As Meir came in and stood beside my father, I told all the servants, and the whole body of them had come in to wait on the Earl, to please go out. "Very well, Godwin," I said. "What have you to say to me?" I tried not to cry.
If the people of Oxford knew that two Gentile children had been brought up as Jews, might they not try to harm us? Might there not be some law under which we could in fact be executed? I didn't know.
There were so many laws against us, but then these children were not the legal children of their Christian father.
And would a friar such as Godwin want the disgrace of having his paternity known to everyone? Godwin, so beloved by his students, could not possibly wish for such a thing.
But the power of the Earl was considerable. He was one of the richest in the realm, and had the most power in resisting the Archbishop of Canterbury whenever he chose, and also the King. Something terrible might be done now in whispers and without a public display.
As I considered these things, I tried not to look at Godwin, because I felt only a pure and elevated love when I looked at him, and the worried expression on the face of his brother caused me fear and pain.
I felt again that this was a stalemate. I was gazing at a chessboard on which two figures faced each other, and neither had an opening for a good move.
Don't think me hard at such a moment for calculating. I saw myself as to blame for everything that was now taking place. Even the quiet and pensive Meir was now on my conscience as he had asked for my hand.
Yet I calculated as if I were doing sums.If exposed we will be condemned. But claim them and Godwin faces disgrace.
What if my girls were taken from me, and theirs was to be a life of unendurable captivity in the Earl's castle? This is what I dreaded above all else.
All my deception had been through silence, and now I knew that the chess pieces faced each other and I waited for the reach of the hand.
My father, though offered a chair, remained standing, and he asked Meir if he would take the lamp and light the face of both the men who stood opposite him. Meir was loath to do this, and I knew it, and so I did it, begging the Earl's pardon, and the man only gestured his acceptance and looked directly beyond the flame.
My father sighed and gestured for a chair and then sat down. He put his hands on top of his walking stick.
"I don't care who you are," he said. "I despise you. Trouble my house, and you inherit the wind."
Godwin drew himself up and came forward. My father, hearing his footsteps, raised his walking stick as if to push him back, and Godwin stopped in the center of the room. Oh, this was agony, but then Godwin, the preacher, the man who moved crowds in the squares of Paris, and in the lecture halls, began to speak. His Norman French was perfect, and of course so was my father's and so is mine as you can hear.
"The fruit of my sins," he said, "is now before me. I see what my selfish acts have wrought. I see now that what I so thoughtlessly did has had grave consequences for others, and that they have accepted these consequences with generosity and grace."
I was deeply moved by this, but my father indicated his impatience.
"Take these children from us, and I will condemn you before the King. We are, if you have even for a moment forgotten it, the King's Jews, and you will not do such a thing."
"No," said Godwin in the same meek and eloquent manner. "I would do nothing without your consent, Magister Eli. I haven't come into your house with the pretense of any demand. I come with a request."
"And what could that be? Mind you," said my father, "I am prepared to take this stick and beat you to death."
"Father, please," I begged him to stop and listen.
Godwin accepted this as though he had the patience to be stoned in public without lifting a finger. Then he made his intentions clear.
"Are there not two of these beautiful children?" he said. "Has not God sent two because of our two faiths? Look at the gift he's given to Fluria and to me. I, who never expected to have the devotion or love of a child, am now possessed of two, and Fluria lives daily, without disgrace in the loving company of her offspring, which might have been torn from her by someone cruel.
"Fluria, I beg you: give one of these beautiful girls to me. Magister Eli, I beg you, let me take one of these beautiful girls from this house.
"Let me take her to Paris to be educated. Let me watch her grow up, Christian, and with the loving guidance of a devoted father and uncle.
"You keep close to your heart always the other. And which you choose to come with me, I will accept, for you know their hearts and you know which one is most likely to be happy in Paris, and happy with a new life, and which is more timid, perhaps, or more devoted to her mother. That both love you, I have no doubt.
"But Fluria, I beg you, realize what it means to me as a believer in Jesus Christ, that my children cannot be with their own, and that they know nothing of those most important resolves their father has made: to serve his Lord Jesus Christ in thought, word, and deed forever. How can I return to Paris without begging you: give one of the girls to me. Let me raise her as my Christian daughter. Let us divide between us the fruit of our wicked fall, and our great good fortune that these beautiful girls have life."
My father went into a fury. He rose to his feet, clutching his walking stick.
"You disgraced my daughter," he shouted, "and now you come wanting to divide her children? Divide? You think you are King Solomon? If I had my sight I'd kill you. Nothing would stop me from it. I would kill you with my bare hands, and bury you beneath the backyard of this house to keep it from your Christian brethren. Thank your God that I'm blind and sick and old and can't tear your heart out. As it is, I order you out of my house, and insist that you never return, and do not seek to see your daughters. The door is barred against you. And allow me to put your mind at ease on this account: these children are legally ours. How will you prove otherwise to anyone, and think what scandal you bring upon yourself if you do not leave here in silence and give up this brash and cruel request!"
I did everything in my power to restrain my father, but with a sharp elbow he pushed me to the side. He swung his walking stick, his blind eyes searching the room before him.
The Earl was stricken with sorrow, but nothing could touch the look of misery and heartbreak in Godwin. As for Meir, I couldn't tell you how he was taking this argument because it was all I could do to put my arms around my father and beg him to be quiet, to let the men speak.
I was in terror, not of Godwin, but of Nigel. Nigel was the one after all with the power to seize my two daughters, if he chose, and to subject us to the harshest judgment. Nigel was the one with money enough and men enough to seize the girls and lock them up in his castle miles from London and deny me that I would ever see them again.