The Fifth Servant (17 page)

           
“What kind of signs?”

           
“I already told you that every act leaves a trace. Just go and look among Federn’s circle of friends and acquaintances, and see if they can help you find a willing Christian, and when you come back, tell me everything that you have seen and I will tell you what is a sign and what isn’t a sign. I will know them when you describe them to me.”

           
“All right, but if I’m going to be your legs, Rabbi, there’s one thing you’ve got to do.”

           
“What?”

           
“Hire me.”

           
“We’ve already hired you. You’re a public servant.”

           
“That just means everyone in the
Yidnshtot
gets to boss me around. You know how people are. If they know I’m working for
you
, and you alone, they’ll show me some respect. It’ll be a lot easier to get them to talk to me if I’m acting as the High Rabbi Loew’s personal investigator.”

           
“Personal
what
?”

           
“Like an Inquisitor of sorts—only for our side.”

           
“You’re certainly not afraid to ask the hard questions, which may be just what we need in a case like this.”

           
“We can draw up a contract of some kind stating that I’m authorized to act on your behalf. A formal-looking parchment with your signature on it would open a lot of doors.”

           
“Very well. But we haven’t discussed your fee.”

           
“Have you got a kreuzer?”

           
“Yes, but—”

           
“Give it to me.”

           
Rabbi Loew smiled wearily. He plucked a coin from his purse, and placed it in my open hand.

           
“Here’s a daler. Keep the change,” the rabbi said. “You’re hired.”

           
We shook hands on it.

           
“Nice to be working for you, Rabbi Loew.”

           
“Save it for after we catch the killer.”

           
The Kreuzgasse was temporarily blocked off by a gang of Jesuits in long black cassocks filing out of the Church of the Holy Spirit. They gave us a few dirty looks as they marched toward the rebellious neighborhood of Bethlehem Chapel, but most of them concentrated on just looking menacing.

           
Then the distant voices of the town criers announcing the edict sealing off the ghetto came drifting toward us, carried by the wind through the streets and alleys of the city.

           
Rabbi Loew said, “All right, Mr. Investigator. What’s your next move?”

           
Besides getting the hell out of town?

           
I said, “The Talmud tells us that a corpse is like a Torah scroll that has been damaged beyond repair. If we could examine the child’s body as closely as we examine the
seyfer Toyreh
, wouldn’t it tell us things? Think what we could learn from it, what hidden meanings it would reveal.”

           
“Do you actually think the authorities will honor such a request?”

           
“No. This bunch of tight-lipped dandies would never allow it,” I said, as the last of the swishing black cassocks vanished around the corner. “So we appeal to the emperor. Another thing to ask him when you see him tomorrow.”

           
“Let’s hope. We don’t have a firm appointment with him yet, and Rudolf can be very moody and withdrawn at times. He once refused to grant an audience with a special envoy from the College of Cardinals in
Rome
. Unless Mordecai Meisel is willing to help. After our failure with the
kehileh
and the imperial consulate, Meisel’s our best connection to the
keyser
’s court at this point.”

           
“I keep hearing that name. Who is he?”

           
“Time to start earning that daler, shammes. He’s the mayor of the Jewish Town.”

CHAPTER 10

           
THE BAND OF J ESUITS MARCHED through the Little Square like a column of black ants chewing a path through the jungle. Seasoned ironmongers stepped back to watch the black cassocks swishing from side-to-side in unison.

           
The bladelike movement sliced fear into the heart of a clockmaker’s apprentice, and he ran off to warn Father Ji
i that the men in black were on their way.

           
The precise tramping of their boots made a servant girl’s heartbeat quicken in admiration for the selfless bravery of these soldiers of Christ who were spreading the word and stamping out heresy. All that shiny black leather sent shivers down her back and between her thighs.

           
To Janoš Kopecky, they were the worst kind of thugs—arrogant Papists willing to use any weapon against honest Christians in their fight to regain control of the imperial city and its environs.

           
A town crier stood in front of the Gothic portals of
Old
Town Hall
, loudly proclaiming the anti-Jewish edict while the rain loosened the mud clinging to his boots. A couple of beer-bellied merchants stood listening to the crier with their mouths hanging open. Kopecky strode past them to a quiet street behind Our Lady of Týn and ducked inside the columned walkways of Granovsky’s house.

           
Six capitular members of the Greater Bohemian Mercantilist Alliance sat around a long oak table. The wood was polished to a lacquered finish, reflecting the men’s faces like a dark, smoky mirror.

           
“You’re late,” said Masaryk. “Where were you?”

           
“Sorry. I had to wait for a parade of whipping boys to pass by.”

           
“Sit down, and let’s get started.”

           
“Wait a minute,” said Kunkel. “Where are Hürwitz and Goldschmied?”

           
Kopecky said, “Haven’t you heard? The ghetto’s been sealed off. No Jews can get in or out.”

           
“Really? Then what’s this Jew doing here?” said Kunkel, pointing at a pale stranger with long dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard. The stranger’s striped vest glistened with tiny pearls.

           
Masaryk laughed. “They haven’t had Jews where he comes from in three hundred years.”

           
“Yeah, well he could pass for a Jew in those clothes.”

           
“So who is this fellow? What’s he doing here?” Kopecky demanded.

           
“This
gentleman
is Bobby Johnson, and he comes from the court of Elizabeth of En gland with an offer of material support for her Protestant allies in
Central Europe
.”

           
The men around the table showed great interest in cultivating such a profitable alliance.

           
“Since this is being such a delicate matter, I am not an official envoy,” said Johnson in tolerable German. “So I also have some leisure time.”

           
“He wants to talk business with you,” said Masaryk.

           
“He wants to trade with the butcher’s guild?”

           
“No, Janoš. Your other business.”

           
Johnson had a glimmer in his eye.

           
“Oh. Well, that’s nice. Too bad the ghetto’s going to go up in flames sometime in the next three days.”

           
“Oh, crap,” said Hrbeck. “Do you know how much money I’m going to lose if that happens?”

           
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be doing business with the damn Jews,” said Tausendmark, a recent arrival from
Bavaria
.

           
“I was about to collect the Easter tribute, you
dummer Esel
. What am I supposed to tell my customers?”

           
“What are we going to do about this?” said Kunkel.

           
“What’s to do?” said a wine and beer merchant named Švec. “They’ll break a few windows, burn a few shops, then everything will go back to normal.”

           
“Easy for you to say,” said Hrbeck. “You don’t own any houses in the ghetto. Business will probably pick up for you. There’s nothing like a bunch of
Judenschläger
running riot for selling cartloads of booze.”

           
“Not this time,” said Kopecky. His wife was always telling him to go easy on the Jews, but this was serious business.

           
“Don’t be a woman, Janoš. The Jews will find a way to weasel out of it, like they always do.”

           
“Are they really being that clever?” said Johnson. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about how smart the Jews are, but I always thought they were a little exaggerated.”

           
“They’re not exaggerated, Englishman,” said Hrbeck. “The Jews are con-fined to the ghetto and forbidden from owning property, right? So that ought to make it easy for us to charge them what ever we want for rent, you’d figure.”

           
“I am expecting so.”

           
“Yes, but you don’t know the Jews. They’ve got second sight when it comes to money. The rabbis saw it coming a mile away, so they got together and prohibited their people from competing with each other for lodging. They’re not allowed to pay more than the established rent, or do anything to get another Jew evicted, no matter how crowded the
Židovské M
sto
 
gets.”

           
“And if we try playing them off against each other, the whole community stands together and refuses to pay us anything,” said Masaryk.

           
“They’ll live twelve to a room if it means keeping a three-story building vacant until we meet their terms.”

           
“Can’t you be taking it up with the emperor?” asked Johnson.

           
“Right. And you know what he’ll do? Establish a commission to study the problem,” said Hrbeck.

           
“How can you continue to let the Jews live among you?” Tausendmark said.

           
“Because the Turks are less than a hundred miles from
Vienna
, and Meisel gives Emperor Rudolf all the gold he needs to run the war,” said Masaryk.

           
“Let me get this straight. You can’t get rid of them because
one Jew
is financing Emperor Rudolf’s army?”

           
“There are plenty of others, but Meisel’s the emperor’s favorite. He doesn’t even have to wear the Jew badge when he leaves the ghetto on business.”

           
“And yet somehow, we’ve managed to expel the Jews from almost every city in
Germany
,” Tausendmark said.