but he had a great love for their keen minds, and above all for the devout lives that they lived, which he said often taught him more about love than the conduct of some of the theology students at the university.
Many a time I wanted to confess the whole state of affairs, but these considerations stopped me, as I've told you. One, that Godwin would be deeply unhappy if he knew that I had been left with child. And secondly, that he might, as any Gentile father might, be alarmed that two daughters born to him were being brought up as Jews, not so much because he would judge me for what I had done, or fear for their souls, but because he knew the persecutions and violence to which our people are often subjected.
Two years ago, he knew what had happened in the matter of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln. And we had written to each other candidly about our fears for the Jewry of London at that time. When we are accused in one place, the violence can break out in another. The hatred of us and the lies about us can spread like a plague.
But such horrors as that pressured me to keep the secret. For what if Godwin knew he had daughters in danger of riot and murder? What would he do?
What finally caused me to put the whole question before him was Meir.
Meir had come into our house just as Godwin had years ago, to study with my father. As I've indicated, my father's blindness did not stop the flow of students. The Torah is written on his heart, as we say it, and after all his years of commentary on the Talmud he knows it by heart as well. And all of Rashi's commentary on Talmud, that he knows too.
The Masters of the Oxford synagogues came to our house regularly to consult with my father. People even brought him their disputes. And Christian friends he had aplenty who sought his advice on simple matters, and now and then, when they needed money, with the laws now against our lending, they came for him to find some way to borrow without the interest being recorded or known. But I don't want to talk of those things. I have never managed my own property.
And very soon after Meir began to come to my father, he managed my affairs for me, and so I didn't have to think of material things.
You see me here dressed richly and in this white wimple and veil and you see nothing to mar the image of a rich woman except this taffeta badge affixed to my breast which brands me as a Jewess, but believe me when I say I seldom think of material things. You know why we are moneylenders for the King and for those of his realm. You know all of this. And you know probably that since the King outlawed our money lending at interest, ways have been found around it, and we still hold in the name of the King a great deal of parchment on many a debt.
Well, my life being devoted to my father and my girls, I didn't consider that Meir might ask for my hand, though I couldn't help but notice what any woman would, and I'm sure even you have noted, that Meir is a fine-looking man of considerable gentleness and keen mind.
When he very respectfully asked for my hand, he put it to my father in the most generous terms--how he hoped, not to deprive him of me and my love, but rather to invite all of us to move with him to the house he'd only just inherited in Norwich. He had many connections there, and relations, and was a friend to the richest of the Jews in Norwich of whom there are many, as I think you know simply from the sight of the many stone houses that stand out so remarkably. You know why we build our houses of stone. I don't have to tell you.
Now my father had almost no sight left to him. He could tell when the sun had risen and he knew when it was night, but as for me and my daughters he knew us by the touch of his gentle hands, and if there was anything that he loved almost as much as he loved us, it was instructing Meir, and guiding Meir's reading. For Meir is not only a student