The Boudicca Parchments

Chapter 7

They were dressed up as eighteenth century Polish noblemen, two bearded men in long frock coats and felt hats, with a thin black ribbon tied round their waists to separate the upper half of their bodies — containing the heart and the brain — from the lower half, which contained the sex organs.

But they were not fetishists. This was how they dressed, just as their ancestors had dressed this way for the last two hundred years. They were a small ultra-religious Jewish sect and like the Quakers and Amish Mennonites, they dressed in the style of clothes that had characterized their religious movement since it was first established.

Strictly speaking, it was not in the style of their religious movement that they dressed, but rather the style of the movement from which they had seceded. For this movement was in fact not quite as old some people thought. It had only been founded in 1938 after it broke away from a larger Jewish religious movement over a major political difference.

The older man, in his sixties but looking somewhat older, called himself “HaTzadik” — The Righteous One — although his real name was Shalom Tikva. And the very tall man he was addressing was his thirty-year-old son Baruch.

“When Sam Morgan arrives, he will be bringing something of importance, so treat him with respect.”

“What will he be bringing?”

The resentment in Baruch Tikva’s tone was palpable.

“I do not want to put the evil eye on it by talking about it. You will see when it arrives.”

“I don’t know why you trust that man. You should be very careful of him.”

“Why? Because he is a gentile? You sound like the profane ones!”

“I don’t mean because he is a gentile. I trust the Arabs more than the profane ones! But I trust Sam Morgan even less. He is greedy. And he has wormed his way into your trust. I mean no disrespect, but be careful of him my father.”

HaTzadik’s tone was conciliatory.

“You have nothing to be jealous of. You are my son and he… he is a stranger.”

But the words did not heal the wound: they twisted the pain even more.