Another Scandal in Bohemia (50 page)

Chapter Thirty-three

PRISONER OF PRAGUE

Ahead of
us, as faint as fog, appeared a misty glow.

For once I dreaded that I had been right, and my friend tragically wrong. Ghosts did haunt these ancient tunnels, and we were about to encounter one of them.

Muted laughter drifted toward us on the stale scent of decay.

My hand seized Irene’s shoulder in a spasmodic grip. I felt her wince at my warning, then her warm breath was tickling my ear.

“Almost there. Be of good heart.”

We continued forward, our soft shuffles lost in the sound of someone talking ahead.

The light intensified, indicating a merely human source of light: a lantern like our own.

Only one voice spoke; apparently it entertained itself. I recognized the German language, even understood a few words.

“Eat,” it suggested. “Drink.” “Time goes.”

“You stay.”

Did a Golem eat? I wondered. Did a Golem need an attendant to feed and water it, like a pet? What would keep such a creation alive once its makers were dead? A Keeper as immortal as it was?

We had neared another opening into an adjoining tunnel. From this mouth both the light and the odd, one-sided conversation had issued.

Irene stopped at the very selvage edge of light, causing me to collide with her back. Only the prominences of her face and figure caught the light, including the revolver in her right hand. She stooped to set down the lantern, then cocked the revolver.

The noise was louder than a snapped branch in a forest, for here the surrounding rock magnified sound.

I shut my eyes, expecting I know not what, but at the least a rather disastrous discovery.

As I feared, the German voice paused. In the unnatural silence we could hear heavy, booted feet pacing in our direction. My only solace was that we likely would not live long enough to worry about Godfrey’s survival. And if, perchance, our state of grace in our present lives saw us all to the same form of afterlife, we could meet again in some better world. I was not, however, sanguine.

Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum.
Thump, thump, thump, thump. Ponderous steps, as made by a walking monster. And what did a monster really eat and drink—besides bone and blood? Our triumph in finding the lair of the long-survived Golem would end in the fate of all flesh—death, dissolution.

 Closer. Closest! We are doomed, I thought, my eyes squeezed so painfully shut that fireflies curtsied on my inner lids.

“Halt!” Irene commanded in stem German.

I felt her back stiffen, and pictured her pistol-bearing arm thrusting forward into the light. What good were a few paltry gunshots against a monster of such height and girth and life span?

I waited to be caught up as a leaf in a stream, to be seized and smashed against the tunnel walls. Irene kept talking.

Her rapid German was unintelligible to me, but she seemed to be giving orders. What is more, I finally heard a sullen male voice muttering
ja wohl
like the tamest waiter at U Fleků.

I dared flutter my eyes open enough to peek through my lashes.

A man stood before us. An... ordinary man. True, he was over five feet tall, rather rotund, and unabashedly untidy about his dress and grooming... but he looked like quite an ordinary villain. Quite human. Quite mortal.

“Hold the pistol on our prisoner, Nell,” she instructed, suddenly forcing the weapon into my hand, “while I bind him.”

The metal was still warm from her flesh. Only that realization permitted me to hold the deadly instrument level. I clutched Godfrey’s knife in the other hand, and must say that our prisoner regarded me with a look of unholy alarm.

Irene drew a length of rope from the side pocket of her man’s jacket and swiftly approached the prisoner, binding his hands behind his back.

I doubted that she knew how to tie him securely, but did not want to inquire in front of him, even if he spoke only German. I am told that the German and English languages share many similarities, though I have never noticed many when in the presence of those who spoke German.

Once he was bound, she rejoined me to take charge of the pistol. Irene asked a series of short German questions, which he answered as briefly. Satisfied, she motioned him toward the light with the pistol’s barrel.

We followed, quickly discovering that the expected tunnel had been hollowed into a large chamber. The light came from a paraffin lamp set on a crude table, which was companioned by chairs as crude.

Irene motioned the man to one of the chairs, then put up her hand to stop him. She hurried to the table, extracting a formidable bread knife from a cut loaf before letting the man near.

I also noticed a glass water pitcher—full—and a wine bottle—nearly empty, naturally—on the table, along with some newspapers.

“We did not need to bring our own,” Irene noted, brandishing her bread knife. “You must take control of the pistol for another moment. We will be safer with our prisoner secured to the chair, rather than having him capable of lurching about.”

“Yes,” I said faintly, taking the incongruously warm grip again. “Lurching about is to be avoided at any cost.” At that she handed me the bread knife as well.

Like a magician, Irene produced another coil of rope from her other side pocket. She knelt to bind the man’s feet to the chair legs, an operation I watched with alarm, for he could have easily kicked out at her face.

However, he seemed most interested in keeping his eyes on me and my assortment of weapons, which I tried to hold with familiar aplomb while affecting an expression of utmost ferocity.

Once the poor fellow was bound before a simple meal that he could not touch, Irene reclaimed the pistol and lofted the lamp from the table.

“Now we must find our Golem. He cannot be far.”

“He cannot?”

“I am relieved that we had only one keeper to disarm; at least this fellow claims that he is alone at his post, for now. Quick! What time is it?”

I had at least had the foresight to pin my lapel watch to my sailor collar. I lifted the upside-down dial, cleverly meant to be read by the possessor, and strained to tell where the hands as fine as a daddy longlegs’s spidery legs pointed. “Almost three, Irene!”

She blew out a frustrated breath. “We must hurry, Nell, for we have other business to accomplish this night.”

“More than finding the Golem?”

“Much more, but first we must find him, and enlist his aid.”

“Really? The Golem will help us. Why?”

Irene’s smile would have put Mona Lisa to shame. “He will have his reasons.”

She held the lamp high above her shoulder and swept the cavern walls. They were bare, bereft of furnishings—then I saw a pale, shining gleam... the lamplight paused on this object. A humble porcelain chamber pot! Irene was indeed a White Rabbit tonight, leading me down a hare-hole to curiouser and curiouser scenes.

Irene moved deeper into the dark, casting her light before her like the American Statue of Liberty. It illuminated no huddled masses yearning to breathe free... but there— against the stony wall—a cot! A blanket.

We stood awestruck beside this sign of—not just human presence, for the guard had confirmed that, but of... habitation, perhaps inhuman habitation.

“Observe the extraordinary length of the cot, Nell.”

“Irene, it must be... seven feet long. What does this mean?”

“It means that whoever has prepared this hidden nest equipped it for precisely what we seek.”

“The Golem!” I said, convinced beyond all doubt now. “Will a pistol and two knives be sufficient against it?”

Irene laughed. “No, but I will be.”

“Irene, you overestimate yourself at critical times. Let us return to fetch reinforcements.”

“I already have: you.”

“We are but two women—”

“We are two determined women. Trust, me, this Golem will be glad to see us.”

“To... devour us, or worse.”

“Nonsense! The Golem is a prisoner. He is no threat to us.”

“You mean that... that man, and others, found the creature and turned him to their own uses against his will?”

“Yes, and I mean that they recreated him, just as Rabbi Loew did centuries ago, albeit accidentally.”

“How could anyone raise up such a monster accidentally?”

“Because they served a monstrous plot and would not stop at any means to accomplish it. But we will foil them, Nell, and lay the Golem to rest for good.”

“Oh. We will not... kill it?”

“Now you are sympathetic? I thought you feared it.”

“It may be as dumb as a beast of the field, used to evil purpose by bad men. Yet, when I saw it, I sensed some inner torment, however awe-inspiring its aspect.”

“Your mercy becomes you.” Irene’s face hardened in the warm lamplight. “I, however, am not as inclined to that virtue as you. I confess that I would rather leave this creature penned up beneath Prague where it cannot repeat the ill it has done through the years.”

“Then it is dangerous!”

Her look was fierce. “Only to those foolish enough to trust it. But, for Godfrey’s sake, I will unleash it on Prague and Bohemia again, and God save them.”

With that she moved farther along the wall, beyond the cot, her small circle of hot light illuminating rock walls, rock floor, rocky emptiness.

Then, when our path was taking us almost back to the table with its silent prisoner, the lamplight glanced off cold metal—a length of black chain coiled like a cobra. One end was fastened to a great metal ring cemented into the rock wall.

Only a monster as massive and legendary as the Golem would require such brute containment! I felt my throat constrict.

“Irene, dare we risk releasing what this chain holds?”

She eyed me implacably. “It means Godfrey’s life.”

“Yes, and I would do anything—I am here, am I not? But there is a Greater Good; there is blasphemy that walks the earth and must be fought at all cost. There is Evil Incarnate.”

“And, there, I think, is the Golem.” Irene’s lamplight followed the chain until it ended in a manacle.

I saw a massive foot in a crude shoe. Her inexorable light ran up the figure’s long leg—in tattered trousers— past the huge rough-shirted torso—to a visage that would be unbearable even in a nightmare.

“Is this what you saw stalking the streets of Prague, Nell?” Irene asked in the biting tones of a prosecuting attorney.

I averted my face, though my eyes could not desert the creature. “Yes, yes! The face—the awful brown face, like broken crockery.... I had not seen it so clearly before.”

The creature, for all its size, cowered at the light, lifting an instinctive arm before its mockery of a face. Even from these manacled limbs chains clanked. Marley’s Ghost could not have been as horrible to Scrooge as that debased yet mighty figure was to me.

It attempted to scrabble to its feet, using the wall to support itself, but the chains, the apparent dazzle of the lamp, made its movements futile.

Irene put the lamp down on the ground, and handed me the pistol again. I gripped it as if my... life depended on it.

Then Irene did the most astonishing thing. She pulled off her soft-brimmed man’s hat and began drawing the hair pins out of her hair. In an odd way, the performance reminded me of Tatyana’s display on the ballroom floor, save that Irene’s movements held nothing of seduction, only grim, unrelenting purpose.

Her revelation of her sex had a remarkable effect on the Golem, Sounds—raw, guttural unintelligible sounds—escaped that stiff earthenlike mouth. It pushed itself against the wall again, frantically, as if escaping a powerful vision.

Irene shook out her hair, jet-black in the strong light, but still gloriously shining along its waves. Could the Golem be a kind of reverse Samson, susceptible to the sight of a woman’s long hair...?

The thing babbled piteously, so that my fear eased, especially when the chained hands—large and chapped red from cold—lifted in supplication. No doubt the sight of a bearded (and mustached) lady of great beauty had shattered the beast’s last shred of sanity.

Only a heart of stone could have resisted such mute appeal. Irene’s at the moment was hardened against anyone’s plight but Godfrey’s.

“Now is the time for your knife, Nell,” she said, her voice still oddly brittle, as if torn between triumph and some other, less-admirable but therefore more powerful emotion.

“My knife?” The nervous vibrato in my voice would hardly tame a mouse, much less the Golem. “Surely you don’t expect me to—”

“I must keep the pistol on him. You must approach the beast and remove the thorn that torments it.”

“Thorn? Irene, you make no sense.”

“You must cut its bonds.”

“But... it is chained. Steel will not cut iron.”

She sighed. I sensed that it marked a change in her emotions. “It will cut leather.”

I swallowed. “Leather? You mean... skin. Irene, what mad plan have you in mind, some sort of ungodly sacrifice—?”

“Approach the Golem of Prague, Nell. You will be safe, for it knows what a pistol is. Moreover, it now knows what I am. When you are near, you will see what must be done.” Never have I so imperiled myself, my soul, on faith. I had never known Irene to risk another while she stood by to take the lesser hazard, so, clasping both my knives, I edged nearer the pathetic but intimidating huge figure.