Safekeeping (42 page)

Another cold wind blew through the house when the door swung open without warning. The cooper and his two sons entered bearing axes and saws.

“Everyone's heading to the Jewish quarter! They're torturing the host!”

“Ha!” Thomas jumped to his feet. “There you have it! I told you something was awry.”

Margaretha gaped at the sharpened blades. She had been right to worry about the butterflies. “But how did they get one?”

The cooper shook the snow off his bushy, red beard. “Who knows? Maybe they bribed a Christian who owed them money. Maybe one of them pretended to be Christian and smuggled it off in his vile Jew mouth.”

“What do we know then? How can we be sure they're torturing a host?”

Peter shot her a silencing look while the younger of the cooper's sons stammered with excitement. “Fräulein Claudia saw a ray of light shoot
out of the Jew Lippmann's house into the sky. She peeked in the window and at first it was too dark to see anything, but then all the candles in the house kindled at the same time, by themselves, and there was Lippmann and two others standing around a table with a Eucharist. One of them said something like,
Let's see if what they say about you is true
, and then came down on it with a hammer. But the Eucharist didn't break. Another stabbed at it with a knife. And still it didn't break. Only bled. The table flooded with blood.”

The other brother, visibly annoyed at his younger sibling for hogging the story, interjected, “The Jews panicked. But instead of being convinced, they tried to get rid of the host. One of them threw it at a pot of boiling water, but the host floated above the pot.”

A rabble and their horses could be heard gathering outside, beyond the wooden shutters. Margaretha's heart pounded so hard her chest hurt. Well, what did God expect? How could she not care for that family at least a little? She had worked for Meister Goldsmid since she was a young girl, and though it was degrading to call a Jew a master, aside from a general irascibility, he had been good to her. Once he called her “an ignoramus” in his thick French accent, but what were a few ugly scenes in twenty-four years? She was in the house when most of his children were born, and some of the grandchildren. Just last week, she helped deliver baby Jonah, her mistress Anna's late bloom, she being a frail forty-four, a whole three years older than sturdy Margaretha's forty-one. At one week old, the baby already looked like Meister Goldsmid. Same eyes.

Unable to keep the shaking out of her voice, Margaretha said, “Why go after the lot of them? Why not just kill the Jew Lippmann and the other two?”

The cooper switched his axe onto the opposite shoulder. “They all have to go. While Claudia was running away from the first house, bright lights shot out of all their houses. They must have divided the host. Probably charged each other a pretty sum.”

“Lights? I thought it was yellow butterflies.”

“Lights, butterflies! What difference does it make?” Thomas pulled his hat back on. “They're torturing a host! They're a pestilence! We must be rid of them!”

“Hurrah!” cheered the younger son. “Before the cock crows, not one will be left alive!”

They marched out of the house chanting
They will pay!
while Peter hastened to don his coat. When Margaretha rushed for hers, he grasped her arm. “Leave it alone. It's dangerous.”

Margaretha realized he knew she was going to warn Meister Goldsmid before she did.

She shook her hand free. “I have to get there before you.”

At this hour in winter, the street was normally dark and quiet with everyone tucked behind their wooden doors and shutters, nestled around their hearths, but tonight the street glowed with torches. Men mounted their steeds or marched off with hatchets to the cheers of their women and children. Margaretha darted down the cobblestones, skirting carts and crowds, taking a route she had traveled thousands of times. Was this mad dash the last? In nearby Düsseldorf, the massacre following the desecration of a host had been thorough. While the Jews were still alive, they ripped off their flesh with iron pincers and fried it on pans like rashers of bacon. Margaretha hiked up her heavy skirt and ran faster.

When the
Judengasse
came into view, the thick wooden doors that usually locked the Jews in from sunset to sunrise were wide-open, revealing darkened alleyways flecked with fire. It looked like a giant stone oven. Margaretha didn't give up hope though. There was a chance that the violence hadn't reached her Jew's house at the far end of the ghetto. If she got there in time, she knew he would be ready to flee, that he had always been ready. One summer afternoon when the jewels in his workshop gleamed with sunlight, he told her that he loved gemstones, not only for their beauty, but because they were small enough to conceal on one's person and had value in any country. At the time she took this for avarice, but now she understood. Meister Goldsmid had been evicted with all the Jews from France, and his father before him had been forced out of England; she had seen the papers in his desk with the name Gold
smith
, not
smid
. Oh well, he would have to fly again. And then she had the uncomfortable thought that whatever the family left behind should go to her, she who had spent her days in that home, not some random pillagers.

When Margaretha passed through the low, arched gate, she found the massacre had started. Fire raged out of the windows and doors of the mossy stone rowhouses, and the streets, the narrowest in the town, were thick with smoke and the stench of burning flesh and hair. In Düsseldorf some Jews supposedly set fire to their own homes, preferring to perish
in their own flames than risk being disemboweled. A Jewess, chased by two men with axes, ran past Margaretha, screaming, “I did nothing! I did nothing!” while another Jew came in the other direction, crying, “I want to convert!” When his pursuers caught up to him, mere yards in front of Margaretha, the Jew backed against a wall: “I saw the miracle! I believe in Jesus Christ now!” It was like watching pigs running from the slaughterer. Margaretha realized that even if she got to the family in time, the walls of this pen were too high to scale. And yet, she pressed on.

She removed her hood so she wouldn't look like a fleeing Jew. She wasn't much afraid for her own life—she was too fair-haired, ruddy, and tall to be mistaken for a Jewess, and she would only have to rattle off the Supplication to Mary to dispel any doubt—but just in case, she steered clear of the marauders, turning onto quieter side streets even if they took her slightly out of the way. If anyone looked in her direction, she planned to raise a fist and cry, “Death to the Jews!”

At last she arrived at the untouched part of the ghetto. It was good she knew these laneways as well as the cracks in her bedroom ceiling, otherwise she never would have been able to find her way in such darkness. The moonlight didn't reach these cramped and crooked alleys, and not a candle flickered. Fear and dread resounded in the unnatural quiet. She could feel the Jews listening behind the walls, holding their breath, hoping her footfalls would pass them by.

She knocked on her Jew's door. Nothing. She listened for movement and heard only the scared stillness. She banged again and then understood she must be terrifying them. She took a quick glance around before calling, “Meister Goldsmid! It's me, Margaretha!”

The door cracked open, and a round black eye peered at her from the shadows. Meister Goldsmid grabbed her by the hand—it was something he had never done before, touch her. He led her through the unlit front shop and into the back workroom. As he bolted the door between the two chambers, Margaretha's eyes adjusted, and half-finished candelabras and pendants shone in the gloom.

The goldsmith's face glistened with sweat. “Anna and the children, God protect them, are hiding in the cellar.”

“I came to warn you, but I'm too late.”

He wore the yellow circle badge on his black cloak and on his head the pointed yellow
Judenhut
, with the brim twisted to look like horns. She had
rarely seen him in the marks of shame; he'd always whipped them off as soon as he entered the house. Why had he donned them now? To appease the mob? It was a mistake. He looked so Jewish in that hat. He looked like someone who'd desecrate a host. They were going to descend on him with zeal.

“First they accuse us of torturing Christian children, using their blood in our rituals. And now, now they are killing us because of a . . . a cracker.”

Margaretha shook her head. “It's not a cracker. It's the body of Christ.”

The Jew raised his eyes to the wood ceiling. “Dear God, how much longer until You gather us back in the Promised Land?”

“Give me Jonah.” Margaretha was shocked by the offer—plea—that came out of her mouth. Had that been her plan all along?

“No.” The goldsmith shook his head but Margaretha saw the cogs turning behind his eyes.

“Meister Goldsmid, the synagogue's burning. Everything's burning. People are . . . I'm sorry, but you're all going to die.” She heard how odd she sounded, as if she were saying she was sorry but the bakery was out of bread. “But I can save Jonah.”

“And have him baptized? Have him become one of the people who killed his family? Better he were burned at the stake.”

A cannonade of galloping hooves. Screams. The marauders had reached the far ends of the ghetto. Margaretha had to think quickly: Could she bring up a boy in her house who wasn't Christian? There was a pounding at the front door.

“Fine! I won't baptize him!” It sickened her to make such a promise, even though she had no intention of keeping it.

“And you will tell him when he's old enough who he is?”

“Yes!”

With the thud of axes chopping at the door, the Jew fumbled into the leather pouch hanging off his belt and pulled out the brooch, which Margaretha had watched him craft over the last year to give to Anna on their twenty-fifth anniversary. Nothing could distract the goldsmith when he worked with his gold, squinting and breathing heavily as he twisted threads of what he called the “noble metal” into elaborate filigrees, but never more so than when it came to this brooch. Every gulden he could spare had been put into it, and even in the shadows its sapphire, rubies, and garnets smoldered with color. If not for the fleuron missing a petal, the
brooch would have been faultless. The missing petal was Meister Goldsmid's signature; he made a “mistake” in all his jewels so he never risked thinking in vainglory that he had made something perfect. Now Anna would never see her brooch, never even know of it.

“Give this to Jonah when you tell him he's a Jew. Tell him he can sell it if he needs the money.”

Margaretha grabbed the brooch and stuffed it in her pouch.

“Jews! Jews! Where are you hiding the host?” The clamor was in the front shop. “Ah, behold! Another jeweler's house!”

Without saying goodbye, Margaretha hurtled for the kitchen, where she had spent much of her life. With shaking hands she grabbed the iron ring and heaved open the heavy trap door. As she scrambled down the narrow stone steps, she heard Meister Goldsmid begging, “Take, take what you want! All the gold and jewels! My family has fled.”

Margaretha would never be able to clearly recall what happened in the cellar. The family's eyes must have gaped at her in the gloom, but she could never quite picture it. Could she really have said nothing, nothing at all, as she took Jonah from Anna's arms? Could Anna have handed over her baby without a word? One of the boys prayed in their exotic tongue. Could she have taken this boy too? Could she have grabbed one or two of the grandchildren by the hand and led them up the stairs and out into the night and back to the safety of her house? It would have been too hard to explain to the neighbors. One could pray for and be granted the miracle of a newborn, not a twelve-year-old.

Margaretha hastened out the back door and into the night, cradling Jonah beneath her cloak. If she were stopped, she could probably get away without revealing what was under her robe, but she didn't want to chance it, so she weaved her way back taking streets that had already been ravaged. Running as fast as she could, she dodged the bodies splayed on the cobblestones and the flames leaping out the windows. A dismembered man dangled from an eave. She passed a wall smeared with human entrails, grateful her baby was shaded from these sights. She peeked at him only once, and he looked happy nestled in her arms. And why not? He knew her arms as well as anybody's.

She ran through the gate out of the
Judengasse
and into the quietude on the other side. As she stumbled back toward her house, gasping for breath, she wondered if there was any chance that in fifteen years she would give
her son the brooch and tell him that he was a Jew. She didn't think so, but she couldn't be sure. When the peddlers brought the stories of torture and death from Düsseldorf, Margaretha had asked herself what she would have done had it happened in Terfur instead. She had decided she would have done nothing. What reason had she to believe that a woman like her, too meek to ask her husband to stop gambling away her hard-earned guldens, would behave any differently than the thousands who either butchered the Jews or silently watched the blood seep into the snow? But she had surprised herself. In fifteen years, she could surprise herself again.