The Fifth Servant (26 page)

           
A couple of the men in our crew laughed, but Acosta’s back went rigid.

           
“If necessary,” he said.

           
“I’m disappointed by your apparent lack of faith,” said Rabbi Aaron. “I shall have to have a word with your rabbi.”

           
I knew that was an empty threat, having seen how the two rabbis got along.

           
And with that, Rabbi Aaron whisked up his coterie of budding scholars and left us to our fate.

           
When they were gone, I asked, “Who are the Freethinkers in this town?”

           
“Anyone who doesn’t agree with Rabbi Aaron.”

           
“I figured out that part. But it would really help if I knew their names.”

           
Acosta looked at the gray sky. I followed his gaze and saw a faint trace of the sun’s rays glowing sideways across the rooftops.

           
“Some other time,” he said, pulling me from the line and telling me to go aloft and blow the horn that announces the end of the work day.

           
He cut me off when I started to protest.

           
“We can handle it without you,
señor
Benyamin. Besides, Rabbi Loew wanted you to cover the
minkhe
services, remember?”

           
“All right,” I said, “but promise me you won’t commit mass suicide till I get back. I wouldn’t want to miss out on that.”

           
It took him a moment to realize I was just kidding, then he almost cracked a smile.

           
“This isn’t the time for jokes.”

           
“No, it never is,” I agreed. “But it’s one of the tricks we use to survive, isn’t it? I bet you can still say a pretty good
Ave Maria
if you have to.”

           
My words lingered in the air between us. The empty space was filled with the heavy clunking of stone on stone. Our barrier was already two feet high and rising, but it still wasn’t big enough to be an effective defense against anything larger than a sewer rat.

           
I counted eleven stones before he said, “My family were
conversos
,” Acosta said. “You know what that means?”

           
“Sure.”

           
“No, you don’t. You can’t possibly know. You’re the original wandering Jew.”

           
“Aren’t we all?”

           
He looked at me. “Do you know what it is to love the place you were born? I mean
really
love it? Do you know what it means to dance with all the pretty girls at harvest time, and drink from the same barrel of cider as their fathers and brothers, and feel your heart swell with pride when the drummers come bearing the royal colors of His Majesty King Phillip, because he’s
your
king, too, and those are
your
colors as much as anyone else’s?”

           
“No, I don’t,” I admitted. “I guess I don’t really feel like I belong anywhere that much.”

           
“That’s right, you don’t.”

           
I had nothing to say to that.

           
“I had friends in the
armada
who fought in the battle at the Gulf of Lepanto. One of them died, another practically had his hand blown off. And three years later, the Turks took back almost everything we had fought for. It’s still in their hands. So much for our big sacrifice.”

           
I said, “Do you still have family back there?”

           
He looked down at the unmoving brick in his hands, leaving me to wonder what this man I had been thinking of as a free-spirited bachelor had left behind in the land that he loved so well.

           
“What the hell is this?” he said, as if he had just noticed the brick he was holding.

           
“Looks like we’re running out of stones already.”

           
“Then it’s time to start tearing up the streets and put those new paving stones to better use.”

           
I had a thousand questions about how we’d manage to accomplish that without more support from the townsfolk, but one look at the veins bulging in his temples silenced me on that subject.

           
“Take comfort, my brother,” I told him, laying my hand on his shoulder. “When the Messiah comes, he will re unite the tribes of Israel, and we’ll all be together again.”

           
“You’re telling me that we’re so divided, it’ll take a messiah to bring us together.”

           
“That’s one possible interpretation, I suppose—”

           
“There’s always another interpretation, newcomer. Now go blow that horn before my hot Spanish blood gets the better of me.”

           
MY BOOTS THUDDED UP THE worm-eaten steps as I climbed to the top floor of the tallest house on the Schwarzengasse carry ing the horn that heralds the coming of Shabbes slung over my shoulder. Away from all the street noise, from the
toyhu vo-boyhu
of the gutter, I finally found a moment to reflect about what Reyzl had said and done, and to let it sink in that it might actually be time to say the
Rabbis’ Kaddish
for our marriage, or what ever it was that we once had between us. Something that was once love, surely.

           
The
aggadah
says that when Adam was just formed from the earth, before he met Eve, before God breathed life and soul into him, he was a senseless clay figure called a
golem
. And that’s just what I felt like.

           
These thoughts flowed through me like a dark river, flooding my heart with memories of how good it was when we were first together, once upon a time, how our attraction for each other was so strong, our passion so exhilarating that we felt like it could surmount any obstacle, as if no one had ever made love before us, as if the complete history of the world were leading up to that one moment of divine coupling. It reminded me how every dip and curve of her body was shaped by the same hand that completed the circuit of this great globe of ours and set the heavens spinning, how the downy fuzz on her lower back looked like precious golden threads in the morning light, and how I’d give anything to get a second chance to go back and live those days all over again, knowing what I know now, and not mess up quite so badly this time.

           
But this was not the moment to indulge in the luxury of frivolous thoughts—or at least what any self-respecting knight in the romance tales would consider frivolous. But what do those idiots know? Courtly love.
Ha
.

           
By the time I was back on the street again, merchants and beggars alike had already dropped what they were doing and were heading for the baths. All around me, Jews were hugging each other and asking forgiveness for any wrongs they may have committed during the week. Nobody hugged me or begged my forgiveness, but we wished each other a
gutn Shabbes
as I made my way back to the East Gate.

           
I peered through the opening. The German preacher was still perched on that barrel—the fellow had stamina, I’ll give him that—only now he was praying for the Jews to see the light and free ourselves from our captivity to the Devil. All we had to do was let Jesus into our hearts, and everything would go swimmingly for us from that point on, on earth and in heaven. He made it all sound so simple. Maybe it
is
simpler for them, I thought, since most Christians don’t know what it’s like to live in constant fear of having their bones ground up into piecrust like a character in one of those horrible English revenge tragedies.

           
I thought I caught a glimpse of the imperial guards coming to protect the perimeter of the ghetto and I took heart for a moment, then felt it change to a sick tugging in my
kishkes
when I saw that it was only the municipal guards bearing an order to conduct a house-to-house search for “clues” and to inventory the contents of the ghetto.

           
One of the scavengers outside the gates, his hands blackened with soot, complained that the guards would get the best pickings. The sergeant turned, still clutching the order in his mailed fist, and said, “Don’t worry, that Jewish gold isn’t going anywhere soon. It’ll still be there Sunday night.”

           
Some of them laughed, although coming from them it sounded more like the cackling of a flock of vultures waiting for a suffering animal to breathe its last.

           
“What are you talking about?” I said. “The Sheriff told us we had three days to solve this bloodcrime.”

           
“You weren’t told you had three days, Jew. You were told you had till Monday morning, and I have it on high authority that the Jewish Monday begins at sundown on Easter Sunday. Now let us in.”

CHAPTER 15

           
“SINCE WHEN HAVE THEY PAID attention to the Jewish calendar?” Yankev ben Khayim whispered hotly in my ear.

           
“Since it served their purposes.”

           
“Somebody must have blabbed.”

           
“Don’t start making accusations. The
goyim
all know that our days end at sundown.” In Hebrew, the hour of twilight is called the
beyn ha-sh’moshes
, the moment between the suns.

           
“Shhhhh!”
Somebody shushed us.

           
The services were starting. I was leaning on the west pillar, facing the holy ark. I straightened up as the shul’s upper shammes, Abraham Ben-Zakhariah, got up on the
bimeh
and began reciting the
Ashrey
prayer.

           
“Ashrey yoyshvey veysekho—”
Praiseworthy are those who dwell in Your house.

           
I joined in the prayer, which normally calls upon us to lay aside all earthly concerns for the next twenty-four hours and to open our souls to God’s tremendous majesty. But today we were also celebrating the first days of Pesach. Anyway, I tried. I didn’t rush over the Hebrew words as if they were meaningless syllables to get through, like people sometimes do. I pronounced each word clearly, letting the cadences of the holy tongue clear my thoughts of the everyday Yiddish of the street.

           
But it was hard to draw a curtain between the weekday world and the spiritual realm. Unless you were one of the rich
makhers
who got the best seats near the ark, it was standing room only inside the Old-New Shul. A crush of men ten rows deep was packed in behind me along the western wall. The line went out the door and into the vestibule, and every time somebody else tried to squeeze in, a fine white dust drifted down from the scaffolding on the south wall. And there was some pretty vigorous shoving as burghers of various ranks competed for the best view, which was not at all in keeping with the welcoming spirit of the prayer. But the shul didn’t have a gallery for women yet, so what did they expect? Men tend to behave better when the women are watching, even if it’s from up in the balcony or behind a screen.

           
But the real distraction was that right before the service, as I was scraping all the old wax out of the candle holders, Yankev ben Khayim had come rushing in and started quizzing me on my knowledge of local law.

           
Did I know that the Jews of Prague were being held prisoner by Christian gatekeepers whose salaries we were required to pay?

           
No, but it didn’t surprise me any.

           
Did I have any idea how absurd it was that the Christians believed with all their faith that the death of Jesus was God’s will, and yet they still blamed the Jews for it?

           
As a matter of fact, I did.

           
Did I know that under German law, anyone who owes money on a private debt is only obligated to repay the original lender? In other words, if the lender dies, the debt dies with him.

           
“What?”

           
I told him if that isn’t a motive for getting rid of somebody, I don’t know what is—especially a merchant of fine imported goods. Plenty of people must have owed the Federns money, and a short list of their major debtors would be a great place to start.

           
Except that the looters were getting smarter, and the ledger was one of the first things they burned these days.

           
But some kinds of men are willing to blot out the figures in a lender’s book with the blood of their fellows. And with Federn and his whole family under arrest, I’d have to get authorization from the emperor just to speak to them.