Rabbi Gamliel left the synagogue at nightfall, waving farewell to the faithful wrapped in their prayer shawls, distributing alms to the beggars that haunted the streets of Safed, blessing the little children, bowing whenever he passed an old man. The softness of the air made him feel carefree, even though the Law ordered him to rush home to study and not let himself be distracted by the witching charms of twilight. Not that the young rabbi had never violated the Law, may God forgive him. At the age of thirty, he was still a bachelor. The daughter of the gaon of Yavne was betrothed to him in marriage, and she was already twelve. But he had not waited to taste the pleasures of the flesh. Copulation with a prostitute was tolerated by the Torah. And monogamy had only recently been established by the elders. Many Jews were not yet practicing it.
His conduct often puzzled his flock. More than once, in the dead of night, he had been heard singing and dancing alone around his desk, talking to his books, screaming psalms at the stars. He sometimes disappeared without warning, merely leaving a few instructions to his secretary. He would suddenly reappear a few days later, enter the yeshiva of which he was the master, and resume his classes where he had broken them off, congratulating his studious pupils, reprimanding the idlers who had taken advantage of his absence to daydream, although nobody knew how he could so infallibly tell one group from the other.
What his disciples did not know was that he had read the Gospels in the company of Brother Paul. He also knew by heart the last words of Christ, which the Brotherhood held secretly in its cellars. He had studied them with great care, seeing nothing to disagree with. Nothing that contradicted his own faith. Except for that annoying Trinity . . . If it had not been for that, the Brotherhood would have made public this final message, this overwhelming testament dictated by Jesus to the high priest Annas just before his arrest. The Church had been looking for the document for centuries. In vain. And yet Gamliel had received orders to reveal its existence to two brigands from Paris. There wasn’t much to fear from Colin. But God alone knew what Villon planned to do with such information. He might sabotage the whole operation, if only to take revenge for the imprisonment that had been inflicted on him as a test.
But it was precisely on Villon’s cunning that the commander of the Brotherhood was banking. He knew perfectly well the poet would not submit blindly to the orders of Guillaume Chartier, let alone those of Jerusalem, and he was counting on that. Not that the unseen head of the book hunters had deigned to reveal his plan to Gamliel, but the rabbi guessed that Villon was one of its chief components.
Gamliel walked up and down the sleeping streets, for the first time doubting the legitimacy of his mission. When he reached the doorway of his house, he stopped for a moment or two at the foot of the steps and murmured a prayer. A thick cloud passed over Safed, covering the moon, plunging the town into darkness.