“Yes? What did you think you saw?”
She shook her head.
“Tell me,” Dee said. “What was it?”
“That man,” she said.
“What man?”
She shook her head again. Dee opened his mouth to press her, but then suddenly he understood. She had seen the man who had once kept her prisoner. Now he noticed that she was trembling from head to foot.
“Let’s go back,” Dee said. “We don’t have to do this.”
“It was an illusion,” she said. “Come—we have to find Izak.”
They continued on through the vast house, opening doors and peering into empty rooms as they passed. Shadows thrown by his candle flickered on the walls. His ears began to fill in the silences; he thought he heard a chittering noise, and then the sound of small feet scrabbling across a floor overhead. He turned to Magdalena. “Did you hear that?” he asked.
“What?” she said. Her eyes were unfocused; she seemed to wander in a daze.
“Let’s go back,” he said.
“No.”
Something moved ahead of him. He slipped back around the corner and motioned to Magdalena to stay where she was. His heart beat fast and strong, like a loose shutter banging in the wind. Sweat broke out on the back of his neck.
“Give me the gold,” someone said.
“No,” said another voice.
“We agreed to share it,” the first man said. There was an unpleasant edge to his voice; he sounded aggrieved and menacing at the same time. “I told you when the master was away, and where the gold was hidden. If not for me—”
“Nonsense. I needed no help from you. And I don’t recall any agreement.”
The first man cried out in rage. Dee heard the ring of metal on metal, the sound of swords being drawn, and risked a look around the corner.
The two men fell upon each other. Their swords dashed in a ferocity unlike any Dee had ever seen. Then one man knocked the other’s sword from his hand and the second man, heedless of the danger, moved closer, grabbed a handful of hair and pulled furiously. The first cried out and kneed the second in the groin.
The second man fell to the floor. The first bent over him and quickly stabbed him to the heart. But the second, incredibly, was still alive. He struggled up off the floor to a sitting position. The first backed away in horror.
What was it? What had the man seen? Dee moved for a closer look. “God,” he said. The second man still lay sprawled on the floor, and yet somehow he was also sitting, then rising. No, Dee realized. It was his ghost that was rising.
The first man put his hand to his heart, a look of extreme terror on his face, and collapsed to the floor. Then his wraith rose as well, and the two ghosts grappled with each other. Back and forth they went, each trying to gain the advantage. One knocked the other into the wall and the second man passed straight through it. The first followed.
The hallway was clear now. Dee was about to motion Magdalena forward when the voices in front of him started up again. “Give me the gold,” the first man said.
They were condemned to repeat their actions over and over again, Dee saw. Something in the house would not let them leave. He shuddered.
Magdalena had drawn up next to him and was watching the struggle in silence. When the two passed through the walls a second time he turned to her. “They’ll probably do this until doomsday,” he said. “We’ll have to go another way.”
“No,” she said. She seemed more alert now, having been given a problem to work out. “If Kelley wanted to hide something he would put it here, past these men. He couldn’t have better watchdogs.”
She was right. Dee watched again as the two men repeated their meaningless ritual. How many times had they performed it? Now he noticed that their clothes looked decades if not centuries out of date, and that when they spoke their accents sounded wrong.
“How?” he asked.
“We’ll wait until they become ghosts again,” she said. “Then we’ll be able to walk through them.”
The picture made him shudder again. He studied the two men as they began their performance for what had to be the thousandth time. When the second man fell to the ground he edged forward, trying not to let his fear show. He did not want Magdalena to see him afraid.
He skirted the bodies on the floor. The ghostly battle swirled around him, and then somehow he was in the center, in the middle of the fighting, unable to see a clear path ahead. One of the wraiths passed through him and he felt all that man’s feelings, fear and greed and anger and horrible frustration. His candle sparked blue where the wraith touched it.
“Move,” Magdalena said urgently.
He tried to take a step but discovered he could not. The wraiths’ emotions overwhelmed him. Now both the dead men occupied the space he did, pushing and shoving through him, and he felt the complex tangle of their obsessions.
“Move,” Magdalena said again.
He took a step forward, then another. And then he was past them, rushing down the corridor, trying to shake off the loathsome touch of the dead men’s souls.
“Wait,” Magdalena said.
He turned and found he had gone past a closed door in his hurry. She edged it open. He joined her, holding his candle high. Something massive stood in the center of the room.
“It’s a storehouse, I think,” he said.
Someone moaned. “I told you—I don’t know anything,” a voice said. “I’m the last person Rabbi Loew would confide in. Please, I beg you, leave me alone.”
“Izak?” Dee asked.
“What? Who are you?” the voice said.
“We’re friends. Rabbi Loew sent us.”
They moved forward into the room. The massive object was a bed, Dee saw. Izak was tied to one of the legs, his hands behind him.
“I’ve never seen a bed that big,” Magdalena said. “An entire village could fuck on that bed.”
“Magdalena!” Izak said.
She bent to untie the knots. “It’s all right, Izak,” she said. Dee had never heard her sound so tender. “We’re here. We’re going to help you.”
Izak seemed dazed. Dee held the candle closer. Magdalena’s ancient gnarled fingers found purchase in the knots. “Rabbi Loew sent us,” he said.
“Why should Rabbi Loew help me?” Izak said. “He doesn’t care if I live or die. It was Magdalena’s idea, I’ll wager.”
Magdalena untied the last knot. Izak swung his arms slowly, wincing as feeling came back into them. “I don’t—I don’t know if I can stand,” he said.
Magdalena gently lifted Izak’s arm over her shoulder. The boy grimaced and stood when she did, painfully slowly. Together they made their way to the door, Izak hobbling, Magdalena steadying him.
“Let’s go that way,” Dee said, pointing away from the wraiths. “I don’t want to meet those ghosts again.”
“What?” Izak said. “What ghosts?”
Magdalena seemed to weigh the chance that they might find no way out against the certainty of having to pass through the ghosts. “Good,” she said finally.
Dee indicated to her that she should go first; he did not want to hurry ahead and perhaps lose her, and he could keep an eye on their rear. She set off down the hallway, Izak leaning heavily against her rounded shoulders.
Their progress was painfully slow. They traversed a number of corridors, passing closed doors and empty rooms on both sides. Perhaps there was no way out, Dee thought. Perhaps they were doomed never to leave the vast house, to stay there forever, like the ghosts. Perhaps this was some rarelyvisited corner of Rudolf’s castle … .
Footsteps behind him jolted him out of his reverie. He turned quickly but could see nothing. He was about to hurry on when he heard a low laugh.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
Silence. Magdalena and Izak were somewhere down the corridor now, a lumbering shadow like a four-legged monster, and he ran to catch up with them. Behind him someone called his name.
He stopped
again, raised his candle, and peered into the gloom of the hallway. “Kelley?” he asked, though the voice had not sounded like Kelley’s. “Where are you?”
He could hear nothing. No—was that another laugh? It sounded like Erzsébet. Was she here now? The laugh deepened; now it sounded like his demon. His heart sped until he thought he might faint.
He hurried forward, nearly bumping into Magdalena and Izak. “Move,” he whispered urgently. “The demon’s behind me.”
“Are you certain?”
“Of course I’m certain, woman! Who else could it be?”
“Who indeed?” she asked.
What did she mean? He was about to answer angrily when she said, “I thought I saw a man, remember?”
“Yes,” he said, understanding now. Kelley, or Kelley’s house, was showing each of them what they feared the most. Magdalena had seen her captor; he had heard first Erzsébet and then the thing he had run a thousand miles to escape.
Think, he told himself frantically. So far the demon had only possessed those who had summoned it, or who had at least been in the room when it was summoned. It had grown stronger over the years, but he did not think it was strong enough yet to act of its own volition.
Another sound, this time of glass breaking. He jumped. Could he be certain of that? Kelley’s house seemed to feed on the fear of those inside it. Perhaps this was not the demon, perhaps it was something worse, something called up by his own terror. And he was terrified, there was no hiding it. He remembered the repellant feeling of the demon crawling inside him and his fear grew by leaps and bounds.
“Quickly,” he said to Magdalena.
She said something he could not hear. His heart pounded loudly. She was moving slowly, so slowly, Izak dragging her down. Why had she been the one to carry him, why didn’t he? “Give me Izak,” he said. “I can move faster.”
She shook her head. “I’m stronger than you, old man,” she said.
Something screamed behind them, an obscene sound, like a parody of a man. They went another few torturous steps down the corridor. He wanted to cry out in impatience.
Don’t be afraid, he told himself. No fear, there must be no fear. Suddenly he remembered the psalm against demons and began to recite it aloud.
The thing behind them howled again. How much longer did they have to go?
“Light,” Magdalena said abruptly.
It was true: something gleamed up ahead. “Could this be a trick?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
The light grew brighter. There was a final cacophony behind them—it sounded like bells falling from a cathedral roof—but it was muted, distant.
He saw an open door leading out to the courtyard. Izak moved free of Magdalena and together the three of them achieved one final burst of speed. They ran out into the heat of the courtyard, laughing.
“We can’t stay here,” Dee said. “Someone might see us.”
They hurried through an alleyway away from the house and came out onto an unfamiliar street. Izak was limping badly, but at least, Dee thought, he could walk on his own. They went down a few streets and sat on a stone bench bordering a square.
“Who are you?” Izak asked Dee. “You talk about ghosts and demons as though you know them personally, you can find your way through that house of dreadful magic—”
“I told you,” Dee said, still panting from his escape. “I’m a friend of Rabbi Loew’s. My name is Doctor John Dee.”
“Loew has no friends like you,” Izak said. “And how do you know Magdalena?”
“Come,” Dee said. “Let’s take you home.”
“I’ll go with Magdalena,” Izak said. “Not you.” His rudeness was back; he seemed every so often to remember that he hated everyone and made haste to hide his real nature, the friendliness and openness of youth.
“She might not be strong enough,” Dee said. “And what if Kelley comes after you?”
“Very well,” Izak said, trying without success to give the impression that he didn’t care one way or another.
The three of them made their way through the streets of Prague. Loew was waiting at the gate to the Jewish Quarter. “You found him,” Loew said.
He attempted to clasp Izak to his chest but the boy twisted away and stalked off. Loew watched him go, an unreadable expression on his face. Magdalena hurried after him.
Loew turned toward Dee. He seemed to shake off his dark thoughts. “Thank you, my friend,” he said. “Can you—can you tell me what you saw in Kelley’s house? Or would you prefer not to speak of it?”
“The house shows you what frightens you most,” Dee said. “I heard—I thought I heard my demon.”
Loew was silent a moment, perhaps thinking of his own fears. “What frightens a golem, I wonder?” he asked.
“Nothingness, maybe. Uncreation.”
“I doubt we’ll ever know,” Loew said.
Dee yawned.
“You’re tired,” Loew said. “And no wonder. Go home and rest. Do you have a place to stay? I’m sorry, I should have asked you before, but—”
“I’m at an inn—it’s called At the Three Frogs. And tomorrow I suppose I’ll go back to Trebona.”
“Will you?” Loew asked. His eyes searched Dee’s face shrewdly.
Dee laughed. “You know me too well. I should go home, go back to my family. I will. And yet something’s about to happen here—everyone and everything says so. I don’t want to miss it, whatever it is.”
“Well, good day,” Loew said. “Good day, and thank you. Our teachers tell us that when a person saves a life, it is as though he saved an entire world.”
“I’m glad everything turned out well,” Dee said.
He made his way to the inn and fell on the bed, still clothed. An hour later he woke to an urgent pounding at his door. He stumbled up and opened it. Rabbi Loew stood there, a stunned and hopeless expression on his face.
“What is it?” Dee said. “What’s happened?”
“Yossel’s gone,” Loew said.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s gone. I went to his room and he wasn’t there. I was so disturbed after we visited Kelley’s house yesterday that I forgot to take the shem out of his mouth. He sat on his bed for hours, not moving, drawing no attention to himself, waiting until the night, and then he left. I’ve only just discovered he’s missing. He’s disobeyed me, disobeyed a direct order—”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“None. I looked at Rivka’s house but he wasn’t there. She hadn’t seen him, she says.”
“Who’s Rivka?”
“A young woman in the Quarter. He says he’s in love with her. I was sure that that’s where he would go … . But I have no time for this—we must find him soon, before he does terrible harm. Will you help me?”
“Of course,” Dee said. He smiled wryly. “It looks as if God doesn’t intend for me to leave Prague after all.”
For the second time that day he made his way to the Jewish Quarter. It was mid-afternoon, the day still hot and airless. He followed Loew to the town square and saw that the rabbi had gathered a group of men to help him. One after the other the men gave their reports: no one had seen anything, the golem was still missing.
Loew gave orders and the men fanned out away from the square. “You,” he said to Dee. “I want you to go to the tavern we visited once, and the neighborhood around it. Yossel may have left the Quarter.”
Dee headed back to the gate. How, he wondered, could the golem still be missing? Where could he hide? Surely someone had seen him; with his great height and misshapen features he would cause comment wherever he went.
At the tavern Dee questioned the customers, giving as vague a description as possible; he did not want to start a panic or draw suspicion to the Jewish Quarter. No one had seen him. Dee left and wandered the streets, keeping his eyes open and stopping a few passers-by. When the sun set he headed back, feeling hot and dirty and tired.
F
OR THE REST OF THE DAY MAGDALENA SHOWED IZAK A PART of Prague he had never imagined. They went to alleyways behind taverns and picked out food from among the garbage; to a wealthy part of town where a woman never failed to leave out some bread and a saucer of milk, “for the fairies,” Magdalena said; and finally to a dim alley with no exit, formed by the angles of several buildings.
“This is where I usually sleep,” she said, showing him several dirty blankets piled in a nest. “Of course if you want to go home …”
“I have no home,” he said. He felt dreadfully hungry despite all their scavenging, but he understood that this was the price he had to pay for his escape from the Quarter. He did not complain; it seemed a fair exchange.
She smiled at him, and he saw he had said the right thing. She gave him half the blankets and they settled down to sleep.
The next day dawned hot and bright, and they rose and began their rounds again. Magdalena knocked on a door and a woman came out and handed them some cold meat.
Izak marveled at how she had made a life for herself in the forgotten parts of the city. “Won’t Doctor Dee give you food?” he asked.
She laughed. “He does when he remembers. He worries about me, but he’s very impractical.”
“But—but that’s terrible. He has so much, and you have so little. Why aren’t you angry with him?”
“I don’t know. It’s no good to be angry about things you can’t change.”
Izak thought about that for a moment. He couldn’t change his bastardy, yet he could not help but be furious at Loew’s pronouncements, and at the casual way the peddler had used his mother. Perhaps when he was as old as Magdalena he would be more accepting. “How long have you lived on the streets?” he asked.
“Oh, a long time,” she said.
“Where are we going now?”
They went to an inn where merchants and aristocrats drove up in expensive coaches. He followed her around to the back. Piles of half-eaten food littered the alleyway; he was amazed at how much people threw out. They picked out what they wanted and Magdalena set off for their next destination.
The day had grown hotter; the heat seemed almost a tangible thing, someone walking along with them and screaming at the top of his lungs. “How long did it take you to find all this?” he asked.
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