Authors: Kenneth Wishnia
“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.