Another Scandal in Bohemia (39 page)

“We must travel on? Where?”

“I fear the trail will lead us all the way to Prague, Watson.”

“Bohemia? But why?”

“Because that land’s Queen is involved in the matter that led to the murders of poor Berthe and Nathalie.”

“The devil you say! Royal intrigue and murder? What a case. At least we are acquainted with the King.”

Holmes puffed deeply on his pipe, assuming that dreamy expression I glimpsed only during his moments of deepest thought, or while he was caught in a cocaine trance.

“We are indeed acquainted with the King of Bohemia. It will be interesting to see him again.”

“But you do not like the King.”

“I did not say it would be pleasant, Watson, only interesting.”

He smiled, to himself, not me, and stared out over the Paris rooftops turning slightly golden in the twilight.

Chapter Twenty-six

CRYPTOGRAPHY

Irene and
I strolled together up Karlova street, she in the best of moods, I in the worst.

“Ah, what a splendid day!” she cried, stopping to fill her lungs with the lively Prague air. “I feel that we will make excellent progress. As much as an incognito venture into the Prague streets benefitted the Queen yesterday, I could accomplish no real work with Clotilde and Allegra along.

“We
two will make giant steps,” she predicted, taking my arm and implementing her own metaphor until I was stumbling to keep up.

“Irene, slow your pace! People are staring.”

“Of course they are. We are a notable pair.”

She released me reluctantly and settled into a genteel stroll more befitting our ladylike attire.

Irene had exaggerated when she declaimed our worthiness of interest. I wore an Empire green twilled wool, princesse-style redingote with dusky maroon trim on reveres, cuffs, and skirt, and a green felt bonnet to match. No one would—or should—give me a second glance.

Irene wore a princesse-style polonaise, too, but her effect was far more queenly. Her gown was of silver faille in an all-over scallop design, with an upstanding collar and bodice of black lace. Swags of glittering jet overhung her bosom and hemmed the gown, so she faintly clicked when she walked.

She carried an ebony walking stick. Her black velvet bonnet was frosted with silver and dull red ostrich plumes, with a crimson velvet cluster of roses nestling near her left temple.

“I am so relieved, Nell. Since I left Paris, I have had Allegra to look after. Now, Allegra is consorting with the Queen at the palace, and Godfrey is doing something dull with the bankers. I know all my chicks to be safe and am now free to track the Golem to his lair.”

‘Today?” I asked with some dismay. “With me?”

“Of course with you! Isn’t wonderful to be tramping the Prague streets together again?”

“Perhaps,” I said dubiously, “but you forget that you and I seldom went out unaccompanied by the King. Our small tramping expeditions were only to the royal doctors’ infirmary and the gypsy woman you revisited yesterday.”

“That may be true,” Irene admitted, “but now we are free to tramp where we will, unimpeded by royal escorts and castle carriages. I have just the route.”

She drew me to a stop beside a green grocer’s shop to rummage in her reticule for a much-crinkled piece of paper.

“What is that?”

“My scribbled notes, and a crude map I made. Yesterday’s venture had more purpose than an en masse palm-reading. I gathered testimony of the Golem’s progress on the two other occasions on which he was seen.”

“There are more?”

“Only the two, except for your and Godfrey’s encounter.”

“Three times. It does rather sound like something large and brutish is running loose in Prague.”

Irene leaned near and dropped her voice to a stage whisper, which is to say that she attracted the attention of everyone within fifty feet. “Perhaps it is the Frankenstein monster. That would be a find, Nell, would it not?”

“Not,” I begged to differ. “I hope this Golem proves to be as much fiction as the Frankenstein creature.”

“I don’t!” Irene avowed. “Such a turn of events would ruin my investigation. See this map: I have marked the sites of his appearances with an ‘X’.”

“Most original.”

“Here is U Fleků,” she went on. “You notice the appearances cluster around the Old Town and the Josef Quarter.”

“The likely area for a Josef Quarter creation to haunt.”

Please don’t use such a negative word, Nell.”

“Which one?”

“Haunt. I am convinced that the Golem is as solid as you and I.”

“Then I am glad that we make your pilgrimage to find him in daylight. I wonder that you did not drag me out by the dark of the moon.”

She eyed me askance, her amber earrings shaking indignantly. “Once we have verified the Golem’s lair, such an expedition may be necessary. Now, we need to see.”

“How fortunate for me, although I really do not want to see any more of the Golem than I did.”

“I’m afraid that we must. He is the key to this entire business.”

“He is a medieval legend, Irene, as Faust is. Sometimes, I fear, you take the unreal reality of the stage too seriously.”

“What do you think you saw?”

I pondered. “A large person, moving quickly yet clumsily. Were it not for the... unearthly... quality of the face, I would feel confident in saying that Godfrey and I encountered an exceptionally bulky drunkard.”

“What was unearthly about the face?”

I was loath to revisit my memories of that night, but Irene was a skilled interlocutor. I found the scene taking shape again in my mind.

“The face was... unformed, rudimentary. I sensed where eyes, nose, mouth were, but did not see them fully formed. I saw a... melted... face, Irene.”

She bit her lip and lifted her eyebrows, an expression that would have not flattered anyone else, but was enchantingly provocative in her.

“I am afraid that you describe with admirable exactitude the unfinished face a giant clay figure come to life would wear. Most disturbing, Nell, I don’t mind telling you, for I trust your observations implicitly: I could not have described the Golem’s face better myself, had I seen it.”

“Then we do truly track the Golem?”

“It would seem so.” She drew her reticule cords taut, then waved the crude map under my nose. “The Rothschilds will not be encouraged to hear that the rumors are true. Whatever the outcome, we will follow the trail to its logical conclusion.”

So we walked on.

As charming as the streets of Prague’s Old Town were, I could not help glancing worrisomely down every passing byway. Many of the streets could not tolerate more than six persons across. In such shaded, narrow and winding passages, marked by archways linking wall to wall, one could well envision an unearthly being on the prowl.

The citizens of Prague came and went in broad daylight. A baker’s vendor brushed by, his tray half-full of pastries dusted with poppy seed. The local population much treasured the black poppy seed, but I could not see a seed-strewn roll without being reminded of mice droppings.

Buxom lace-capped Bohemian countrywomen passed us, their ample shawl-covered figures bursting from checked gowns and embroidered aprons.

We walked further into the heart of Old Bohemia, until we crossed into the Josef Quarter. The area was named after the Emperor of Austria, Franz Josef, who had given the Jews in the ghetto their full civil rights some decades before.

Such largesse was unusual in Europe, and, perhaps for that reason, several Jewish synagogues thrived in this small area, the most significant of which was the New-Old Synagogue near the bend in the river Vltava.

In the crowded, narrow way, Irene pulled me into a nearby butcher’s shop so she could further study her rough map by the light of the window.

I gazed at the foreign meat goods, at strings of fat sausages, some dark as blood, others pale and pink. Unknown spices seasoned the shop’s warm air. Garlic rose from among them like a thread of French incense.

The entire scene was rather repulsive, but Irene was frowning at her map and would not be distracted.

“If there is a location around which all the manifestations center,” she muttered, pointing a gloved forefinger at the much-abused paper, “it is here. I can find no other terminus.”

“How far is ‘here’?” I wondered.

“Only a couple of streets over.”

“Then why don’t we go and see what sits on that site?”

Irene turned unusually baffled eyes upon me. “Because I know what sits upon that site; lies, rather. That is the old Jewish cemetery.”

A thrill crawled my corset strings. “We saw such a place on a previous ramble in Prague. Graves, thousands of graves, all piled one atop of the other.”

She nodded. “The Golem was said to have been both created and uncreated in the attic of the old synagogue, but when one thinks of him rising to walk again, the vicinity of a such an ancient graveyard for his kind seems perfectly appropriate.”

“Then we
do
speak of a ghost!”

Irene tucked her paper back in her reticule. “A most substantial one, I fear.”

We walked on, with purpose now, with a single goal in sight.

The Jewish cemetery in Prague was renowned even years before I first glimpsed it. I might say that it was perversely renowned, for to see it is to know that we do indeed pass as the grass which springs up and is cut down. Apparently, little land was allowed the ghetto for burying its dead. The result over decades and centuries was that grave was set upon grave, up to twelve denizens deep, and the headstones came to thrust each other up like ingrown teeth. The effect given was of the dead bursting forth from their allotted six- by-two-foot spaces, of headstones pushed up and askew, of a whole City of the Dead elbowing one another for, er, breathing room, of man’s inhumanity to man, alive or dead, reaching bizarre proportions.

Yet amongst such chaos, amongst such pathetic yet oddly dignified and touching memorials, one monument stood solid, level and unaffected by the raw jousting for space around it. That was the tomb of Rabbi ben Loew, the purported father of the Golem.

Irene had pointed out this impressive stone structure on our previous sortie into old Prague. Now we stood before it again, more awed than ever by the power of the Golem legend. At least, I was more awed. I can never say for certain what Irene is thinking, because she is an actress and hides it well when she wants to.

“When we were last here, Nell, I mentioned that to this day people place notes upon Rabbi Loew’s tomb, seeking some boon or the other. Is that not suggestive to you?”

“Yes. Hope springs eternal.”

“Beyond the need of humanity to see past its own mortality.”

I thought. “The rabbi’s tomb is a sort of post-office box between living and dead.”

“Exactly! And why must we restrict the correspondence to between the living and dead? Why not between the living... and the living?”

I turned to stare at my friend’s triumphant face. “A message center, you mean?”

She nodded slowly. “I suggest that we examine some of the slips of paper that have been left recently.”

“Irene... that may be blasphemous, to trifle so with the dead, and the living’s hopes. Certainly it is an invasion of privacy.”

Her mouth settled into a grim line. “Sometimes one must invade privacy and even trifle with blasphemy to find the truth.”

We advanced together on the tomb, a solid stone affair somewhat higher than our heads.

As we neared, the truth of the custom showed itself. Small white flakes of paper had been affixed to it by weighted stones.

“These petitioners believe that the rabbi himself will look upon their offerings,” I objected. “We must not violate their expectations.”

“And if a wrong is being committed in the dead rabbi’s name?” she answered instantly. “Have we not an obligation to reveal it?”

“Yes! But you cannot know for sure until you violate the crypt.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“Yes, but what word did you use—?”

“Violate—?”

“Most dramatic, Nell, and most in character, but, no, that other telling word, so wonderfully melodramatic.”

I considered. “Crypt?”

“The very word! Crypt. Oh, it smacks of pyramids and mummified pharaohs, of speaking ravens, forgotten mists and the divinely decadent dreams of Mr. Edgar Allen Poe. Crypt. Yet this is not a crypt, Nell; it is a tombstone. Why did you call it so?”

“I don’t know! It looked... like a crypt.”

“How does a crypt differ from a tombstone?”

“I don’t know! I suppose... one can walk into a crypt, and one cannot enter a tombstone.”

“Ah!” cried Irene, in rapture. “So simple. So obvious.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Oh, you need not beg anyone’s pardon, least of all Rabbi Loew’s, whose grave site you have just saved from a dastardly desecration.”

“I have?”

“Indeed. I was ready to rip every message from its surface, and read it. Now I think such a course is uncalled for.”

“I should hope so!”

“Now, it is much simpler. We must return by the dark of the moon you mentioned earlier, Nell, and dig it up!”