Prague bridges the Vltava River in a broad valley, the central square on the right bank and the imperial castle on the left. The streets bend with the river, and the visitor must use church towers to orient himself to the Charles Bridge and its thirty decorative statues. Downstream a short distance is the largest ghetto in Europe, squeezed between market and river. Dark, steep-roofed tenements teeter above ghetto lanes to make narrow canyons, and the crowds are thick with noise and smell. The population waxes and wanes; the Jews have been expelled at least twice in the name of cultural purity, Aaron informed me, and welcomed back twice to lubricate the economy. “Emperor Joseph II, who died in 1790, was such a reliable patron that the Jews named their neighborhood Josefov for him,” my new mentor explained.
When I arrived, ten thousand were crammed into a neighborhood fit to house a quarter of that number. Even the cemetery is jammed, the twelve thousand overlapping tombstones marking just the topmost layer of a hundred thousand remains. It idly occurred to me that all soil is corpse powder, animal as well as human, and that we grow our sustenance upon the dead.
The ghetto is a medieval relic. Jews are scattered through most of Germany and Bohemia now, becoming doctors, farmers, artists, and bankers. The craft guilds have weakened, letting Jews into trades, and Jewish women are far more likely than their Christian neighbors to join their husbands in the workplace.
Despite this modernity, the Prague ghetto remains walled, soot-streaked, claustrophobic, and gated. Streets are clogged with carts and stalls. There is almost nothing green except the moss in the cemetery, and stains mark the periodic river floods. The language is a babble of Hebrew, Yiddish, Czech, and German, meaning that even Frenchmen Gideon and Aaron struggled to be understood. There was no room for our wagon in the ghetto, so father and son stabled it near the riverbank and we walked into the teeming streets, me with bandaged shoulder. The exercise was good for me, but my wound was raw and my muscles stiff, so I limped, to considerable sympathy.
My guardians explained I was an American savant with terrible secrets and a wounded hero of Austerlitz. Was there a place I could recover, unmolested by any government? Such a request was understood perfectly.
We were mobbed by the curious, because word of Napoleon’s victory caused great excitement. While most in the Austrian empire feared that the battle would be followed by territorial losses and indemnities, the Jewish hope was that Bonaparte would prove to be another Josef, reforming the law and opening the ghetto. Word flew faster than I could walk, and in short order an invitation from the chief rabbi came. Guides breasted the current of humanity so we could be ushered to the New Synagogue, so-named because it had been finished in 1270. An even older house of worship decayed nearby.
The gabled building was deliberately plain, lest it draw envy and attack. Inside, it had the same graceful Gothic arched ceiling as a French cathedral. There was a raised and fenced platform in the center, and steps on one wall led to an ornamental closet with drapes.
“The platform is called a bimah, where the Torah is read,” Gideon explained. “The sanctuary on the east wall, closest to Jerusalem, is where scrolls of the Torah are kept in an ark.”
“No chairs?”
“Worshippers stand.”
I keep seeking a religion to make me comfortable. “What are those slits on the north wall?”
“Women must stay in that annex during services, looking through windows to the rabbi. It’s the eastern way.”
I know that prophets of all faiths consider women distracting to the message at hand, and I understand the point. On the other hand, I enjoy the fairer sex, and separation disappoints me. My own wife is female, and ten times more spiritual than I am. Making her kind peer through slits in the wall is like denying the cook the dinner, in my opinion. More women front and center would bolster attendance, if they were comely and sang well.
Unfortunately, few people request my religious advice.
Tall, narrow windows let in light, but compared with the baroque excess of Venetian churches, this place was plain as a Puritan. Everyone thinks Jews must be rich, but I saw little sign of it. They dressed simply and worked hard.
Rabbi Abraham Stern greeted us. This man met expectations, being a barrel-bellied, white-bearded patriarch with black robes and cap. Most Jewish men ignore the old prohibitions against shaving in these modern days, but the rabbis remain as bushy as Sinterklaas. Gideon made introductions all around, and Abraham examined me cautiously, reserving judgment. For this I deemed him perceptive.
Since none of us could speak German or Czech, we were fortunate Abraham understood French. “You’ve come from the battlefield?” he asked us.
“Napoleon is triumphant,” Gideon said. “He didn’t just defeat the Allied armies—he smashed them. French influence will be sustained far into the German principalities, Russia will retreat, and Austria has been humiliated. Ethan here witnessed the naval battle of Trafalgar, but that French defeat has already been avenged. Bonaparte is like the mythical Greek villain Antaeus, who became stronger every time he was hurled to the ground.”
“Reference Bible stories, my son, not pagan ones. I sense you’ve too much learning from a French school.”
“Then I will compare Napoleon to Samson, but with his hair regrown.”
The rabbi turned to me. “So Napoleon is Samson. And you look as pallid as that hero after Delilah cut his hair, American.”
“I’ve got a hole through my shoulder and was chilly enough without added ventilation. Now I’m retired from military service and looking for my family.”
“In Prague?”
“My wife and son have allegedly been imprisoned somewhere in Bohemia while seeking a medieval relic.” This was what Catherine Marceau had written me. She’d hoped to enlist me, and whether her seductions were entirely calculated or she fancied me, I could never figure out. Certainly she wanted to seize the Brazen Head. “I’m hoping to find some word of their whereabouts so I can rescue or ransom them. Have you heard of a beautiful woman with a small boy researching medieval secrets?”
He was clearly intrigued. “There was actually talk of one.” My heart soared. “She was called a gypsy, an astrologer, and a witch. She had Egypt’s beauty—and Egypt’s mystery. She disappeared. I could make inquiries.”
My heart hammered. “I’d be grateful. I’ve also got enemies trying to conscript me. Monsieur Dray suggested I might hide in the ghetto while we investigate. He also said you might help us with legends about the artifact we seek.”
“Which is?”
“An artificial man.”
“A golem,” Aaron explained, “but built like a machine. Made not of magic, but of metal. Bronze, I think.”
“Part of it. Built by Albertus Magnus, the great medieval scholar,” I put in.
The rabbi glanced up at the synagogue’s vaulted ceiling. “And where is this creature?”
“That’s what my wife was trying to find out. Could your stories of this golem and the Albertus automaton have been mixed up?”
Abraham considered us carefully for a while and came to a decision. “There were rumors of your coming. God’s ways are mysterious, are they not? To bring this wounded soldier to this synagogue at this turbulent time? And yet there was speculation. Signs in the sky. The cawing of birds. Whispers in answer to prayer. Come, come, into my house. Let’s discuss these matters in private.”
We were led across a small courtyard to an adjacent building. Steep steps led to a living area with a plank floor, beamed ceiling, and windows that overlooked the ghetto rooftops. Prague Castle rose beyond. The city struck me as one of the most beautiful I’d ever seen. In a world of relentless progress, Prague promised the magic of the past.
The rabbi stoked the fire in a tile stove, put on water to heat, and then thought better of it and opened a bottle of Riesling. Glasses and a pewter plate of kolache pastries were set on the oilcloth that covered his table. Winter sunlight filtered through leaded glass, books gave a studious air, and the sharp, sweet wine was restorative. My shoulder oscillated between dull ache and sharp outrage, and my fitful sleep had left me groggy and grimy. I wanted to rest a hundred years, yet I dared not pause my quest for Astiza. Now I’d entrusted my success to Jews. Rabbi Abraham had bright, mischievous eyes, cautious calculation, and the officious manner of holy men.
“I’m not sure if I’m chasing a treasure or a phantom,” I began. “I have a habit of stumbling on odd things, such as the Book of Thoth, Thor’s Hammer, the Mirror of Archimedes, or the Crown of Thorns.” This raised some eyebrows, but I think they assumed I was exaggerating. “In other words, I’ve come to accept that the world is a peculiar place. So I ask you plainly . . . Are the legends of the golem real?”
“The legends are real,” the rabbi said, taking a judicious sip and smacking the wine in his mouth. He took time to enjoy life’s small pleasures. “The golem? The one Rabbi Loew created sleeps in our synagogue attic. Or so they say.”
“You’ve seen it?” Aaron asked.
“Certainly not. I’d never presume to enter. If the creature is there, let him sleep. Rabbi Loew had trouble controlling his creature, and I wouldn’t presume to do so now.”
Since I, for one, couldn’t have resisted peeking, I hesitated to believe him. Was the story just a myth? Yet did not seeing help keep it real? The golem could be in that attic.
“But don’t you want to use him? I thought the golem protected the Jews from marauding Christians.”
“Until he went out of control. The golem was made from the soil of Adam, not mechanical metal, and controlled by incantation, not gears and wires. All this took place more three centuries ago, using sacred magic since lost. The lesson I take is not to toy with God’s powers. The more men invent, the more troubled the world becomes. If Albertus Magnus made and lost an artificial man, it’s probably for the best.”
“The automaton is supposed to foretell the future.”
“I’ll tell you your future, Monsieur Gage, and mine as well. We will get sick. We will have accidents. We will have sorrow from the loss of loved ones. Someone we love will break our hearts. Armies will tramp, cities will burn, and plagues will erupt, as they have from the beginning of time. And you can’t wait to learn this? You need a machine to hurry the horror?”
“Napoleon and Talleyrand believe that’s a pessimistic view of the future, Rabbi. They say a machine that could calculate the future could help them avoid disasters and improve what’s to come.”
“Change the future, you mean. Manipulate it.”
“They dream of universal rule, French justice, and a flowering of commerce and art.”
“And who in Bohemia is seeking this French enlightenment, delivered on the point of a bayonet?”
“Some Jews are. We’ve been told your people are excited by his victory.”
He looked skeptical. “My people have not thought this through.” He poured us more wine. “Bonaparte wants assimilation to bury Jewish identity.”
“Which threatens your own authority?”
“The ghetto, my friends, is what keeps Jewish unity alive.”
I didn’t want to argue religious politics. I had a headache, and this was getting us nowhere. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not an ambassador for Napoleon, Rabbi, and don’t even know if this automaton called the Brazen Head exists. It may be as elusive as the Holy Grail or the Seven Cities of Gold. I’m chased by lunatics, my wife may be imprisoned, and my son may hardly remember me. I’ve lost my life savings, been shot in the shoulder, and find myself reliant on your mercy, hiding from a treacherous comtesse, a mad and disfigured baron, a policeman as big as a plow horse, and an emperor who periodically threatens to shoot me. The Austrian and Russian emperors are just as hostile. I’ve been cursed by the Austrians, scorned by the Russians, fled the French navy, been abandoned by my English spymasters, and am probably cursed for stealing Christ’s Crown of Thorns. And all this after I announced my retirement.” I don’t like whiners, but I couldn’t help spewing this litany of complaint. I was exhausted.
I was talking to what seemed to be a good man, however, and was relieved to see his skeptical expression soften. He gave a slight, sympathetic smile. He nodded at Aaron and Gideon. Then he gave a broader smile, which was more puzzling, and finally he began to shake. His belly shuddered. There was a guffaw, much to my dismay, and then the other two men joined in as well, laughing so uncontrollably that they could barely keep from keeling onto the floor. I seldom cause such amusement, except among my torturers.
“I don’t see what’s so funny.”
Abraham gasped for breath. “If even half that is true, you must be in league with the devil!”
“I’m trying to escape devils, I tell you. Everyone wants this Brazen Head. My wife is mixed up with it, and I’ve got to save her life.” I felt grumpy.
“We’re sorry, Ethan, but there is always comedy in tragedy. It’s such an eloquent list of complaints that we may anoint you an honorary Jew. You can start a Society of Job.”
“Do you believe a word I’ve said?”
“You claimed you’ve got a clue to your quest that you haven’t shared yet,” said Aaron. “You can trust the rabbi. Come, we’ve committed to getting you this far. What is it you’re hiding?”
I unstrapped Talleyrand’s broken sword hilt and brought it out. “I’ve been dragging this thing through Europe without really knowing why, though I’ll admit it’s been a handy tool. There’s odd luck to this relic. I was given it by Talleyrand just before Napoleon’s coronation. The foreign minister thought this might be a clue.”
Abraham looked intrigued but cautious. “Swords are hardly in short supply. Why would Talleyrand want a broken one?”
“I don’t know, and nor did he. It’s antique. It may have a pedigree.”
I passed the stubby blade around. Aaron took a look, but it was Gideon who discovered the obvious. “It uses the rose as a pommel.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe I’d missed this detail. The pommel on the butt of the sword’s hilt was smooth silver, but I now noticed that the edge, where it cupped the hilt, was cut in what could be regarded as the edge of a rosebud. The effect was subtle, but elegant and obvious once you saw it. “A good eye, Gideon. It’s odd how the rose keeps turning up in my life.”
“How so?”
“My wife found a dried rose that led to a mysterious man named Palatine, who persuaded us to try to sabotage Napoleon. An English spy was named Rose, and I fetched her help with a rose. Rose windows in cathedrals and rose symbols among the Rosicrucians. The mystic Christian Rosenkreutz may have stolen the Brazen Head from Albertus, or was given it to prevent its destruction by Thomas Aquinas. Have you heard of Rosenkreutz?”
“Of course. By repute he disappeared here in Bohemia. No one knows where.”
Rabbi Abraham took the sword back, dipped a cloth in his glass of wine, and rubbed the stub of blade. I’d never bothered to clean the rust, and in fact the centuries of tarnish had gotten worse when I was at sea. My host, however, began methodically polishing. “Perhaps there’s some kind of inscription.”
I was embarrassed I’d left this task to others.
Gideon looked over his shoulder. “A letter perhaps. C?”
“More like a moon, it seems to me.”
Now Aaron joined them. “No, narrow at one end and broad at the other. It looks like a horn.”
Now I hobbled over to look. “A cattle horn?”
“Yes, but as a musical instrument,” Abraham theorized. “A battle horn.”
“We haven’t used that sort of horn since medieval times,” Gideon said. “Look, there’s something on the other side of the blade. A letter.”
It was an R.
The rabbi’s eyes narrowed, then widened. “A rose, a horn, an initial. Was Rosenkreutz ever in Spain?”
“By legend he studied there with a sect called the Alumbrados that was outlawed. You think this ‘R’ stands for his name?”
“Unlikely. No, this is much more interesting. We’ll have to consult the texts.”
“What texts?”
“First, the history of Charlemagne and the very beginnings of the Holy Roman Empire.” Abraham went to his shelves and brought down a fat volume, threading its pages until he found the entry he was looking for. There was a woodcut print of a knight wielding a sword in a great battle, a horn strapped to his side. “This broken sword has spirit, I think. Soul. You can feel it, can you not?”
“Only its edge.”
“I can feel the soul of the man who wielded it.” He thumped the pages. “This relic of yours is what men have long been waiting for, I suspect.”
My head throbbed. “Speak to the point, please. My shoulder feels like nails are being driven into it. I’m addled from weariness.”
He smiled. “Congratulations. You haven’t found the Brazen Head, Ethan Gage, but you may bear the fragmentary remains of one of the most famous weapons that ever existed. You’ve heard of Excalibur?”
“King Arthur’s sword? I’m aware of Malory’s stories.”
“Its legend is probably a myth, but the potent symbolism of a great sword is rooted in countless episodes of history.”
“How does a rabbi know this?”
“This relic you bring is intimately connected to French history, so much so that mad Rudolf II here in Prague reputedly collected its other half. That’s why I looked up Charlemagne.”
“You mean Rudolf owned the blade? The missing part of what I have here?”
“Yes, the blade of Durendal, the sacred sword of Roland.”
“Roland! The French medieval hero?”
“You’re God’s messenger, American, and have brought the ancient hilt of the sword wielded by Charlemagne’s lieutenant Roland, who died at the Pass of Roncesvalles in 778 while defending the rear of the French army from the Basques. He blew his great horn, Oliphant, for relief that came too late. Wouldn’t Napoleon long to own such a powerful symbol?”
He certainly would. He’d hoped to use Charlemagne’s own sword at his coronation, but when competing cities offered several lengths of old hardware with claim to the pedigree, Napoleon gave up on identifying the true sword and ordered that a replica coronation sword be made instead. Desired relics have a way of multiplying when money or prestige is at stake. And yet famed swords might well be passed down, and one of them must be real. Could this be the handle of Durendal? “Why would Talleyrand have it?” I wondered aloud.
“He would buy it because of rumors of its power.” Abraham came around the table to grasp my good shoulder, ignoring my wince when the pressure pulled at my wound. “Ethan, you’ve unwittingly brought into this synagogue one of the most momentous relics in the world, and you’ve brought it to the one place in the world where it can be safely hidden: this ghetto. Just as soon as you find the other half, the sacred blade.”
“And how am I to do that?”
“Legend here has long held that it was concealed in the Star Summer Palace, a nearby seat of mysticism and magic where mad Rudolf hid his most important treasures.”
“It’s kept on display there?” I’d not heard of this place.
“It disappeared. Skeptics question whether it exists at all, but your arrival is too convenient not to be God’s will. Your new friends will help you.”
I stood wearily and went around to peer, bleary-eyed, at the old book. Yellowed pages, Latin script, and decorative lettering to start each entry. Combative Roland had the fierce and fatalistic look of a man already dead. “After I get some rest.”
“Yes, yes, you can sleep here in my quarters. Sharpen your mind before we sharpen the sword.”
As I turned away, the light caught something almost invisible on the page, and I ran my finger to pick it up. I thought it a fine thread at first, possibly from the binding, and rotated it between thumb and forefinger. But no, it was only a long, blond human hair.