The Fifth Servant: A Novel

Freitag

Pátek

Friday

CHAPTER 1

A DISTANT CRY WOKE ME.

I sat up and looked out the attic window over the sloping rooftops on the north side of Broad Street, which the German-speaking Jews called the Breitgasse. It was too early to see the horizon. The city and sky were an inseparable mass of darkness, and the scream’s dying echoes evaporated into the air, like the breath I could see coming out of my mouth.

I was in bed with two strange men—the mikveh attendant and the street cleaner—and the room was damn near freezing. It was spring by the calendar, but it was still winter at heart, and I could feel in my bones that it was going to rain, like it did every year on the Christian holiday of Good Friday. I’d have bet five gold pieces on it, but there weren’t any takers, and I didn’t have five gold pieces. If you turned out my pockets, all you’d get for your troubles would be a few lonely coppers and some mighty fine lint imported all the way from the Kingdom of Poland.

But something had jarred me awake. Like it says in the Megillas Esther, the king found no rest, so I listened intently, the fog of sleep still swirling around in my head.

Muffled and ghostly, a distant cry floated over the narrow streets of the Jewish Town:

Gertaaaaaah—!

Goose bumps rose on my arms, as if the spirit of God had blown right past me and withdrawn from the room. If a Christian child was missing from its bed we were sure to be accused, and all of a sudden I was reduced to being just another Jew in a city that tolerated us, surrounded by an empire full of people who hated us.

Did I come all the way from the quiet town of Slonim just to get butchered by a bunch of latter-day Crusaders? And if the Jews got scattered, or worse, I might never see my wife Reyzl again.

Acosta’s shadow filled the doorway. "Hey, newcomer, shlof gikher, me darf di betgevant." Sleep faster, I need the sheets, said the night watchman, his rough-edged Yiddish softened by the rolling R’s and open vowels of his Sephardic accent.

Did you hear that shouting? I asked, planting my feet on the cold floor. Any trouble out there?

You just stick to your morning rounds and let the watchmen handle it, all right?

My knees cracked as I stood up and groped around in the darkness for the pitcher and basin.

Seven people crammed into two beds. Three men in one, a family of peasants in the other, part of the yearly crush of country folk visiting the imperial city for the week from Shabbes Hagodl to Pesach. The country folk had washed their bodies for the Great Sabbath the week before, but their clothes still had the overripe tang of a barnful of animals.

The night watchman took it all in and said, What, there wasn’t room for the goat?

I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing. It wasn’t good to joke around until I chased away the evil spirits that had settled on my hands during the night, and said the first prayers of the new day. Fortunately, the rabbi in Slonim had taught me how to get rid of the invisible demons by washing them off my hands in a basin of standing water.

Every year on Shabbes Hagodl, we listen to the Lord’s words to His servant Malakhi: Behold, I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Then we watch and wait for a mysterious stranger who appears around this time of year and asks to be seated at the Seder. And woe to the family that turns the stranger away from their door! Because he just might be the herald of the Messiah himself.

Such is the faith that has guided us through so many narrow scrapes. When the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, we rebuilt the temple out of words and called it the Talmud—a temple of ideas that we can carry around with us wherever we go.

And so we outlasted the Roman Empire, and we’ll outlast this empire, too.

The watchman pulled off his boots, grabbed his share of the blanket, and was snoring by the time I faced the eastern wall and said my morning Sh’ma. I paid special attention to the part about teaching your children the word of God in order to prolong your days and the days of your children.

Halfway down the crooked stairs to the kitchen, I could hear Perl the rabbi’s wife issuing orders to the servants to scour the house for khumets, the last traces of leavened bread. So there were no oats or porridge or kasha to keep my stomach from growling, only a mugful of chicken broth and some stringy dried prunes. Hanneh the cook shouldn’t waste a piece of good meat on the new assistant shammes.

I warmed my fingers on the tin mug, while pots clattered and doors slammed all around me. Despite the noise, I overheard Avrom Khayim the old shammes telling the cook, "What do we need a fifth shulklaper for? Like a wagon needs a fifth wheel."

But—wonder of wonders—Hanneh actually stood up for me and told the old man that the great Rabbi Judah Loew knew what he was doing. She had heard that the new man from Poland was a scholar and a scribe who had only been in Prague a few days, without a right of residency, when the great Rabbi Loew had seen a spark of promise in him and made him the unter-shammes at the Klaus Shul, the smallest of the four shuls that served the ghetto’s faithful.

Maybe Hanneh was thinking of her own husband, dead these many years, because she ended up stirring the ladle around the big pot and giving me a boiled chicken neck. I thanked her for this, one of the first signs of kindness anyone in this strange new place had shown me.

I sucked the bones dry, then went to the mirror to clean the shmaltz off my beard, and noticed with some resignation a few prematurely gray hairs curling around my temples. But I thought of the disembodied screams that had roused me from my bed, and suddenly a few gray hairs didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

I found the master putting on his short tallis.

What should we do, Rabbi? Should we prepare for an assault?

Just attend to your duties, Benyamin Ben-Akiva, he answered. God will show us the way in due time.

So I grabbed the big wooden club and went to chase the spirits out of the shul.

THE KLAUS SHUL STOOD in the elbow of a disreputable side street between the Embankment Street and the cemetery. I listened for the sound of spirits rustling about, then I raised the club and pounded three times on the narrow double doors and told the spirits worshipping inside to return to their eternal rest. I dug out the big iron keys, which jingled coldly in my fingers, found the right one, and opened the shul for shakhres services.

I traded my thick wool hat for a linen yarmulke, and stood on the platform in the empty shul and chanted a Psalm that was supposed to keep the restless spirits at bay. The melody wavered in the chilly air. I never claimed to be a cantor.

Back outside, I listened to the silence and prayed that it wouldn’t be shattered by the sound of boots and breaking glass. Then I doubled back and headed east along the Schwarzengasse to the far-flung Jewish houses outside the ghetto on Geist and Würfel Streets in the Christian part of Prague.

When the limits of the ghetto were established after the Papal decree of 1555, several Jewish house holds fell outside the line of demarcation, including what was left of the original Old Shul, and the rebellious Bohemians were content to ignore the shrill voices demanding that every single Jew in the city be relocated within the gates. But none of the Jews were more than a minute’s dash from the main gate, just in case they had to retreat inside the ghetto to seek shelter from the gathering storm.

Maybe it was fine for the Jews of Prague, but I wasn’t used to being cooped up like this, behind a wall.

The watchmen were still changing shifts. The night men looked beaten and tired, but their tightly drawn faces betrayed their agitation. And yet somehow I was still hoping to finish up early and go see Reyzl before she got too busy helping her family prepare for Pesach, which fell on Shabbes eve this year, when all work had to stop a half-hour before sunset.

Women carry ing heavy tubs for spring cleaning sloshed soapy water on the steps of their homes and onto the newly laid cobblestones. I had to dodge a butcher’s apprentice holding a big basket of meat on his head and step around the masons chiseling away at the paving stones. Then I nodded to another shammes, who was out collecting wheat money so the poor visitors would have matzoh to night. Two Jews were handing sacks of flour to a couple of Christians to store the forbidden khumets for the next eight days.

The big eastern gate rose up in front of me. Penned-in with no place to go, the Jews had built one house on top of another along the narrow streets of the Jewish Town. After a few years away from city life, I’d gotten used to the grassy paths and open pastures outside Slonim, which calmed my spirit and helped me talk to God. How could a man talk to God on a street like this? I mean, besides a cry for help.

Stop right there!

The gatekeeper laid a hand on my chest.

Where’s your Jew badge?

My what?

Listen, stranger, you’ve got to wear the Jew badge whenever you leave the ghetto. You got that?

Yes, sir.

I hurried back to the house with the stone Lion of Judah over the doorway and persuaded one of the Christian servant girls to take a moment out of her busy morning to sew a bright yellow ring on my cloak.

We don’t have such things in Slonim.

I rushed back to the gatekeeper, who let me through this time, now that I was wearing the gelber flek, the yellow stain required by an imperial decree—the Reichspolizeiordnung.

The street outside the ghetto was quiet compared to the Schwarzengasse, with only a few whores and drunken soldiers refusing to call it a night, crossing paths with clear-eyed kitchen maids and shop keepers with pink cheeks as round as apple dumplings. They all looked harmless enough, but I knew very well how the sunniest Christian faces could turn mean in an instant once an accusation is made.

I avoided eye contact as I walked down the Geistgasse, crunching over a thin layer of frost that had settled on the old stones. And I almost jumped out of my boots when a couple of rats scurried around my ankles, joining a slithering mass of rodents swarming over a piece of fallen meat. I’ve seen plenty of field mice in my time, but these city rats were huge.

Hoofbeats rang off the pavement, and suddenly the rats scattered as a horse-drawn cart clattered over them and came barreling right toward me. I jumped to the side and the cart thundered past, nearly crushing me beneath its wheels, the driver violently whipping his horses while his big-boned helper held on for dear life. They just missed flattening a tiny Christian servant girl as the heavy cart swung east onto Stockhausgasse and rattled away.

My heart was pounding, and I hoped that no one had seen the panic in my eyes.

Bohemia was relatively safe for the Jews these days, certainly safer than the other parts of the German Empire, where Protestants and Catholics had been furiously fighting for control of the soul of Europe ever since the reformists broke from the Roman Church a few de cades back. And for a while it seemed like a good plan to just step back and let them fight each other, but we have a saying in Yiddish: A cat and a mouse will make peace over a carcass.

And spring is open season on Jews. Holy Week and Eastertide were especially risky, and a gambling man would say that we were long overdue for some old-fashioned Jew-hatred. Every year the Jews got thrown out of somewhere. The lucky ones merely got beaten up, had their property stolen, and escaped with their books and the clothes they happened to be wearing at the time. But one Easter a while back, a mob of enraged Christians had practically burned down the entire Jewish Town, leaving only the blackened stone shul and a few crummy houses that refused to fall over. Three thousand people murdered in one weekend, all because some idiot said that a Jewish boy had thrown a handful of mud at a passing priest.

Some say it was worse than just mud, but I don’t believe that for a minute. What Jew in his right mind, outnumbered by hostile and well-armed outsiders, would invite such trouble?

When my ancestors first set foot in the land of Babylonia, they didn’t rush around smashing the idols, they made the place their home and wrote the monumental Babylonian Talmud there.

The Bohemian capital was as alien as pagan Babylon in many ways, but I knew enough to move closer to the wall and yield to a couple of footmen in red-and-gold livery walking a pair of sleek black dogs. Despite my good faith effort to get out of the way, the dogs’ ears flew back and they lunged for my groin. I stepped back once again and found myself pressed to the wall with nowhere to go, and before I knew what I was doing I had taken a fighting stance, with the big wooden kleperl raised and ready to clobber the first dog that came at me.

The footmen laughed.

Don’t worry, they don’t like Jewish meat. Isn’t that right, girl?

The dog snapped at my privates.

I don’t know, said the other one. She seems to like the smell of kosher salami.

Reflex had gotten me into this. What was going to get me out? Think, man, think.

Go ahead, Jew. I’d like to see you try.

I didn’t understand Czech very well yet, but I got the general idea.

The dogs strained against their leashes, but the footmen were well mannered enough to hold them back. It sounded like one of them called the dog Miata, but I might have heard wrong.

I slowly lowered the club, searching for the right combination of words to placate these lackeys.

Finally, I said, Forgive me for startling your master’s dogs.

My poylishe Yiddish was close enough to the local dialect of German for the footmen to understand me, and they seemed satisfied. They nodded curtly and strolled away, patting the dog and saying good girl.

So that’s how it was. A couple of spoiled livery servants could taunt me like that and I couldn’t respond. I could have broken the two of them in half if they didn’t have those dogs with them. And some rich man’s coat of arms on their sleeves. And every Christian in the kingdom watching their backs.

I was still considering this when I heard the cry again:

Gertaaaaaah—!

Closer this time.

I pounded on the doors and windows of all the houses and shops with mezuzahs on the doorposts, calling In shul arayn! and asking if anyone knew anything about the missing girl. Was Gerta a woman or a child? But nobody had any answers for me. Some of the shop doors rattled loosely, their locks clearly worthless.

I turned into the Würfelgasse. In the middle of the narrow lane, two children four or five years old, a boy and a girl, took turns shooting marbles into a chalk circle.

As I called on all the Jews to come and serve the Creator, a pair of women’s voices answered from opposite sides of the street. The children obediently got up from their game and went in to their mothers, the boy through a doorway marked by a mezuzah, the girl through a doorway with a cross nailed squarely in the middle of the upper frame.

So young and compliant, I thought, smiling to myself. They haven’t learned to be difficult yet.

They haven’t learned to think of all human relations in terms of what language you pray in or how much gold your family has to buy friends in high places.

Because you can only buy fair-weather friends.

That’s why Rabbi Shemaiah says, Love work, hate authority, and don’t get friendly with the ruling powers, because no matter who’s sitting on the throne, all those petty lords and nobles just use your friendship when it serves their needs, but they do not stand by you in the hour of your need.

Just look at Emperor Rudolf II’s grandfather Ferdinand, who expelled the Jews from Bohemia, even though he gave his word as king that he would never do so.

Back on the lower Geistgasse, a middle-aged Christian woman with a dark blue headkerchief was banging on the door of one of the Jewish shops I’d just called to shul. She looked up at the second-floor window, then went back to rattling the flimsy door. Another woman, who must have been the proprietress, stuck her head out of the upstairs window.

"What can I do for you, paní?"

Are you open today?

Sure, sure. Until noon. I’ll be down in a minute.

I was halfway back to the East Gate when a bleary-eyed Jew and a pair of Christians beckoned to me.

Come join us, said the Jew. He was trying to open his door with a key that was far too large for the narrow lock.

I didn’t budge. Join you doing what?

Is there something wrong with your eyes? Can’t you see that we’re celebrating Purim?

Purim was over a month ago.

Can I help it if I celebrate Purim a little more often than other Jews?

I turned to go, but the Jew spread his cape wide and blocked my path.

"We, sir, are entertainers to the lords and burghers, and only a gawking newcomer from the provinces would fail to recognize the great Shlomo Zinger and his associates. Professional merrymakers, a su servicio."

We also do weddings, said one of the Christians.

And when we see a man looking troubled—Zinger patted my cheek with sloppy familiarity—it is our sworn duty to cheer him up.

Taanis, folio twenty-two A, I said, reflexively citing the Talmudic passage in which Elijah the Prophet announces that two humble jesters will have a share in the World-to-Come because they are helping people to forget their troubles.

Ah yes, I heard you were a scholar, said Zinger.

You did?

"The Yidnshtot is big, my friend, but word gets around just like in a small town. A promising disciple of the great Isserles and some other Polish rabbi, who tossed it all to come after a woman. That’s the stuff of romantic ballads, mate."

No, it isn’t. She hasn’t spoken to me yet.

Don’t worry, she will. He leaned in closer. We also heard that one time you fought off six men at once. Six big, drunken Cossacks.

The other Christian said, Is that true?

Well, no, I said. Actually, I had talked my way out of that one, but as a newcomer to this town, I figured I could use the reputation.

"It was only five Cossacks. And two of them were kind of scrawny."

The two Christians looked genuinely disappointed.

Listen, I said. Do you know anything about—

Zinger nudged me as a young woman with long black tresses and broad Slavonic features walked up to the East Gate carry ing a basket.

"That’s the little mouse’s Shabbes goye."

The who—?

"Mordecai Meisel’s sabbath maid. The big makher who built the hospital, the orphanage, the mikveh. He paved the streets. Pretty much owns your ass, too, Mr. Benyamin from Slonim."

Oh. Listen—

You want to come in and see our costumes for Sunday’s feast at the Rožmberks?

"No, I need to get back in time for the Amidah prayer—"

And just at the moment when I should have been somewhere else, a woman’s scream pierced the morning air.

CHAPTER 2

ANYA HATED KILLING PIGS, especially when it took a couple of tries to hit the main artery. Cows and sheep were finished in a moment, if you did it right. But pigs knew. They knew you were trying to slit their throats and they didn’t understand what they’d done wrong, or why they deserved it. She felt their animal incomprehension when they struggled to get away from the glistening knife, and heard it in their plaintive squeals. Sometimes she swore she could even see it in their faces.

She hated it even more when her father asked her to help do it when it was still dark outside.

Let me finish doing my braids first, she said.

No time now. Do it after.

So she tied her hair back with a kerchief and ran downstairs. The pig was tied up in the courtyard, and her father Benesh was sharpening the long knife. She pushed up her sleeves, and tied a butcher’s apron around her waist.

When he was ready, she gently wrapped her arms around the animal’s shoulders, took hold of its front legs and hugged it tightly, bracing herself.

Why so early? she asked.

The cart came through early.

He closed his fist around the pig’s ears and prepared to cut its throat. The animal bucked and squealed, but Anya held tight.

She couldn’t help thinking of the shoykhet’s blessing before the sh’khiteh—the swift cut to the neck meant to minimize the animal’s suffering.

Borukh atoh Adinoy, eloyheynu melekh ha-oylem…

When it was over, Benesh wiped the bloody knife with a rag. Not like the crude men who wiped the blood on their sleeves and spent the day surrounded by swarms of buzzing flies. He took some pride in his appearance.

Anya wiped her hands with the rag, and helped her father lift the carcass onto a slotted table so he could gut it. But first they had to carry a fresh side of beef into the shop. Benesh grunted from the effort.

He said, We need you to marry someone quick. I’m getting too old to haul a side of beef onto the slab by myself.

He was half-joking, but the joke had been going on for a few months now. Still, she tolerated it.

She said, Yes, father, tossed the bloody apron into the washtub, and went into the kitchen to wash her hands before they got too sticky.

Her mother Jirzhina was rolling out the dough for knedlíky, special Easter dumplings.

Anya, I need you to hang this up for me, she said, nodding toward a bun with a cross baked into it.

Anya washed and dried her hands. She took a knife, got up on a stool, and cut down last year’s Good Friday bun. Then she hung the new one from the ceiling to protect their home from fire for another year.

Her mother told her to open the shop and sweep it out.

Anya said, I’m supposed to be at the Meisels’ place as early as possible.

Why do they need you? It’s Friday.

It’s Pesach. It’s their Easter.

Their Easter starts on Friday?

At sundown. They asked me to help out today.

Her mother considered this. They pay you the same?

Yes.

Jirzhina shrugged. The Jews paid well. But still.

Anya said, What?

Nothing. Janoshik said he might be coming by.

Anya said nothing.

You don’t like him?

"He’s all right, Mama. But sometimes he can be such a balvan, like he’s got rocks in his head."

Better a boring man who stays with you than a thrilling horse man who leaves you with a baby.

Don’t worry, Mama.

I’m not worried about you. It’s them.

Jirzhina aimed her rolling pin at the street, where drunken mercenaries were passing by, singing dirty songs.

Legions of foot soldiers, Reiters, and musketeers from the Turkish front had swarmed into Prague on Holy Thursday, and hadn’t wasted any time tearing the town up. Fortunately, the town was big enough to absorb the shock, Anya thought. She told her mother that she would be careful.

She went upstairs to finish braiding her hair, but there wasn’t time for that now. So she gathered her long black hair and tied it back with a lace ribbon. She had to look good for the rich folks. Back downstairs, she put on a clean apron and opened the shutters and the heavy wooden door to the shop.

The neighbors were already yelling at each other, Ivana Kromy’s shrill voice cutting through what ever protests her husband Josef barked at her.

Anya wondered how people could be so angry with each other before they even had their morning porridge. It took most people a good part of the day to build up to a fury like that.

She swept out the rear of the shop, keeping an eye out for the beggars who relied on true believers like Benesh Cervenka for a bit of Good Friday generosity. She also watched out for thieves and other lowlifes who thought that the best cure for warts was to steal a slice of beef, rub it on the afflicted area, then toss the beef down a privy hole, so that when it rotted, all their scabby warts would fall off.

Why couldn’t the recipe start out with buying a piece of beef? No, it had to be stolen for the magic to work properly.

She felt the floor shift under a man’s weight, and she turned around. Janoshik was leaning on the counter, a toothy smile on his round peasant face.

Hey, cutie. Want to go see the pageant in the Old Town Square?

Anya said, Sorry, the Meisels need me today.

He was disappointed. "You’re always working for those Zhids."

They’re not so bad. And it’s only one day a week.

Right. And that’s supposed to be Saturday. Today is Friday.

She explained for the second time this morning that today was a special day for the Jews.

Seems like everything’s special if it’s about them, he said. So what kind of spells do they use to clean their meat?

He meant the koshering process.

No spells. They just soak the meat in water, drain it, sprinkle it with coarse salt to remove the blood, then wash it a couple of times. That’s it.

There’s no way that that’s it. They’ve got secret magical words for everything.

They just praise God before they do anything.

So now you know Jewish prayers? Who’s teaching you?

Janoshik, please—

No, really. I want to know where you’re learning all this Jewish magic.

They say the same ten words about fifty times a day, that’s all. I’m used to hearing it.

He glared at her.

She said, They kill a cow, they praise God. They cover its blood with dirt, they praise God. They wash their hands, they praise God. They cut a slice of bread, they praise God. They take a wizz—they praise God. Get it?

I get it. You’re turning into a secret Jew.

Her reply got sucked right down her throat. He might as well have accused her of killing cattle with sorcery. The Church moved swiftly against anyone accused of Judaizing beliefs, and the punishment was death by public burning. How could he say such a thing so carelessly?

She swept the floor with renewed furor, thinking about the way the Catholics had been sweeping through Bohemia, reclaiming the land for the one true faith. One powerful sweep sent the pile of dust swirling into the gutter.

She was putting the broom away when a fragment of a faraway plea floated past her ears:

…ertaaaaah…!

Anya stopped what she was doing.

Anya, let me—

She shushed him, but the cry was not repeated.

Anya, I didn’t mean…

To what? Accuse her of heresy?

Her father brought in a tray of meat from the newly killed pig.

She said, Excuse me, I have a customer.

She had several customers. An old woman bought a slice of beef liver so thin you could almost see through it. A kitchen maid named Erika, on her way back from the fish market with a basket full of eels, selected the best cuts of pork for her master, Janoš Kopecky, one of the richest burghers in the neighborhood. A couple of old beggars came for a handout while Janoshik stood and watched silently. A tipsy cavalryman picked out a couple of eggs and counted the coins into her hand so slowly Anya thought he was going to pass out on the street, until she realized that he was taking his time so he could look her over with an expert eye. Fine. Let him look.

She even gave a coquettish swish of her behind as she walked to the back of the shop to get some fresh pork.

A Jesuit priest in a long black cassock stopped and stared.

When she came back carry ing a side of ribs, the priest raised an accusing finger. Aren’t you supposed to be closed today?

Protestants buy meat, too, Father.

The priest stepped up to the counter. He was relatively young, but Anya saw that he was as stone-faced and humorless as any fossilized Church elder.

I suppose you have a dispensation to sell to Hussites and Utraquists?

What did he want? Money?

What is it, Anya? Her father stepped into the shop, wiping more pig’s blood on a rag.

I’d like to know why you are open for business on the most somber day of the year.

People like to buy for the next day, Father.

That’s not what she just said.

Anya lowered her eyes from her father’s sideways glance.

Janoshik cleared his throat. Say, father, isn’t there a law that says Jews can’t have Christian servants working for them?

Anya felt a cold needle prick her heart.

The priest looked at Janoshik.

Yes, my son. The Holy Fathers have issued more than one decree condemning that absurd practice. But we all know it still goes on, he said, looking around the shop with renewed suspicion.

Benesh tried to assure the priest. "Father, we are simple Christians. We close at midday, then we’ll go to Mass, do the stations of the Cross, and have fish knedlícky after sundown."

The neighbor’s door burst open. Josef Kromy was still yelling at his wife. Something about his breakfast not being hot enough. Then he slammed the door and stormed off.

Anya used this momentary distraction to step into the back and slip off her butcher’s apron.

Benesh poked his head in the back room.

He said, If there’s any of that meat the Jews want to get rid of because the animals aren’t quite kosher enough…

Yes, father. I know.

She hurried down Haštalská Street toward the Jewish Town, thinking about the mess she had left behind and how much of it would still be waiting for her when she got back at the end of the day. Then she heard it again, a howling like a trapped animal:

Gertaaaaaah—!

CHAPTER 3

AND SHE KEPT ON SCREAMING, whoever she was, shrill screams rippling through the air, shredding the brief moment of peace on this gray morning. My feet sprang to life, carry ing me toward the disturbance.

Zinger grabbed my sleeve. Don’t go, mate. It’s bad stuff.

But I had to go. The uproar was at a Jewish shop, and as the only shammes at the scene, it was my duty to respond, preferably before too many Christians got there.

I just wished I had some beeswax to stuff in my ears, because that woman was screaming like one of Homer’s own high-pitched sirens. I sprinted back down the block, dodging all the whores and mercenaries who turned to gape at the wide-open doorway. She kept screaming as a swarm of rats spilled over the stone lip of the doorsill, fleeing discovery. She kept screaming, drawing the night-weary street people and the early morning house wives together in a strange consortium of people not usually associated with one another, thanks to their common enemy in the form of a tall Jew running freely through their territory.

The woman must have paused for breath, then she started screaming again, only this time transforming her inarticulate shrieks into hateful words that cursed the Jews for their eternal evil. Faces—bleary, wide-eyed, and curious—filled the windows on both sides of the street.

The rats scattered in my path, leaving thin traces of blood with their tails. I kicked some of the vile creatures out of the way, stepped over the melting footprints in the frost, and pushed past a couple of onlookers standing frozen to the spot at the threshold to the store.

I recognized the hysterical woman as the same one from before with the dark blue kerchief on her head. She must have been in the middle of doing her morning errands. Carrots and flowered herbs spilled from her basket as she flailed her arms like a broken windmill, threatening red-hot irons and worse for the perpetrators of this crime against Christendom, while the terrified proprietress begged her to stop her infernal wailing.

On the floor between them lay the body of a blond girl, maybe seven years old, her shift torn and bloody, her face waxing pale in death. I checked the impulse to kneel close and touch her, just to make sure, to see if there was any warmth left in the poor creature. But I couldn’t do it in front of an hysterical Christian witness. No point in making a move like that.

I’ve seen a lot of people get hurt in my time, so I noticed that most of the blood on the girl’s nightshirt was drying to a rusty brown, but some splotches of dull red looked quite a bit fresher. It looked like she had lost a lot of blood, but there wasn’t that much on the floor around her, as if she had bled out somewhere else before being deposited here.

Ill-tempered foot soldiers pushed me aside to get a look.

What’s all the f—?

Oh, good God—!

Christ!

I looked around the shop. The stock was mixed. Bolts of coarse linen filled the lower shelves, fine fabrics sat safely on the shelves near the ceiling, and jars of apothecary’s herbs and powders stood behind the central counter. Crates of exotic feathers left little room to move around.

The women of the night joined the outcry.

Let us have a look, you slobs.

Yeah, shove over.

Sweet Jesus—!

Now the walls were quaking. I almost expected to see them split open to the sky, but it was only two sets of hurried footsteps tramping down the stairs outside.

A couple of the mercenaries roughed up a worried-looking Jew as he squeezed between them into the store, then they groped and cursed at a young woman who must have been his daughter as she passed between their burly shoulders.

The man had well-trimmed fingernails and streaks of gray in his hair and beard.

He said, What’s going on, Freyde? But one look at what was on the floor and he turned a sickly shade of gray.

His daughter’s hand flew to her mouth, and it looked like she was going to puke, but she held it back.

What took you so long? his wife said.

"I was in the middle of the Sh’ma. And Julie was—"

You’re the owner? I asked.

Yes.

"Jacob, do something," his wife said.

He was going to need more than a Sh’ma to get out of this. Jacob took a step forward.

Keep away from the girl! the Christian woman screamed.

Jacob held out his hands and begged her to calm down. A mercenary with dark circles under his eyes told him to keep his filthy hands off good Christian women.

I had to alert the rabbinical authorities, but I couldn’t leave the shop keeper’s family alone with these trained killers. They may have been tired and hung-over, but they were waking up fast, and I’d need more miracles than the Maccabees to take them on by myself. There wasn’t enough room, for one thing.

Jacob looked at me for support. Any prayer for this kind of situation?

Now everyone was looking at me.

All eyes fell on my Jew badge.

The soldier with the dark circles unsheathed his sword. Two more brawny fighters followed his prompt. The bald one drew a short stabbing sword out of his belt, the one with a scar over his left eye, a spiked mace. They spoke as if acting out a scene they had rehearsed and played out many times over the years.

You’ll pay for this, Jew.

I’ll cut off your horns for a trophy.

Let’s start with the old fart.

They might as well have been wearing carnival masks and reading lines from the crudest anti-Jewish folksplay, like the Judenspiels of Endigen or Oberammergau—except that I was sure that none of them could read.

That was a possible way out, if I could manage it.

The killers advanced on Jacob, taunting him with their swords. The third one raised his mace and splintered off a chunk of countertop, just in case Jacob had misinterpreted their intentions.

It was time to cast in my lot. I stepped between the sword points and their target.

You gentlemen had better hold your peace, unless you want to face the consequences of breaking the emperor’s laws.

The men slowed, puzzled.

Don’t tell me you haven’t read the emperor’s laws! I said, amazed at their lack of preparedness. Then it’s a good thing I got here in time to keep you from getting in trouble with the law, because the statutes clearly state that the Jews are granted permission to live in these lands as vassals of the emperor. That means we are his servants. We belong to him. And the imperial code dictates severe penalties for anyone who willfully damages the emperor’s property.

They weren’t sure what to do about this. The pikemen looked at each other for assurance, clearly not used to feeling doubt about their actions.

Jacob’s daughter Julie finally said something. Yes, yes, it’s true. We belong to Kaiser Rudolf II.

Whisperings rippled through the crowd. Could it be? Was it possible? They weren’t going to listen to some smart-mouthed Jews, were they? Hell no! Kill them all, God will know his own.

A woman standing at the periphery yelped as a gruff stranger elbowed her aside. The man shoved some more gawkers out of the way and planted his boots on the threshold. I had never seen the badge on the man’s left pectoral, but I had no problem recognizing the unmistakable attitude of a member of the municipal guards.

Uh-oh, Kromy’s here, said one of the whores.

Come to collect your Good Friday freebie, Josef? said another.

Josef Kromy looked at her. Better keep it warm till Monday.

The women tittered.

Kromy glanced at the remains of the lifeless girl. The rodents had left teeth marks on her arms, and tiny paw prints in the dark stains on the floor around her. He displayed no shock, no revulsion.

I wondered how many depraved crimes the man had seen for him to have no visible reaction to such a scene.

Kromy said, Somebody want to tell me what happened here?

The woman with the blue kerchief said, I found her. Oh, it was horrible. I made that woman come down and open the door, and there—

Freyde Federn said, I’ve never seen this child before. When I came downstairs to open the door, the lock was broken.

Which stairs did you use?

There’s only one set of stairs, Mr. Kromy, the ones outside the house.

Kromy said, Let’s see this broken lock. He waved a couple of dumbfounded observers aside, and examined the main lock.

Doesn’t look broken to me, he declared.

Freyde fumbled for the words. I mean that the door was unlocked, and I’m sure I locked it when I closed up last night.

Then why did you say the lock was broken?

"Because