Solomons gold, p.1
Solomon's Gold, page 1
SOLOMON’S GOLD
A Doctor William Gilbert Mystery
LEONARD TOURNEY
Lume Books, London
A Joffe Books Company
www.lumebooks.co.uk
© Leonard Tourney 2023
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The right of Leonard Tourney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Cover art by Imogen Buchanan
To the Coggeshalls of Halstead, Essex; forebears.
CONTENTS
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PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
FIFTY-NINE
SIXTY
SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO
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Men of acute intelligence, without actual knowledge of facts, and in the absence of experiment, easily slip and err.
William Gilbert, De Magnete, 1600
PROLOGUE
Thames Estuary, 1290 A.D.
It is Year of Grace, 1290. Edward, the first of that name, is England’s king. He orders the Jews expelled from the land, both to please the Pope but even more himself, for he hungers after their wealth that he may pay his debts and get the nobility off his back; for them, the Jews are a loathsome plague upon the land. Besides, he believes Jews undermine the virtue of a Christian nation, even those who say they have converted to the true faith.
Or so the king claims, and his word must not be doubted or controverted.
There are also stories about the Jews, terrifying stories. How they sacrifice Christian children, how they perform satanic rituals, how they conspire to take over the world.
And it is for that reason that the boy—Jacob Silva, aged eleven—along with his mother and father, his younger sister, and seventy others of his tribe, have boarded a vessel to go to France where they hope to resettle and worship the Lord God of Israel without impediment. They have taken with them all their worldly goods, and these have been stowed in the hold of the ship; securely, according to the shipmaster, a gaunt-faced man who looks like a fasting cleric, or perhaps a retired pirate. That long, livid scar on his right cheek looks like a battle scar and is a warning to his crew: disobey me at your peril.
Now the tide is out, far out, and the ship rests in the mud and sand of the estuary, awaiting refloating, which the captain says will occur before dawn. In the meantime, while it is still light, he invites his passengers, Israelites all, to disembark and walk with him on the drying sand. The shipmaster says exercise is good for the body and the mind. Best go now, while the opportunity presents itself, he says cheerfully. He beckons them to follow him.
No one objects. He is, after all, the master of the vessel and for now their commander-in-chief. They climb down the ship’s ladder and follow him. He walks forward confidently toward the sea, which is visible as a thin, blue line in the distance.
Jacob Silva is not the only child among them. There are dozens of others. They race ahead of their parents, fascinated by the lure of the distant water, something most of them have never seen; the sea. Their excitement is understandable, their energy infectious.
Parents call them back, bid them be careful, don’t slip or fall. But there’s no restraining them. They are children, already weary of the three day’s confinement below deck in the dark, the cramped, poorly lit space, odoriferous, rat infested, a floating sepulchre. At least here in the open, the air is clear, the stink of rotting seaweed at least natural, the air invigorating with its freshness.
Parents scurry after the children to rein them in, looking toward the sea. They do not notice the captain has turned away, run back to the ship, climbed aboard, and watches them from the bow, bent forward like a second figurehead. They hardly notice that the tide has turned, that the sea is returning, rushing back to its place. It will presently lift the ship off the sand, that it may proceed to its destination; a port in France, a port in Holland or in Spain. History does not record which.
The tide’s return is not slow and measured but rapid and voracious, as though it had a mind to regain ground at any cost. Before they know it, the passengers are knee-deep in water, struggling now to return to the ship. They are alarmed, beginning to realize their peril. They scream, the men as well as the women, dragging their children behind them and then hoisting them on their shoulders. Before they know it, the water is waist high.
All this has transpired in less than an hour. They call out to the shipmaster, who looks down on them from the deck like a gargoyle, or malevolent deity of some different, even more brutal world.
The rope ladder by which they descended has been drawn up. Shipmaster’s orders.
Some of the men and a few of the women appeal to the shipmaster to give aid, to let them come aboard. Have mercy, they cry. In God’s holy name, have mercy. We shall drown, we and our children with us.
But he mocks their misery, laughs cruelly. He calls down to them that they should remember Moses and his command that the Red Sea be parted so that the Israelites might cross on dry land. Perhaps God will perform the miracle a second time and save this small group of pilgrims. This is what the shipmaster says.
His words are like a sermon, the ship’s bow his pulpit.
But Satan is the author of it, this perverse homily. He has written every word.
“Pray to your Hebrew god,” the shipmaster cries, and behind him members of the crew stand looking down as well and snickering. Great fun, this. And don’t the Jews deserve it for crucifying Christ?
The ship’s hold is full of chests containing the Jews’ wealth. Gold and silver cups and plate, jewels to wear upon one’s fingers or hang around a neck, coins of a dozen nations, all discreetly tucked among cloaks and gowns and bed and table linen. The crew is mindful of that, as well.
There is no laughter among those struggling in the water. This is no laughing matter. There is crying rather, appealing not to the shipmaster now but to heaven. The ship rises with the tide as though lifted by divine decree. The sails are set. Overboard, the water is up to shoulders and necks. The tide rushes in even faster. It is diabolical. There is no miracle to be had on this terrible day.
The boy, Jacob, watches his parents struggle, moving their arms frantically, their faces struck with horror. He sees heads disappearing beneath the water, he sees his family drowning, his father, his mother, his little sister. The ship now moves toward the open sea, fully sailed, driven with what captain and crew consider a good wind.
Jacob is a thin, pale boy of eleven. Once, when he was eight, he fell into a pond. His feet could not touch the bottom. There was no one around to help. The water was cold and foul tasting. His heart seized with fear of drowning; he flailed his arms and kicked his feet, more in frustration and terror than intent to keep afloat or move toward the bank. In those desperate moments, he learned to swim. What else could he do, since the alternative was unthinkable to his young mind?
It was what he does now.
The ship, when aground, lay but a quarter of a mile from the shore. That is what he swims for, ignoring the cold of the water, waving his arms, kicking with his feet. He feels himself not only afloat but propelled forward, and the more he does it, the faster he moves. Success empowers him, as success will. He keeps his eyes fixed on the shore, which is distant at
He is numb from the cold, his strength failing, when he feels his feet touch the sandy bottom. Then he struggles forward, knee-deep, then ankle deep, exhausted, trying not to think about his mother and father, his young sister, or the others; strangers to him but fellows in faith and blood.
* * *
Of the company of exiles, Jacob Silva was the sole survivor, the sole witness. In years to come, he would remain in England, conceal his Jewish identity, and live to write the account of the experience that it might be recorded, that the angels might read it if no earthly man or woman did.
That God might punish those who committed the enormity.
It is the least he owes to his dead mother, his dead father, his dead sister, and the others, all so ruthlessly betrayed.
* * *
Years after, the esteemed Raphael Holinshed will mention the atrocity in his Chronicles, the magisterial history of early England. He will not mention the name of the captain, or that of his ship, or any of the passengers save to remark that they were Jews, rich Jews, sent into exile. He will not write that there was a survivor of the incident, a witness to bear testimony of it. He will not write what happened to the treasure of those wretched souls. He did not know.
One can imagine such things, make it the stuff of stories and dreams, plots and counterplots. Perhaps the ship sank and took crew and goods down with it, a parable of justice. Perhaps the treasure was taken up and hidden away, a lesson in avarice. Perhaps it was never touched for fear it was cursed, a cautionary tale. One can well imagine such a thing, in so wicked a world. We tell such stories to make sense of chaos.
In any case, it is no story for children. It might make them think less of mankind and despair at the triumph of evil.
The learned and much revered Holinshed will resolve none of these mysteries. But, of course, there are answers. Something happened to the Jews’ wealth, their coffers of silver and gold plate, their jewels and the sacred emblems of the faith.
They exist somewhere, as does the truth of what happened then and thereafter.
ONE
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London, 1576
The message received by the young doctor was plain on its face, without dissimulation or sentiment, written in an awkward hand of one unaccustomed to writing and not anxious to improve his skill.
Your old Jew is dead. Hanged himself. Come, Doctor, see for yourself.
William knew the writer better than he wanted to. The warden of the Domus Conversorum, a residence for converted Jews in Chancery Lane. His dealings with the man had been unpleasant.
The note was brought to him at his house shortly after nine in the morning while he was in the midst of treating a patient. Because of the note, the doctor canceled his next appointment of the day, even though the patient was a wealthy silk merchant who had contributed generously to the Royal College of Physicians, of which the doctor was a member and an officer. He told his manservant where he was going and set out to walk the several streets to the Domus, where the man referred to as “the old Jew” resided or had resided, if the message received was true, and not some jest practiced upon him. It would not have been beyond the warden to do such a thing; he was a meanspirited fellow with a cruel streak and the breath of an East Cheap sewer.
The doctor’s name was William Gilbert, and he was a young man in his early thirties, a graduate of Cambridge, and the son of a prominent lawyer and judge in Colchester, a town in Essex. He had been practicing in London for the past several years, where he quickly made a name for himself in medical circles and had become attending physician to several members of the queen’s court.
His rise in that regard had been meteoric but not unaccompanied by tribulation and dangers, some of which had threatened his life and driven him at times into a near despair. His salvation in each case was his profound commitment to his profession and his work as a natural scientist. He was not only a physician but an investigator of the natural world and its operations, and most especially the physical properties and powers of magnets, which he held to be not only critical to the compass, that invaluable device of navigation, but also to an understanding of the structure of the Earth. He experimented constantly with his magnets, communicated with other learned men of like interests both in England and abroad, read widely and deeply, and aspired one day to collect his observations and the results of his experiments in a book, a book that would be written in Latin so that it could be universally read and approved.
He had already decided upon a title: De Magnete. It was not a title to attract common readers, but then it would be written for other scholars, a species that had a great tolerance for such things.
That worthy ambition, the writing of his book, he would indeed accomplish, but he could not know that then, as a young practitioner living in London in 1576. No one sees the future with such clarity or certainty. Not even the astrologers who believed, foolishly in William’s mind, that the stars dictated the fortune of even the humblest of God’s creatures.
* * *
It was a cold, gray morning, the air filled with the smoke of coal fires and the stench of sewage that ran down the gutters and poured from the windows and caused any number of diseases of which the inhabitants knew not the names, although they suffered from them. At such an hour the narrow London streets were busy as usual, crowded with wagons and carts, clattering over cobbles and potholes, as well as the usual troop of pedestrians and horsemen; no one, it seemed, was content to stay at home. William navigated the streets with skill and speed. He was a tall, thin man, dressed plainly in gray or dark doublet and hose and a modest white collar no wider than three or four inches. Smooth-faced and fair, he disdained the fancy dress of many of his class that made them look like peacocks on parade, aping the garb of the French or Italians, bejeweled as though they wore their whole income on their backs, perfumed as though they were above decent English sweat.
As the son of a well-to-do lawyer and judge, he was by birth a gentleman, a status he had strengthened by his Cambridge education and his professional attainments. He had no wife, nor children by mistresses or casual encounters, although he enjoyed the company of women and had once been so besotted with one that he would happily have died for her. She had married another and then died in childbirth. It was the tragedy of his young life, a lesson in the depth and duration of grief that he put to good use when he consoled the dying and their survivors. It was also a lesson in love—its frailty, its tentativeness—when he considered loving again.
He complied with current regulations regarding church attendance but was neither pious nor puritanical in his views. He held God, the Great Maker, as the author of the visible world as well as the invisible. He venerated Christ as a teacher of good morals and the author of salvation. He kept the holy days and feast days, obeyed the law, and honored the queen. In none of these practices was he extraordinary or exceptional.
He had a great many friends in the city and several significant connections at court. He was respected among his professional colleagues, trusted by his patients, beloved of his servants, and a good son to his father and stepmother.
William lived in a handsome house on Fleet Street with a fruitful orchard, garden, and stables. He was healthy and strong of limb, blessed with a loving and affluent father of whom he was eldest son and therefore heir. He had every reason to be content with his life, positive about his future, secure in his place in his world.
This was the state of his life on the morning he received word of the death of him whom the writer of the message had disdainfully called “the old Jew.”
TWO
Within minutes, he had arrived at his destination; a single building resembling more a church than a house, with a stubby crenelated tower at one end and clerestory windows on the single-story extension. This was the place in which Isaac Silva had resided ever since William had come to London and become his physician. It was a refuge set aside for converted Jews who—having had all their property confiscated—now were wards of the crown, given a modest stipend, and provided with simple lodging. The Domus, as it was commonly called, was presided over by a warden. In this case, a man named Simon Meredith, a paunchy, moon-faced man in his forties who had secured his position because he was somebody’s brother-in-law. As William saw it, the man had little else to recommend him. It was Meredith, the impudent fellow, who had written the message about Isaac, about his hanging himself, and bidding William to come and see for himself, as though William might contest the fact otherwise.
