The Fifth Servant (62 page)

           
It didn’t matter if it was a boy or a girl.

           
Because a man lives on through his children.

           
Your body dies either way, but without children, without a son to say Kaddish for you, you do not live on in memory. Death is truly the end.

           
At least Anya and Yankev had each other, I thought.

           
And then I heard the sound of trumpets.

CHAPTER 32

           
THE SAUSAGES SIZZLED IN the pan, shrinking and browning around the edges, oily bubbles of fat hissing and popping as the eel merchant poked them with a sharp stick.

           
The fish market was nearly empty at this hour, and the cross atop the Agnes Convent hung over the wide, empty space before us. I’d almost forgotten what open space felt like.

           
And my head still felt cold.

           
Knots of Christian revelers gathered at the river’s edge, piling merrily into boats that ferried them to the other shore, where pockets of early risers dotted the fields, waiting to see the sun dance on Easter day.

           
And for a moment I envied the Christians’ freedom to misbehave without thinking about the consequences, because no matter what they did, no matter what rules they broke, they would wake up tomorrow in a sane and stable world. We had no such assurances.

           
The blare of trumpets had heralded the thunderous arrival of a company of imperial guards to escort the Inquisitor’s envoys with their writ of
Sub Poena
. And before the dust had settled, the foot patrols had stormed into the ghetto and began rounding up Jews, while the horse guards spread out and took up positions outside the gates to “protect the emperor’s property,” as they put it.

           
There were only three guards at the Northwest Gate, mounted on imposing armored steeds, but their protection was more symbolic than substantive against the growing number of angry faces accusing them of being pawns of the Jews.

           
And I had to stand by watching it from a safe distance. The hardest part was pretending to enjoy it.

           
The eel merchant laughed as he prodded the sausages.

           
“Tell me please what you are laughing at,” I said.

           
“Those idiots won’t be happy till every friggin’ Jew is killed, converted, or chased out of the kingdom,” he said. “Too bad the Jews know how to fight back.”

           
“Yes, they say that six kingdoms have tried to destroy these Jews, and they’re still here,” I said, trying to speak Czech with a Polish accent. “But surely they are no match for a kingdom as powerful as this one.”

           
“Where’d you say you were from?”

           
“From the good town of Czestochowa.”

           
“Where’s that?”

           
“It is in the distance of two hundred miles of Prague.”

           
“Uh-huh. Ain’t that Poland?”

           
“Yes, in its western part.”

           
The sky was brightening, and musicians in matching red-and-yellow out-fits hustled toward the main square, while the imperial guards kept things in order by trotting alongside a steady stream of dark-clothed Jews flowing southward from the gates. It looked like the whole population of the
Yidnshtot
was being rounded up and herded to some church on the south side of the ghetto.

           
A couple of filthy street boys chased after the Jews, pelting them with rotten scraps of fish. But they soon ran out of ammunition.

           
“So you wanna buy some eels?” he said.

           
“No, thanks.”

           
He stabbed a sausage too deeply, and it released some juices that spattered in the grease. The eel merchant jerked his hand away and cursed, then he licked the spot and prodded the sausages more gently, turning them just a little. They were slowly browning all the way around.

           
“Then you must be after something else,” he said.

           
“Well, actually, uh—”

           
“You’ve made it plain enough,” he said, spearing a sausage and transferring it to a battered metal dish. “Go ahead. Take one.”

           
“Oh, no. I couldn’t.”

           
“Shut up and take it already,” he said, spearing another sausage and blowing on it. “My mom sent them. Best damn sausages in town.”

           
Now what?
Should I pretend to bite into the sausage and spit it on the ground or into my sleeve when he wasn’t looking? No, the two of us were too close together and there were too few distractions for anything like that to work.

           
“You’ve been staring at them long enough,” he said, stuffing his mouth with meat. “I know you want one.”

           
I decided that my first priority was to keep my Christian identity intact and not jeopardize the plan.

           
“May God repay you,” I said, taking one of the sausages. I started to say a silent
brukhe
, and had to stop myself.
What’s the blessing for pork?
There wasn’t one, of course. So I bit through the crisp skin and chewed, the warm juices spilling across my tongue and down my gullet. It tasted just like any other sausage meat, really.

           
So I stood there munching on pork sausage and watching the flow of people shrink to a trickle as the ghetto was emptied of Jews. The two street boys grew bored with their game and drifted back across the square.

           
My companion took a swig from an earthenware jug, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and offered me a swallow. “Here, this’ll take the wax out of your ears,” he said.

           
“Ne, d
kuji
, it’s a little too early in the morning—”

           
“Don’t they celebrate Easter in Poland?”

           
I had to keep up appearances, so I took a swig of the raw alcohol, which cut through the pork fat and burned all the way down. I shivered a bit, which made the eelmonger laugh.

           
“What’sa matter? You never had
slivovice
before?”

           
“Ours is smoother,” I said, coughing.

           
He laughed and slapped me on the back, hard. Right on my bruised shoulder. It hurt so much tears came to my eyes, and I figured it was time to jump feet first into the void before he noticed anything.

           
“You know, forty days of Lent is an awfully long time to go without certain pleasures,” I said. “And I’m looking to buy some top-quality meat.”

           
“With what money?” he said. “You look like you don’t have a half-a-pfennig to sew up the holes in your breeches.”

           
I dug into my pocket, took out one of Meisel’s silver dalers, and dropped it into the metal tray.

           
One of his eyebrows arched, then he plucked the coin from the tray and put it in his mouth to suck the grease off it. He took it out of his mouth and examined both sides of the coin, and his lips curled up into a lopsided smile.

           
“Well, that changes things now, don’t it?” he said. “How much meat were you looking for?”

           
“A whole cartload.”

           
His eyes became two slits.

           
“What do you need that much meat for?” he asked.

           
“Actually, I’m more interested in the two men who were driving the cart.”

           
His eyes looked east, west, and south.

           
“Something wrong?” I asked.

           
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just that the sheriff’s men came around yesterday, poking into everything and asking a lot of questions about a cartful of meat.”

           
“The municipal guards are no friends of mine.”

           
“I bet they’re not. But you can’t be too careful.”

           
“No, you can’t.”

           
His gaze became distant.

           
I waited for his answer while my stomach grumbled, punishing me for eating that
treyfene
sausage.

           
Finally, he called out to one of the street boys: “Marko!”

           
He tossed the kid a copper farthing.

           
“Watch the stand till I get back.”

           
THE PUBLIC BATHS THAT M ORDECAI Meisel had built for the community lay empty and abandoned, and the rowboat heaved against the dock as we climbed aboard. I grabbed the bowsprit and got a palmful of splinters for my trouble. Carved into the main beam above my hand was a creature with three faces, sharp ears, and a pointed tongue. It was wielding a sword and a drinking horn, like a pagan idol.

           
“I see you’ve met Svantovit,” he said. “Our protector since the olden days. He’s got three faces because he watches over the past, the present, and the future.”

           
And from where I was standing, the future didn’t look too good.

           
I pulled some of the splinters out of my palm and squatted on the bench seat for a closer look at the three-faced idol. It was skillfully crafted, though not by a master.

           
“I carved that myself,” he said.

           
“It’s pretty good. You should have been apprenticed to a woodcarver.”

           
“My old man made damn sure to crush that idea pretty early on,” he said, handing me a piece of kindling from the cooking fire. Its tip was glowing reddish orange.

           
“That’s too bad.”

           
“What’s the difference?” he said, slipping the paint er and shoving off. “Make sure you keep that ember protected from the wind.”

           
“That would have made me angry as hell.”

           
“What’d you say your name was?”

           
“Vasil.”

           
“Well, listen to me, Vasil. I could teach you things about anger that would curl your hair,” he said, putting his back into it and steering us in the direction of the old mill on the other side of the river.

           
The castle rock loomed over us, casting its wide shadow across the water.

           
Off to the east, between the water and the sky, a disturbance shimmered like heat rising from an oven, and suddenly the bright orange lip of the sun appeared with a flash and bled across the horizon like molten fire. Distant cheers filled the fields, as the rounded rim of the sun slowly rose from its nighttime wanderings beneath the mantle of the earth.

           
“Yeah, I hated my old man, too. So how far are we going?” I said, eyeing the unfamiliar terrain. Langweil’s model of Prague didn’t include the area north of the Vltava.

           
“Don’t worry, I’ll get you there in plenty of time. What’s the big rush?”

           
“No rush,” I said, trying to push the conversation along. But the rolling of the swells did not sit well with me, and I burped up the taste of that forbidden sausage.

           
“I just need a couple of men who can keep quiet about what’s in the meat wagon. Know what I mean?”