Another Scandal in Bohemia (13 page)

We were silent.

“The pogrom?”

Godfrey and Irene nodded.

“I have not,” I spoke up.

The Baron addressed me, so exclusively that I became restive after a while. His words were short and clipped and the picture they painted was harsh.

“The pogrom is only on the large scale what all Jews have faced on a small scale. We are periodically reviled, herded, forced to leave where we have lived. In the ghettos even we are not safe; on high Christian holy days, mobs attack the ghettos and demand a blood price of many deaths for the single, ritual death they blame on us. Then we die; men, women, children, and the thirst is satisfied until the next time.”

“That,” I said, realizing it for the first time, “is what you left behind.”

“That is what we came from; to become Barons of France or lords of England, we first had to become wealthy and powerful beyond all others of our kind. Thirty pieces of silver may buy betrayal; thirty million will buy—ultimately, grudgingly—respect, titles, prominence.”

“Why, you are like Mr. Worth!” I said, amazed.

The Baron regarded me in puzzlement.

“You are respected by dint of talent, but only tolerated by dint of birth,” I explained.

He smiled. “I believe that we Rothschilds are more than tolerated now, at least in France and England. Austria is another story. Even when we kept a major bank in Vienna, a Rothschild was not allowed to become a citizen or buy a house because he was a Jew.”

Irene stirred, as if roused from some melancholy reverie. “The tale you tell is ever the same. If the Rothschilds cannot protect the Jews of the ghetto, how can we?”

“We are our brothers’ keeper,” he said a bit bitterly, “yet in these latter days we grow careless in our religion and smug in our safety. Only my brother Édouard pours money into the wild and doomed dream of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. As well commandeer an ice floe and call it Israel. No, we Rothschilds do not seek to reshape the world, only to keep it from disintegrating further. We cannot stem the Russian pogroms, but we can aid those who flee them. We cannot level the ghettos, but we can leave them and make it possible for others to live beyond them, as we do. Other matters we cannot affect, only wonder at, and one such example is much on my mind of late. Have you ever heard of the Golem?”

The Golem. The Golem. “I have—!” I stared wonderingly at Irene. “A kind of... monster, was it not?”

She shrugged. “One person’s monster is another’s Messiah, and that is precisely the role the Golem played.” Her tone dropped into the soft, hypnotizing range of storytelling. “The Golem was a man of clay. A medieval rabbi used the words of the Cabbala—the secret oral tradition of Judaism, handed down from Moses to the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud—to breathe life into its huge frame. Supposedly mute, but powerful, the Golem defended the ordinary ghetto dweller from rampaging mobs. Yet this clay man could love—the rabbi’s daughter—and so he was unmade. Some believe that the tale of the Golem inspired Mary Shelley to write
Frankenstein.
Yet the historic Golem is more than monster, it is myth. Its story explores the nature of creation and responsibility, which draws the line on which balance hatred and humanity. It would make a splendid tragic opera, as I told my dear friend, Antonin Dvořák, but who would play the title role?”

“Surely,” I said, “no one today believes in such a creature?”

The Baron was silent, then pushed off the desk edge. He had long since allowed his cigar to burn to a last inch of ash in a crystal tray beside him.

I grew aware that the chamber was still, and smokeless. “Reports—serious reports from unimpeachable witnesses,” the Baron said, “indicate that the Golem has been seen—twice within the past three months—stalking the ghetto byways. Taller than the ground floor of a house, with a face that is not a face, nearly blind and able to choke out only raw, ungoverned sounds... but alive, moving, back from the undead.”

“Where? Where has such a thing been seen?” I demanded, still a doubting Thomas.

Then I remembered when and where I’d first heard mention of the Golem on Irene’s lips and jerked my head. I met her eyes already staring into mine with an expression of mingled mystification and triumph.

“Prague,” the Baron answered my question. “In Prague, of course. That city historically has been the richest source of the Golem legends. Something is rotten in the state of Bohemia, in its politics, and in its people. Now the Golem walks again for the first time in four hundred years. I want you three to go to Prague immediately and discover what is wrong.”

“Prague,” I whispered, stunned and dismayed.

Irene’s lips silently mirrored the motion of my own.

Chapter Eight

AN EMBARRASSMENT OF ROTHSCHILDS

 “I am
not persuaded,” Godfrey said into the lengthening silence. “My wife has reason to fear for her personal safety in that city. Vague rumors of social and political unrest and the even vaguer reports of this mythical creature hardly justify the risk.”

Godfrey had spoken with perfect politeness, and utter indifference. When he finished, he contemplated the thick ash on his cigar end as if the issue of when it would fall was of much more import than the Baron’s astonishing proposal.

The Baron’s dark eyes sparkled almost as brightly as Irene’s did at the hint of a mystery.

“Monsieur is prepared to negotiate, I see, but time is of the essence, and I must be blunt. No doubt you refer to the current King of Bohemia’s frustrated ambitions in your wife’s direction?”

Godfrey did not blink—nor did he stop eyeing his irritating ash—but I could not avoid exclaiming, “You know of that?”

“Of course. Miss Huxleigh. When the King of Bohemia directs five of his top secret agents’ attention to pursuing a pair of misses absconding from Prague, the action is noticed, please believe me. That is why you may rely upon our information that maneuvers of great moment are taking place in Prague; such plots may undermine the delicate national harmony of Europe itself.”

“European nations,” Irene pointed out, “have had no harmony since Bonaparte.”

“All the more reason to watch every trembling of the earth and its inhabitants, whether in France or Bohemia. The various nations and their governments are all intertwined. We Rothschilds know that better than most, having sunk our roots into various quarters of the Continent. We listen when the feather of a pigeon drops unwarranted in Warsaw; feel the tremors when the royal coffers overflow in Bremen. When the Golem apparently walks again in Prague, we see it not only as a manifestation of spiritual unease, but of political unrest.”

“If you know of the King’s enmity toward my wife,” Godfrey said, “you realize how senseless it would be to send her there. And without her presence, Miss Huxleigh and I are mere babes in the Bohemian woods.”

“You must not devalue yourself and your able assistant,” the Baron chided. “Happily, I do not accept your diagnosis.” He turned to Irene with a smile. “Nor do I expect that Madame Norton will fail to find an apt way of reintroducing herself to the city, be it in disguise or in the manner of some brilliant, bare-faced approach. Am I not right?” He bowed to Irene.

“Perfectly correct, Baron,” she agreed, “but my husband is also correct. I cannot be sure how the King would react to my presence in Prague, and that possibility must be considered. He may wish to kill me—or kidnap me. Neither course would suit myself and my companions.”

“Yes, yes, I admit the risk to you, Madame. Yet such risk did not keep you recently from the home turf of a far more formidable opponent than Wilhelm von Ormstein.” Irene donned her most skeptical expression, but I could see her fingers tightening on her dainty cigarette holder. “You refer, Baron—?”

“To your expedition to London, a city far more perilous to you than Prague. In addition, this Colonel Moran with whom you involved yourself is the most dangerous man we have encountered on three continents. I predict that he is not done with you.”

“Then he is still alive?” Irene demanded.

The Baron smiled. “I may not say more.”

“And Quentin Stanhope?” I broke in breathlessly, unable to restrain myself, or the hopeful quaver in my voice.

The Baron’s smile grew more mysterious. “I may not speak on that issue, either, Miss Huxleigh, but I believe you are wise to have forgone wearing mourning just yet.”

“If you know so much about us,” Godfrey put in a bit sternly, “you obviously have... spies of far greater experience than we at your command. Why recruit us?”

“Because spies are merely that, functionaries. This mission to Bohemia requires more finesse. I may have the confidences of the servants to the great, but rarely witnesses among those with whom the great rub elbows.”

“You do indeed resemble Monsieur Worth!” Irene exclaimed admiringly, flashing me a glance of acknowledgment “Except that you require not a
mannequin de ville
, but
agents du monde"

The Baron did not scorn her comparison to Monsieur Worth, as I feared he might, but he did look puzzled.

“Monsieur Worth,” she explained, “wishes me to wear his most exquisite gowns out and about as an inducement to wealthier clients to buy them.”

The Baron clapped his hands once, in understanding and pleasure.

“So you are already placed, Madame, as one who may go anywhere in great style for purposes of Fashion? Excellent. You have a gift for attracting the support of merchant princes like Worth and Tiffany, if not the honor of actual princes like Wilhelm von Ormstein. This new arrangement will suit my plans admirably.”

Once again Godfrey intervened, and with a well-taken objection.

“You are not dealing with your usual sort of agent, Baron,” he said. “Spies act at your command, as I said; I doubt that we will be so malleable.”

“True,” Irene added mischievously. “We will do as you wish only so long as we are convinced that it abets the greater good.”

“And what is the greater good, Madame?”

“Why, what we believe it is.”

“I see. You warn me that you may be contrary.”

“We warn you,” Godfrey said, “that we serve our own integrity before any other’s cause, no matter how high- sounding.”

The Baron upheld a forefinger. “But not your own interests?”

“Interests,” Godfrey repeated, consulting Irene and me in turn with his eyes. “No. We are all capable of sacrificing our own interests if the need be dire enough.”

“Excellent. I can ask for no more than agents accompanied by consciences. Our family goals are as I said: to ensure the peace of Europe’s many, often-contentious nations. Wars kill people, destroy lands and property, and ruin economies. The House of Rothschild has never thrived on devastation; we came from it too recently.”

“Still,” Irene put in, “you have not done badly for yourselves.”

“And for those who serve us,” the Baron added with a bow. “On that note, I would like to present you with some tokens of our confidence in this association. Of course you will be paid, and well, if your mission proves successful, but until then—”

He turned to the two men by the door who had stood to attention as stonily as well-trained dogs while we talked. “You may bring in the items from the vault.”

The word
vault
caused Irene’s eyebrows to elevate in pleased anticipation. Godfrey merely looked wary, while I had visions of damp stone and large, red-eyed rats. We were, after all, in a basement, no matter how imposing the edifice above it. While the French like to fancy themselves too grand for vermin, they have a long history of consorting with them, just as all peoples do.

The first object was presented to Irene. The silent bearer stood before her with an inlaid ebony case supported on the crook of one arm—a case large enough to hold the family silver.

Irene’s spine straightened even beyond the call of her superb posture, though she kept her bare shoulders admirably down, and her neck lengthened in a swanlike gesture, as if she were a child trying to stretch herself tall enough to see into a tempting dish atop a stove. Her expression was a study of innocently serene, utterly controlled, and frightfully fierce anticipation.

I pitied the poor Baron if the contents of his chest failed to meet her expectations.

He nodded at the man, who plucked open the lid like a clam shell, revealing an interior of blackest velvet festooned by a Milky Way of blinding light

Irene had risen with the lid to stare down at the case’s contents, her features almost illuminated by that eerie, icy, profligate azurine-albino glow. Godfrey, too, stood and stared. And I.

“I must add,” the Baron said, “that your old acquaintance Mr. Tiffany would be grateful for any news of royal jewels coming onto the market that you encounter on your journey. It was he who suggested that this bauble might serve well as an ‘introduction’ to those we wish you to consort with. He will, of course, be delighted to accept any commission its presence might stimulate.

Irene was still speechless, something neither Godfrey nor I was used to. But, then, we too were struck dumb.