The Fifth Servant (9 page)

           
Gans sharpened his nib with a short knife.

           
Yankev ben Khayim lit a couple of candles, and sat next to Isaac Ha-Kohen. The two of them began rocking rhythmically back and forth, murmuring ancient prayers as they set out on the long, slow voyage toward a state of near-ecstasy that would allow them to receive the energy flowing from the divine emanations of righteousness and mercy.

           
“Yes, you men begin the
tfiles
,” said Rabbi Loew. “If we assail the gates of heaven with our tears, God willing, they may open for us. In the meantime, perhaps we can buy the
goyim
off before this turns into another dreadful blood—”

           
Rabbi Loew stopped suddenly. I followed his gaze. The rabbi’s granddaughter Eva was standing in the doorway, holding a long feather. She was about twelve years old. Not much older than the victim.

           
She said, “I’m here to dust the books,
zeyde
.”

           
Rabbi Loew said, “You’re a big girl, Havele, but you still need help dusting all these books.”

           
“I can do it myself, Grandaddy.”

           
Eva Kohen had dark curly hair and bright eyes, and something passed across young Lipmann’s face when she came into the room, though she may not have been aware of it.

           
“Very well, my little jewel,” said Rabbi Loew. He resumed his discourse, leaving out the references to blood. “As I was saying, we are dealing with people who don’t just tell lies, they tell so many lies that they build a parallel world out of their lies, and in
that
world, those lies are true. For such people, it’s not what is, it’s what they happen to believe. For surely we have learned that even if all the words of slander directed against us are not accepted as true, half of them
are
accepted.”

           
He turned and quizzed his grandchild: “Eva, can you tell me where that citation is from?”

           
Eva repeated the words to herself, and said, “Is it the
Breyshis Raboh
?” The great commentary on
Breyshis
, In the Beginning, which the Christians call Genesis.

           
“That’s my girl,” he said, giving her a loving squeeze.

           
She was a smart girl, all right.

           
Rabbi Gans opened the pot of ink, dipped in the nib, and began to anoint the blank pages with the majestic block letters of the Hebrew
alef-beys
.

           
Isaac Ha-Kohen and Yankev ben Khayim kept up their soft chanting, but they needed more voices, more prayers pounding on the unyielding gates of heaven.

           
Rabbi Loew stroked his beard and considered a moment. Finally, he asked a question: “Benyamin Ben-Akiva, are you schooled in the Kabbalah?”

           
“My knowledge of Kabbalah is like a page that has fallen out of an old book. But I know something of the Law.”

           
“Good. Come with me, then. We need to build a legal case that will convince the emperor to intervene on our behalf before Federn confesses.”

           
“Confesses? He hasn’t done anything.”

           
Isaac Ha-Kohen shook his head and gave me a
shows-what-you-know
look without losing his place in the prayers.

           
Rabbi Loew said, “A man will admit to anything after three days of torture.”

           
I shuddered at the thought. I’d been made to stand thigh-deep in snow until icy needles pierced my thickest flesh; I’d been slapped with a switch, a stick, a calloused hand; I’d been forced to sleep in the stables without food or a blanket; I’d been called a fool and a slob and a thousand other useless names. But my legs eventually went numb, my bruises healed, I learned to withstand hunger and cold and harsh accusations, and I never confessed to something I didn’t do.

           
Eva was going through each book on the shelf with a feather in a largely symbolic search for wayward crumbs that might have fallen into the cracks between the pages. Rabbi Loew gave her a pat on the shoulder as I followed him toward the door.

           
We stopped to look at what Rabbi Gans had written. After the first few words, he had switched from ornate Hebrew capitals to cursive Yiddish:

           
On Friday, the 14th of Nisan, 5352, or March 27 of the Christian year 1592, in the sixteenth year of the reign of Emperor Rudolf II, may his glory be elevated, there arose a new persecution based on the ancient lie, the dreaded blood libel.

           
“Good start,” said the rabbi. “Now write that the first thing Rabbi Loew and his assistant shammes did was go to the
kehileh
to secure a formal request for the transfer of the accused, Jacob Federn, from the municipal to the imperial prison. He’ll be safer there.”

           
I asked, “Why are we wasting time going to the Town Council? Why not go directly to the
keyser
?”

           
“We’ve got a better chance of getting the emperor’s ear if the request comes from the whole community.”

           
I nodded.

           
“All right,” said the rabbi. “Then
kum aseh
.” Get up and do.

           
I helped Rabbi Loew put on his winter cloak, and together we went out to the street armed with nothing but the will to perform a
mitsveh
, a positive act, almost a holy deed, since it is written that whoever saves a single life is looked upon as if he had saved the entire world.

CHAPTER 7

           
WHEN THE I NQUISITOR’S CARRIAGE and retinue crossed the
Vltava
River
into
Prague
, the waters were churning so violently that it spooked the horses. The driver said the river was riding high with early runoff from the highlands, but the Inquisitor knew this was surely the Devil’s work. And so was the slow fire eating through his guts. His backside also hurt from the long, hard ride down through the
Brenner Pass
, another sign of the Devil’s torment, but he took courage from the protective shield of the true faith that hung around his neck like a mantle of steel. Bishop Heinrich Stempfel had spent a lifetime sniffing out unbelievers and heretics, and was ready to confront the enemy in any form. He challenged the wicked ones to reveal their ugliness and try to keep him from exposing their sinful acts to the pure, bright light of truth.

           
He winced as their hellfire clawed at his tender places, but he was damned if they were going to keep him from seeing this mission through to the end. His cause was just.

           
Bishop Stempfel had his own priorities, but the new pope had given him his orders: Catholic Prague had been without a leader for two years since Archbishop Medek’s death, may God rest his soul, and that empty seat had to be filled by someone who was prepared to crush the gathering forces of Protestant heresy and reclaim the fractious Bohemian territory for Rome. As his caravan pulled into the courtyard of Our Lady of Terezín, with its Italian-style parish house, all arches and orange roofing tiles, Bishop Stempfel thought, “And here come a couple of the contenders.”

           
Archpriests Hermann Popel and Andyel Zeman were positioning themselves at the head of a long red carpet, jabbing each other with their elbows while waiting to receive the Pope’s envoy with all the drums and colors and pomp and protocol appropriate to his station.

           
A pair of liveried footmen opened the carriage door and placed a velvet stool on the flagstones for the bishop, who waited for them to lay an embroidered handkerchief on the cushion before he stepped down. He was followed by his closest aide, Grünpickl, and his scribe, Stuck.

           
Popel and Zeman led a procession of choirboys holding pure white candles to greet Bishop Stempfel, who took a gilded casket from Grünpickl and presented it to the two archpriests as a gift from His Eminence in
Rome
to the faithful of
Prague
. It contained a holy relic, the bones of a child killed by King Herod of
Judea
during the slaughter of the innocents. Popel and Zeman opened the casket to gaze upon the objects of such long-term veneration. The bones were extremely well preserved. They looked only a few years old, clear proof of their miraculous powers.

           
“Thank heaven you’re here, my lord,” said Popel. “The
verfluchte Juden
have spat in our faces for the last time.”

           
“Can it wait till after breakfast?”

           
“My lord, this sacrifice calls for swift vengeance.”

           
“What form of sacrifice do you mean?” he said, looking over the faces of the innocent Christian boys whose well-being he had sworn to protect.

           
Popel was surprised by Bishop Stempfel’s ambivalence. The Inquisitor was supposed to swoop into this sluttish city, which had opened its gates to every possible heretical belief, with the glowing cross of the True Faith emblazoned on his chest and a flaming sword in his outstretched hand. He put great emphasis on his next words:

           
“My lord, I speak of the dreaded
Blutbeschuldigungen
—”

           
“Not another bloodcrime, Popel.” The bishop turned and began the majestic walk down the bright red carpet toward the marble steps. The two priests followed alongside. “I keep telling the legions of the faithful that the Jews don’t use blood. It’s against their Law. Even the Poles know that. King Boleslaw the Pious and His Eminence Innocent IV settled the matter quite some time ago.”

           
Zeman was content to keep quiet and let Popel dig himself deeper into this hole.

           
“
Rome
may have spoken, but the matter is far from settled,” said Popel. “Just last Easter a Jew from Löwenstein tried to buy a four-year-old child for his blood.”

           
“Well, God knows you can’t believe anything from that bunch of lunatics in Löwenstein. Aren’t they the ones who are convinced that a Jewish woman once gave birth to a sow?”

           
“Those events are well documented, my lord. The Jews have broken into our churches, desecrated holy images, and even mocked the Savior’s crucifixion by wounding the Body of Christ with their daggers.”

           
“They did all this in front of a hostile congregation, and nobody tried to stop them? Surely there is some exaggeration here.”

           
Popel didn’t answer. He was beginning to understand what it meant when people said that when the mighty arm of the Lord takes human form, the vessel is sometimes too weak to stand the strain.

           
As they passed through the main archway and climbed the stairs to the private dining chambers, Zeman asked Bishop Stempfel if he enjoyed the trip from
Rome
, and if he found the weather to his liking.

           
The table was laid out with a variety of Bohemian fare, but Bishop Stempfel filled his plate with German sausages smothered with pepper, cumin, and other costly spices. The Bishop of Bishops, Pope Clement VIII, had personally declared that Stempfel could dispense with fasting during this expedition because he needed to keep up his strength for the fight against demons.

           
The bishop sat in the finest chair, with a red velvet cushion and a high back crawling with gilded curlicues in the latest fashion. He took a moment to admire the floral patterns on the high ceiling, which were endlessly reflected by the full-length mirrors.

           
Popel tried again: “My lord, give me license to use all available means to deal with the Jews for their detestable crimes.”

           
“Leave them to the judgment of God for a moment,” said Stempfel, slopping hot mustard on a steaming pile of sausages. “
Rome
has established a clear policy. Our first order of business is to rid the country of heretics, and purge their ranks of those arch-heretics, the witches. We’ll have plenty of time for the Jews later.”

           
Popel drummed his fingers on the table while breathing rapidly through his nostrils.

           
“Don’t worry, my friend,” said the bishop. “Our sacred mission is to restore the unity of mankind under the banner of the universal Church. First it was the Hussites, with their nasty habit of tossing people out of windows. But we learned to tolerate them. Then came the Utraquists and the Picardians and the Unitarians, and we tolerated
them
. And now the place is crawling with followers of every persuasion, who act like we still roll into a town, set up a table, and charge people a daler a head minimum to buy off their sins. Heaven is not for sale, they say. Bah! As if we haven’t progressed beyond the wholesale merchandising of dispensations and indulgences.”