Another Scandal in Bohemia (28 page)

“Nell?” Irene was repeating, and I could tell that she wanted, that she required my opinion. I was not a mere witness, but someone whose views she depended upon for a certain consistency, even a certain clarity. That Irene, with all her wit, many talents, greater worldliness, and superior intuition, relied upon me for balance was a realization I knew seldom.

When I did experience this revelation, I felt less foolish, less useless, less idle. Now I must set aside my deepest prejudices and speak to what I had seen, as truly as possible, so that Irene could see through me to the greater mystery that was hers to solve. I spoke softly, slowly, aware of Allegra’s enormous and impressionable eyes and ears upon me.

“You know me, Irene. I believe in the spiritual too deeply to fall easy victim to the merely supernatural. Yet this Golem is the product of a spiritual process, however base its common clay, as we all are. What did I see?” I sighed, trying to be utterly accurate. “I saw a being. Male. Large. Huge, in fact. Something chained about it, something confined. Something vacant, masked, unfinished in the face. I saw a powerful... blundering, witnessed a Hercules unchained. It did not see us, not in any common sense. It could have just broken free of a long-ago past, for the street itself was older than many cities. It was not a normal thing that we saw, that I knew. Larger than life. Perhaps larger than death. Was it the Golem? I cannot say. But it was not... ordinary. It was not... right.”

Irene stroked the bridge of her nose, as I do when my pince-nez pinches, but she wore no spectacles. Her eyes closed as if consulting an inner vision. Then she nodded.

“There is no doubt. You and Godfrey have seen something extraordinary. I had not reckoned on that, upon there being substance to these rumors of the Golem walking again. Most troubling.”

“What is this ‘Golem’?” Allegra asked eagerly, no longer able to contain herself or the champagne she had imbibed. “Is it something like a Guy Fawkes effigy?”

And a little child shall lead them. I smiled at Allegra, that most innocent of us innocents abroad. “The Golem, my dear, is like a giant from a fairy tale, only more profound. It is both living and dead; wise and stupid; victim and avenger. It is protector, and sacrificial lamb.”

Only I had studied the old tales years ago. Only I knew the Golem’s proper place in ancient Prague. Only I might predict its reality in the present-day city. Of all my duties as a governess, I loved best telling tales, especially if they were morally instructive. Or if I could make them so. “Have you heard of the Rothschilds, child?”

Allegra nodded, eyes wide. “The wealthiest and most powerful bankers in Europe.”

“The fiscal frog princes of Europe, my dear girl, who sprang from a small, dismal pond no one else wanted: the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt, but twelve feet wide, and that twelve feet extending forever into poverty and despair. You know that most humans failed Our Lord when he finally came to Earth. Only a few knew the promised Savior, and pledged allegiance even at the foot of the Cross. You know how Christianity, persecuted and reviled, came to convert half the world—the most civilized half, of course. You know how Greeks became Christians, and Romans, and half-wild Huns. But not Jews. And, in time, Christians reviled the Jews for their ignorance of the Lord’s arrival. The Jews were forced to wander the earth, and to them Christians assigned the distasteful task of handling money, as Judas had handled the thirty pieces of silver. Only they could lend and borrow, could thrive on the interest of such transactions.”

“Like Shylock!” the dear girl prompted.

Irene started from her reverie. “Oh. I thought you had mentioned my current pseudonym.” '

“Like Shylock,” I reiterated pointedly. “At first we despised them because they did not believe as we did. Then we despised them because they did what we considered ourselves too noble to do. Despite their money-handling, most Jews remained poor, and even the rich among them dwelled in the same crowded, filthy alleyways, the Jewish quarter, in the great cities of Europe.

“Then we began to suspect them of occult wrong-doing, of ritual murder of our children. Did not Herod order the Slaughter of the Innocents? So on great Church Holy Days, particularly at Easter, when Our Lord was crucified and resurrected, Christian anger boiled over. Then they would storm the gates of the ghetto, then riots ensued, and then Jews would pay the blood price for the Blood of the Lamb they had shed, and may still be shedding.”

“But did they do it?” Allegra demanded. “Murder children? Like the evil butcher who pickled them in the St. Nicholas legend? That was so long ago, Miss Huxleigh! And the ancient Jews didn’t know, did they, who the Christ was? If they had known, would it not have made the prophesies of their disavowal wrong? Weren’t the people of Israel needed to reject the Savior, so that he could save us all? And is it fair to blame the descendents for their forebears’ stupidity?”

I smiled at her impassioned, naive wisdom. “Perhaps. That is not for the likes of you and me to decide. Even Christians all suffer for the foolishness of Adam and Eve, our own forebears.”

“Ah,” Irene interrupted, “is that why life is sometimes so vexatious? I shall have to have a sharp word with Adam and Eve in the Afterlife.”

Allegra opened her mouth as if to say something more, then shut it. I resumed my tale, which had all the drama of grand opera, not appreciating the interruption. Irene had been right; the Golem legend provided the perfect text for such a work, could only a baritone big enough be found to sing the part of the Golem.

“To know the legend of the Golem, one must know the meaning of the Hebrew word. It means ‘germ,’ also ‘formless’ and ‘mindless.’ ”

“A blank slate,” Godfrey put in, sitting back and folding his hands. “A perfect tool.”

“There are many variations of the Golem story, and who may say where the truth most lies?’ I went on, quelling Godfrey with a governess’s glare.

“Certain elements persist: the High Rabbi, one Loew, used the Cabbala, the mystic Jewish occult powers, to bring to life a huge man-figure of clay. He put a paper, on which was written the vivifying words, including the shem, the secret Name of God, into the Golem’s mouth to raise it. But the Golem must not defile the Sabbath with its unnatural life, so each Friday evening the Rabbi must remove the paper bearing the sacred shem. On one such midnight the Rabbi forgot”

“Just like Cinderella forgot!" Allegra burst out, much annoying me.

“The Golem is no Cinderella,” I said sternly. “For one thing, it would require a large rather than a tiny shoe.”

“Clementine,” Irene added absently, and mysteriously. “Number nine.”

“There was no number written on the paper, simply the occult formula for the Golem’s creation. What do you suppose happened when the Golem was not set to rest for the Sabbath?”

Allegra blinked, looking weary, and I suppose that the hour was late for old folk tales that seemed to have no point. “He turned into a pumpkin?”

“No. He turned into a madman. He went berserk, uprooting trees and running wild through the streets of Prague.”

“Like the figure you saw!” Allegra exclaimed.

“Exactly. Like the figure Godfrey and I saw. Legend has it that the appalled Rabbi realized that the Sabbath had not yet been consecrated at the Old-New Synagogue. He pursued the Golem and drew the sacred scroll from its mouth. The clay form fell to the ground and shattered. Even today the pieces are said to lie in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue.”

“A stirring tale,” Godfrey put in over the smoke of a cigarette that he now passed back and forth to Irene, a most unsanitary habit, but then I imagine that married persons indulge in more unsanitary pursuits.

“That is one version,” I added, sitting back, pleased to watch my attentive audience pucker a common brow.

“There is not a single legend?” Irene asked. “How... very annoying.”

“Perhaps not. The second version is much more political.”

“Political?” Godfrey abandoned his careless slouch to sit to attention.

“Indeed,” I answered, and went on before I had to endure any more interruptions. “Some say that the Golem was destroyed only after the Rabbi was called to a midnight audience with Emperor Rudolph the Second. This mystical ruler, called by some a madman, made Prague his seat, then invited the day’s alchemists and crackpot astronomers to the city. The year was I592, and Rabbi Loew was conducted in secret to the Emperor’s chamber. What came of that conference, we cannot know. Some say that in exchange for putting the Golem finally to rest, the rabbi had the Emperor’s assurance that the attacks on the ghetto would cease.

“Some say that Rabbi Loew returned from Prague Castle to tell Joseph Golem that he must sleep henceforth in the attic of the New-Old Synagogue, where he had been created. On the thirty-third day after Passover, the Rabbi and two assistants entered the attic and walked seven times around the sleeping figure, intoning magic formulas. By the seventh circle, all life had left the Golem. It has not been seen since, but many believe it has lain in the attic of the synagogue. Waiting.”

I turned to Allegra. “As for your Cinderella dreams, I must add that in some versions of the legend Joseph the clay man falls in love with the rabbi’s lovely daughter, and has slept ever since, dreaming of her after her father took the words of life from his mouth forever.”

“How sad! No wonder the poor creature blunders through the streets,” she responded from her sympathetic young girl’s heart.

Irene merely smiled and said, “Herr Frankenstein’s monster, I presume.”

Godfrey frowned, then added, “Doesn’t Hugo’s
Notre Dame de Paris
portray yet another ‘unnatural’ man—the hideous hunchback Quasimodo, in some versions created by the magician Frollo—who covets a maiden fair in Esmeralda, the beautiful gypsy girl?”

Irene nodded. “Scratch the day’s new works of art and uncover an old legend. A pity neither you nor Nell thought to scratch the surface of the Golem you saw. I wonder what—or whom—you would have found?”

Allegra shuddered. “I would not wish to know! I am so glad I was on the train with Mrs. Norton instead of in the streets of Prague with Mr. Norton, Miss Huxleigh, and... that thing.”

“You are young, Allegra,” Irene said, more severely than she was wont to speak, “and think in extremes. Better to pity the creature, than to fear it. Scratch a legendary monster,” she added in ominous tones, “and often you will find a martyr.”

Chapter Nineteen

QUEEN’S GAMBIT

The next
morning, Godfrey was summoned to the Bank of Bohemia to report on his progress. I was not mentioned in Mr. Werner’s message.

This left me somewhat miffed, and at the mercy of my enterprising friend, Irene, who was always more dangerous when left to her own devices.

“Let the men go talk their men talk!” she said when I reported my snubbing in the rooms she shared with Allegra. “We have better things to do.”

“Such as—?”

She glanced at the dear girl by the window, then leaned close. “We must arrange an audience with Her Majesty, the Queen of Bohemia.”

“We?”

“You were present when the Queen sought my aid. You will reassure her when she meets us again and finds me... changed.”

“Yes, I am always useful for reassurance. What of Allegra?”

I give Irene some credit for sense. She understood immediately that I was concerned about our charge’s disposition.

“Allegra will accompany us. What better excuse for an insignificant social visit than a triumvirate of women, one of them a mere girl?”

“She is indeed only a girl. How can you involve her in such an scandalous intrigue?’

Irene shrugged. “A knowledge of such intrigue is the best defense one can give a girl in this dangerous age.”

“It hasn’t done the Queen of Bohemia much good.”

“Ah. She knows nothing of intrigue, or she wouldn’t have been driven to seek our aid.” Before I could challenge Irene’s convenient, and inaccurate, “us,” she cannily changed the subject. “What did you think of the King last night?”

“What I have always thought: a most impressive figure face-to-face but impervious to the gender considerations involved in being a gentleman.”

“You thought him a pompous prig!”

"Irene, you put words in my mouth, as usual! I cannot deny that Wilhelm von Ormstein is most overbearing in person. That feature has not changed. But now I know the man beneath the monarch, and he has not only treated you despicably—”

“Yes?” Irene purred.

“He has additionally been most insensitive to the poor Queen, who being an unimaginative creature cannot understand his dereliction of duty—”

“Yes, Nell—!” she encouraged me.

“But me he has always treated as an exceptionally invisible piece of furniture, and so he did last night. Nothing has changed with him.”

“Ah, you think so?”

“You say differently?”

“No. Only he did not recognize me.”

“Irene! Why on earth should he? You have marshaled all of your considerable theatrical arts to ensure that he should not do so. Why are you disappointed that you have succeeded?”