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.
I became a woman of three great pleasures, a woman who listened to three great songs. The first song was the daily teaching of my beautiful daughters. The second song was my reading and writing for my beloved father who depended upon me often for this, though he had students aplenty to read to him, and the third song was the letters of Godwin, and these three songs became a small choir that soothed and educated and improved my soul.
Don't think me evil that I kept the secret of the children from their father. Remember what was at stake. For even with Nigel and Godwin reconciled and writing regularly to each other, I couldn't envisage anything coming of my revelation except disaster all around.
Let me tell you more of Godwin. He told me all about his classes and his disputations. He would not be able to teach theology until he was thirty-five, but he was preaching regularly to large crowds in Paris and had quite a following. He was happier than he had ever been in his life, and he said over and over again, he wanted me to be happy, and asked why I had not married.
He said the winters were cold in Paris, just as they were in England, and the friary was cold. But he'd never known such joy, when he had had pockets of money to buy all the firewood he would want, or all the food. All he wanted in the world was to know how it went with me, and had I too found happiness.
When he wrote of this, the untold truth pressed in on me painfully, because I was so happy with our two daughters at my knee. Gradually, I realized that I wanted Godwin to know. I wanted him to know that these two fine flowers of our love had bloomed safely and gave forth their beauty now in innocence and with protection.
And what made the secret all the more painful was this, that Godwin continued so ardently with his Hebrew studies, that he often disputed with the learned Jews in Paris, and would go to their houses to study with them and talk with them, just as he had long ago done when he went back and forth between London and Oxford. Godwin was as much now as ever a lover of our people. Of course he wanted to convert those with whom he disputed,