Their faces were wooden with fear.
“You stay here,” Jacob’s father whispered.
“But I can help!” Jacob said.
Just then, the door banged open. A boy with a leather cap and wide, wild eyes stood in the doorway. He was no more than fifteen. In one hand he held a torch. In the other, a hatchet. He pushed the torch at the walls. The straw sticking out of the mud started to smoke.
Bathsheba picked up an iron poker. Jacob expected her to attack the young man with it. But instead she attacked the opposite wall. With three thrusts she made a hole. The teenager was shoving the torch at the thatched roof now, because all the wall was doing was smoking. Jacob’s father stared, frozen.
No. He wasn’t frozen. Jacob could see his mouth moving. He was praying.
The hole in the wall was big enough for someone to crawl through. Bathsheba grabbed Jacob by the back of his neck and pushed him to it.
“Jacob,” she said, her breath hot and sharp in his ear. “Run. Hide in the woods. We’ll go, too. Meet us at the school, the beit midrash, tomorrow. If there’s no beit midrash left, go to Cousin Yehuda’s. Go!”
Jacob tried to object.
“Go!” She shoved him headfirst through the hole. r />
He tumbled into the alley behind their house. He scrambled to his knees and looked through the hole, into the house. “Mama!” he shouted.
His parents were gone. The roof was on fire.
“Mama! Papa!” he shouted again.
He didn’t know where they were.
So he ran.
“Are you all right?” Aron says, looking around at us. All of us are sweating and rubbing our faces. Our mugs of ale sit untouched on the sticky table.
“Not really,” the innkeeper says, and he wipes his face with his sleeve.
Jacob spent the whole night lying facedown in a streambed, shivering as the water trickled under his stomach. Long stems of yarrow hung from the bank over his head. He noticed this. Jacob had learned all the plants at a very young age. He seemed to have an affinity for plants. In the cold, lonely darkness, the yarrow gave him comfort.
The next morning, our community was gone. And half the houses on the Christian side of town had burned, too. Stupid, stupid kids.
Jacob made his way through the wreckage, looking for the beit midrash. He didn’t find it, for it had burned completely to the ground. He looked for his parents. He didn’t find them, either.
But he did find me, lying beneath a collapsed wall. I was bleeding from my head. Jacob pulled the rubble off me, and then he did the strangest thing—he ran away.
I waited for death to come.
But then, Jacob came back, his hands dripping with yarrow root. He pressed it on my head and started to pray.
And this is the strangest part. He was halfway through the first line of the Shema, our holiest prayer, and my head stopped hurting. Halfway through the second line, and the blood was no longer running down my face. After he’d said the prayer once through, he pulled the yarrow root from my head.
We sat for a while together. I knew what he wanted to ask, but it took him a long time to finally say, “My parents?”
I shook my head and told him I hadn’t seen them at all.
“I have to go to Yehuda’s house,” he said. “Ama said they’d meet me there.”