Burning Twilight (6 page)

Every man in the hall, noble or servant, was equally dumbfounded. But in an instant Lord Strekov took charge and allowed the three of us to come forward to examine the knife, providing that we touched nothing ourselves and that our examination was performed in full view of all those present. That was to be expected. But I didn’t expect those burly peasants to clear the benches and crowd in close around us, every one of them puffing hot, stinking breath down our necks.

We asked them to step back a bit, but their desire to see a genuine murder weapon was a lot stronger than their interest in careful observation and analysis.

When I finally got someone to bring over a torch and we got a good look at the blade, there didn’t seem to be much blood on it at all. Perhaps the knife had belonged to Sir Tadeusz? No, it was too crude to be a nobleman’s dagger. His sword had been made of damask steel inlaid with gold filigree.

“Your eyes are better than mine, Rabbi Benyamin,” said Rabbi Loew, straightening up with an old man’s groan. “Take a close look and tell me what you see.”

I crouched on one knee and studied the scarred blade by the flickering light.

“Hold that steady, will you?” I asked. A pair of bondsmen obliged by supporting the torch with both hands.

A couple of faint streaks of reddish brown matter caught the light, thinner than the finest thread.

“It looks like someone tried to wipe the blood off this blade.”

Sir Mateusz ordered the servants to yank the burlap aside, then he pawed and pulled at his brother’s clothing until a flap of cloth fell open, revealing two wide streaks of rusty brown that could only have been made by someone wiping the blood from both sides of a knife.

“Ah!” he cried. “Just like you said. It’s been wiped clean.”

“Not completely.”

The handle glimmered dully with traces of another substance, but the peasants kept blocking the light.

“Bring us a pot of water,” said Rabbi Loew.

“Fresh, clean water,” I stipulated.

“And enough wood to bring it to a boil.”

In no time the servants had a cauldron of water bubbling away in the fireplace. Rabbi Loew instructed them to remove it from the fire and set it on the flagstones in front of the hearth.

When the water stopped sloshing around, Rabbi Loew asked Lord Strekov to wrap the knife carefully in a clean napkin and drop it in the pot.

The servants had some trouble finding a clean napkin, and when they finally found one and placed it in their master’s hands, Lord Strekov stood there with his arm outstretched, the napkin stirring in the drafty air.

“Father,” he said, calling the priest.

“Yes, my son?”

“Is this sort of Jewish magic permitted?”

“My lord, I have yet to see any magic performed before my eyes this evening, Jewish or otherwise.”

But Lord Strekov was still unsure of himself, which must have been a new feeling for him.

“There is a new kind of magical art,” I said. “A natural magic that opens the doors to new knowledge and new worlds. And it involves nothing unholy, because like all learning, it ultimately comes from the five Books of Moses, which the Christians call the Pentateuch.”

“Explain,” said Lord Strekov.

“What we seek comes to us through nothing more than precise observation of the workings of God’s world.”

Lord Strekov’s eyes flitted to the right, then back at me. I followed his gaze to his son, Mateusz.

From what I know of the laws of succession among the nobility, if we couldn’t name the true murderer, Lord Strekov would always have to wonder if his younger son had a hand in his elder son’s death. What was it like to live that way? To spend your days worrying if your own flesh and blood might yield to the urge to take sole possession of your property and treasure, whatever the cost?

Lord Strekov broke from his rigid stance and picked up the knife with the napkin, marched toward us and dropped the knife into the steaming cauldron.

The knife sank to the bottom and landed with a muffled clunk, leaving a trail of tiny bubbles in the steaming water. The surface rippled from the disturbance, then began to settle. Some of the bubbles brought up particles with a faint reddish tinge, and for a moment I stopped feeling the hot breath of peasants on the back of my neck. Eventually other bubbles came up, bringing traces of an oily substance with an undeniable hint of blue. Rabbi Loew dipped a bit of parchment into the water and drew it out, then held it up and showed us that the substance had adhered to it.

It was blue dye.

Lord Strekov saw the signs and recognized their meaning. Every man in the room did the same. But if His Lordship knew something, he did not reveal it to us.

But he could not stop all the tongues from running rampant and filling the hall with murmurs, until Rabbi Loew silenced them by pounding the floor with his staff. When all eyes were upon him, the rabbi raised his arms like the fabled councilor in the court of King Solomon and took four strides to the east, marked the corner with his staff, then took a stride to the north, and repeated the process, marking each corner of the slim rectangle until he ended up right back where he started.

“What is the meaning of this?” Lord Strekov demanded.

“I have just measured off the limits of your grave, my lord,” said Rabbi Loew, playing out a scene from a Yiddish moral tale published in Prague about twenty years earlier. “Know well that when you die, this is all the territory you will possess.”

The imaginary rectangle beneath the rabbi’s staff suddenly seemed more real than the actual planks that made up the floor.

“You can’t ask me to point him out to you,” said Lord Strekov.

“That’s all right,” I said. “I think we can find him easily enough.”

Lord Strekov’s face fell, and I knew that we would have our man before the night was through.

T
he Zohar says that just before the Most High brought His light into the world, He created all the souls that humanity would ever need, and that each soul descends to join its designated body when the appointed time comes. But what if a soul doesn’t
want
to descend from the heavenly spheres? Perhaps that would explain why some men seem to be missing a part of their soul.

The part that feels.

Rabbi Isaac of Safed says that such a man who yields to his anger is possessed by a strange god and thereby commits the sin of idolatry. But is it still a sin if he becomes possessed against his will? I don’t know the full explanation, but perhaps one day, God willing, I will go to Safed and ask Rabbi Isaac’s disciples to clarify what their master actually said.

T
he night was clear and the full moon defined the edges of the sloping roofs and crooked chimneys as sharply as if they were paper cutouts.

One of Lord Strekov’s squires pounded on the door of the dyer’s home with a mailed fist.

“Open up, Horshky!”

The pounding was loud enough to startle the elves that sleep under the eaves of these country cottages.

A woman’s voice answered: “Who is it?”

“Lord Strekov’s men! Open up!”

The woman stumbled in the darkness, then the door swung open and the moonlight struck her pale eyes like a watchman’s lantern.

It was as dark as the bottom of an old cooking pot inside the dyer’s cottage, so the squire strode into the room holding a torch aloft, unconcerned about blackening the ceiling. He examined the four corners of the room to make sure that no evil spirits lurked there that might threaten His Lordship’s life, limb, or property.

“What is this about?”

“Where is your husband?” the squire demanded.

“Right here,” said Horshky, stepping into the flickering firelight and pulling a short woolen coat over his nightshirt. His fingernails were covered with faded blue stains, and as he fixed his gaze on us, I immediately saw that he had the same bright blue eyes and defiant bearing of his half brother, Mateusz. “What do you want?”

“Andrzej Horshky,” the squire announced, “you stand accused of the murder of Sir Tadeusz Strekov.”

His wife let out a strangled yelp.

A gust of wind blew in through the open door, making the torch flame dance and shiver.

“What?” Horshky said.

“Let’s see your hands.”

Horshky stared at his hands as if he didn’t quite know what to do with them. His palms were just like any other man’s.

“Look how he hesitates—” a guard interjected.

“That proves he’s guilty!”

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” said Horshky. He was eerily calm for a man in his position, like a bored prompter reading a cue line from a play he’d seen a hundred times before.

Lord Strekov’s men sniggered and shook off his words, then Rabbi Loew stepped in from the shadow’s edge and into the circle of light.

“Perhaps he truly feels that he did nothing wrong,” said the rabbi. “Because he believes so strongly that he was betrayed by his victims that his hatred has taken on a life of its own.”

“What victims? What are you talking about?” said Horshky.

“Look, there’s no point denying it,” I said. “We know all about Father Szymon’s ruling that you had no right to a share of Lord Strekov’s estate since he didn’t marry your mother within the bonds of the Catholic Church.”

Horshky stood there silently. But silence is also speech, as we say.

I went down the list, ticking off the main points: “Sir Tadeusz was next in line to inherit the manor house and the surrounding land, including the dyeing mill, Jan Barwicz ran the mill with an iron hand, and Father Szymon blessed the arrangement.”

Horshky stared right through me to a spot about a hundred yards off in the deepest part of the woods.

“At least tell them I had nothing to do with Sir Tadeusz’s murder,” said Kassy.

“And how would I know anything about that?” said Horshky.

“Was Sir Mateusz next on your list of victims?”

But Horshky denied everything. “Lord Strekov has many other bastard children in the region. Why aren’t you questioning
them
?”

I could have answered that with two words. But Rabbi Loew handed Kassy his staff and told Lord Strekov’s men, “Take this woman to the graveyard and lead her to Father Szymon’s grave. There you will allow her to pound on the earth three times to summon his spirit and bring it back here to testify at this moment of supreme judgment.”

Kassy said, “But Rabbi, the law—”

“The law has established a very clear precedent in this case. Rabbi Karo has ruled that it is permitted to question the spirit of a dead man, provided that you do not attempt to conjure the corpse itself.”

Rabbi Loew rarely cited such laws in front of unfriendly Christians, but something in his authoritative manner convinced them. The lord’s men nodded, although they didn’t look too thrilled about having to escort an accused witch to the graveyard.

“Don’t worry, my mother always told me never to trust a man who conjures the dead,” said Kassy. Then she took the rabbi’s staff and left with two of the lord’s men.

Rabbi Loew took a step closer to Horshky. “God commands us to love our fellow man because our souls are all connected. And so we must conclude that whoever hates his fellow man is actually guilty of self-hatred.”

“Fellow man? What did any of my fellow men ever do for me?” said Horshky, as the pounding started outside in the cold night. “What have I got to show for all that wonderful love? This world hasn’t given me anything.”

I looked around the room and saw a wife with a kindly face, a hearth full of embers, a larder that was nearly half full, and a man who gets to breathe freely in the crisp mountain air, unlike so many of us whose lives are restricted to the cramped and fetid ghettos. But obviously Horshky didn’t see that. He only saw his lowly position relative to his brothers, and thought that the world had given him nothing.

“What have I got to show for it?” Horshky repeated as the pounding grew louder.

Rabbi Loew nodded, and the squire slipped the manacles from his belt.

“You’ve got no evidence against me,” Horshky protested, stepping backward as the very walls seemed to shake from the pounding.

The squire advanced until Horshky was practically scrunched into the corner. Then a window smashed and Horshky threw his arms up to protect himself from the flying fragments and stumbled against the door of a cabinet. The door creaked open and a motley collection of shoes spilled out onto the floor.

His hatred had grown so palpable I could almost feel it walking among us, the floor bending under its weight.

“There’s your nameless evil,” I said.

As Horshky was led away in irons, Rabbi Loew said that God is present whenever true justice is rendered.

But sometimes I wonder.

R
abbi Moyshe Ben Nakhman says that without the Torah, man would hardly be distinguished from a brute beast. And there were plenty of men without the Torah around these parts.

“The world of men is governed by evildoers,” said Rabbi Loew, looking up at the starry sky as if searching the heavenly spheres for answers. “When I was young, God granted me the strength of a lion to fight for the cause of justice. But in the end, I have failed to make much of a difference. Perhaps one person in a thousand will hear my words and follow the path of righteousness.”