A KNOCK CAME AT LOEW’S DOOR, AND A moment later he heard Pearl go answer it. Footsteps sounded down the corridor to his study, then Pearl put her head around the door and said, “Hanna wants to talk to you.”
Hanna was Izak’s mother. Sighing, Loew closed the book he had been studying. “Tell her to come in,” he said.
Hanna took the chair on the other side of Loew’s desk. She was a plain woman with a short-sighted squint, and mousecolored hair tucked under a plain kerchief. Had she really once slept with Mordechai the peddler? She did not seem the sort to do anything so shocking.
She twisted her hands in her lap, her eyes lowered modestly. Finally Loew realized that she was waiting for him to speak first. “What can I help you with, my daughter?”
“It’s Izak,” she said.
Loew tried not to sigh. What had the young man done now? Sometimes he thought that Izak had caused him more trouble than the rest of the inhabitants of the Quarter combined.
“He’s gone,” Hanna said.
“Gone? I’m sorry to hear that. Still, he stayed here for nearly two years before he left—there’s obviously something about this place that’s important to him. Perhaps he’ll come back.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Hanna said. “I don’t think he wanted to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think someone took him.”
“Someone—”
“He didn’t take any of his clothes or other things. His—his letters from Sarah.”
“Well, perhaps he left on impulse. How long has he been gone?”
“Four days. And there’s another thing. Someone sent me a letter.”
“A letter? What did it say?”
“I don’t know. I can’t read. Here.”
She took a letter from her pocket and handed it to Loew. He adjusted his spectacles and read it quickly to himself.
“I have Izak,” it said. “Tell Rabbi Loew that I will trade him for information on the thirty-sixth man. Tell him that he should leave the name of this man at the base of the statue on the southeast corner of the Cattle Market. Yours sincerely, Edward Kelley.”
He looked up to find Hanna’s eyes on him. She seemed stricken, as though she had read the bad news in his expression. “Yes, well,” he said carefully. “It appears you’re right. Someone took him.”
“But why? What do they want with him?”
“They want to—to trade him for information.”
“But that’s good, isn’t it? You can give this person the information he wants and get Izak back. Can’t you?”
What could he tell her? That he didn’t have the information, and he wouldn’t give it to Kelley in any case? He couldn’t bring himself to dishearten her further. “I’ll take care of it. Try not to worry.”
“What will you do?” She lowered her eyes again and smiled shyly. “Will you set the golem on him?”
“I’ll see,” Loew said.
After she left, he stood and began to pace his small study. This was all Izak’s fault. If the boy hadn’t gotten into the habit of wandering outside, away from the safety of the Quarter …
No. He couldn’t let his anger with Izak cloud his judgment. It was Edward Kelley’s fault. He would have to see what
Yossel could do. He headed down the hallway, went into his son’s old room, and sat on the bed.
Yossel turned his strange clay-colored eyes toward him. “Good day,” the golem said. His pronunciation had improved greatly over the months.
“Good day,” Loew said. “I’m going to need your help again.”
“Yes, I would like to help,” Yossel said.
“I need you to find someone for me,” Loew said. “Do you think you can do that?”
Yossel nodded slowly.
“Do you remember Izak?” The golem nodded again. “He’s being held captive by a man named Edward Kelley. I’m going to need you, to leave the Quarter and search for him. You’ll have to go at night—I don’t want you to frighten anyone, and I don’t want Rudolf to hear about you. Do you think you can do that? Walk the streets in secret, looking for Izak or Kelley?”
Yossel nodded again.
“Start your search at the Cattle Market. He probably lives nearby, since that’s where he told me to leave the information he wants.”
The golem’s expression did not change. Why was he explaining all of this? Loew wondered. Why was he treating Yossel as if he was a person, a member of the congregation?
“Yes,” Yossel said finally. “I will do as you say. And then—then will you teach me all the things I want to know?”
“We’ll see,” Loew said. He stirred uneasily.
EVERY NIGHT, AS HE AND PEARL LAY IN BED, HE COULD HEAR the heavy tread of the golem as he walked down the hallway and stepped out the door. If Pearl was awake she would shiver and turn toward her husband. “I wish you could keep him somewhere else,” she said once.
“Where would you have me put him?”
“I don’t know. Away from us. What if he hurts one of the children? Or the grandchildren?”
“Don’t worry. I’m very careful—he won’t slip out of my control again.”
“God willing,” Pearl said.
Yossel always returned before they woke. After morning prayers Loew would go to his room and ask if he had discovered anything, but the answer was always the same—the golem had seen neither Izak nor Kelley.
Friday came, and Loew took the shem from Yossel’s mouth. On Saturday evening, after the Sabbath, he put the paper back, and the golem shambled to the street to begin his rounds. The next day Loew went into his room and asked, “Did you see anything?”
He expected the usual answer, but to his surprise the golem said, “Yes.”
“Yes? You found Izak? Or Kelley?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“You asked me if I saw anything. I walked along the street of the silversmiths, heading to the gate that leads outside. I turned onto another street, and there ahead of me I saw a beautiful girl.”
“A—a girl?” An evil picture came unbidden to Loew’s mind, of the golem roughly handling a child, perhaps hurting or even killing her. “Who?” he asked harshly.
“Her name is Rivka.”
Rivka, Loew thought uneasily. More of a young woman than a girl. She had long, dark hair, and an expression Loew thought too forthright for a woman. “Yes, I know Rivka.”
“I asked her why she was awake when all the world was sleeping. She did not run away, or cry out—she did not seem afraid of me at all. She said that the moonlight woke her, and
that she had to go outside and see how everything had been changed by the moon. She showed me how the moon turns the world its own color, that everything becomes the same silvery white. I had never noticed that before.”
“What are you saying? That you didn’t look for Izak or Kelley?”
“Oh, I looked for them. I only spent a few hours talking to the girl. But I knew after the first hour that I wanted to marry her.”
“To marry!”
“Yes. Don’t worry—I didn’t say anything about it to her. I know I have to ask your permission first.”
“It’s impossible. You can’t marry.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not a man. You don’t have a soul. Because only men who are created in the image of God can marry.”
“But I am created in the image of God. I look like men, and men look like God.”
Loew had not thought the golem capable of such complex reasoning. “You’re talking foolishness,” he said, trying not to let his disquiet show. “Or blasphemy. Either way I don’t want you to talk to that girl again. Do you understand me?”
Yossel said nothing.
A few mornings later Loew’s fears were confirmed. “I saw Rivka again,” Yossel said, even before Loew could ask him how his search had gone.
“I told you not to talk to her,” Loew said.
“I couldn’t help it. She looked so beautiful. She told me she had enjoyed our conversation, and hoped to see me again.”
“She did, did she?”
“Yes. I asked her if she would marry me—”
“What!”
“I had to ask her myself, since you would not give your permission.”
“And what did she say?” Loew asked, curious in spite of himself.
“She laughed. She said she was not ready to marry anyone. She gave me a peach. It was so soft—I never felt anything that soft. It was white in the moonlight. She told me to eat it, but I said that I had never eaten anything before, that you had never given me food. She laughed again and motioned to me to eat it anyway. It was astonishing. Why didn’t you tell me there were such things in the world?”
For a moment Loew saw the scene before his eyes: the woman; the moon; the round white peach, a second moon. The golem, hulking over all. He would have to talk to Rivka, tell her to stay away from Yossel. “Never mind that,” he said. “I told you I didn’t want you talking to her again. Do you understand? You’re to do as I tell you.”
“But—”
Loew felt a thrill of fear. He had never imagined this, never expected that the golem would be so contrary. Dreadful pictures filled his mind, the golem rampaging through the Quarter, killing people, killing Pearl or one of the children … .
“Don’t contradict me!” he said loudly. Too loudly: he felt helpless, without control. “I’m your creator—I tell you what to do. Your task is to listen and obey.”
“Just as your creator tells you what to do. And you listen and obey.”
“Exactly,” Loew said, though he knew that to compare him to God was the worst sort of blasphemy. There was only one God. “Will you do that?”
The golem said nothing.
“Will you? Or do I have to keep you here with me at all times?”
There was still no answer from the golem. “Open your mouth,” Loew said roughly.
“What?”
“Don’t ask questions. Open it.”
Yossel did as he said. Loew took the piece of paper from the golem’s mouth. The light of intelligence went out of his eyes and his head fell slightly and came to rest on his shoulder. Loew watched him carefully, but he made no move after that.
Loew headed toward his study, deep in thought. What had he done? Had he been wrong to create the golem? He had not thought it through, had not considered all the consequences. And despite himself he could not help feeling sorry for Yossel. He had given the clay figure organs of generation just as men have, but only because he had wanted him to resemble a man in every respect. He had not thought of the effect this would have on Yossel himself.
Perhaps he should erase the aleph on his forehead, let the golem sink back into inert clay. But what if Rudolf attacked again?
And there was another reason to keep him alive, one that Loew could barely admit to himself. As far as he knew he was the first man in the world to create life from nothing. How could he destroy that creation? How could he give up this astonishing thing he had done?
He had gone as far as his study before he realized that he had another problem besides Yossel. If he did not animate the golem, there would be no one to help him search for Izak and Kelley. Loew would have to write to Dee for help. He had tried to keep his dilemma from Dee, had not wanted to burden the man with more problems than he already had, but now he saw that he had no choice, that he needed Dee’s advice about Kelley. He sat heavily at his desk and took out pen and paper, inkwell and sand.
DEE WOKE SUDDENLY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, HIS HEART pounding loudly. Where was he? In Prague, in Poland, in Transylvania? He could see nothing.
Jane stirred beside him, and he remembered. Count Vilém, Trebona, alchemy. What had woken him? He strained to see, to hear. Then he heard it: someone was coming down the corridor toward his room.
The footsteps grew heavier. He sat up, struggling to throw off a blanket that seemed tied in knots. The footsteps came closer, then stopped in front of his door. Someone or something laughed maliciously.
Who was it? In the dark, horrible fancies filled his mind. It could be the demon; it could even be Erszébet, following him from Transylvania, ready to wreak some terrible vengeance. He had no shortage of enemies.
He listened intently but heard nothing else. Sweat covered his body; he felt ill, in the grip of some fever. Summoning all his courage, reciting the psalm against demons, he went to the door and opened it.
There was no one there. Dee took a candle from one of the sconces lining the wall and walked a little way down the corridor. He opened the door to the children’s room and went inside.
All four were sleeping peacefully. He held the candle over each in turn and said their names silently, as though performing an incantation: “Arthur, Katherine, Rowland, Michael.” Then he turned and went back to his room.
He woke what seemed a short time later. A terrible feeling of dread weighed upon him, a feeling he had thought he had left behind when he came to Trebona.
He listened hard. The same footsteps were heading down the corridor.
Once again the footsteps stopped at his door and he heard the malicious laugh. Once again he stumbled to the corridor and looked left and right down the hallway. Once again he visited his children’s room, and once again he saw nothing amiss.
He did not go back to sleep, and so was awake when the
footsteps came again and the entire performance was repeated. And repeated again an hour later, though this time Dee could see the sky turning pale beyond his window and knew that dawn was near. Somewhere a cock crowed.
He lay still, watching the sky grow lighter. Objects emerged slowly out of the gloom, defining themselves: bed, wardrobe, chair. Their very ordinariness reassured him. When he heard servants bustling down the hall he dressed and went downstairs.
Count Vilém sat alone at a great oak table, breakfasting on bread and beer. “Good day, John!” he called to him. “Care to join me?”
Dee sat. His eyes felt stuffed with sand. Vilém gestured to a servant standing motionless by the table; the man left and returned with a platter of bread and beer. Dee stared at it, wishing he had some of that reviving drink Loew had once served him—what was it called? Coffee, that was it.
“John,” Vilém said. “John, are you listening to me? A traveler brought some letters last night.”
Dee forced himself to pay attention. “Letters. Yes.”
“Listen to this,” Vilém said, opening one of the envelopes in front of him. “It’s from a friend of mine in Prague. ‘I was recently introduced to a man who is fashioning a cup from a giant green stone,’ he writes. ‘He claims the stone is an emerald, though I have never seen or heard of one so large. He is a Jew, and says he is making the cup in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah. There are strange mystic currents in Prague. Everyone feels that something is about to happen soon, though no two people can agree on what it will be. You must leave Trebona, my friend, and come to the city—otherwise you will miss it.’”
Vilém looked up. “What do you think? Is something about to happen?” He saw Dee’s expression and put his letter down. “What is wrong?”
“I heard something last night,” Dee said. “Footsteps.”
“Is that all? It was a servant, probably. One of the girls sneaking out to visit one of the stableboys.”
“No. Loud footsteps. And a—a laugh. An evil laugh. I went out to the corridor but there was nothing there.”
Vilém frowned. “I don’t know what it could have been.”
“No, but I do. I am—I have been haunted by a demon.”
“A demon?”
“Yes. I have been running from it since I left England, but I can’t escape it. I’m afraid it has followed me here, to your house.”
“Well,” Vilém said. “We’ll post a guard outside your room. And I’ll look in my library for something to banish it, some ritual or incantation.”
Dee’s heart sank. Vilém meant well, but he had no idea how to deal with the thing that haunted him. He was a hearty, pragmatic man, a man who thought that a practical solution could be found for everything. Dee had once believed that himself, before this thing had started to dog him. But even Loew, with all his learning, had not been able to help him. He was completely alone.
“Post the guard outside my children’s room instead,” he said.
Katherine came down the stairs. “Hello, child,” he said. “Have some breakfast with us.”
As she came closer he saw that she looked troubled. It was not a child’s expression but an adult’s, the face of someone with a problem too great to bear. The sight twisted his heart.
“What is it, sweetling?” he asked.
She put her arms up and he lifted her to his lap. She would soon grow too heavy for this, he thought, realizing to his surprise that she was already five years old. “I had a bad dream,” she said.
He drew her close to him. His heart was pounding so loud
he thought she might be able to feel it against her skin. “What did you dream?”
“A—a thing. There was a bad thing. It came into my room. Then there was a light, and it ran away.”
A light? Could that have been his candle? “What kind of bad thing?”
“I—I don’t—”
To his horror she burst into tears. He cursed himself for asking her, for forcing her to think about the thing she most wanted to forget. Had her dream brought back memories of that night in his study? Even worse, what if it had not been a dream at all? What if the demon was stalking her again?
He had to do something, he thought. Surely there was a spell, a ritual … . He shuddered. Katherine must have felt something because she squirmed in his lap to face him. Her worried expression had returned.
“Everything will be fine,” he said. “The bad thing will not bother you again.”
A plate slipped across the table and smashed into a wall. Katherine cried louder. “What was that?” Vilém asked. His commanding expression had gone; he looked uncertain, almost afraid.
“It’s the demon,” Dee said, quietly, so Katherine wouldn’t hear.
That night when he went to look in on the children he saw that Vilém had been as good as his word: a man in the count’s livery stood in front of the door, his eyes alert. The guard nodded as Dee stepped inside.
The children slept peacefully. Rowland had thrown off his blanket; Dee covered him again and tucked him in.
The presence of the guard did not reassure Dee; he felt uneasy as he made his way back to the room he shared with Jane. His apprehension grew when he blew out his candle,
plunging the room into darkness. He tossed on the bed, certain he would never get to sleep. Several times he thought he saw fantastic shapes in the dark, his mind creating phantoms where nothing existed, and he jerked awake, his heart pounding.
He fell into a troubled sleep. A scream woke him. He sat, then quickly spoke the spell for his glow-light. “What is it?” Jane asked, coming awake beside him.
“I don’t know.”
Together they ran into the corridor. A bright glare came from the children’s room. At first Dee thought it was another glow-light, something the demon had summoned up. He woke fully, all his senses alert, prepared to do battle with whatever the demon had in store for him.
As he hurried closer he saw orange light flaming from the open door. Vilém came running down the corridor. The guard he had posted followed him, and other servants scurried around; the entire house seemed to have come awake.
Dee ran for the children’s door. “No!” Vilém said.
Dee barely heard him. The fire was concentrated around the four children, playing around their bodies and caressing their faces. He rushed to the closest, Rowland, and saw to his relief that he was not burning; the fire illuminated and held him, nothing more. The children looked enchanted, as if they had lain under a spell for a hundred years, their faces glowing in the light.
He reached through the fire for Rowland. His hands and arms burned and sparks caught on his nightshirt, but he ignored everything and pulled his son out and laid him on the floor. Beside him he saw Jane doing the same to Katherine, and Vilém lifting out Arthur. He hurried to Michael and pulled him free.
As soon as the children were safe the mattresses and bed linen ignited. Dee heard an enormous whoosh and for the first
time smelled fire and burning straw. Arthur came awake and started to scream; Katherine and Rowland heard him and woke as well, their cries joining his. Michael, remarkably, still slept.
Dee lifted Michael and shepherded the rest of the children outside. The ceiling gave way behind them, falling heavily on the beds and catching fire as well. Vilém called for water. A stream of servants ran downstairs to the well.
Dee did not join them. He hurried his family to his bedroom and crowded the children in the small bed, where he examined them carefully. They had fallen asleep again, understanding somehow that they were safe. None of them, miraculously, had been hurt.
“Husband,” Jane said softly. He looked up at her. Amazingly, she was smiling. “Your beard is almost gone. And your eyebrows … .”
“Your eyebrows too,” he said. He reached over and gently traced the nearly bare arcs over her eyes.
“Thank God the children are all right.”
Dee frowned. “Not God,” he said. “God was not responsible for any of this.”
“No. It’s that demon, isn’t it? That thing Kelley called up in your study in England.”
He looked at her, surprised. He had told her everything else, but he had been careful to keep this one thing from her, knowing how she would worry. “How do you know about that?”
“I see things, don’t I? And hear things. I’m not stupid.”
“No,” he said. “Not stupid at all.” He hesitated. Men ran up and down the stairs, shouting out orders. “I thought I had finally outrun it, but it’s found us again. And it’s toying with me. It could have killed the children, but instead it wanted to show me its power. It will kill me with worry one day.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I think—I have an idea, but we’ll talk about it tomorrow. I’m far too tired to decide now.”
He made room for himself on the bed and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
He met Vilém in the corridor the next morning. The count was still dressed in his nightclothes. “Is the fire out?” Dee asked.
“Yes. The room’s destroyed, though. Was that—was that your demon?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Vilém said nothing. They walked to the children’s room together. The count had not exaggerated; the room lay in ruins, the ceiling fallen, the floor awash with water. Servants came and went around them, sweeping and pulling debris from the room.
One of the servants hurried up to Vilém. “We received some letters this morning,” he said.
Vilém glanced through the packet absently. He stopped at an envelope, his eyebrows raised, and then handed the letter to Dee. “You have some interesting friends,” he said.
The letter was from Loew. As Dee reached for it he felt a sharp pain, and he noticed for the first time that his hands were red and raw, burned from last night’s fire.
“Here, are you all right?” Vilém asked.
“Yes.” He broke the seal and opened the letter quickly, wincing.
“I have some bad news about your associate Edward Kelley,” Loew had written. “He has kidnapped the boy Izak and says he will exchange him for the name of the thirty-sixth man. I am at a loss to know what to do. I thought that since you were acquainted with the man you might have an idea or two. At least, I hope you will write telling me Kelley’s address.”
Dee looked up to see Vilém watching him closely. “What is it?” Vilém asked. “You look as if you’ve gotten bad news.”
“Bad news, yes,” Dee said. “Not for me, but for a friend of mine.”
“What is it?”
“A young man I know has been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped? By who?”
By a man I once called my friend, Dee thought. If not for me this never would have happened. I bring evil to everything I touch.
He thought quickly. The demon had proved that it could find him no matter where he went, no matter how safe he thought himself. He had to stop running, had to turn and face it at last. “I’ll have to leave here for a while,” he said.
“What about your work on the Stone?”
“The Stone?” Dee asked absently, his thoughts still on his demon. “I wonder if perhaps the Stone is to be found somewhere besides workshops and studies, if the path to it lies outside, in the world.”
“What do you mean?”
“Would you look after my family for me?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.”
Dee went upstairs to pack. One last time, he thought. It was nearly a prayer. One last journey before we all return to England.
PEARL USHERED ONE OF LOEW’S STUDENTS INTO THE STUDY. “He says he has a letter,” Pearl said.
Loew took the letter eagerly, hoping that it was from Dee. But one glance showed him that it couldn’t be; there was no envelope, just a piece of paper folded in half. He opened it.
“I have not yet heard from you,” the letter said. “My patience in this matter is not unlimited. The boy will die if I
do not receive the information I want within seven days. Cattle Market, at the base of the statue. Yours sincerely, Edward Kelley.”
“Who gave this to you?” Loew asked the boy. “Where did you get it?”
“A man came into the Quarter with it,” the boy said.
“What did he look like? Did he say where he came from?” Loew remembered that Kelley had had his ears cut off for some offense. “Were his ears clipped?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. He looked like a man, that’s all.”
Loew tried not to become angry with the boy. Why should he have paid attention, after all? “Very well,” he said. “You can go.”
A knock came at the front door. Not now, Loew thought. I don’t have time for this—I have to think. He heard Pearl speak to someone and then lead him down the hallway, heard them pass the student on his way out. The door to the study opened.
“Your friend is—” Pearl began.
“Doctor Dee!” Loew said, astonished. “I hadn’t—this is—that is, you are very welcome. Now more than ever. My God, what happened to your beard?”
“The demon tried to burn my children,” Dee said.
“My God,” Loew said again. “Are they safe?”
“Now they are, yes. I’m the one it wants.”
“But aren’t you taking a risk by coming here?”
“It’s worse than that. Somehow Rudolf got Pope Sixtus to banish me from Prague.”
“Well, then, you mustn’t stay—”
“I have to. It’s my fault Kelley’s after you. I was the one who led him to you, who told him about the thirty-sixth man. I have to make amends somehow. And Izak—is he in danger?”
Loew handed him the letter wordlessly. Dee read it
quickly, then looked up. “I know where Kelley lives,” he said. “I’ll show you. Come—we’ll have the golem pay him a visit.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Loew said. “I took the shem from Yossel’s mouth. He’s disobeyed me a number of times. I told him to search for Izak but he went his own way—he’s been talking to a woman in the Quarter—”
“Well, we can’t confront Kelley ourselves. He’ll run to Rudolf as soon as he sees I’m in town, or he’ll grab us both and torture us for information. God knows what he has in that house of his.”
“The demon, you think?”
An expression passed fitfully across Dee’s face; he looked like a haunted man, a man ridden by demons. He seemed to make an effort to cast away his evil thoughts. “Demons, yes,” he said. “And other things, probably, by this time.”
“That’s another reason you shouldn’t go. You can’t face the demon—it’s already done you enough harm.”
“I’m done with running,” Dee said. “And those seem to be my only choices—running or staying and facing this, whatever it is.” He tried to smile, but it made little headway against the haunted look in his eyes. “But I would feel safer if the golem were the one to beard Kelley in his own den.”
“Very well,” Loew said. “If you think that’s the right course … .”
“I do.”
Dee followed Loew to Yossel’s room. The rabbi reached into one of his pockets, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, and placed it in the golem’s mouth.
The strange clay-colored eyes opened and saw them. “Rabbi Loew,” the golem said. “And Doctor Dee. It’s good to see you both. And very good to be alive again.”
He looked from one of them to the other. For a moment the clay features moved and Loew thought he saw an expression
of resentment, almost of anger, pass over the golem’s face. Then he smiled, and Loew shook his head. He had imagined it, that was all.
THEY MADE THEIR WAY THROUGH THE TINY STREETS AND alleyways of the Jewish Quarter. It was mid-afternoon; the summer sun burned hot, tarnishing the sky. Despite the heat, Loew had muffled the golem in huge shapeless clothing. The clothes were no disguise, though; Yossel’s great height and shambling walk drew curious or terrified glances from nearly everyone they passed.
Once the golem stopped and gazed up at the window of one of the houses. “No,” Loew said harshly. “Come along.”
“What is it?” Dee asked. “Who lives there?”
“No one. A woman. I was going to tell her to stop talking to Yossel, but there’s been no time … .”
What’s happened in this town since I left? Dee thought. The tale sounded interesting, but he couldn’t think about it; he had to concentrate all his attention on Kelley.
They received even more stares after they passed through the gate of the Quarter. The Jews had probably all seen Yossel before, Dee thought, but these people had never encountered anything like him. He looked at the golem’s mismatched arms and wished for the hundredth time that he had had time to fix them.
They headed south through the Old Town and the New Town, the golem tirelessly, the two old men stopping to rest every so often. Living on Vilém’s estate Dee had forgotten the bustling crowds of Prague, the priests and conjurers, gypsies and soldiers and madmen, traveling musicians and quacksalvers and mountebanks.
Finally they reached the Cattle Market. It was market day
today; cows and other livestock brayed and bellowed, and men selling their wares tried to make themselves heard over the clamor. Dee caught the mingled smells of hay and horseflesh and dung.
Loew pointed to a statue on the southeast side. “That’s where I was supposed to leave a message,” he said.
“You were, were you?” Dee said. His anger with his old colleague had grown on the long walk; he was furious with Kelley for playing with innocent lives to further his own ambition.
Then he remembered Kelley’s familiar at the alchemists’ tavern, the thing that had perfectly imitated a human except for its strange backwards hands, and he shivered in the summer heat. How could they confront something like that?
The sun seemed not to have moved at all in the sky, though they had walked a long way. Dee led Loew to Kelley’s huge house. The rabbi motioned the golem forward. The two men hid themselves in the shadows of a coach entrance next door, close enough to overhear anything that might happen. Dee tried to catch his breath; the heat was suffocating.
They heard the golem knock, and then the door opened. “Yes?” someone said. It was Kelley’s voice; to Dee’s surprise he had answered the door himself.
“I’ve come for Izak,” the golem said.
There was a long pause. Kelley was probably studying the golem, realizing that this was no ordinary visitor. “Ah,” he said finally. “You’re Loew’s creation, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m surprised he’s let you out. From what I’ve heard he uses you as a slave, locking you away except when he needs you to do his bidding.”
“God’s devils!” Loew said. “He’s trying to corrupt him.” He moved forward.
“Stay here,” Dee said. He put his hand on Loew’s arm. He
could feel the muscles pull and strain, like taut rope. “We can’t let him see us.”
“I—I am not a slave,” Yossel said finally.
“No? So Rabbi Loew allows you perfect freedom, the right to do whatever you want?”
There was another long pause. Loew took another step toward the street. Dee’s grip tightened on his arm. “No,” Yossel said.
“No? Tell me, what do you desire? What would you do if you were allowed anything at all, if you were free of him?”
“There’s—there’s a woman—”
“A woman, good. I can help you there, I think. I have potions, amulets, trinkets … . I can make her want you as much as you want her. Why don’t you leave Rabbi Loew and come live here with me? I won’t treat you as badly as he does, I promise.”
“No. No, he is my creator. As God is your creator.”
“Ah, but I have left God long ago. And you can leave Loew as well.”
“No.” Yossel’s voice was louder, stronger. “I’ve come for Izak.”
“What makes you think you’ll find him here?”
“Rabbi Loew told me.”
“And Rabbi Loew is always right, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to disabuse you, my friend. Izak is not here. It seems your precious Rabbi Loew was wrong.”
“May I come in and look?”
“Of course not. There’s a good deal in here I don’t want anyone to see. Especially Loew.”
“Loew isn’t interested in anything but Izak.”
“Oh, I doubt that. You tell your owner that he knows the terms of our bargain. He tells me the name I want, and I release Izak.”
Dee heard a scuffle, and then a thump as something hit the floor. He stuck his head out cautiously. Kelley lay prone across the doorway. Yossel was nowhere to be seen.
“What is it?” Loew said intently.
“Yossel pushed past Kelley and went inside.”
Nothing happened for long moments. Bells rang out somewhere in the city. A coach drove down the street and Dee and Loew ducked back into the shelter of the doorway. “Do you see anything?” Loew asked impatiently.
Just then Yossel ran from the house. He looked wildly up and down the street and rushed past them.
“Yossel!” Loew said. “Come here! Now! Yossel!”
The golem paused. Something had terrified him badly, Dee saw. How could a lump of clay have such a searing expression? The golem headed toward them reluctantly.
“What happened?” Loew asked. “What did you see?”
Yossel shook his head.
“What? What was it?”
“I can’t—I can’t say.” The golem’s voice was low, rasping.
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Kelley’s moving,” Dee said. “He’s going to wake up soon. We’ve got to go.”
Without discussing it they headed around the market, anxious to put the noise and bustle between them and Kelley. “Tell me,” Loew said urgently. “What did you see in Kelley’s house?”
“Nothing can make me speak of it,” Yossel said. “Not even if you were to promise me an immortal soul.” And he said nothing else on the way back to Loew’s house, though both Loew and Dee tried to draw him out.
Shadows were lengthening across the streets by the time they reached the Jewish Quarter, the evening finally bringing the promise of cooler weather. Someone had placed a bundle of rags against the wall near the gate. As they came closer the
bundle moved and stood up, and Dee saw that it was Magdalena.
She had insisted on traveling to Prague with him but had gone her own way when the coach reached the city; she had not thought Loew would welcome her, and he had to admit that she was probably right. Now he nodded to her as she came toward them. “Good day, Doctor Dee,” she said.
“Good evening, more like,” Dee said.
Loew looked from Dee to Magdalena. For an instant Dee saw her as Loew did, a shapeless mass of soiled and ragged clothing, and he felt briefly embarrassed. Then he thrust the feeling away. Magdalena was a good person; he had no reason to be ashamed of her.
“This is Magdalena,” he said to Loew. “She’s been helping me with my investigations.” He turned to Magdalena. “And this is Rabbi Loew.”
Loew nodded without turning toward her. Dee felt annoyed at his rudeness; then he remembered that Loew did not look directly at any woman other than his wife.
“And who is this?” Magdalena asked, indicating the golem.
“My name is Yossel, lady.” He held out his hand. Magdalena took it gravely.
“I have a great deal to tell you,” Dee said. “Is there a place we can go to talk?”
“There’s a tavern,” Magdalena said.
“Good. Will you join us, Rabbi Loew?”
Loew hesitated. “Yes, very well. But I don’t think they will look kindly on Yossel.” He turned to the golem. “Yossel, go home. Go to your room. Do not talk to anyone on the way. Do you hear me?”
Yossel nodded and shuffled through the gate into the Quarter.
The tavern was like a border outpost, Dee saw as they went inside, a place that served Jews, Christians, and Saracens alike.
It reminded him of that other borderland he had visited, István’s realm, with its confusion of different peoples and religions. The three of them, mismatched as they were, drew no stares from the other patrons.
As they went toward an empty table they passed a group of women seated together. One of them turned, and Dee recognized Marie.
“Doctor Dee!” she said. “You must—you must—”
The German defeated her. She spoke to one of her companions in French and the other woman translated.
“You must be careful,” the woman said. “My friend Marie says she has seen the countess Erszébet in Prague.”
“Erzsébet! Here?”
Marie spoke again. “Yes,” her friend said. “There is—there is a door the countess wants to keep open. Do you understand what she means by that?”
“I’m afraid I do,” Dee said. “Thank her for the warning. And ask her how she is, please. Has she found lodging in Prague?”
“Oh, yes,” the woman said. “She is staying with me. She had a terrible scare in Transylvania, apparently, something so frightening she will not talk about it. Did it have something to do with this Hungarian woman?”
“Yes, it did. She’ll have to tell you herself what it was, though.”
“I understand. And meanwhile I will see that she is well taken care of.”
Loew and Magdalena had found a table, he saw. He bid farewell to Marie and her friend and went toward them, deep in thought.
So Erzsébet was here, in Prague. Everyone was here, it seemed, everyone and anyone who would benefit from keeping the door open, or from closing it. Prague was the center, the place where all the lines crossed.
He had not come here accidently, he saw. He had been brought here, the demon chivvying him, harassing him, leading him every step of the way to the one spot in the world where it could come through the door the easiest.
Once again he remembered the old Yorkshireman’s story about the farmer who had been tormented by a Boggart for years and who, in running away from it, had only managed to bring it with him. “We may as well turn back to the old house,” the farmer had said, “as be tormented in another that’s not so convenient.”
If only they could somehow turn back to the old house. If only they could return to England, away from demons and fraudulent alchemists and women who bathed in blood.
But what if the demon wasn’t the only one who had guided his steps? What if he was here for a purpose—to stop the demon, to close the door, to find the thirty-sixth?
He joined Loew and Magdalena and ordered mutton stew and some beer. Loew shook his head; he would not eat anything not prepared according to his dietary laws, Dee remembered. Magdalena declined food as well, but Dee understood in time that this was because she had no money to pay for it, and he ordered another stew for her. “Was that Marie?” she asked.
“Yes. She seems to have found friends here in Prague, for which God be thanked.”
When their meals came she ate quickly, like a starving child. God knows when she had eaten last, Dee thought; it might not have been since they left Trebona. He would have to remember to ask her where she planned to stay the night.
“So,” Magdalena said when she had finished. “What is it you wanted to tell me?”
“Well, for one thing Izak’s been kidnapped,” Dee said.
He was unprepared for her reaction. She put a hand to her mouth, an anxious look in her eyes. Now he remembered seeing
her and Izak in the Jewish Quarter, and he wondered again about their unlikely friendship.
“Oh, no,” she said. “What happened to him?”
He told her about the notes Kelley had sent and their visit to his house with the golem. By the time he finished she had regained her usual blunt confidence. “Well, then, we’ll have to look around Master Kelley’s house ourselves,” she said.
“What!”
“No one else will do it. Even Yossel is afraid of him.”
“We will not go into his house. You of all people should understand how dangerous it is to visit a sorcerer. Don’t you remember Erzsébet?”
“I survived Erzsébet, didn’t I?”
“With my help. And you can’t count on that this time—I’m not going with you. I have no wish to meet whatever it was that frightened a golem.”
“Fine. I’ll go alone, then.”
“No, you won’t. I can’t let you do that.”
“How will you stop me?”
Loew stared at them, his brows raised, the proscription against looking at another woman forgotten. “Who’s Erzsébet? What happened to you?” he asked.
“Erzsébet Báthory,” Magdalena said, pronouncing the syllables with relish.
Loew’s amazement deepened. “I—I’ve heard of her, of course,” he said. He listened as they recounted their tale, taking turns: Erzsébet’s rooms, Magdalena’s transformation, the dead body.
“So you’re twenty years old,” he said to Magdalena when they had finished. “I wouldn’t have guessed it.”
She grinned, showing her few teeth, sharp and discolored as pebbles. “I’m glad,” she said. “If you can’t penetrate my disguise then it must be good indeed.”
“But Erzsébet did,” Dee said.
“Yes,” said Loew. “That worries me too. What powers is she allied with?”
“Not godly ones, that’s for certain,” Dee said. “She told me she summons them by her bloodletting.”
“I wonder—” Magdalena said. “Well, you both divide the world into two camps, God’s and the demons’. But I wonder if there might be more than that. There are a good many powers that we know nothing about.”
“Nonsense,” Loew said. “There is God, and there are those opposing him.”
“Every religion tells us that,” Dee said. He remembered how exotic Loew’s religion had once seemed to him. Now, allied with him against Magdalena’s lunatic ideas, he realized that they were closer than he thought. “Whatever the differences between Loew and me, we both believe in a God that created heaven and earth.”
“Every religion? Really?” She looked at each of them in turn, and he caught a glimpse of the forthright young woman hidden behind the blurred form of the crone. He could see that she was about to make one of her dreadful pronouncements, something blasphemous or obscene or both. “You’ve never asked how I perform the magic that transforms me into an old woman.”
“Very well, how do you?” Dee asked.
“I pray.”
“There, you see—”
“I pray to a woman. She’s something like my mother, the way I remember her, and something like a statue I saw once in a Roman ruin.”
“Well, of course the pagans believed in all sorts of errors—”
“Did they? How can you be sure they were errors? How can you know, absolutely know, that what you believe is true?
So many things exist that we can have no knowledge of—perhaps your gods are out there, somewhere, and mine too.”
“Enough of this,” Loew said. “What are we going to do about Izak?”
The discussion was making him uneasy, Dee saw; he had probably learned to tread carefully in matters of religion. And yet no one at the neighboring tables was paying them the slightest attention. In England people having these sorts of conversations had to look over their shoulders constantly; there were always spies eager to report heresies to the authorities for pay. Magdalena, at least, might have been arrested as a witch and possibly tortured. He felt a little shocked at the amount of freedom he seemed to have here.
“I told you,” Magdalena said. “I’ll get him from Kelley’s house. We can do it tomorrow—I was at the alchemists’ tavern earlier today, and they said he has an audience with Rudolf then.”
“And I told you you’re not going in there,” Dee said.
“And I asked you how you were going to stop me.”
Dee sat back in his chair, frustrated. She had become his responsibility, almost his daughter, he saw. Still, it was far better to think of her as a daughter than to remember her as the beautiful young woman she truly was. “The only way I know,” he said. “I’ll have to talk you out of it—show you just how foolish this idea of yours is.” He turned to Loew. “Come, help me here. Even the golem was frightened by what he saw in Kelley’s house.”
“That’s true,” Loew said. “And Yossel is far stronger than all of us together. How could we survive something like that?”
Magdalena was silent a moment. Then she said, “When I was fourteen I became a prisoner of a man who used me very badly.”
She did not seem to want to continue. Dee said, hoping to prompt her, “Did he—did he take liberties with you?”
Magdalena laughed harshly. “Oh, it was far worse than that. You are a wise man, Doctor Dee, but you know very little about some things. He raped me, and then he shared me with his friends. And after a while he gave me to strangers. At the end of the night he would tie me up and leave me in my room, and I would try to sleep. And then in the evening he would come back and give me supper—the only food I ate all day—and then his customers would arrive again.”
Loew had gone very pale. “How did you get away?” he asked.
“One night he was drunk and didn’t tie the ropes tightly enough. I worked my way loose, and when he came into the room I broke a chair over his head. I may have killed him—I didn’t stay to find out. So you see, I know what it’s like to be at the mercy of someone stronger than you, someone who wants to use you for his own ends. I’m going to find out what happened to Izak.”
“But you don’t even know him,” Loew said.
“I know him better than you do.”
“What? How?”
She laughed. “I know a good many people here in Prague. Not much goes on that I don’t hear about.”
“Very well,” Dee said. “If I can’t stop you, I’ll have to go with you.”
“And I,” Loew said.
To Dee’s surprise she began to laugh. “Wonderful,” she said. “Two ancient men, tottering around after me as I try to move silently through Kelley’s house.”
“You can’t go in there alone,” Dee began, and Loew said, “You have no idea—”
She laughed again. “I need a protector, do I? You men could not have survived half the things I did.”
“But you know very little magic,” Dee said. “You said so yourself.”
“That’s true.” She looked at each of them in turn. “You come with me, then, Doctor Dee. I won’t need both of you.”
“But—” Dee said. But he knew less magic than Loew. And he had been opposed to going into Kelley’s house to begin with. But he couldn’t say anything; he would sound the worst sort of coward if he did. “Very well. I’ll meet you at the Cattle Market tomorrow at ten. Do you know where that is?”
“Of course.”
Loew thanked them for the trouble they were taking for Izak, and the three of them separated. Dee walked toward the inn where he had left his worn and stained travel bags; he had decided not to stay with Doctor Hageck, who would doubtless attempt to talk him out of visiting Loew.
He climbed the steps to his room and opened the door. The heat of the day had not dissipated; the room was stuffy and close. It was only when he had unpacked and settled in that he realized he had never asked Magdalena where she planned to spend the night; he had been too shocked by her story to think of it.
He understood that what she said was true: he would probably not have survived the things she had had to endure.