sittin' on the dock of the bay

hm. this sounds kinda euphemistic.

There was a search, of course. The child was never seen again. No trace of them, nothing.

She was convinced that her child had been abducted.

She refused to give even a passing thought to the river that lay less than five meters from where she had left her child. The shallow but fast river, with the white water rapids, and the rocks at the bottom. The river she left her preschooler playing next to. That river. The one that feeds out to the sea.

Even decades later, she was convinced that some malicious agent had abducted her child, and she wouldn't hear anything to the contrary. It couldn't possibly have been the river. The river that even adults still drown in. That was unrelated. Someone did this.

i'm basing this off mark glanville's review of e.m. rose's the murder of william of norwich, which thoroughly summarises her argument about the case.

for those unaware, william of norwich's death in 1144 is generally considered the first case of blood libel. he was a young boy found with stab wounds in forest next to the city, which was close to the local jewish quarter.

but until a hagiography (life of saint) was written about him in 1150-2, his death wasn't really seen as suspicious. his uncle's attempt to blame local jewish people had been outright rejected by the sheriff nor was there any inquest, and rose argues it was probably an attempt to claim william was murdered, rather than died by his own hand.

but by 1150, the bishop of norwich was referencing william's death while representing a local knight accused of a murdering a local jewish lender, claiming that any accusations from the jewish community should be ignored until william's death was investigated. the knight wasn't found guilty, but there still wasn't any investigation of william's death.