The Convert Read online

  Hamoutal shakes her head and laughs at the story, but that night she lies awake and listens to the call of the owl, out there on the far slope. It’s like hearing the solitude of time itself.

  2

  A little more than three months later, her second child is born. This time there is nothing to it: the girl slips out of her. They call her Justa. Half-witted prophets are roaming the valley; the locals hear the shrill sounds of hornpipe and chalumeau echo from the hillsides, the drum rolls, the rhythmic wheezing of rumbling-pots, the incantation of threatening prayers. Strident preachers of doom, penitents, beggars and bandits are wandering the land, combing the villages and frightening their people. The villagers stay inside. It is the strange month of February, with its slanted, unearthly sunlight growing stronger by the day.

  One late morning in April, she sees four Norman knights ride through the Grande Porte; she recognises them right away by their armour. The hooves of the horses scrape over the paving stones. Their bearing has a masterful, implacable quality. They dismount and appear to negotiate with the herald. Hamoutal abandons all her chores; she can’t find Yaakov and doesn’t have time to reach David in the synagogue. She flees for the hills in panic, with little Justa hidden in her apron. When she reaches the edge of the cliff above the village, she sits down and stares into the depths to see if they’ll pass her house. The calm of the village remains unbroken, but as dusk fades into night, she wakes in a panic under an ice-cold sky. Their loud laughter rings in the small streets below, and her heart races as she hears the northern tongue of her childhood. The child lies still and limp, bundled into her shawl. The madness of it stabs through her body and mind – what is she doing up here, for God’s sake? The moon has gone, but everything is alive and quivering with an energy she cannot comprehend. The cold remoteness of the stars far above the dead quiet of the forsaken village sends chills down her spine. Somewhere in the spring leaves of an oak tree, something rustles. She waits till the drunken voices vanish through a slamming door and the silence returns. Then she steals back down along the steep, rocky path; in the darkness, it takes her almost half an hour. She shivers from head to foot as she walks, rubbing her baby girl to warm her up. At home, her husband opens the door and stares at her in horror. She creeps inside and lays the child by the fire, which slowly revives her. Hamoutal is frantic; her fear erupts in a flood of tears, almost unstoppable. Then she drags herself into her dark bed and falls asleep with her arm around her child.

  On warm mornings in June, she bathes with the children in the wide pools formed here and there by the Nesque. The water is cool and invigorating; she can wash herself undisturbed among the bushes. After Yaakov heads for home, as her little girl sleeps on the bank, she removes her clothes and goes deeper into the water. She can’t swim, but she enjoys the feel of water up to her chest. She leans back and lets herself float for a brief moment, her long locks bobbing on the ripples. Then she stands up straight again and feels some foreign object in her hair, a smooth weight sliding down her back – it’s a large water snake, an albino reptile more than a metre long, which wriggles between her legs back into the water and disappears among the swaying water plants. She just manages not to scream as she watches the creature fade into the depths. She steps out of the water and dresses, still in shock. Between two bushes, she glimpses the grinning features of a peeping Tom. She is seized with worry about Yaakov. She sprints all the way home. When she gets there, gasping for breath, nothing is wrong. The boy looks at her in surprise when she throws her arms around him and hugs him tight. That night a shepherd’s young son is nabbed by a wolf in the field where, not long before, Hamoutal and her children were lying asleep together.

  In early 1095, she realises she is pregnant for the third time.

  3

  These days, the old rabbi delegates more and more duties to young David Todros. Word is sent to David’s father that his son will assume the care of the Jewish community in Moniou, and that the couple have decided to stay there for good. They have built a life there, David tells his father, their children are young and healthy, they have a sturdy house near the synagogue, and country life in their small community is a rich source of unexpected happiness. Hamoutal has found peace and quiet there, far away from all the ferment and intrigue of their age. They are safe from Norman knights, he explains; such knights often pass through Narbonne, but are almost never seen in this remote valley. Hamoutal shudders at the thought of returning to Narbonne only to be recognised and dragged off, after all these years, to some place far from her husband and children. David makes sure not to mention the knights who recently came to the village.

  A few years earlier, after a long strategic tussle, a brilliant churchman from the Champagne region, Odo de Châtillon, was elected pope. He took occupancy of the Lateran Palace in Rome and called himself Pope Urban II. This new pope showed a good deal more talent for diplomacy than his reckless, bullheaded predecessor, Gregory VII. He established the Roman Curia, a body that broke with the tradition of papal infallibility and was thus capable of consolidating Rome’s power and prestige. Urban felt deep concern about the safety of the many pilgrims headed east to Jerusalem, who were running into more and more hostility and aggression along the way. He understood very well that his first task was to restore the Church’s tattered reputation in the West – and to that end, he cast a covetous eye on the East. Since the Great Schism with Constantinople forty years earlier, the Roman Church had been compelled to struggle with the Orthodox Church for influence. Urban was determined to do some great deed that would prove his power and boldness. Wherever he turned, people were calling for the liberation of Jerusalem from the accursed Saracens. Why not turn that into an instrument for restoring the glory of the Roman Church, still exhausted from its struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor? How was he to unite all those different forces? The social unrest grew, and not only among the masses; the knights, too, needed some high purpose to serve as an outlet for rising social tensions. Could the Normans who held power over Sicily be of use to him in a campaign for the ground on which the Church of the Holy Sepulchre once stood? How would the Christian knights cross the Mediterranean? The pope had sleepless nights, but a brilliant strategy was budding in his pious mind. He would go out and preach to win support for his plan. He was thinking most of all of his fatherland, France, where the unrest was greatest, but may also have sensed the interest in mounting a military campaign in the East. At night, he would fling himself to the floor of an empty church, pray, and plead for insight, feeling the cold creep into his spine.

  Even in the peaceful valley that David described in his letters, such people passed through now and then – pilgrims and adventurers en route to the Holy City. They could be identified by their excited tone, their religious zeal, their eagerness to proselytise, and their loathing of Saracens and Jews. David preferred to keep such visitors out of the Jewish quarter, but the priest of the Church of Simon Peter at the other end of Moniou liked to have them in the village as long as possible; by putting money in his coffers, they enhanced his status in the region. Not long after David’s light-hearted letter to his father, this friction began to cast a shadow over Moniou. The Jews avoided going too far beyond the central Grande Porte; the Christians were less cautious about mingling but, even so, spent less and less time on the south side of town, near the Portail Meunier and the Jewish quarter. This opened up an invisible rift in the small community, a reflection of what was happening in many parts of Europe. Everything seemed to be propelling them towards a confrontation that no one wanted. The aggression usually went no further than insults, curses and provocations, though once in a while, things got out of hand, and yes, the Jews took most of the blame, so be it. But no political leader, no high-ranking official, had a clear view of the aggression and violence flaring up all over – except perhaps for the one man who saw the potential of that unfocused energy, if properly channelled: the new pontiff of Rome, the sly, worldly Frenchman who had already, in the second year
of his pontificate, made his planned tour of France. He had studied in Reims, become a monk in the Cluniac Order, and climbed the ladder until he attracted Rome’s attention. He was the ideal cement between the fragmented kingdom of France and the Holy See; he also formed a tactical counterweight to the power of the Holy Roman Emperor.

  By the time Pope Urban arrived in the city of Clermont in 1095, after a long journey, he was ready to issue the great call to arms which he had been contemplating for such a long while, and which he hoped would unify the Christian world again.

  His strategy involved shattering the relative peace between Muslims, Christians and Jews in the East; the dividing lines had to be clear and firm. Christ’s tomb had to be hacked out of the Muslim world and made an integral part of Christendom. The only possible course of action was to reconquer Jerusalem. Urban, the brilliant tactician, turned his new idea over and over in his mind, a strange and novel concept to his contemporaries: the ‘holy war’.

  He went to Clermont to pray in the crypt of the Basilica of Notre-Dame-du-Port, and just a few days later, on 27 November 1095, he launched his holy war, somewhere in the fields outside the city, making his historic appeal to join the First Crusade.

  His impassioned speech triggered a response he could never have anticipated. As Urban spoke, several knights echoed his repeated words, God wills it! The prelates and knights in the front rows fell to their knees and thundered in Occitan, Deus lo volt! Preachers shouted it, flung their arms into the air, men wept; horses reared up amid the jostling and tumult, and some knights tore long strips off their robes to make large crosses, which they sewed to the backs. The uniform of the crusaders was born. And when Urban promised his followers that if they defeated Christ’s enemies they would receive a plenary indulgence for their sins, the crowd went wild, cheering, praying, chanting, singing. The enthusiasm spread so fast among the many lost souls in the throng that Urban himself was taken aback. His promise of a plenary indulgence meant that even a murderer could escape eternal damnation by committing other murders during the crusades – as long as the victims were foes of the true faith. We do not know Urban’s exact words, but multiple witnesses mentioned in their summaries of the speech that Urban said they must not wait till Jerusalem to strike down the enemies of the Lord. This was a transparent reference to the Jews; his words gave sanction and legitimacy to the anti-Semitism of many preachers, such as Peter the Hermit in the north.

  Under the feudal system, the gap between rich and poor had grown ever wider. Popular frustration and resentment were mounting, aimed at the wealthy, the clerics and the aristocracy. But the knights were undefeatable, so the people and their priests chose an easier target for their discontent: the Jews who had grown wealthy by lending money and charging interest, the Jews who had murdered Jesus. Wearing old pots and pans on their heads in a laughable attempt to emulate helmeted knights, they formed gangs armed with flails, pitchforks and blunt knives, and shod in clogs or clumsily knotted strips of leather. They trailed after the orderly horsemen, who looked so glorious in their shining armour, with their helmets, their plumes and the colourful trappings on their steeds. They besotted themselves with drink, fornicated by night with the women in their companies, and prayed by day for a plenary indulgence – the more enemies of their Saviour they could kill, the surer their salvation.

  Among the excited believers stood an experienced, capable man who knew his way around Jerusalem: the fierce one-eyed adventurer and commander, Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse. He was placed in charge of the expedition at the head of the Provençal troops, together with the Bishop of Le Puy, who went along as the papal legate. Right away, these two leaders began the mobilisation and missionary work for the great campaign, determined to show the world how great and resilient Christianity had once again become. They promised the Saracens a ‘holy war’. It would be another few years before the Muslims, in outrage at the barbarous attacks on the illustrious city of Antioch, adopted a counterpart to this expression: the word ‘jihad’. Its original meaning was religious zeal or devotion, but from then on, it was haunted by an echo of Urban’s words in Clermont.

  The crusaders mobilised and waited till spring, when the first armies set off for Jerusalem. Raymond’s great force, some 25,000 men, would not march until after the summer of 1096.

  4

  For three days, the mistral blows hard and unrelenting under a cloudless, pitiless sky. The wind is so hard that dogs, sheep and goats squeeze their eyes shut in the glaring sun, turn their hindparts to the gale and lie down behind low walls, rocks and tree trunks, waiting. The evergreen oaks rustle as the wind whistles through their rough branches, solitary and shrill; it presses at walls and shutters with a growl. The lizards stick to their nooks; the gaunt cows low in complaint. Throughout the plains of Provence, the flags and pennants are waving. People drag each other along, cluster into crowds, arm themselves with whatever is at hand. They are poised for action, a rising flood of humanity, afflicted with wind-madness. Plagued by headaches, they sink to their knees on the hard ground. They chant and sing; some villagers retreat into their houses. Cheese crumbles in clenched hands; the wine tastes sour and the olives sharp. At the top of the cliff, to the loud cawing of the circling crows, two Jewish workers, adding one of the last massive stones to the tower, are crushed beneath it. They tumble from the wooden scaffolding and break their necks. Is it really an accident? Their formless bodies roll down the mound of sharp pumice stones and into the bushes, leaving a trail of blood. The mutilated corpses are carried down the steep path to the village and given a simple burial in the Jewish cemetery by the road to the gorge. The villagers pray. They gossip. They curse under their breath.

  It is October 1096. After years of cutting, carving, hauling, sorting, stacking and building, the proud tan tower on Mount Jupiter is almost complete. It catches the first rays of dawn, and as evening falls you can faintly see – coming into the valley from Saltus or standing on the high Plateau d’Albion – something like God’s middle finger glowing in the gathering darkness above the medieval eyrie. The top of this fortification offers a view of the Tour de Durefort on the other side of the valley. At night, an emergency signal can be sent with bronze mirrors and fire from peak to peak, travelling from Marseilles to Moniou and onwards in less than an hour. The region is safe from invasion by the Moors.

  But it’s not the Moors who come. It is an army straight from the core of the people – not an external enemy, but one that was hidden in their hearts, now breaking free, undefeatable, nourished as it is by years of witch-hunts, minor vendettas, vengeance on neighbours, rabble-rousing, mutual accusations, and tall tales of ritual Jewish infanticide, cannibalism, demonic possession, satanic rituals and innocent people abducted by rabbis. A ten-year-old boy is found beaten to death at the entrance to the gorge. The Jews are blamed; there is violence in the streets; the rabbi and priest band together to bring the villagers to their senses. Hate clenches like a muscle in the heart of the community; its energy threatens to swell out of control, burst loose and destroy everything in its path. An armed guard post is set up at the synagogue entrance. The Christians call it a disgrace.

  Raymond of Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse, was a respected man. He was born in 1042, the second son of Pons of Toulouse. By the time Pope Urban II gave his fateful speech in Clermont, Raymond ruled over the whole of rural south-eastern France. All the chroniclers of his day extol his many virtues; he surrounded himself with the noblest of knights and was held in greater prestige than any other military commander. During an earlier visit to Jerusalem, he had lost one eye in a fight. This only strengthened his unassailable image and authority. Knights came from Limousin and Languedoc to join him, even though the Norman armies mocked ‘those Provençals’. His retinue included not only his spiritual guide, the Bishop of Le Puy, Adhémar de Monteil, but also such men as Gaston, Viscount of Béarn and Lord of Saragossa; Seigneur Pierre, Viscount of Castillon; Guilhem V of Montpellier, Raymond’s protégé, who had already be
en to Jerusalem twice; Pierre, Lord of Avignon; Girard of Roussillon; and numerous other men of high rank and station, the elite vanguard of the troops that were now on the move. Behind them came the armed warriors, the armed civilians, and after that the farmers, their carts laden with provisions, equipment and assorted junk. Bringing up the rear were the whooping children, who sometimes walked a long way with the army, the women who decided to follow their husbands, and the sutlers and provisioners with their tempting concoctions; right at the back, a few leathery, desperate old fellows tagged along on the journey to the Holy Land to liberate their Saviour’s hallowed ground from the Saracen Satan. It took days before the whole train was finally in motion, a human snake slithering its way to the heart of the Vaucluse en route to Italy.

  After three days of mistral, one twilit morning the wind abruptly dies. Everything is motionless. The sun rises; it’s a glorious day. The plateaus and valleys, the heights and gorges exude deep peace. A light veil of mist drifts up and over the Arcadian land. This day is a gift of God, Raymond tells Adhémar, we must go. They kneel and pray in the morning sun. Horses whinny and tug at their reins; knights drop to their knees in prayer all over the camp, crossing themselves and bowing their heads. A song rises. Many of the rugged men are deeply moved. Tears run down their faces; their hands are folded in devotion. The banners hang still, as if spellbound; late butterflies flit through the dry oak trees. The world holds its breath.