Castle Rouge (41 page)

“And Gypsies aren’t religious, are they?” I put in. “We don’t have many in America, although some have begun showing up with immigrants from eastern Europe.”

“They believe in God, whom they call Del,” Quentin said, “and the Devil, whom they call Beng. I suspect that is enough to make them religious. But their deepest beliefs are in the clan and predestination.”

“Now I see where Gypsy fortune-tellers come from. How do you know so much of them?” I asked quickly.

I had not meant to sound challenging, but Quentin Stanhope appeared to know everything about anything exotic there was, and I doubted even an Englishman could be such a know-it-all.

“It is very simple, Pink.” He smiled, pronouncing my name with such la-di-dah precision that it sounded like a mockery. It was indeed an absurd nickname for a grown woman and a daredevil reporter at that, but I liked people to underestimate me. Except, at the moment, Quentin Stanhope. “The Gypsies, or the Roma, as they call themselves, originated in the particular region of the globe where I have misspent my youth, India.”

“India! That does not seem very likely.”

“What is likely has nothing to do with the Romany, Pink. For a time Europeans who encountered them and saw they came from the East, like the three wise men, decided they were from Turkey or Nubia or Egypt. In fact, I have conversed with some and I find basic words, numerals, kinship terms, and names for body parts, and actions, to be Indian.

“That said, they were never solely Indian, but part of a ragtag military force India assembled in the tenth century to fight the Muslim armies determined that Islam should dominate Buddhist India and even beyond into the edges of Christian Europe. In fighting to hold back Islam, the mercenary Roma soldiers were pushed into the fringes of Europe. The Gypsy people spread deeper into western Europe in our own century, and, now you say, are emigrating like the Irish, the Poles, the Russians, and the Jews to the great gleaming shore of America, indeed a melting pot for the melting-pot people of India and now Europe.”

“‘Bring these, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door,’” I quoted from the poem Emma Lazarus wrote about the statue in 1883 to raise money for the pedestal it would rest upon three years later. “We could do with a bit less ‘wretched refuse,’ if you ask me. But I only wanted to know where the Gypsies came from.”

“Ah, you can’t know where anyone came from unless you know where they are going, and vice versa.” He turned to Irene, who had barely concealed her impatience during his lecture-hall answer to my simple question. “And it might interest you to know that in the course of their centuries-long movement westward the Roma were kept as slave labor in one part of Europe.” He glanced at Bram. “In that same quaint neighboring region that so fires your imagination. Transylvania.”

“Slave labor? But that was ages ago. Is slavery still possible in this day and age?” I demanded.

“More than possible,” Quentin answered, “and in more places than you would believe.”

Before he could enlighten me further, and I did wish to be further enlightened, as I saw a story in it, Irene leaped to direct the discussion back to more relevant matters.

“So the Gypsies could indeed be forced to do some master’s bidding?” she said. “That makes their appearance in Paris all the more suspicious and establishes a direct link to Transylvania, where Godfrey was sent on his last mission.”

“The Romany are too diffuse to summarize. Even in slavery they would cling to their tribal ways, and there is no way more difficult to change or challenge than that of the tribe. So I would guess they are shrugging off any remaining servitude and moving on, as they always have, absorbing what they call
gajikané
, or foreign, bits of language and custom into the eternal constant of their clannish lives.”

“You admire them!” Irene charged.

“I admire all who defy definition and who survive the centuries.”

“Have you moved among them?”

He nodded. “They are the most difficult to know, to trust, or to give trust to. One must regard them as a pack of wild dogs. They may invite you to share their meat, or they may make you their meat. It depends upon their mood.”

“So they would be united foes but unreliable allies?”

He nodded.

“And dangerous slaves or servants?”

He nodded again.

“Yet the Chi-Rho would mean nothing to them,” Irene mused. “I have met but one Roma, and her only twice. She is part fraud and part Sybil, and it is always up to me to decide which part is speaking. And she gave me a gift of great price when last we met, although I paid well for it, in gold…and in blood.” She glanced at Bram. “I would hie us all to your mysterious Transylvania, Bram, now that I know Gypsies point that way also and certainly Godfrey was lured there. But…do we risk abandoning Nell somewhere in between?”

No one answered. No one could.

“The trail of murders begins in London, where there are few Gypsies save their native Tinkers—and there were no Gypsy suspects in Whitechapel—and goes to Prague,
then
to Paris. All are great metropolitan centers. Why would Nell be dragged to the wilds of Transylvania?”

We were silent, all too aware that there was one good reason why Nell would not be “dragged” to Transylvania or anywhere else: her lifeless body lay somewhere between the exposition site in Paris and the path James Kelly took, which Irene and I knew for a fact went as far as Neunkirchen at least.

None of us would say this. The decision must be Irene’s.

She stood and stared down at the map of Prague. “Sherlock Holmes lost the Ripper in Whitechapel by a matter of minutes,” she muttered as if to herself. “He is back there now, retracing his own footsteps. We both scoured Paris until we turned up James Kelly. Prague has not been subjected to the same search. That is what we must lay to rest: Prague’s role in these events, and the only place to do it is here.”

Her finger stabbed a point on the map.

She looked up at the rest of us, resolved.

“We will continue with our expedition tonight, and if it proves unenlightening, we will move on to Transylvania and Quentin’s Gypsies and Bram’s sinister village with all speed.”

33.

Cryptic Doings

The oldest grave is that of a poet and physician who died in 1439. Avigdor Kara was a rare survivor of an Easter pogrom in 1389 that slew almost the entire Jewish population of Praque, some 3,000, killed by the city’s Christians after local priests accused them of desecrating the Host used in giving Holy Communion
.

—
TRAVEL GUIDE ON THE OLD JEWISH CEMETERY

FROM A JOURNAL

The streets of Prague echoed with the sounds of any city: the creak of wheels and constant slap and jingle of harnesses, the click of hooves sharp as sleet, and the distant rainlike patter of footsteps.

And, of course, because this was Prague, where silver, crystal, and beer ruled long before King Wilhelm occupied Prague Castle, a never-ending tune was the off-key celebrations of men leaving beer parlors.

We went on foot, Bram Stoker and I taking up the rear because Irene and Quentin knew where we were going, and presumably why.

Night mist slickened the rough cobblestones. Bram Stoker had to restrain himself from reaching out to support my elbow when my boots slipped on the uneven surface. But I wore men’s clothes as he did, and, unless I wished to disguise myself as a sot, there was no reason for me to lean on his support.

I think it half killed him not to play the gentleman, though, and I much liked him for it.

In fact, I so relished this outing! Much more fun to pass as a man among men than among three women disguised as men. No one glanced at us, or noted our progress.

We passed a lone woman now and again, obviously seeking business. They were mere shadows, hesitant to break into the knot of four “men” to find one who might patronize them. Four men might simply take their wares for nothing.

They reminded me of lost dogs in the city: wary, hungry, needing recognition but fearing it will come as a blow. I shuddered at the notion of the thousands of these lone, dark ghosts haunting the byways of every great metropolis hoping to attach to a living body for a few minutes and thus earn the illusion of warmth one way or another…with money for beer or for a bed out of the weather.

I let my walking stick hit the stones sharply, rhythmically. I was not one to be stopped for foolishness, the sound said. The lurking women hovered but came no closer to our party.

I realized then that it was not enough for me to write of women in brothels. I must write of women with no brothels to call home. And I felt anger at how unchallenged I could be at night on the street in my male garb, among men, while these homeless souls could be arrested and abused merely for being out here at this hour unescorted. Even respectable women were sometimes caught up in the net, despite their protests, and then their reputations were so soiled that they might as well join the nightly sisterhood in truth.

The ways grew narrow and deserted, although the merriment of the taverns could always be heard tinkling at a distance, like echoes from another world.

So narrow grew the streets that the constant faint odor of horse dung vanished. I smelled instead…lilacs. The scent reminded me that the world in general—not the dim, murder-haunted world I had chosen to inhabit these past four weeks—was easing from spring into summer.

The lilac smell grew so strong that I realized we were bearing toward it. A park? We moved between two tall buildings and saw an open space gaping. Not large, but occupied only by low walls, much crumbled. This was a park of tilted stones and scrawny maple and sycamore trees with a few lavish lilac bushes scenting the air until it hung heavy and sickly sweet, like something not quite wholesome but no less attractive for that.

A lantern was unshaded ahead of us. I blinked as the light blazed off gray and reddish stone blocks tilted this way and that.

Irene and Quentin were threading their way through the ruins, so Bram and I followed suit, less gracefully, stubbing our boot toes on the fallen stones. I grew quite dizzy from looking down while moving over the shifting ground and obstacles, from inhaling the thick, sweet odor as cloying as chloroform….

“What is this place?” I asked Bram, who shrugged his own confusion.

So we stumbled, half-blinded, after Irene and Quentin, until they stopped by a large low building in the middle of the ruins.

There we caught up with them, and caught our breaths. At first I thought that Irene was smoking, but then I realized that I saw the faint wreaths of our breaths unfurling in the light of Quentin’s lantern.

I also saw the general shape of the construction before us: a stone “house” of sorts, but barely higher than a tall man’s hat. And it had no windows!

The others were also noting the trail of their breaths in the chill and damp night.

“At least that proves that none of us is a vampire,” Bram said jocularly. “A vampire would not breathe.”

“Charming!” said I. “I understand why you write fiction. Once set upon a theme, you never let it loose.”

“Bram’s thought is apt,” Irene answered me. “We are, after all, in the place of the dead.”

“We are?” I gazed uneasily at the dark around us.

“This”—Irene lay a gloved hand upon the stone structure as one would touch the arm of an old friend one was introducing to strangers—“is Rabbi Loew’s famous tomb.”

“Tomb! Quite a sizable one. Then this place is, is—”

“The ancient Jewish cemetery in which Rabbi Loew’s tomb is located,” Quentin said.

“And the broken walls we were dodging all the way here—?”

“Ah!” Bram Stoker sounded delighted. “That was the centuries’ deposit of gravestones. A pity we did not come by daylight. I understand they were piled up over the decades to twelve levels, until they tilt atop each other like cards in a badly shuffled deck. One might almost think the deepest dead eager to push all their fellows out of the earth from below.”

“Or your walking undead pushing upward to rise again,” Irene said sardonically. “But this site most reminds me of the living,” she added, patting the smoke-grimed stone of the rabbi’s tomb. “The last time I was here Godfrey and Nell accompanied me, and Nell accidentally tripped a mechanism that opens a door to the tomb’s interior.”

“Why should we wish to join the ancient rabbi in his tomb?” I asked. “Surely he has nothing to say after so many centuries.”

“It is never wise to underestimate one credited with resurrecting the Golem,” Irene answered me. “What we found on our previous exploration were stairs down into and through the tomb to an underground network of tunnels.”

“Underground! Like Paris!”

“Perhaps,” Irene said. “On my last visit they were a well-kept secret used to further a political plot, one in which rumors of the Golem’s walking again was an important factor. I’m wondering if their presence is still such a secret, or if they have been put to evil use again.”

“So,” said Bram Stoker, sounding cheerful, “we may encounter the legendary Golem below?”

“I can attest,” Irene said with an enigmatic smile, “that we did indeed glimpse the Golem himself during our last visit. But tonight I am most hoping that we will find traces of the same sort of secret society that we uncovered in Paris and, perhaps, even find our missing ones, for this place has served to hold a very special prisoner captive before.”

“Wait!” I cried. “That Gypsy woman you consulted; she hinted something about this place before we left her.”

“Indeed, Pink, she did. Not even gold will get a direct answer from one of Quentin’s Roma, but I believe they delight in riddles as much as the Sphinx and will say just enough to lead one in the right direction, if you are wise enough to see the clue.”

“You are dealt with as you deal,” Quentin agreed. “Those whom they hoodwink have been misled as much by their own greed as anything. Those who deal straight with them will be rewarded with an honest answer, can they but recognize it.”