The Fifth Servant (43 page)

           
Serious words indeed, not to be spoken publicly in a Christian language.

           
“So again I ask, where to now?” said Rabbi Gans, anxious to change the subject.

           
“First we must execute the emperor’s decree,” said Rabbi Loew.

           
“That’ll be a barrel of laughs,” I said.

           
“Then what?”

           
“One of the clues we uncovered today is a thread,” said Rabbi Loew. “And a thread is always found on the tailor.”

           
Metaphorically speaking.

CHAPTER 23

           
KASSY WAS TIRED, BUT ELATED. She had been up all night, boiling the strange new leaf into a tisane and testing it on a mouse she had pried away from Kira. Satisfied that the pale green mixture wasn’t poisonous, at least, she had tested it on herself, and found that a tea made from this new leaf was a mild stimulant, and that the more concentrated tincture was a stronger stimulant that greatly eased the darker moods of melancholia.

           
An herb that relieved the symptoms of melancholia
. Imagine the possibilities if she had found a way of counteracting its debilitating effects! Her pulse was surging and her mind was abuzz, as if she were strolling barefoot through a lightning storm, and she felt that anyone who had never experienced the sublime plea sure of finding an elusive answer to a long-standing problem has never known true joy.

           
But the best answers always led to more questions, and now she wondered how the Jews were involved in this, what they knew about this herb, and what other secrets they possessed that could shed light upon the dark places beyond the limits of her knowledge. She was more determined than ever to defy the restrictions and penetrate the man-made barriers around the ghetto in order to study with the Jewish alchemists. And she couldn’t wait to tell Anya, the Jew’s maid, about her thrilling discovery.

           
Her worktable was still covered with iron filings from a series of trials with Magnesian stone, reminding her that she had to give the whole place a good sweeping before any stray bits of metal contaminated any of her current experiments. But all that—the mundane reality of dirt, sweat, and obligations—could wait until after she recorded her observations, so she quickly brushed the filings onto a sheet of scrap paper with the side of her hand and set them aside, clearing a space for her notebook and a relatively intact specimen of the Peruvian leaf.

           
She dusted off her hands, and flipped open her notebook, creating a slight turbulence that nearly sent all the metal sweepings spilling onto the floor. She was focused on setting down her observations as she slid the scrap paper out of the way, when the most extraordinary thing happened. The iron filings on the paper arranged themselves in series of expanding arcs emanating from two point sources. She stared at the undulating pattern for a moment, not sure if this was really happening or if sleep had somehow crept up on her and this was all an exceptionally vivid dream. When she held the paper up to examine it, the pattern collapsed, and she realized that she had caused this phenomenon by laying the filings across the thin bar of iron that she had magnetized as part of yesterday’s experiment. She held the paper over the flat slab of metal again and gently shook it to distribute the filings evenly, and to her supreme astonishment the bits of iron realigned themselves in the same pattern of loops radiating from the two ends of the magnet. Like an apostle witnessing the Ascension, she slowly turned the paper and shook it some more, and the pattern reconstituted itself once again. Somehow the tiny iron filings were giving substance to a constant invisible force.

           
She was so absorbed in the process of mapping out a couple of weeks’ worth of experiments that she didn’t pay much attention to the clanking of steel boots on the paving stones outside. Another confrontation between the Society of Jesus and the Hussite sectarians, she thought, when something rammed the door to her lab so hard the wood split.

           
All of her plans, solid or barely formed, even those lying just past the visible horizon like undiscovered islands—all were broken from their orbits by the sound of splintering pine and scattered like so much sawdust as the next shuddering impact broke the door in two.

           
Kira skittered away and hid under the dish rack.

           
Spike-toed boots kicked the last dangling pieces of planking out of the doorframe as if they were stray bits of driftwood. Glass rattled in the rack as a contingent of squires stormed in like a pack of hounds, and as in a dream gone wrong, she couldn’t move a muscle to stop them. And in an instant, Kassy was surrounded by eight bodies protected by several layers of chain mail and steel, as if her humble healer’s shop were a strategic location on a foreign battlefield.

           
Four sets of mailed fists seized her under her arms and knees and lifted her off the ground as if she were made of straw, while two men in black-and-gold jerkins slid a heavy basket under her. The steel-faced men struggled to keep her in the air the whole time as they set her in the basket. Then they drew the straps tight, and raised her higher so that the four of them could carry her out the door all trussed up like a bundle of laundry.

           
And during all this, someone with a commanding voice had been giving orders not to allow her to touch anything or secrete anything upon her person, and to turn her rooms upside down looking for any instruments or ointments or other objects of witchcraft.

           
A bolt of fear shot through her and remained quivering like an arrow shaft buried deep in her chest. Images of the rack, the
Uffzieher
, and the water board flashed before her eyes, all of them light forms of torture whose use was so routine that the courts had ruled that confessions obtained with them were “freely given.” But what really made her skin crawl was the Witch’s Chair. The spikes on its arms and back were made of wood, but it had an iron seat you could fry an egg on once they heated it up. The Austrian judges were especially fond of this one.

           
“You are charged with dispensing a potion containing a suspicious ingredient known as bird’s tongue.”

           
Kassy’s fingers closed around the cross hanging from her neck as the commanding voice read aloud the legal document that would seal her fate:

           
“And so by order of the Imperial Code, we hereby sentence the herbalist and accused aeromancer, Kassandra Boehme of the Bethlehem Chapel district, to public exposure in the pillory while wearing the
Schandmask
for a period of ten hours, and thenceforth do banish her from Prague and its environs for the remainder of her days. Furthermore, her worldly possessions shall be confiscated and divided among the loyal Christians to whom that office falls.”

           
The guards shoved the leather Mask of Shame over her mouth, making sure that the iron choke bit pressed down on her tongue to keep her from speaking any more. Then they shackled her legs together and carried her off to the pillory.

           
THE HASP WAS COMING LOOSE, so the correctors used a heavy mallet to drive a pair of spikes through the metal and into the post. With a dull clang, they chained her alongside the other troublesome women on the platform in Old Town Square.

           
Kassy scanned the horizon to see if anyone noticed her, or took pity, or if she had any enemies in the crowd, because she could withstand this punishment as long as no one tried to torment her with rotten vegetables embedded with nails, or sharp stones. At least they hadn’t hung a sign around her neck calling attention to her crime. But it was hard to see through the eyeholes in the mask.

           
Only now did she have time to reflect on Kira’s fate.

           
Who’ll feed her?
she thought. Her furry little companion would survive on natural wit and instinct, but would she find a nice, warm home and be cared for? All she could do was hope.

           
Her second biggest concern was her undelivered message for the butcher’s daughter, Anya, although she had no way of knowing if it would still matter by the time she was released.

           
Then she saw them. A few paces behind the jeering mob, trying not to draw too much attention to themselves. Evelina the midwife’s helper and a couple of Father Ji
i’s young partisans, standing together with grim, determined faces. As she fixed her gaze on them, they discreetly held up a few torn-up books that they had “looted” from her shop in order to save at least
something
from the wreckage of her life for the long journey ahead. It was such a relief to see some sympathetic faces in the square, and to know that she wasn’t completely alone in this world.

           
Because she knew that there was plenty of good work for a wise woman to do in the hills of northern Bohemia.

           
And she knew how lucky she was to have gotten off so easily.

CHAPTER 24

           
A LINE OF RIGID, UNIFORM bodies suddenly emerged from the swirling masses of humanity on the far side of the stone bridge like a fleet of ships gliding through the misty waters of some inland sea. And the people melted away like clouds of gray-green fog before the fixed figureheads of municipal authority.

           
The sheriff stood square-shouldered, his heels planted firmly in the earth, and when we approached him, he informed us that he and his men were here to escort us back to the ghetto. That was his plan, anyway, until we presented him with a copy of the emperor’s decree.

           
“What’s this?” he said.

           
Rabbi Gans started reading it out loud: “
Our Sovereign Emperor Rudolf, a just and pious ruler
—”

           
“I can read, you know,” said Zizka, taking the decree from Rabbi Gans and looking it over.

           
We awaited his reaction.

           
He said, “So the emperor takes your gold and returns the favor with his protection, and I have no say in the matter. You Jews certainly know the ins and outs of every legal document in the land, don’t you?”

           
I admitted that textual perspicacity was one of our strengths.

           
“Do you really have to go through with this?” he asked, slapping the decree with the flat of his hand.

           
“I’m afraid so.”

           
“Because a lot of people are not going to like it.”

           
“No, they’re not.”

           
“It says we are obligated to accompany you at all times for your own protection,” he said.

           
Each of his men was carry ing a double-edged broadsword, all shiny and freshly sharpened.

           
I said, “Just don’t protect us
too
closely, all right?”

           
The sheriff shook his head with bitter amusement. And we stood there silently, while the currents of people washed around us, until finally he said, “All right, let’s get this over with,” and waved us on.

           
We started down the King’s Road toward the main square, with the armed patrol falling in behind us.

           
Zizka said, “But no matter what this decree says, I can’t guarantee your safety if you arouse the people’s anger by mishandling the child’s body in any way.”

           
“We all share your concern,” said Rabbi Loew. “And you may rest assured that we do not intend to force the dead girl’s spirit to reveal her killer’s name or anything else that might trouble her. We just want to see what she has to say for herself.”

           
A couple of guards stopped short with a clanking of metal. Zizka ordered them to get a move on, while we kept walking.