“Dominion, but not death in such numbers.”
“Men die in numbers as great in forgotten corners of the earth, some of them very near to us.”
“Women as well,” Irene said. “And children.”
The Baron nodded. “You touch upon the matter that has brought you to me.”
“Death?” Godfrey asked quickly.
“Possible death. Potential death. Please, be seated.”
We eyed the bestiary of surfaces to choose from. Godfrey shrugged and sat in a red velvet-upholstered chair formed from a thorny crown of antlers, against which his dark and light coloring and black and white garb appeared to great distinction. Irene sank upon a long-haired throw of creamy Mongolian goat hair that perfectly set off her blue-black gown. I found a stool of some unidentifiable hide and sat before I had long to study it.
The Baron moved to a massive desk formed of an exotic gnarled wood and sat behind it.
“I am accustomed,” he began, eyeing Godfrey principally, “to transacting business with men.”
“So are most men,” Irene put in a trifle tartly. “That is why they own most businesses.”
The Baron raised a soothing hand. I almost expected to see a frill of lace at the wrist, so graceful was his gesture.
“I am well aware of Madame’s distaste for custom,” he went on. “In this case, I welcome it. But the American-born perhaps do not understand our Old World order. The house of Rothschild is founded upon one man and his five sons, and I am proud to claim Mayer Amschel as my grandfather.”
“Did he and his wife have no daughters?” Irene inquired. The Baron nodded. “Five.”
“An equal number of sons and daughters? And what became of Mayer Amschel’s five daughters when his five sons began forging the links of the Rothschild financial empire?”
“They married and had children.”
"That is all?”
“They worked hard to maintain their families and lived to see their sons move into financial enterprises in England and France, far beyond the Frankfurt ghetto where Rothschilds began, and to see their daughters marry sons of Rothschilds.”
“But that,” said I without thinking, “is too close a relationship for marriage!”
“First cousins to first cousins,” the Baron admitted, “but by the third generation some foreign blood had strengthened the stock. Certainly all of us have proven to have a decent head for business.”
With this I could not argue; the Rothschilds were the uncrowned kings of European finance, and only tales of the American financiers like Jay Gould could rival their princely ways.
“You have not invited us here, Baron,” Godfrey put in, “to debate the Rothschild pedigree.”
The Baron’s face turned into a merry mask for several moments before audible laughter poured from his mouth and eyes as well “We are considered an international and rather intimidating family, but I confess that I find myself confounded by the united front you three present, with Madame Norton’s American verve, Miss Huxleigh’s British rectitude, and your own incisive Anglo-Saxon sang-froid, Monsieur.”
“I am a barrister, not a banker. I cannot afford to be anything other than cold-blooded,” Godfrey replied.
“Perhaps we can change that sad state of affairs,” the Baron suggested with a twinkle, nodding to the door.
The distinguished gentleman I had taken for more than a butler advanced with a trio of boxes on a silver tray. He presented each in turn; first to Godfrey, then to Irene.
Godfrey settled against his upright chair back with a decidedly Lucifer-like expression of satisfaction and a long, thin cigar between his fingers. The butler bent to light it, then moved on to Irene. From the smallest box, an exquisite thing of ruby enamel and sterling silver, she selected a small dark cigarette, which she installed in her own mother-of-pearl holder, extracted from her reticule.
While the skeptical Rothschild eyebrows remained quirked toward heaven, she accepted the butler’s lucifer and shortly exhaled an expert, stiletto-thin stream of smoke.
The servant disappeared and I forgot him utterly—until he was bowing before me with the silver tray... and a crystal bowl filled with wrapped hard candy.
My more innocent enjoyments had never before been catered to with such social thoughtfulness. I accepted one in a gold and crimson paper, making much of unwrapping it and popping it into my mouth. Only then did it occur to me that I had effectively silenced myself for some time. Unlike the disgusting cigarette, a sweet cannot be plucked from one’s mouth and held casually in the hand while speaking, to be reinstated later.
Still, the candy was flavored with strawberry and honey, and was very good.
The Baron had settled deeper into his chair with a cigar that matched Godfrey’s for length and was twice its circumference. Again the butler made the rounds, this time with four flutes of blond, bubbling champagne. My flute, I discovered when I hoisted it, was filled with sparkling mineral water.
The Baron’s uncannily apt hospitality made me regard him as a devil in disguise, and indeed, smoke seemed to swirl from his ears and mouth as he puffed away happily on his outsize cigar.
“You have made your point, Baron,” Irene said, removing her cigarette holder from her mouth and contemplating the bejeweled gold snake that twined the stem, while smoke curled up from the cigarette like a ghostly extension of the serpent’s tail. “You know a good deal about us, even to our personal habits.”
“Why not? We Rothschilds have the most efficient spy network in Europe.”
“Efficient, yes,” Godfrey agreed. “But with more demanding work to do than turn its efforts to such discoveries as that Miss Huxleigh neither smokes nor drinks.”
The Baron rose and strolled around his ornate desk, sitting on one comer and crossing his legs. Had Oscar Wilde tried such a posture he would have looked like an overbalanced Humpty Dumpty. Baron Alphonse looked at ease.
“At first I determined to speak only to you, Mr. Norton. Then, various reports indicated that Mrs. Norton would not respond well to being overlooked.” He bowed in Irene’s direction. “Indeed, she suited us far better than you. Then I became convinced that Miss Huxleigh’s participation was also necessary. You may not be a family, but you certainly amount to a force of three. I concluded that no one of you would be as effective as all three.”
“Effective at what?” I finally asked, having sucked the sweet to a small enough pellet to swallow. “Spying?” I said tartly.
The Baron raised an instructive forefinger. “Exactly, Miss Huxleigh. Only the English are so forthright. That no doubt accounts for the fact that my Uncle Nathanial in London has done better than any of us. You see, by scattering to the winds, each branch of the family Rothschild has developed its own character. Mine, as the French flavor in the recipe, is diplomatic and subtle, but you have boldly broached the heart of the matter. It would suit the Rothschild fortunes and family to have the three of you act as our eyes and ears. You travel on the fringe of certain circles and are admirably suited to learn things others less felicitously placed could not. With Mr. Norton’s entrée to matters legal and international, with Mrs. Norton’s ability to charm aristocrat and artiste alike, with your own invaluable gift for going unnoticed, you form a formidable syndicate, as it were, for gathering information crucial to not only Rothschild interests, but those of all civilized Europe.”
“Which are no doubt one and the same thing!” I responded indignantly, feeling a sweet, hard lump melting none too swiftly down my esophagus. I hiccoughed and was forced to sip water and be silent.
“What brought your attention to us?” Irene asked.
The Baron smiled and also withdrew his cigar to contemplate it. I wished I had done as much with my sweet, as I choked into my flute of sparkling water. I cannot imagine what possesses those afflicted with the smoking habit to make so many self-indulgent gestures with the objects of their obsession.
“Your intervention in the affairs of Alice Heine, the Duchess of Richelie
u, now the future Princess of Monaco, thanks to your busy work.”
“Ah.” Irene had sat back to exhale the word in smoky satisfaction. Her gown’s silver trim glittered like smoke rings against the midnight-blue darkness she wore. “Alice is related to rivals of yours, the banking family of Heine.”
“Founded by Salomon Heine of Hamburg,” Godfrey added.
“You see? How quick you are, and with no warning. From sixteen groschen Salomon Heine became one of the wealthiest bankers in Germany. Mayer Amschel started with less, but there were more of us.”
“Why should we spy for you?” I demanded when I could breathe well enough to speak. I had framed the question from the high moral ground of demanding why he would think we could be persuaded to spy for anyone.
“Perhaps because we have asked you first? Not sufficient reason for Miss Huxleigh, I see. Then I would argue that our ‘spying’ has often kept the topsy-turvy towers of European capitals upright. The Rothschild coffers have more than once opened to save a crown or a parliament. Money breeds best in peace, yet Europe has tottered on the brink of disastrous realignment and dissolution since the Corsican ran rough-shod over most of it.”
“The sad state of European politics has persisted for decades,” Godfrey said suspiciously. “That did not spur you to consider recruiting us now.”
“No. But a specific country troubles, and a certain crown lies uneasy, and an even more... individual matter has arisen, one that I could not dare speak of to most people. Perhaps it will be too much for you, as well.”
“What?” Irene demanded eagerly, drawn to the Baron’s bait as a snapping turtle is to a dragonfly.
The Baron spread his supple hands, the cigar leaving a train of smoke like a steam engine. “You know where we came from. The ghetto of Frankfurt. Twelve feet wide that home and haven and prison was, yet roomy enough to beget in, and die in, and be killed in. You have heard of the blood price?”
We were silent.
“The pogrom?”
Godfrey and Irene nodded.
“I have not,” I spoke up.
The Baron addressed me, so exclusively that I became restive after a while. His words were short and clipped and the picture they painted was harsh.
“The pogrom is only on the large scale what all Jews have faced on a small scale. We are periodically reviled, herded, forced to leave where we have lived. In the ghettos even we are not safe; on high Christian holy days, mobs attack the ghettos and demand a blood price of many deaths for the single, ritual death they blame on us. Then we die; men, women, children, and the thirst is satisfied until the next time.”
“That,” I said, realizing it for the first time, “is what you left behind.”
“That is what we came from; to become Barons of France or lords of England, we first had to become wealthy and powerful beyond all others of our kind. Thirty pieces of silver may buy betrayal; thirty million will buy—ultimately, grudgingly—respect, titles, prominence.”
“Why, you are like Mr. Worth!” I said, amazed.
The Baron regarded me in puzzlement.
“You are respected by dint of talent, but only tolerated by dint of birth,” I explained.
He smiled. “I believe that we Rothschilds are more than tolerated now, at least in France and England. Austria is another story. Even when we kept a major bank in Vienna, a Rothschild was not allowed to become a citizen or buy a house because he was a Jew.”
Irene stirred, as if roused from some melancholy reverie. “The tale you tell is ever the same. If the Rothschilds cannot protect the Jews of the ghetto, how can we?”
“We are our brothers’ keeper,” he said a bit bitterly, “yet in these latter days we grow careless in our religion and smug in our safety. Only my brother Édouard pours money into the wild and doomed dream of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. As well commandeer an ice floe and call it Israel. No, we Rothschilds do not seek to reshape the world, only to keep it from disintegrating further. We cannot stem the Russian pogroms, but we can aid those who flee them. We cannot level the ghettos, but we can leave them and make it possible for others to live beyond them, as we do. Other matters we cannot affect, only wonder at, and one such example is much on my mind of late. Have you ever heard of the Golem?”
The Golem. The Golem. “I have—!” I stared wonderingly at Irene. “A kind of... monster, was it not?”
She shrugged. “One person’s monster is another’s Messiah, and that is precisely the role the Golem played.” Her tone dropped into the soft, hypnotizing range of storytelling. “The Golem was a man of clay. A medieval rabbi used the words of the Cabbala—the secret oral tradition of Judaism, handed down from Moses to the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud—to breathe life into its huge frame. Supposedly mute, but powerful, the Golem defended the ordinary ghetto dweller from rampaging mobs. Yet this clay man could love—the rabbi’s daughter—and so he was unmade. Some believe that the tale of the Golem inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. Yet the historic Golem is more than monster, it is myth. Its story explores the nature of creation and responsibility, which draws the line on which balance hatred and humanity. It would make a splendid tragic opera, as I told my dear friend, Antonin Dvořák, but who would play the title role?”
“Surely,” I said, “no one today believes in such a creature?”
The Baron was silent, then pushed off the desk edge. He had long since allowed his cigar to burn to a last inch of ash in a crystal tray beside him.
I grew aware that the chamber was still, and smokeless. “Reports—serious reports from unimpeachable witnesses,” the Baron said, “indicate that the Golem has been seen—twice within the past three months—stalking the ghetto byways. Taller than the ground floor of a house, with a face that is not a face, nearly blind and able to choke out only raw, ungoverned sounds... but alive, moving, back from the undead.”
“Where? Where has such a thing been seen?” I demanded, still a doubting Thomas.
Then I remembered when and where I’d first heard mention of the Golem on Irene’s lips and jerked my head. I met her eyes already staring into mine with an expression of mingled mystification and triumph.
“Prague,” the Baron answered my question. “In Prague, of course. That city historically has been the richest source of the Golem legends. Something is rotten in the state of Bohemia, in its politics, and in its people. Now the Golem walks again for the first time in four hundred years. I want you three to go to Prague immediately and discover what is wrong.”
“Prague,” I whispered, stunned and dismayed.
Irene’s lips silently mirrored the motion of my own.
Chapter Eight
AN EMBARRASSMENT OF ROTHSCHILDS
“I am not persuaded,” Godfrey said into the lengthening silence. “My wife has reason to fear for her personal safety in that city. Vague rumors of social and political unrest and the even vaguer reports of this mythical creature hardly justify the risk.”
Godfrey had spoken with perfect politeness, and utter indifference. When he finished, he contemplated the thick ash on his cigar end as if the issue of when it would fall was of much more import than the Baron’s astonishing proposal.
The Baron’s dark eyes sparkled almost as brightly as Irene’s did at the hint of a mystery.
“Monsieur is prepared to negotiate, I see, but time is of the essence, and I must be blunt. No doubt you refer to the current King of Bohemia’s frustrated ambitions in your wife’s direction?”
Godfrey did not blink—nor did he stop eyeing his irritating ash—but I could not avoid exclaiming, “You know of that?”
“Of course. Miss Huxleigh. When the King of Bohemia directs five of his top secret agents’ attention to pursuing a pair of misses absconding from Prague, the action is noticed, please believe me. That is why you may rely upon our information that maneuvers of great moment are taking place in Prague; such plots may undermine the delicate national harmony of Europe itself.”
&nbs
p; “European nations,” Irene pointed out, “have had no harmony since Bonaparte.”
“All the more reason to watch every trembling of the earth and its inhabitants, whether in France or Bohemia. The various nations and their governments are all intertwined. We Rothschilds know that better than most, having sunk our roots into various quarters of the Continent. We listen when the feather of a pigeon drops unwarranted in Warsaw; feel the tremors when the royal coffers overflow in Bremen. When the Golem apparently walks again in Prague, we see it not only as a manifestation of spiritual unease, but of political unrest.”
“If you know of the King’s enmity toward my wife,” Godfrey said, “you realize how senseless it would be to send her there. And without her presence, Miss Huxleigh and I are mere babes in the Bohemian woods.”
“You must not devalue yourself and your able assistant,” the Baron chided. “Happily, I do not accept your diagnosis.” He turned to Irene with a smile. “Nor do I expect that Madame Norton will fail to find an apt way of reintroducing herself to the city, be it in disguise or in the manner of some brilliant, bare-faced approach. Am I not right?” He bowed to Irene.
“Perfectly correct, Baron,” she agreed, “but my husband is also correct. I cannot be sure how the King would react to my presence in Prague, and that possibility must be considered. He may wish to kill me—or kidnap me. Neither course would suit myself and my companions.”
“Yes, yes, I admit the risk to you, Madame. Yet such risk did not keep you recently from the home turf of a far more formidable opponent than Wilhelm von Ormstein.” Irene donned her most skeptical expression, but I could see her fingers tightening on her dainty cigarette holder. “You refer, Baron—?”
“To your expedition to London, a city far more perilous to you than Prague. In addition, this Colonel Moran with whom you involved yourself is the most dangerous man we have encountered on three continents. I predict that he is not done with you.”
“Then he is still alive?” Irene demanded.
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 9
