For Jacob the merchant was leaving Paris. He, with his wife and son, were setting forth for Aquitaine, where it was believed the couple were, and would not rest until Jacob had seen his daughter properly married in church. Then it was their hope to return to Paris where, if the young man was up to it, Jacob would take him into his business.

Not many fathers would have done it. They’d have cast their daughter out. But it was generally agreed that he was showing a truly Christian spirit.

The luckiest person in all this, people also said, was the miller’s son. He was going to get an heiress for his trouble.

“If only I’d known,” joked one of the eligible suitors for Naomi’s hand, “I’d have run away with her myself.”

It took Jacob ten days to close up his business and put his affairs in order. The merchant guild wished him a safe return. The royal authorities gave him a travel pass and wished him luck.

In the last week of October, in the year of Our Lord 1307, Jacob the merchant set out in a horse and cart, taking the rue Saint-Jacques, the old pilgrim’s road that led up the hill past the university. Before passing through the gate, Jacob paused.

“Look back at the city,” he said to his son. “I shall never see it again, but perhaps you will one day. In better times.”

A week later, they reached Orléans.

Two days after that, however, instead of continuing southwest toward Aquitaine, they took another road that led them eastward. Journeying south and east by stages they continued another two weeks until they passed into Burgundy. And then they traveled another ten days until finally, looking eastward early one morning, Jacob said to his son: “What do you see in the distance?”

“I see mountains, whose peaks are covered with snow,” he answered.

“Those are the mountains of Savoy,” his father said.

By the time he reached them, he would be a Jew again.

And feeling a great weight of corruption and fear fall from his shoulders at last, he murmured the words he had missed for so long.

“Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

Chapter Seven

•  1887  •

They were all furious with him. Madame Michel was not speaking to his parents. As for Berthe, no one knew what she thought.

And how could he explain? He hadn’t liked Berthe so much, nor her mother’s business. He thought only of working on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower. But even if his parents understood, he wasn’t sure how much they’d care. His mother pursed her lips. His father looked glum. As well they might, having hoped he was going to feed them.

“I suppose,” his father once suggested, “you could still be an ironworker and marry Berthe.”

“I don’t think so,” said Thomas.