Summary

At the university, Conservation Patricia informs Helen and Aaron that there are no further documents dated before the rabbi’s death, with one potential exception: a document that has never been opened before, with a wax seal believed to be “the original, still intact” (371). Patricia tells them the humidifying chamber is in use and that opening the document will be “a slow process” (371). Helen wonders whether Ester had died during the plague; though she was not listed in the parish records, she could have “died an unrecorded death, in the most chaotic weeks of the plague” or had survived then “vanished into silence” (371). Wilton’s article had implied “Ester Velasquez had simply died an obscure death in London, either during or after the plague” (371). Aaron thinks, “but then, hadn’t Wilton seemed … a bit too preoccupied with the larger prize of Sabbatean Florence to...