Dark Tracks by Philippa Gregory
“How could it be blasphemy to attack the infidel?” the lord asked.
“Their Bible is our Bible,” Luca said. “The very same.”
“Never!” Lord Vargarten exclaimed. “Who knew that?” He kicked his horse and made it wheel round, through the broken doorway of the synagogue. “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken my horse in there,” he remarked.
In the street outside, his men were painfully hauling themselves into their saddles. A couple of them were hiding away little stolen treasures, but most of them were stunned with shock, nursing a broken arm, or bleeding from the nose.
“You impious dogs!” Lord Vargarten yelled, anger replacing fear. “Theft and rape weren’t enough for you? Oh no! You had to go and try to steal the Jewish Bible. Don’t you know that’s as good as our Bible? You’ll all have to go to confession and your hurts are your own fault.”
“Johann is dead!” someone shouted from the back of the troop.
“And it’s his own fault!” Lord Vargarten replied. “Because he put his hand on the Holy Bible and an angel struck him dead. Remember it. When I tell you to take a little reward for your work, I don’t expect you to desecrate our own Bible! Fools that you are. Follow me, we’re riding home.”
He glanced down at Luca. “Are you coming back with us?”
Luca shook his head. “We’ll come later. I thank you for your help. I shall send my report to the Holy Father and tell him that you saved two towns from the dancers.”
“No need to mention desecrating the Bible? It was not me, remember, it was that fool and he’s dead. I’d rather not have that marked up against me.”
“Not at all.”
“Follow me!” his lordship bellowed to his men, and pushed his horse through his troop, down the narrow street, and toward the gates.
Luca and Brother Peter stayed very still, the setting sun burning into their faces, until they heard the gates bang shut behind them, the diminishing clatter of the hooves, and then the tocsin sound once, to tell everyone that the village was empty of Vargarten’s men and the danger had gone—this time.
Slowly, people opened their shutters and peered out into the empty streets. Tentatively, front doors opened and people came out to assess the damage.
Householders whose windows had been broken emerged with brooms of twigs and started to sweep up the precious glass. There was the noise of hammering from a nearby street as someone started to repair a shutter, torn from its hinges. A woman began to cry over the loss of an heirloom, a treasure that had been passed down by her family for centuries, which they had kept safe through centuries of raids like this, but lost today.
The young woman who had run from the soldier walked back to her house, holding her ripped gown together at the neck to hide her nakedness, her head down.
“I thank you for your help,” she whispered to Luca as she went by.
He was overwhelmed by her dignity. He could find nothing to say but bowed as low to her as if she had been a Christian lady and not a despised Jewess. Then he turned back and paused at the wrecked doorway of the synagogue.
Freize was underneath the opening to the attic, standing astride, balanced on the arms of one of the heavy wooden chairs in the gallery so that he could reach upward, to where the children were peering down. As Luca watched, a small boy lowered himself into Freize’s arms and was lifted safely onto the floor.
Men and women came into the synagogue, calling out for their children and hearing their voices reply. Others went to the rabbi’s house and brought their children down the ladder and through the secret door. The mothers who had hidden elsewhere swooped down on their children and gathered them into their arms, kissing their faces, stroking their hair, patting them all over as if to be sure that they were unhurt.
Many of the children, released from their promise of silence, chattered to their parents that Freize had frightened them at first, suddenly appearing through the secret door in the rabbi’s house, but he had ordered them to be quiet and hide at the back of the attic, and that he had stood before them as the soldiers hammered on the floor, breaking through from the gallery in the synagogue below.
“And then he threw down the bench!” one girl told her father. “When the bad man came in. He broke down the floor and threw them all down!”
The rabbi arrived in the synagogue with his wife. “That was you?” he asked Freize.
Luca could see Freize struggle to explain. “Tell the rabbi,” he said shortly. “Tell him truly what has happened here. For I saw something that I cannot understand.”
Freize spoke quietly to the rabbi. “There was a Being,” he said. “Call me a fool, but he joined us in Venice. First time I saw the creature it was no bigger than a lizard. Kept by some alchemists in a jar. I know it doesn’t sound like it could be so, but it was. When we put it into the canal, it swam like a fish, like a salamander. When we left Venice, I thought it was walking on dry land, and following us—I kept seeing it from the corner of my eye, looking like a stable lad, like a little boy.”
He broke off and looked from Luca to Brother Peter, then back to the rabbi. “You’ll think I’m a fool,” he said. “Or drunk and seeing things.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to me?” Luca demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me you were seeing such a thing?”
“Because I thought I must be mistaken!” Freize exclaimed. “Even now, it sounds like madness.”
“Go on,” the rabbi said steadily. “It is not madness to me.”
Brother Peter looked at him. “Have you heard of such a thing before?”
“Yes,” said the man. “Have you?”
Brother Peter nodded.
“Ishraq saw the Being when it was no more than a lizard,” Freize said. “And then she saw him when he was the size of a little lad. I told her that I thought it was the lizard from Venice and we looked out for it after that. When the dancers took Isolde, and I followed her, then I spotted the Being again—he was following me.”
“Why?” Luca asked. “Why would he follow you?”
Unhappily, Freize shrugged. “I don’t know. I never knew. He never spoke to me. He never answered when I told him to go away. But he was growing considerably. It was troubling. Anyway, when I tried to get Isolde away from the dancers, it was the Being who saved her. He helped her and pulled her onward, and when I started dancing too, he got hold of my hand and drew me away. He ran us down the hill toward the village when our feet were dancing us away, back to them, as if he were a good father and we were silly children. And it was the Being who shouted out the special words and got the gateman to open the gates.”
“He shouted in Hebrew,” the rabbi told Luca. “He said: ‘Open the gate in the name of the one and only God!’ ”
“In Hebrew?” Luca asked.
The rabbi nodded. “The language of our faith. Of course the gateman obeyed.”
“But when we got in the gates and they were closed behind us, and we were safe, the Being was gone. Slipped away.”
“Disappeared?” Brother Peter asked.
“I don’t know,” Freize said. “I was trying to hold Isolde still, and begging the gateman not to put us out, then this gentleman arrived and we wanted to get her shoes off. I didn’t see the Being again, and I didn’t think to look for him. What with Arabs with scimitars and Ishraq gone, and being trapped in a village of Jews, and leaving you, Sparrow, all on your own, I forgot all about him.”
“And I never saw him at all,” the rabbi said. “Not when they came in, and not afterward. Though it would have meant everything to me to see him.”
“I saw him at the window.” Freize gave a little shudder. “I was afraid he was up to mischief, in your house, sir,” he said to the rabbi. “So I thought I should warn the lady, your wife, since she had been so good to us. She wasn’t afraid at all. She knew just who I meant and she showed him to me, in the attic of your house, guarding the children.”
“Above the ceiling of the synagogue.” The rabbi nodded at Brother P
“Then,” Freize went on, “while I was getting the girls to safety, and coming back here to fetch you, Sparrow, I kept thinking about the children in the attic, with the women and the Being, and I was fearful for them all. When I saw you were alive and trying to get Lord Vargarten’s men out of the village, I thought I’d go and see that all was well with the children. Vargarten’s men had broken into his house and gone on, leaving the door open, so I went in and ran up the stairs. I knew how to open the secret door, so I went up into the attic. The women were there, but no sign of the Being. The little children were there, as silent as angels. Just looking at me as if I could save them, saying nothing.”
Freize broke off, choked with emotion, and spoke to the rabbi. “It’s wrong, what Lord Vargarten allowed is wrong, whatever your people did in the Bible days. It can’t be right. No man could leave little children like that, their eyes wide, listening to their village being wrecked. How could anyone do such a thing? How could anyone allow it?”
“What happened?” Luca prompted him.
“I thought we were sitting snug and safe and we would wait it out, then a little one let out a cry, a tiny cry, but it was enough to alert them in the church below. Then we heard the soldiers breaking the ceiling in the church, thump thump with a battering ram, and then the floor broke away under our feet and up they came. I went to the hole in the attic floor and thought that I’d make a bit of a fight of it, but I didn’t fancy my chances—I could hear there were dozens of them coming. I thought, at best, I could just try to keep them delayed so the children could get away—down the other stairs and out through the rabbi’s house. It’s not the sort of odds I like, and I’m not a fighting man as you know, and I have no taste for trouble; but I shouted to the children to run away and I pushed against the first man that came up, but they were coming on again, and I didn’t think much for my chances, nor for the children, when the Being put me aside with his big hand—” Freize could not hide his shudder. “He has a big, powerful hand, you would not believe it; and he put me aside as if he were sweeping a kitten off a table. He took my place and leaned out of the gap in the floor and I saw him throw the man down—just lift him off and drop him; he thrust the next in the chest—and then he lifted the whole bench itself, which had taken a dozen men to lift up. He raised it, and turned it round and threw it down to the floor below, as if it were no more than a ladder for picking apples.”
“I saw it,” Luca confirmed. He nodded to the rabbi. “I saw the Being do that.”
“And then?” the rabbi asked. “Where did he go then?”
“I don’t know,” Freize said.
“I didn’t see, I was talking to Lord Vargarten and looking at the fallen men,” Luca said.
“I was giving the dead man the last rites,” Brother Peter added.
“He just went,” Freize said simply. “As soon as the soldiers left.”
“I told them the Being was an angel of judgment,” Luca said. “Because they had grabbed at the Bible. I don’t think they’ll come back for him. I think Vargarten believes it was a Christian angel.”
“I jumped down and helped the children down,” Freize finished. “I didn’t see him anymore. I don’t mind telling you that it was most disagreeable. Really. Frightening and noisy and unlikely to turn out all right. We were lucky he was there.”
“You have both heard of such a thing?” Luca asked, looking at Brother Peter and the rabbi.
“Yes,” the rabbi said quietly.
“I have,” Brother Peter said. “I think this was a golem.”
The rabbi breathed out and bowed his head reverently toward where the Ark should stand, the scrolls of the Torah safely stored.
“What’s a golem?” Luca asked.
“We have a story, that it is possible to make a Being from clay, from dust,” the rabbi said quietly. “And to bring that Being to life.”
Brother Peter nodded. “As God did with Adam.”
“That’s what the alchemists in Venice said they could do,” Freize muttered to Luca. “They said they were studying how to make life. They said they could create gold from muck and life from dust. And we saw that they could make gold.” He patted the pocket in his shirt where he carried his golden penny.
“Such a Being grows in power and strength,” said the rabbi. “On his forehead he carries the word ‘EMET,’ which in our language, Hebrew, means truth.”
“That he does!” Freize exclaimed. “EMET—I saw it myself. He had it from the very beginning.”
“It is said that he is a servant of the Jewish people, that in our time of need he will defend us.”
“He did that today,” Luca observed.
“And he saved Isolde and me,” Freize agreed.
“He saved the children,” said Brother Peter. “And the sacred things.”
“But where is he now?” Luca demanded.
The rabbi shrugged. “The story says that he can disappear. The story says that the golem can return to dust and come back again to us, in our time of need.”
“Is the presence of such a Being a sign of the end of days?” Luca asked. “Do you have the end of days in this story?”
“Not in this story,” the rabbi said. He gave Luca a weary smile. “But we too are waiting for the days to end. Sometimes we think they are here for us. Some days—like today—we think the end has come. But still we wait, and still a worse day comes, and still it is not the end.”
“We should still report it to Milord,” Brother Peter said. “This has been strange and uncanny.” He looked at the dead man on the synagogue floor, his neck broken, his head smashed. “And dangerous,” he added.
Freize, Luca, and Brother Peter rode out of the Jewish village, back to the town of Mauthausen, the mother of the two rescued children behind Freize.
The inn looked warm and ordinary in the dusk, and the children came running out to greet their mother and set off with her to ride home on a borrowed horse.
“Will you be safe?” Freize asked her. “Should I ride with you?”
She shook her head. “I will be safe. It is over for now. It will be quiet until the next time.”
“You know,” Freize said confidentially. “If I were you, I think I would say I was Christian and go and live in Vienna. Would you be safe there? If you lived alongside Christians and did not keep to your ways?”
She looked at him and it was as if she could see the future. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think Jews will be safe in Vienna?”
Freize saw to the horses, rubbing them down and turning them out into the twilight field to graze, as Luca and Brother Peter fetched the traveling writing desk to the dining room, with Ishraq and Isolde, and started to compose their report to Milord, the lord of the Order of Darkness.
“Difficult to know where to start,” Brother Peter said, trimming the nib of the quill with a penknife. “I have never attended such an inquiry. It was not an inquiry at all, it was a riot. We have reported on the dancers, but we should say that they were dispersed in the end.”
“The peddler told me that the dancers convinced themselves that they could do nothing but dance,” Ishraq offered. “He put Isolde in a sort of trance so she went out to them. But he said that others convince themselves.”
“So it is not a sickness of the body but a conviction?” Luca asked her. “A sickness of the mind?”
She nodded. “Like the hatred of the Jews,” she observed. “It is as if people are so poor, and their lives so hard, that they have to escape from their reality into an illusion. Sometimes they break out dancing; sometimes they break out in hatred. Either way it is a madness.”
“And the dancers are the same as the Jews to Lord Vargarten,” Luca suggested.
Brother Peter waited, his pen poised. “How so?”
“People fear and hate the dancers just as they fear and hate the Jews. Just as they drive out traveling Egyptians, or attack traveling players. Just as they hate peopl
“Other,” Brother Peter repeated.
“Like me,” Luca said bitterly. “A changeling. Like Ishraq: a half-Moor.”
Isolde’s head went up at the thought of Ishraq’s parentage, and she blushed scarlet at the memory of what Radu Bey had said to her that she had denied, that she would not repeat.
“You can’t blame them,” Brother Peter said. “We all feel comfortable with our own. I would rather live in my monastery than out in the world.”
“It’s understandable,” Luca said thoughtfully. “But we all have to stop ourselves from hating what we don’t know, just because it is strange to us. Lady Vargarten hates the dancers, yet her own sister danced away. Lord Vargarten hates the Jews because he borrows from them and never repays them. They hate them because they are strange and yet they are close; they work together—they are neighbors.”
“Do you want your report to say that people must live together in kindness?” Brother Peter asked with a little smile.
Luca shrugged. “Oh! No! I was warned against being imprecise by Milord himself. He said benevolence without hard detail is a waste of time. But you can write that the dancers were not a sign of the end of days for though it was very terrible, it did not get worse. They dispersed; some of them were cured and went home. If I was thinking of the end of days from what we have seen here, I would say that the treatment of the Jews was the worst sign.”
“You think that the cruelty might get worse?” Isolde asked him.
“I think that if a people think that a community living among them is evil or sick, then they will need very little convincing to destroy them. When you call someone an animal or less than animal, it is the start of the end. What if the next Lord Vargarten blames the Jews for his debts and instead of destroying the debts thinks he will destroy the lender? What if someone like Lady Vargarten takes power? What if, instead of complaining that Jews are here, people decided to drive them away, or drive them to death?”