The Merchant of Vengeance by Simon Hawke

must confess, I have little knowledge of such things, save for The Poor Man’s paternoster, from which my uncle read to me when I was a boy."
    "Well, I am no great scholar in such things myself" said Dickens. "As it happens, ‘'twas a Jew who explained it to me, as I shall now explain to you. In the Bible, there is a verse in which God says, 'If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.' Therefore, if a Christian wishes to remain devout, he must perforce refrain from the trade of money-lending, for to profit from it would be usury. To a Jew, however, the words 'my people' could be considered to apply only to other Jews."
    "I see," said Shakespeare, nodding. "Thus it would follow that if one were a Jew, then nothing would forbid the lending of money at a profit to those who were not your people."
    "Just so," Dickens replied. "And therein lies the rub. For in almost every nation where their wandering tribes have spread, the Jews have been forbidden to engage in one trade after another, until only one was left to them, the trade of money-lending, which was, conveniently, the only one forbidden to devout Christians. Thus, forced by Christians into the only trade that was left open to them, the Jews then became reviled by Christians for engaging in it."
    "But there are more than a few Christian moneylenders here in London, are there not?" asked Shakespeare.
    "Oh, indeed, there are," Dickens replied. "Not all Christians are so devout in their adherence to the Holy Scripture as they are in their pursuit of profit, which is why there came a time when Italian and French bankers started to arrive in England and the Jews could safely be expelled, for once there was enough Christian money to be borrowed, one did not require money borrowed from the Jews."
    "I Cannot imagine what it must be like to be thrown out of my own country," Smythe said, shaking his head.
    "Can you imagine what it must be like to know you do not even have a country?" Dickens replied. "We were born here in this land and can thus count ourselves Englishmen and Christians, but a Jew who has been born here can only count himself a Jew. And even then, he must do so circumspectly."
    "The Jews have your sympathy, it seems," said Shakespeare. "No more so than anyone who is unjustly used, Will," Dickens replied. "Perhaps that is what having been a 'soldier of misfortune' has caught me. I have seen men unjustly used too many times to unjustly use a man myself. Now, I shall give a man his just desserts, mind you, as I threw out that laggard who forged yon miserable blade, but to judge a man because of what his faith is or who his people are? That is not justice in my view."
    "Nor mine," said Smythe. "I, for one, should not like to be judged for who my father is, much less judged for his forebears. I would much prefer to be judged for my own self."
    "As would I, Tuck, as would I," said Dickens. "But then, there are many who do not feel as we do. 'Twas not all that long ago, remember, when Protestants were persecuted under the rule of 'Bloody Mary' right here in our own land. Now the tables have been turned and the Catholics must hide their priests in cubby-holes. And I recall only too well those villainous roaring boys Jack Darnley and Bruce McEnery, along with their murderous crew, the Steady Boys, who wanted nothing better than to break the head of every foreigner in London, for no better reason than that they were foreign. It shames me now to think that I once counted them my friends. Their hatred of all foreigners brought about the murder of my good friend Leonardo, and then doomed them, as well."
    "A fate they richly deserved," said Shakespeare emphatically. "For the murder, aye," said Dickens. "But what of the hate that drove them to it?"
    "Well, were they not punished for that also?" Smythe asked.
    "Of course," said Dickens. "But what I meant was that they had to learn that