Summary

In 1667, Ester has been living in the HaLevy manor for two years. She recalls the abrupt circumstances of her marriage to Alvaro: “Benjamin HaLevy hadn’t wished to delay the wedding a single day, despite the magistrate’s insistence that the smoke was an ill portent to wed beneath” (512). The marriage had taken place a day after Alvaro had returned, despite “the dreadful smoke, and despite the grim faces of the London boatmen and their fleeing passengers” (512). In London, just as “the coals of its plague burned low … the fates smite it with a conflagration such as none had ever seen” (512).

Ester and Alvaro had wed in the manor’s grand atrium, beneath a canopy that was Benjamin HaLevy’s prayer shawl. Alvaro had returned as “a lithe, nearly unrecognizable man,” with “a weather-beaten face … and fine lines of sorrow at the corners of...