by Will Thomas
“I sent a message to Sir Moses an hour ago. All ready, then? Let us be off.”
It was dark when I stepped outside, and too early for Juno and Racket to be about. I wondered just how early it was.
“What o’clock do you have?” I asked.
“Shortly after five. It is imperative that we reach Petticoat Lane before it opens. We should find a cab in the Elephant and Castle. Speaking of time, remind me to purchase a pocket watch for you. We can’t have you constantly asking the time from everyone. It makes the agency look incompetent.”
Middlesex Street was nearly deserted when we arrived, but a few vendors were wheeling in handcarts, overflowing with old clothes. It must have been even more empty the night the Anti-Semite League had arrived, with its sad cargo. Would there really be an attempt at a pogrom here today? At the moment, it seemed unlikely. I’d have called it a rumor, a fantasy, were it not for the events of the night before.
The sun began to rise lazily. Street hawkers filed in and started setting up their booths. Jewesses hung used but freshly washed and ironed clothing on lines and makeshift racks. Food vendors roasted potatoes and boiled milk for cocoa. An enterprising fellow set out a samovar of tea and began a brisk trade immediately, Barker and myself being early in the queue. I began to have doubts about my employer’s plan. Business seemed very much as usual in the Lane. Perhaps the affair had spent itself the night before.
They came west from Whitechapel when they finally arrived, from the warren of doss-houses, public houses, and gin shops. They were close to a hundred strong, the offscourings of the district: rampsmen, bruisers and brawlers, sodden with Saturday night liquor and brimming with hate and violence in their yellow, piggish eyes. Like the group in our garden, they were armed with anything that came to hand, from a board pried from a fence in passing, to a spanner for tapping railway wheels. It was an ugly mob, a twin in every way to the ones that had murdered men, raped women, and terrorized children in Eastern Europe, except for one difference: these fellows were English, a race which prided itself around the world for its decency and common sense.
A wail broke from the lips of the vendors when they realized what was about to happen. I even heard a Russian Jew near me mutter the word “Cossack.” The inchoate mob collected at the foot of Aldgate High Street, then surged forward with bloodlust in their eyes. They tore apart the first stall they reached. From where I stood, it seemed to explode. Wood and clothes flew up into the air. There was a rending of cloth and the sound of axes. The vendor himself went down, streaming blood, after being knocked on the head with a sailor’s belaying pin. His fat wife ran up the Lane screaming in Yiddish. The next three stalls followed in succession. Skulls were being thumped like melons, and Jew and Gentile alike were wrestling in the dirty and rubbish-strewn street.
“I thought you called Sir Moses,” I shouted. “Where are the police?”
“No police, lad. The Jews are handling this themselves,” Barker replied in my ear. “Keep your wits about you. Remember what I’ve taught you. Don’t use your pistol unless your life is in dire distress.”
A fellow leaped by me from behind, knocking against my shoulder. He was a young Jewish fellow with what appeared to be a length of wood in his hand. He ran up to the first rank of leaguers and gave one fellow a good clout on the noggin. Eager hands clutched him, and suddenly he was lifted overhead, amidst a sea of rough hands and angry faces; he was punched and pummeled for his bravery. But he was not the lone brave Jew. More came running, no longer willing to wait passively to be expelled from another country, ready to fight for themselves and their people and a permanent home here. Men were running from all directions, shouting, and suddenly the tide of antagonists crashed over my head, and I was engulfed in the very thick of it.
Soft spots. That was the key for someone as unskilled as myself, Barker said. Only an idiot would try to attack a larger fellow by hitting him in the stomach or the head. But what of the throat? I ducked as a six-footer swung a cricket bat at my head, then gave him a good, solid punch to the neck, right above the collar. The man went down satisfactorily, clutching his throat for air. A second seized my lapels roughly and pulled me off my feet. I clapped my hands hard against his ears, as I’d been taught. The sudden pressure would burst the eardrum and cause a loss of balance. He reeled away and looked disinclined to fight anymore. A third swung back a fence post, intent on cracking my skull, but I ignored the Queensberry Rules and kicked him on the side of the knee. He went down among his brothers, clutching his injured limb.
Just then I got a good wallop on the back of the head. I was down for a moment or two myself, but I shook it off and climbed back into the fray, fists raised. As I stood up again, I saw none other than Brother Andrew McClain standing close by with a fellow in each hand, shaking them as a ratter does two rats before knocking their heads together.
“Hallo, there, Tommy, my boy!” he roared with evident pleasure. “Grand day for a scrap, isn’t it?” He laid hands on another fellow, but I knew that there would be no healing involved. When last I saw him, he was singing a hymn as he knocked combatants about.
I’d lost sight of Barker. I stepped up on the lip of a gas lamp and looked across a sea of men beating the tar out of each other for no good reason. It was like a war, only with poor ammunition. Bottles flew, boards cracked, and elbows separated people from their teeth, but there were no fatalities. I couldn’t tell if one side was prevailing over the other, and I couldn’t find my employer anywhere.
Just then, a strong-looking chap seized my leg and pulled me off the gas lamp, intent on mischief. As I fell into him, I reached for his nose, and slid a thumb into his eye socket. Barker says that the eye is the most sensitive organ of all. This fellow obviously agreed, or would have if he weren’t busy holding his face and cursing. My luck went dry then. I met my match with the next man. He was more cautious, and he had a good right cross. We took turns beating on each other and posturing, waving our fists in the air, when there was a sudden, awful din.
At first, I thought it was elephants, an entire herd of them coming our way. That would certainly put to rout the members of the league, along with everyone else. Elephants are undiscriminating as a species. My opponent and I broke off in mid-blow and craned our necks to see what the next thing to come along would be. It felt like the end of the world. As I watched, something large and gray began to loom over the crowd, but it was not an elephant. The creature looked human. My mind turned to the legend of the golem that Israel had told me about. Had he somehow come to life? He had, but not in the way I expected. He was painted on a banner with a menacing attitude, a very tall banner, held aloft on a long pole. The crowd began to part at the far end of Middlesex, and a phalanx of Jewish men came marching along, four across and ten deep, clad in their voluminous black coats and fedoras. The men in front were holding shofars to their lips, the curling ram’s-horn instruments of Old Israel. The sound was unearthly. It jangled on the nerves like a clarion cry, calling everyone to attention. The crowd, Jew and Gentile alike, stopped in their tracks, jaws hanging open in astonishment at these resolute young men in their side curls and beards, as if to say, “What’s next?” One Whitechapel wag tried to make some snickering remark, but it died in the sudden hush. I recognized some of the men in the ranks from that strange assembly a few days before. One was the impassioned zealot Asher Cowen, who spoke so eloquently to us all. This was the Golem Squad.
The young orator spoke loudly in his own tongue, and every man came to an abrupt halt. He spoke again, and they all answered in unison, like a crack regiment. He spoke in English next, perhaps for the benefit of the crowd.
“A sword for the Lord!” he cried, and they answered in kind. Then each man reached into his coat and pulled out an actual sword, twenty-four inches of newly minted steel, glinting magnificently in the morning sun. On the blade, in swirling Hebrew characters, were the symbols I had seen on the banner at the meeting, the script that formed the word “golem.” So, this was their defense against
the pogrom. These men were prepared to defend their home here to the death. The shofars blasted again, and I felt a holy chill go down my spine. The blasts rattled the casements of the windows. Could these old city buildings withstand what had brought Jericho to its knees?
With a savage cry, the new army charged into the fray, their swords waving in the air. As they ran by, and just before my opponent resumed our fight with a clout to the jaw that rang bells in my ears, I saw a face I recognized. It was distorted by war cries and resolution, but I recognized it nonetheless. It was my new friend, Israel Zangwill, in his coat and hat, a sword in his hand, leaping into the melee. And you will think me fanciful, but I’d swear I caught a glimpse of Jacob Maccabee behind him.
Well, that was it. I wasn’t going to be outdone by a spindle-shanked teacher and a fastidious butler. I bent down, retrieved the fallen cricket bat from the street, and caught my adversary one that would have gone over the wall at Lords. He raised a hand, either to admit the touch or to raise some objection, then he retired from the field or, rather, fell onto it.
A hand plucked at my shoulder, and I brandished the bat, but it was only Racket, in his long coat and cabman’s topper.
“Don’t crown me, Mr. L!” he said, raising his hands. “I’m on your side. Old Push is in hot pursuit after the ringleader. He wants me to take you to where he’s got him pinned down.”
Racket and I dodged our way through the crowd. Swords flashed in the sun, and there were cries and curses in the air in several languages. As one sword came down on a big fellow’s shoulder, I noticed something: the swords were not sharpened. They were mostly being used to frighten and confuse the attackers. My mind went back to the old Bible story of Gideon and how he had used torches, clay pots, swords, and shofars to put to flight an army much larger than his own. As I watched men in twos and threes fleeing back to Whitechapel to bind their bleeding heads and fix their broken bones, I saw the old trick was winning again. This pogrom, unlike the others in Europe, would not succeed. You should never fight a creature when its back is to the wall.
Racket and I were soon around the corner and clambering aboard the hansom. What a day! My head was bleeding, my ears were ringing, most of my knuckles were barked, and I had never felt better in my entire life.
Racket cracked his lash over Juno’s head, and her ironclad hooves dug into the grime-covered road. We rattled at a fast clip down Aldgate High Street. Barker had done fast work, slipping off like that and going after the real leader. I was a little put out with him for not including me in his plans, but I’d had a great time at the little to-do the league had set up for us. Now all we had to do was catch the slippery beast that had instigated this whole show, and we could go collect our fee. I didn’t know who it was, but I hoped at least Barker did.
Abruptly, a loop of rope fell around my neck. I jumped and looked up. The trap was open, but Racket’s familiar whiskers were nowhere to be found. I seized the rope and tried to pull, more annoyed than alarmed, but it was suddenly drawn tight. Very tight. The hemp bit into the flesh of my throat.
Slowly, I was hauled up out of my seat, as someone heaved upon the rope. My shoulders came in contact with the edges of the trap, but my head was pulled through. For a second or two, I found myself looking out over the top of the cab. I wanted to turn around and see my attacker, but I couldn’t breathe, and my fingers couldn’t loosen the rope enough for me to catch my breath. I wanted to cough, to gasp, to drag oxygen into my tortured lungs, but I couldn’t. Spots began to appear in front of my eyes, as if someone were spattering India ink on me. The last thing I remembered before I passed out was the voice of Pokrzywa’s funny little mystical rebbe, Reb Shlomo, saying, “Look out for trapdoors!”
28
THE PAIN THAT CAUSED ME TO PASS OUT WAS as nothing compared to the pain that awakened me again. My head throbbed, my muscles burned, and my heart was hammering in my chest. Searing pain radiated out in waves to my toes and fingertips and back. It felt as if I had been in pain for hours, perhaps forever.
I willed my eyes to open, to move beyond the pain, but what I saw made no sense. I was disoriented. Perhaps I was having a nightmare. I was in some sort of large, dark room, my head close to the ceiling. My eyes refused to focus. Something flitted in front of me, causing my head to move back and strike a post behind me. More pain. The post and I began swaying. Where was I? Flit, there it was again. Limbs. I think it was a man’s limbs I saw, but they were upside down. No, it was I who was upside down. I was tied to a post and suspended from the ceiling somehow. I lifted my head, slowly, and focused on my body. I was near naked and lashed to the post, only it wasn’t a post. It was a cross.
Finally, I was able to focus my eyes on the ropes that bound my wrists and ankles. They that bore my entire weight. My chest was on fire, and breathing was difficult. Every joint felt dislocated. What I had first taken for the ceiling was in fact the floor under my head. The cross, suspended from a rope going up into the darkness, was affixed to a pulley in the top of the building.
“Awake, already, are you?” a familiar voice came out of the darkness.
The limbs appeared again, and my eyes saw something red above me. It was John Racket’s rusty beard.
“Racket,” I croaked, licking lips, which were parched. “Racket, cut me down.”
“When I went to all this trouble to truss you up? Not half. Try calling on your precious Mr. Barker to come cut you down.”
“Why?” I gasped.
“I’m glad you asked that,” Racket said. “I’ve been studying the Good Book a lot lately, searching for some really spectacular way to kill you. That bullet I put through my cab was just to put Barker off for a while. I thought of hanging you from your hair like Absalom, but yours was too short, or of gutting you like Abraham almost did to Isaac, but I didn’t think anyone would get the idea. I about gave up when I remembered Peter being crucified upside down. Now that, my friend, is the dramatic moment. Truly artistic, and not above my poor powers. I’m just going to leave you hanging here until Barker finds you, though at this rate that might just be sometime in the next century. Of course, by then, all the blood will have run to your brain and burst your vessels. Poor Barker will have to find a new assistant all over again.”
“Why are you doing this?” I spat out, before my chest convulsed in a paroxysm of pain. My ears were ringing with the thunder of my own labored heartbeat.
“I’m just throwing our little bloodhound off his scent,” Racket continued. “You see, the Jew was stealing my girl, after we’d been married for five years. I didn’t mind that she was a Jewess, since she had converted to Christianity, but for her to take up with another of her kind, after all I’d done for her, after I’d made her respectable, that was too much. I knew Barker would be hired to take the case, him being all friendly with the Jews and all. So, I began early. I preached against the Jews in Hyde Park days before I killed him, just to throw your boss off the track. I got Miriam’s sweetheart in an alleyway not far from their church in Poplar. It was incredible, a real feeling of power. I smacked him about for a couple of minutes, then I got him with the knife. One blow, right to the heart, and he was a goner. I bundled him into the cab and brought him here. Saw the resemblance to Christ, though I’m a trade unionist and an unbeliever. In a trice, I’d stripped him down and nailed him to a stall plank. I thought, Why not hang him high in Petticoat Lane for all the Jews to see? That’d keep ’em all away from my Miriam. Then I had a stroke of genius. I took a piece of chalk and wrote ‘The Anti-Semite League’ on it, along with a verse I culled from Miriam’s Bible. Told her I was thinking of going to church. I tossed him in the cab, board and all, covered in an old blanket, and found plenty of rope. Nobody saw a thing in the heavy fog, or if they did, they were too terrified to squeal. The Lane was quiet as the tomb. Juno didn’t care for it when I used her to haul the Jew up the telegraph pole, but she’s a good ol’ gal. From sticking him to hanging him didn’t take more than an hour or two.
“I tell you, it was a real pleasure watching your Guv’nor chase all over town looking for a group of Jew-haters that didn’t exist. When I wasn’t looking over your shoulders, I was in the pubs, agitating against the Jews, blaming them for stealing jobs and running up prices. It’s amazing what one bloke can do.”
I moaned as my body was wracked by another spasm. I could no longer feel my legs. They were ice cold, while my chest was on fire. I couldn’t take much more before I passed out, and death would inevitably follow. While Racket went on, boasting of his evil accomplishments, I prayed and prepared myself to meet my Maker.
“Miriam was a good wife for a while, before she cuckolded me. I had to tell her what I done, and how I knew about both of them. If she’d been smart, she’d have kept her gob shut and chalked it up to a hard lesson. But she started yammering, and it was obvious she was gonna peach on me. I took her down, right here, with a rubber-headed mallet. Bashed her head in one stroke. I tossed her out the back loading door, down onto the tracks below, then dragged her down the tunnel and chalked another note. Your boss was too stupid to get it without a little hint. Did you like the shooting? Nobody’d suspect a cabbie of putting holes in his own cab. I wrapped the pistol in a scarf to keep the powder burns off the side, but Barker didn’t even check.
“Later, I piled some fellows from the Crook and Harp pub into a cart and drove ’em all down to your place. Shoulda bloody well known they’d get their heads bashed. But young McElroy got left behind, and you know what he did? He turned Judas on me. He told you everything he knew, didn’t he? Of course, you remember what happened to Judas, don’t you?”
Racket took an arm of my cross and turned me around slowly. There was a pair of slack limbs dangling behind me. I didn’t have to look up into the bloated face to know that the body was once Albert McElroy.
“Stupid sod. If he’d had half a brain, he would’ve looked to see who his cabman was, but then you weren’t much smarter with your educated ways, were you? I even brought you here to the stable, overlooking the tracks.
