Now it was the third week in November, and the woods rang with the noise
of pheasant-shooting. No one hunted that steep, cramped country except the
village beagles, who, as often as not, escaped from their kennels and made
a day of their own. Dan and Una found a couple of them towling round the
kitchen-garden after the laundry cat. The little brutes were only too
pleased to go rabbiting, so the children ran them all along the brook
pastures and into Little Lindens farm-yard, where the old sow vanquished
them—and up to the quarry-hole, where they started a fox. He headed for
Far Wood, and there they frightened out all the pheasants who were
sheltering from a big beat across the valley. Then the cruel guns began
again, and they grabbed the beagles lest they should stray and get hurt.
‘I wouldn’t be a pheasant—in November—for a lot,’ Dan panted, as he caught
_Folly_ by the neck. ‘Why did you laugh that horrid way?’
‘I didn’t,’ said Una, sitting on _Flora_, the fat lady-dog. ‘Oh, look! The
silly birds are going back to their own woods instead of ours, where they
would be safe.’
‘Safe till it pleased you to kill them.’ An old man, so tall he was almost
a giant, stepped from behind the clump of hollies by ‘Volaterrae.’ The
children jumped, and the dogs dropped like setters. He wore a sweeping
gown of dark thick stuff, lined and edged with yellowish fur, and he bowed
a bent-down bow that made them feel both proud and ashamed. Then he looked
at them steadily, and they stared back without doubt or fear.
‘You are not afraid?’ he said, running his hands through his splendid grey
beard. ‘Not afraid that those men yonder’—he jerked his head towards the
incessant pop-pop of the guns from the lower woods—‘will do you hurt?’
‘We-ell’—Dan liked to be accurate, especially when he was shy—‘old Hobd—a
friend of mine told me that one of the beaters got peppered last week—hit
in the leg, I mean. You see, Mr. Meyer _will_ fire at rabbits. But he gave
Waxy Garnett a quid—sovereign, I mean—and Waxy told Hobden he’d have stood
both barrels for half the money.’
‘He doesn’t understand,’ Una cried, watching the pale, troubled face. ‘Oh,
I wish——’
She had scarcely said it when Puck rustled out of the hollies and spoke to
the man quickly in foreign words. Puck wore a long cloak too—the afternoon
was just frosting down—and it changed his appearance altogether.
‘Nay, nay!’ he said at last. ‘You did not understand the boy. A freeman
was a little hurt, by pure mischance, at the hunting.’
‘I know that mischance! What did his Lord do? Laugh and ride over him?’
the old man sneered.
‘It was one of your own people did the hurt, Kadmiel.’ Puck’s eyes
twinkled maliciously. ‘So he gave the freeman a piece of gold, and no more
was said.’
‘A Jew drew blood from a Christian and no more was said?’ Kadmiel cried.
‘Never! When did they torture him?’
‘No man may be bound, or fined, or slain till he has been judged by his
peers,’ Puck insisted. ‘There is but one Law in Old England for Jew or
Christian—the Law that was signed at Runnymede.’
‘Why, that’s Magna Charta!’ Dan whispered. It was one of the few history
dates that he could remember. Kadmiel turned on him with a sweep and a
whirr of his spicy-scented gown.
‘Dost _thou_ know of that, babe?’ he cried, and lifted his hands in
wonder.
‘Yes,’ said Dan, firmly.
‘Magna Charta was signed by John,
That Henry the Third put his heel upon.
And old Hobden says that if it hadn’t been for her (he calls everything
“her,” you know), the keepers would have him clapped in Lewes Gaol all the
year round.’
Again Puck translated to Kadmiel in the strange, solemn-sounding language,
and at last Kadmiel laughed.
‘Out of the mouths of babes do we learn,’ said he. ‘But tell me now, and I
will not call you a babe but a Rabbi, _why_ did the King sign the roll of
the New Law at Runnymede? For he was a King.’
Dan looked sideways at his sister. It was her turn.
‘Because he jolly well had to,’ said Una, softly. ‘The Barons made him.’
‘Nay,’ Kadmiel answered, shaking his head. ‘You Christians always forget
that gold does more than the sword. Our good King signed because he could
not borrow more money from us bad Jews.’ He curved his shoulders as he
spoke. ‘A King without gold is a snake with a broken back, and’—his nose
sneered up and his eyebrows frowned down—‘it is a good deed to break a
snake’s back. That was _my_ work,’ he cried, triumphantly, to Puck.
‘Spirit of Earth, bear witness that that was my work!’ He shot up to his
full towering height, and his words rang like a trumpet. He had a voice
that changed its tone almost as an opal changes colour—sometimes deep and
thundery, sometimes thin and waily, but always it made you listen.
‘Many people can bear witness to that,’ Puck answered. ‘Tell these babes
how it was done. Remember, Master, they do not know Doubt or Fear.’
‘So I saw in their faces when we met,’ said Kadmiel. ‘Yet surely, surely
they are taught to spit upon Jews?’
‘Are they?’ said Dan, much interested. ‘Where at?’
Puck fell back a pace, laughing. ‘Kadmiel is thinking of King John’s
reign,’ he explained. ‘His people were badly treated then.’
‘Oh, we know _that_,’ they answered, and (it was very rude of them, but
they could not help it) they stared straight at Kadmiel’s mouth to see if
his teeth were all there. It stuck in their lesson-memory that King John
used to pull out Jews’ teeth to make them lend him money.
Kadmiel understood the look and smiled bitterly.
‘No. Your King never drew my teeth: I think, perhaps, I drew his. Listen!
I was not born among Christians, but among Moors—in Spain—in a little
white town under the mountains. Yes, the Moors are cruel, but at least
their learned men dare to think. It was prophesied of me at my birth that
I should be a Lawgiver to a People of a strange speech and a hard
language. We Jews are always looking for the Prince and the Lawgiver to
come. Why not? My people in the town (we were very few) set me apart as a
child of the prophecy—the Chosen of the Chosen. We Jews dream so many
dreams. You would never guess it to see us slink about the rubbish-heaps
in our quarter; but at the day’s end—doors shut, candles lit—aha! _then_
we become the Chosen again.’
He paced back and forth through the wood as he talked. The rattle of the
shot-guns never ceased, and the dogs whimpered a little and lay flat on
the leaves.
‘I was a Prince. Yes! Think of a little Prince who had never known rough
words in his own house handed over to shouting, bearded Rabbis, who pulled
his ears and filliped his nose, all that he might learn—learn—learn to be
King when his time came. Hé! Such a little Prince it was! One eye he kept
on the stone-throwing Moorish boys, and the other it roved about the
streets looking for his Kingdom. Yes, and he learned to cry softly when he
was hunted up and down those streets. He learned to do all things without
noise. He played beneath his father’s table when the Great Candle was lit,
and he listened as children listen to the talk of his father’s friends
above the table. They came across the mountains, from out of all the
world; for my Prince’s father was their councillor. They came from behind
the armies of Sala-ud-Din: from Rome: from Venice: from England. They
stole down our alley, they tapped secretly at our door, they took off
their rags, they arrayed themselves, and they talked to my father at the
wine. All over the world the heathen fought each other. They brought news
of these wars, and while he played beneath the table, my Prince heard
these meanly-dressed ones decide between themselves how, and when, and for
how long King should draw sword against King, and People rise up against
People. Why not? There can be no war without gold, and we Jews know how
the earth’s gold moves with the seasons, and the crops, and the winds;
circling and looping and rising and sinking away like a river—a wonderful
underground river. How should the foolish Kings know _that_ while they
fight and steal and kill?’
The children’s faces showed that they knew nothing at all as, with open
eyes, they trotted and turned beside the long-striding old man. He
twitched his gown over his shoulders, and a square plate of gold, studded
with jewels, gleamed for an instant through the fur, like a star through
flying snow.
‘No matter,’ he said. ‘But, credit me, my Prince saw peace or war decided
not once, but many times, by the fall of a coin spun between a Jew from
Bury and a Jewess from Alexandria, in his father’s house, when the Great
Candle was lit. Such power had we Jews among the Gentiles. Ah, my little
Prince! Do you wonder that he learned quickly? Why not?’ He muttered to
himself and went on:—
‘My trade was that of a physician. When I had learned it in Spain I went
to the East to find my Kingdom. Why not? A Jew is as free as a sparrow—or
a dog. He goes where he is hunted. In the East I found libraries where men
dared to think—schools of medicine where they dared to learn. I was
diligent in my business. Therefore I stood before Kings. I have been a
brother to Princes and a companion to beggars, and I have walked between
the living and the dead. There was no profit in it. I did not find my
Kingdom. So, in the tenth year of my travels, when I had reached the
Uttermost Eastern Sea, I returned to my father’s house. God had
wonderfully preserved my people. None had been slain, none even wounded,
and only a few scourged. I became once more a son in my father’s house.
Again the Great Candle was lit; again the meanly-apparelled ones tapped on
our door after dusk; and again I heard them weigh out peace and war, as
they weighed out the gold on the table. But I was not rich—not very rich.
Therefore, when those that had power and knowledge and wealth talked
together, I sat in the shadow. Why not?
‘Yet all my wanderings had shown me one sure thing, which is, that a King
without money is like a spear without a head. He cannot do much harm. I
said, therefore, to Elias of Bury, a great one among our people: “Why do
our people lend any more to the Kings that oppress us?” “Because,” said
Elias, “if we refuse they stir up their people against us, and the People
are tenfold more cruel than Kings. If thou doubtest, come with me to Bury
in England and live as I live.”
‘I saw my mother’s face across the candle-flame, and I said, “I will come
with thee to Bury. Maybe my Kingdom shall be there.”
‘So I sailed with Elias to the darkness and the cruelty of Bury in
England, where there are no learned men. How can a man be wise if he hate?
At Bury I kept his accounts for Elias, and I saw men kill Jews there by
the tower. No—none laid hands on Elias. He lent money to the King, and the
King’s favour was about him. A King will not take the life so long as
there is any gold. This King—yes, John—oppressed his people bitterly
because they would not give him money. Yet his land was a good land. If he
had only given it rest he might have cropped it as a Christian crops his
beard. But even _that_ little he did not know; for God had deprived him of
all understanding, and had multiplied pestilence, and famine, and despair
upon the people. Therefore his people turned against us Jews, who are all
people’s dogs. Why not? Lastly the Barons and the people rose together
against the King because of his cruelties. Nay—nay—the Barons did not love
the people, but they saw that if the King eat up and destroyed the common
people, he would presently destroy the Barons. They joined then, as cats
and pigs will join to slay a snake. I kept the accounts, and I watched all
these things, for I remembered the Prophecy.
‘A great gathering of Barons (to most of whom we had lent money) came to
Bury, and there, after much talk and a thousand runnings-about, they made
a roll of the New Laws that they would force on the King. If he swore to
keep those Laws, they would allow him a little money. That was the King’s
God—Money—to waste. They showed us the roll of the New Laws. Why not? We
had lent them money. We knew all their counsels—we Jews shivering behind
our doors in Bury.’ He threw out his hands suddenly. ‘We did not seek to
be paid _all_ in money. We sought Power—Power—Power! That is _our_ God in
our captivity. Power to use!
‘I said to Elias: “These New Laws are good. Lend no more money to the
King: so long as he has money he will lie and slay the people.”
‘“Nay,” said Elias. “I know this people. They are madly cruel. Better one
King than a thousand butchers. I have lent a little money to the Barons,
or they would torture us, but my most I will lend to the King. He hath
promised me a place near him at Court, where my wife and I shall be safe.”
‘“But if the King be made to keep these New Laws,” I said, “the land will
have peace, and our trade will grow. If we lend he will fight again.”
‘“Who made thee a Lawgiver in England?” said Elias. “I know this people.
Let the dogs tear one another! I will lend the King ten thousand pieces of
gold, and he can fight the Barons at his pleasure.”
‘“There are not two thousand pieces of gold in all England this summer,” I
said, for I kept the accounts, and I knew how the earth’s gold moved—that
wonderful underground river! Elias barred home the windows, and, his hands
about his mouth, he told me how, when he was trading with small wares in a
French ship, he had come to the Castle of Pevensey.’
‘Oh!’ said Dan. ‘Pevensey again!’ and looked at Una, who nodded and
skipped.
‘There, after they had scattered his pack up and down the Great Hall, some
young knights carried him to an upper room, and dropped him into a well in
a wall, that rose and fell with the tide. They called him Joseph, and
threw torches at his wet head. Why not?’
‘Why, of course,’ cried Dan. ‘Didn’t you know it was——’ Puck held up his
hand to stop him, and Kadmiel, who never noticed, went on.
‘When the tide dropped he thought he stood on old armour, but feeling with
his toes, he raked up bar on bar of soft gold. Some wicked treasure of the
old days put away, and the secret cut off by the sword. I have heard the
like before.’
‘So have we,’ Una whispered. ‘But it wasn’t wicked a bit.’
‘Elias took a morsel of the stuff with him, and thrice yearly he would
return to Pevensey as a chapman, selling at no price or profit, till they
suffered him to sleep in the empty room, where he would plumb and grope,
and steal away a few bars. The great store of it still remained, and by
long brooding he had come to look on it as his own. Yet when we thought
how we should lift and convey it, we saw no way. This was before the Word
of the Lord had come to me. A walled fortress possessed by Normans; in the
midst a forty-foot tide-well out of which to remove secretly many
horse-loads of gold! Hopeless! So Elias wept. Adah, his wife, wept too.
She had hoped to stand beside the Queen’s Christian tiring-maids at Court,
when the King should give them that place at Court which he had promised.
Why not? She was born in England—an odious woman.
‘The present evil to us was that Elias, out of his strong folly, had, as
it were, promised the King that he would arm him with more gold. Wherefore
the King in his camp stopped his ears against the Barons and the people.
Wherefore men died daily. Adah so desired her place at Court, she besought
Elias to tell the King where the treasure lay, that the King might take it
by force, and—they would trust in his gratitude. Why not? This Elias
refused to do, for he looked on the gold as his own. They quarrelled, and
they wept at the evening meal, and late in the night came one Langton—a
priest, almost learned—to borrow more money for the Barons. Elias and Adah
went to their chamber.’
Kadmiel laughed scornfully in his beard. The shots across the valley
stopped as the shooting-party changed their ground for the last beat.
‘So it was I, not Elias,’ he went on, quietly, ‘that made terms with
Langton touching the fortieth of the New Laws.’
‘What terms?’ said Puck, quickly. ‘The Fortieth of the Great Charter say:
“To none will we sell, refuse, or deny right or justice.”’
‘True, but the Barons had written first: _To no free man._ It cost me two
hundred broad pieces of gold to change those narrow words. Langton, the
priest, understood. “Jew though thou art,” said he, “the change is just,
and if ever Christian and Jew come to be equal in England thy people may
thank thee.” Then he went out stealthily, as men do who deal with Israel
by night. I think he spent my gift upon his altar. Why not? I have spoken
with Langton. He was such a man as I might have been if—if we Jews had
been a people. But yet, in many things, a child.
‘I heard Elias and Adah abovestairs quarrel, and, knowing the woman was
the stronger, I saw that Elias would tell the King of the gold and that
the King would continue in his stubbornness. Therefore I saw that the gold
must be put away from the reach of any man. Of a sudden, the Word of the
Lord came to me saying, “The Morning is come, O thou that dwellest in the
land.”’
Kadmiel halted, all black against the pale green sky beyond the wood—a
huge robed figure, like the Moses in the picture-Bible.
‘I rose. I went out, and as I shut the door on that House of Foolishness,
the woman looked from the window and whispered, “I have prevailed on my
husband to tell the King!” I answered, “There is no need. The Lord is with
me.”
‘In that hour the Lord gave me full understanding of all that I must do;
and His Hand covered me in my ways. First I went to London, to a physician
of our people, who sold me certain drugs that I needed. You shall see why.
Thence I went swiftly to Pevensey. Men fought all around me, for there
were neither rulers nor judges in the abominable land. Yet when I walked
by them they cried out that I was one Ahasuerus, a Jew, condemned, as they
believe, to live for ever, and they fled from me everyways. Thus the Lord
saved me for my work, and at Pevensey I bought me a little boat and moored
it on the mud beneath the Marsh-gate of the Castle. That also God showed
me.’
He was as calm as though he were speaking of some stranger, and his voice
filled the little bare wood with rolling music.
‘I cast’—his hand went to his breast, and again the strange jewel
gleamed—‘I cast the drugs which I had prepared into the common well of the
Castle. Nay, I did no harm. The more we physicians know, the less do we
do. Only the fool says: “I dare.” I caused a blotched and itching rash to
break out upon their skins, but I knew it would fade in fifteen days. I
did not stretch out my hand against their life. They in the Castle thought
it was the Plague, and they ran forth, taking with them their very dogs.
‘A Christian physician, seeing that I was a Jew and a stranger, vowed that
I had brought the sickness from London. This is the one time I have ever
heard a Christian leech speak truth of any disease. Thereupon the people
beat me, but a merciful woman said: “Do not kill him now. Push him into
our Castle with his plague, and if, as he says, it will abate on the
fifteenth day, we can kill him then.” Why not? They drove me across the
drawbridge of the Castle, and fled back to their booths. Thus I came to be
alone with the treasure.’
‘But did you know this was all going to happen just right?’ said Una.
‘My Prophecy was that I should be a Lawgiver to a People of a strange land
and a hard speech. I knew I should not die. I washed my cuts. I found the
tide-well in the wall, and from Sabbath to Sabbath I dove and dug there in
that empty, Christian-smelling fortress. Hé! I spoiled the Egyptians! Hé!
If they had only known! I drew up many good loads of gold, which I loaded
by night into my boat. There had been gold-dust too, but that had been
washed away by the tides.’
‘Didn’t you ever wonder who had put it there?’ said Dan, stealing a glance
at Puck’s calm, dark face under the hood of his gown. Puck shook his head
and pursed his lips.
‘Often; for the gold was new to me,’ Kadmiel replied. ‘I know the Golds. I
can judge them in the dark; but this was heavier and redder than any we
deal in. Perhaps it was the very gold of Parvaim. Eh, why not? It went to
my heart to heave it on to the mud, but I saw well that if the evil thing
remained, or if even the hope of finding it remained, the King would not
sign the New Laws, and the land would perish.’
‘Oh, Marvel!’ said Puck, beneath his breath, rustling in the dead leaves.
‘When the boat was loaded I washed my hands seven times, and pared beneath
my nails, for I would not keep one grain. I went out by the little gate
where the Castle’s refuse is thrown. I dared not hoist sail lest men
should see me; but the Lord commanded the tide to bear me carefully, and I
was far from land before the morning.’
‘Weren’t you afraid?’ said Una.
‘Why? There were no Christians in the boat. At sunrise I made my prayer,
and cast the gold—all—all that gold into the deep sea! A King’s ransom—no,
the ransom of a People! When I had loosed hold of the last bars, the Lord
commanded the tide to return me to a haven at the mouth of a river, and
thence I walked across a wilderness to Lewes, where I have brethren. They
opened the door to me, and they say—I had not eaten for two days—they say
that I fell across the threshold, crying, “I have sunk an army with
horsemen in the sea!”’
‘But you hadn’t,’ said Una. ‘Oh, yes! I see! You meant that King John
might have spent it on that?’
‘Even so,’ said Kadmiel.
The firing broke out again close behind them. The pheasants poured over
the top of a belt of tall firs. They could see young Mr. Meyer, in his new
yellow gaiters, very busy and excited at the end of the line, and they
could hear the thud of the falling birds.
‘But what did Elias of Bury do?’ Puck demanded. ‘He had promised money to
the King.’
Kadmiel smiled grimly. ‘I sent him word from London that the Lord was on
my side. When he heard that the Plague had broken out in Pevensey, and
that a Jew had been thrust into the Castle to cure it, he understood my
word was true. He and Adah hurried to Lewes and asked me for an
accounting. He still looked on the gold as his own. I told them where I
had laid it, and I gave them full leave to pick it up.... Eh, well! The
curses of a fool and the dust of a journey are two things no wise man can
escape.... But I pitied Elias! The King was wroth at him because he could
not lend; the Barons were wroth at him because they heard that he would
have lent to the King; and Adah was wroth at him because she was an odious
woman. They took ship from Lewes to Spain. That was wise!’
‘And you? Did you see the signing of the Law at Runnymede?’ said Puck, as
Kadmiel laughed noiselessly.
‘Nay. Who am I to meddle with things too high for me? I returned to Bury,
and lent money on the autumn crops. Why not?’
There was a crackle overhead. A cock-pheasant that had sheered aside after
being hit spattered down almost on top of them, driving up the dry leaves
like a shell. _Flora_ and _Folly_ threw themselves at it; the children
rushed forward, and when they had beaten them off and smoothed down the
plumage Kadmiel had disappeared.
‘Well,’ said Puck, calmly, ‘what did you think of it? Weland gave the
Sword. The Sword gave the Treasure, and the Treasure gave the Law. It’s as
natural as an oak growing.’
‘I don’t understand. Didn’t he know it was Sir Richard’s old treasure?’
said Dan. ‘And why did Sir Richard and Brother Hugh leave it lying about?
And—and——’
‘Never mind,’ said Una, politely. ‘He’ll let us come and go, and look, and
know another time. Won’t you, Puck?’
‘Another time maybe,’ Puck answered. ‘Brr! It’s cold—and late. I’ll race
you towards home!’
They hurried down into the sheltered valley. The sun had almost sunk
behind Cherry Clack, the trodden ground by the cattle-gates was freezing
at the edges, and the new-waked north wind blew the night on them from
over the hills. They picked up their feet and flew across the browned
pastures, and when they halted, panting in the steam of their own breath,
the dead leaves whirled up behind them. There was Oak and Ash and Thorn
enough in that year-end shower to magic away a thousand memories.
So they trotted to the brook at the bottom of the lawn, wondering why
_Flora_ and _Folly_ had missed the quarry-hole fox.
Old Hobden was just finishing some hedge-work. They saw his white smock
glimmer in the twilight where he faggoted the rubbish.
‘Winter, he’s come, I rackon, Mus’ Dan,’ he called. ‘Hard times now till
Heffle Cuckoo Fair. Yes, we’ll all be glad to see the Old Woman let the
Cuckoo out o’ the basket for to start lawful Spring in England.’ They
heard a crash, and a stamp and a splash of water as though a heavy old cow
were crossing almost under their noses.
Hobden ran forward angrily to the ford.
‘Gleason’s bull again, playin’ Robin all over the Farm! Oh, look, Mus’
Dan—his great footmark as big as a trencher. No bounds to his impidence!
He might count himself to be a man—or Somebody.’
A voice the other side of the brook boomed:
‘I marvel who his cloak would turn
When Puck had led him round
Or where those walking fires would burn——’
Then the children went in singing “Farewell Rewards and Fairies” at the
tops of their voices. They had forgotten that they had not even said
good-night to Puck.