"You know perfectly well, my beloved Fluria," he wrote, "this has been the most vicious vengeance upon my father that I could conceivably work, to have become a mendicant friar. In fact, my father at once wrote to my relations here to take me captive, and force women upon me until I had come to my senses and given up the fancy to be a beggar and a wayside preacher, dressed in rags.
"Be assured, my blessed one," he wrote, "that nothing so simple has happened. I am on my way to Paris. My father has disowned me. I am as penniless as I might have been had you and I married. But I have taken to myself Holy Poverty, to use the words of Francis, who is esteemed by us as highly as our founder, Dominic, and I will serve only my Lord and King now as the Prior orders me to do."
He went on to write, "I have asked of my superiors only two things: one, that I be allowed to keep my name Godwin, indeed to receive it anew as my new name, as the Lord would call us by a new name when we enter upon this life, and secondly, that I be allowed to write to you. I must confess, to obtain the last indulgence, I revealed some of your letters to my superiors and they marveled at the elevation and loveliness of your sentiments as much as I do myself. Permission for both has been granted, but I am Brother Godwin now to you, my blessed sister, and I love you as one of God's tenderest and dearest creatures, and with only the purest thoughts."
Well, I was astonished by this letter. And I soon learned that others had been astonished by Godwin as well. Happily, he wrote to me, his cousins had given him up as hopeless, seeing in him a saint or an imbecile, neither of which any of them thought to be useful, and they had reported to his father that no blandishment on earth could make Godwin leave the life of the Friars Minor to which he'd given himself.
I received a constant flow of letters from Godwin, as I had before. These became the chronicle of his spiritual life. And in his newfound faith, he had more in common with my people than ever before. The pleasure-loving youth who had so enchanted me was now a serious scholar as my father was a serious scholar, and something immense and wholly indescribable now made the two men in my mind very much alike.
Godwin wrote to me of the many lectures he attended, but also much about his life in prayer--how he had come to imitate the ways of St. Dominic, the founder of the Black Friars, and how he had come to experience what he felt was the love of God in a wholly wondrous way. All judgment dropped from Godwin's letters. The young man who had gone to Rome so long ago had had only harsh words for himself as well as everyone around him. Now this Godwin, who was still my Godwin, wrote to me of the wonders he beheld everywhere he looked.
But, I ask you, how could I tell this Godwin, this wondrous and saintly person who had blossomed from the young shoot I had earlier loved, that he had two children living in England, both being brought up to be exemplary Jewish girls?
What good would such a confession have done? And how might his zeal have affected him, loving as he was, had he known that he had daughters living in the Jewry of Oxford, far from any exposure to the Christian faith?
Now, I have told you that my father did not forbid these letters. He had thought in the early years that they would not go on. But as they did go on, I made them known to him for more reasons than one.
My father is a scholar, as I've told you, and he not only studied the Talmud commentary by the great Rashi, but had translated much of it into French to aid those students who wanted to know it, but did not know the Hebrew in which it was written. As he became blind, he dictated more of his work to me, and it was his desire to translate much of the great Jewish scholar Maimonides into Latin if not French.
It came as no surprise to me that Godwin began to write to me on these very subjects, of how the great teacher Thomas of his order had read some of Maimonides in Latin, and how he, Godwin, wanted to study this work. Godwin knew Hebrew. He had been my father's best pupil.
So as the years passed, I revealed Godwin's letters to my father, and frequently commentary of my father on Maimonides, and even on Christian theology, made its way into the letters I wrote to Godwin.
My father himself would never dictate an actual letter to Godwin, but I think he came to know better and to love better the man whom he believed had once betrayed him and his hospitality and so a form of forgiveness was granted there. It was granted to me at least. And every day, after I was finished listening to my father's lectures to his students, or copying out his meditations for him, or aiding his students to do it, I would retire to my room and write to Godwin, telling him all about life in Oxford, and discussing all these many things.
Naturally in time, Godwin put the question to me: why had I not married? I gave him vague answers, that the care of my father consumed all my time, and sometimes I said simply that I had not met the man who was meant to be my husband.
All this while, Lea and Rosa were growing into beautiful little girls. But you must give me a moment here because if I don't weep for both my daughters I simply cannot go on.
At this point, she did begin to cry, and I knew there was nothing I could do to comfort her. She was a married woman, and a pious Jewish woman, and I couldn't dare put my arms around her. It was not expected. In fact, it was likely forbidden for me to take such a liberty. But when she looked up and saw the tears in my eyes, too, tears I couldn't quite explain because they had as much to do with all she'd told me about Godwin, as about herself, she was comforted by that, and seemed to be comforted by my silence as well, and she went on.
Chapter Ten - Fluria Continues Her Story
BROTHERTOBY, IF YOU EVER MEET MYGODWIN, HEwill love you. If Godwin is not a saint, perhaps there are no saints. And who is the Almighty, Blessed Be He, that he would send me a man so like Godwin just now, and so like Meir, for you are that as well.
Now, I was saying to you that the girls were flowering, and each year grew more lovely, and more devoted to their grandfather, and more a joy to him in his blindness than possibly children are to many a man who can see.
But let me make mention here of Godwin's father, only to say that the man died despising Godwin for his decision to become a Dominican friar, and leaving all his fortune, of course, to his eldest son, Nigel. On his deathbed, the old man exacted a promise from Nigel that he would never set eyes on his brother, Godwin, and Nigel, who was a worldly and clever man, gave in to this with a shrug.
Or so Godwin told me in his letters, because Nigel immediately left the grave of their father in the church and went to France to see the brother he both missed and loved. Ah, when I think of his letters, they were like cool drinking water to me, all of those years, even though I couldn't share with him the joy I had in Lea and Rosa. Even though I kept that secret fastened in my heart.