Good Night, Mr. Holmes (31 page)

“Beyond that lies the University and the Joseph Quarter, where centuries ago Rabbi Jehuda Loew ben Bezalel is said to have made this monstrous thing called the ‘Golem.’”

Irene nodded, but I asked, “What is this ‘Golem’?”

Mr. Dvořák turned to me eagerly. “Good story. Very old story. Someday good Dvořák opera, perhaps? This rabbi, he make huge ceramic man controlled by holy words upon paper in his mouth. One day the rabbi forget to remove paper and the Golem thunders through Old Town, destroying all in his path. Your English lady author, Mary Shelley, use this old Prague legend to inspire famous story, I think. To this day, superstitious folk visit Rabbi Loew’s tomb in the Joseph Quarter, leave papers with prayers and problems on them, for to be solved.”

“And we must go there, where this... Golem... was born?” I said. “Are there no nearby gypsy fortune tellers?”

“None that know old ways,” Mr. Dvořák said.

“We want none but those,” Irene said firmly. “Thank you, Mr. Dvořák, for aid in matters both mundane and occult.” He frowned at the words. “Politics and magic,” Irene explained. “Both, I fear, are most overrated but bear investigation. Good day, then.”

I was eager to leave the theatre’s lifeless chill for the color and light of the riverbank. Irene told our driver to convey us to the Powder Tower. Once there, she instructed him to return in two hours.

I consulted the locket-watch on my lapel. “Two hours?”

Under the shadow of the huge Gothic tower lay a maze of narrow byways, crooked streets into which the sun could not stretch its golden fingers even at midday. I could picture the gigantic darker shadow of the Golem still stalking there.

‘Two hours?” I repeated. “Irene... you know, what Mr. Dvořák said of the Golem’s great size and relentless strength—it reminded me of the Prince.”

She did not correct my use of the outmoded title. “Our quarry is not Willie, Nell; I am more certain of that than ever. You mustn’t let your imagination run away with you. Simply pretend that you are exploring Portman market and tell me if you spy any occult signposts.”

The quarter thronged with people and wagons. Many of the buildings that loomed above us dated to the Renaissance with crowded gables, leaded-glass arcades and steep tile roofs interrupted by mean garret windows.

Irene’s comparison to a London street market was apt, for the old quarter exuded the smell—chicken noodle soup and poppy seed strudel—and sounds of a common folk’s exchange. Peddlers’ carts ground through the circuitous ways, wares ranging from glass beads to pots chiming to the motion.

“At least this area has a Biblical name,” I said righteously, more to reassure myself than make conversation.

Irene flashed me an amused glance. “Alas, no. The name has nothing to do with the ancient owner of a gaudy cloak. The Joseph Quarter is named after the Emperor in Vienna, Franz Josef, who gave the Jews full freedom of the city early in his reign. In a logic that escapes me, they then named the ghetto after him. Politics, Nell, is more mysterious than magic.”

We strolled past a vast cemetery, its ancient headstones cluttered together like some monster’s uneven teeth. One pictured generations of skeletons tumbled atop one another beneath the earth, their headstones above jousting for room as well.

“Rabbi Loew’s tomb, I imagine.” Irene nodded to a large, stately stone construction around which some figures clustered. “Perhaps we should leave a paper with our conundrum written upon it.”

“Why not ask the location of the Zone of Diamonds while you are about it? No, Irene, I would not risk raising that awful Golem. I hope Mr. Dvořák never writes his opera. Besides, who would he find to play the ceramic Frankenstein monster?”

“Almost any romantic tenor,” Irene riposted. “They are all large enough to play three people, although they tend to great girth rather than great height.”

We moved deeper into the maze of cobblestoned streets, farther into a haunting shadow. I lost all notion of direction; my frantic scanning for signposts at last found exactly what Irene had ordered.

“There! That signboard of an outlined hand with numbers written all over it—or is it an inn?”

“The very thing “ Irene made for the sign and darted under its shadow without a pause.

Meaning to urge caution, I followed. We plunged into an even narrower, darker passage. Odd odors latticed the air, as commanding as if they had become physical. In the distance, chimes chattered their glassy teeth. Irene was as intent as a hound upon the trace. My whispered urgings, the tugs of my hand at her sleeve went unheeded.

She followed the scent and the sound; I followed her.

We entered a chamber—at least I took it for a chamber. The area was so draped with curtains, shawls and carpets that it could have been a cave, for all we knew. A paraffin lamp flickered eerie light over the fabrics, making their cursive Oriental designs squirm like maggots in overturned earth. I welcomed the light enough to study its source—and gasped when I saw that the glass lampshade was formed into a milky skull. The chimes we had heard came from the red crystal pendants dangling from its slack jaw.

“English ladies?” a voice as old as the Powder Tower inquired from the dark side of the room.

“American
and
English,” Irene caroled back, braving the clutter to approach the ghastly lamp.

I saw then that the lamp sat upon a carpet-covered table and that low stools surrounded this island of gloomy light.

“We’ll cross your palm with kreutzers,” Irene offered, “if you’ll grant our palms a reading.” I jerked violently on her sleeve. “My palm a reading,” she amended.

A bundle of shawls detached itself from the background. Fringe swayed as a bent figure neared the table. Some interior current stirred the gaudy crimson glass to insistent chiming. It seemed the skull’s death-grin had broadened.

“Sit,” the crone suggested.

I did, in haste. Irene settled more slowly, as theatrical in her impeccably groomed fashion as the gypsy woman was in her unkempt way. I felt as if I witnessed a battle of illusion between two veterans of the art from very different worlds.

The woman extended a time-seamed palm. Irene honored it with a gold coin. The skull’s eyes seemed to warm as the crone’s clawlike fingers closed on the money. Irene extended her palm in turn. It looked smoother than plaster of Paris in the flickering lamp light. I wondered how anyone could read such an unmarked palm.

The gypsy leaned her face into the macabre light. Time had seamed her fragile skin into a lace mantilla of wrinkles, though coarse black hair lanced past her shoulders. “I see,” she began in the traditional way, “a sudden, dangerous journey.”

Irene glanced toward me and rolled her eyes.

“I see a tall, handsome, noble man. I see him pursuing you with all the energy at his command.”

Irene winked at me.

“I see... death. Violent death. And great fortune, but it is hidden.”

Irene yawned.

“I see many diamonds at your feet, lady, as well as a kingdom ... and a small, dark case that is very precious.”

Irene shifted on the stool to ease her back.

“I see much difficulty and heartache, but always I see a tall handsome man. His initial is ... G.”

Irene’s free hand lifted the veil from her face. “Look again, fortune teller. Are you sure the initial is not W?”

“G,” the old woman snapped. “I read what I see, not what you wish me to see.”

“And you tell me what you think I wish to hear,” Irene returned.

“No.” The old woman was firm. “I read what I see.”

I had been thinking and leaned over to pluck Irene’s sleeve again.

“Gottsreich,” I whispered, “Willie’s middle name.”

Irene’s eyebrows raised. “The reading was so direct otherwise. Why should she suddenly turn coy and use middle names?” She leaned across the table to eye the old woman. “I have come here for greater matters than my future.”

“The future is all I sell. It is forbidden that we trade in things that unmake the baby or inflame the lover—”

“No, no,” Irene said, laughing. “I need neither potion.”

“Not you, but another...?” The hag’s berry-dark eyes feasted on mine.

“Certainly not!” I insisted.

“Then what do you ladies want?” She shrugged, ready to dismiss us. “I give you more in one meeting than many hear in ten years of readings.”

Irene lifted her open hand and closed her fingers over the palm. “Perhaps you read the roles I have played on the stage. It doesn’t matter, for I don’t believe a word of it. I want facts, not fancy, for my gold coin.”

“My fancies are my facts.”

“What are these?” Irene drew a handkerchief from her reticule and laid it on the table.

The old woman’s fragile claw peeled the linen back from the contents. “Apple pips, lady! Go make yourself a
kolache.”

“What if I were to brew them into a tea and serve it to a friend?”

“No! The pips of the apple are as deadly as the flesh is sweet. But you know that.”

Irene nodded and tucked the handkerchief away. “I didn’t know if you did.”

“The lore that you laugh at when I read it in a hand governs the things that spring from earth as well.”

“I have a puzzle,” Irene said. “Someone has died of poison, yet it is not by the pips of the apple or the squeezings of the Jaborandi root.”

“Very bad.” The woman turned her head as if to escape hearing the last words. “You know much for English lady already; what can reader like myself offer?”

“News of another herb—one that sifts into the skin, clogs the pores, smothers the lungs in its powder, its scent, its very essence... yet cannot be eaten or drunk. It must be almost invisible and quite deadly.”

The woman lurched up and retreated. I thought she would leave Irene’s question unanswered. She reached the wall of carpets strung from a rope, then, by some exertion far beyond the power of her slight frame, flung a rug aside.

A dusty library of bottles and potions, elixirs and hanging roots lay before us. “Not eaten,” the gypsy repeated. “Not drunk.” She turned and gave Irene a narrow, bitter smile. “Not easy to find. But at least a... unique... herb.” She lifted one of several dust-frosted glass jars, waiting for Irene to inspect it.

“Golden Chain tree,” the old woman breathed. “Touch not the stopper or the vial’s deadly golden fingers will touch you!”

Irene had gone to the tiny vial as if drawn by a magnet. “How much?” The skull’s chimes chattered like frightened teeth.

“Not much, but often.”

“It is undetectable?”

“Is the lady’s face powder visible?”

Irene nodded thoughtfully, “I could have a sample? The merest vial, I assure you, not to be used, of course, only to be... compared.”

The woman clutched the bottle to her flat bosom. Irene held thumb and forefinger two inches apart. “One vial.”

“That would not kill a sparrow.”

“But it might catch a killer.”

The gypsy looked as dubious as Irene had when her fortune was being read. “More gold.”

Irene frowned. The first coin had been princely. “One more coin, then.”

The gypsy nodded and drew the carpet down behind her as she vanished into the dusky clutter. Moments later a hand thrust through a seam clutching a vial of bronze-gold powder. Irene exchanged the vial for a brighter brand of gold.

We emerged from the drapery-hung chamber and the passage blinking in the spring sunlight, finding time had run on without us. Pigeons were already flocking to the rooftops to capture the sun’s warmest rays. We walked the tangled streets, guided by the Powder Tower’s Gothic peak. Had my life depended on retracing my steps to the doorway of the numbered hand, I could never have done it—nor I imagine could have Irene. Nevertheless, she seemed content.

Our carriage awaited in the Tower’s shadow. We rode back up the winding road to Prague Castle with our souvenirs. I had the Dvořák signature cradled in my arm like a baby, and Irene had the vial of Golden Seal secreted in her reticule like a weapon.

Irene held a command performance in the late King’s bedchamber that evening. In attendance, besides myself, were the current King, the Queen Mother, his brother and sister-in-law—the absent brother apparently was not a factor in Irene’s calculations—the pair of eager-to-please doctors and the late ruler’s body servant and chambermaid.

Though it was the apartment of a king, the room seemed as eerie as the gypsy woman’s skull-lit tent earlier that day. The candelabra’s relentless flicker etched bizarre shadows into the furniture’s gilded carvings and changed the ceiling cherubs’ smiles into leers. Everyone present, even servants, wore black.

“Penelope, you will record events as they occur,” Irene directed in stern tones.

I nodded, making a dutiful note by the palsied dance of a nearby candle. A fireplace log broke with the sound of a spine being snapped. I was not the only one who jumped.

“The question,” Irene began, “is the precise cause of his late Majesty’s death. The general cause is already known—some variety of poison, probably herbal, certainly lethal.”

She bent to lift a candelabrum. The nervous flames cast unflattering shadows upon her features, drawing them down, making her seem illuminated by a hellish light. Irene stalked, bearing her branch of tapers, to the royal siblings.

“Herbal poison. It could have been something as simple as the crushed seeds—or pips—of several apples administered as food...” She paused while Hortense’s haughty face blanched. “It could have been an exotic herbal hair restorer poured into a beverage, an innocuous tea, perhaps.” Bertrand winced.

“It could have been other, more imaginative substances administered by other, less likely candidates.” Irene passed before the King and his mother, her candelabrum briefly illuminating their stiff disbelief.

I feared she had ventured too boldly on this course: von Ormsteins were not likely to put up with playing possible suspects for long.

Irene paused before the doctors, silent, her gaze compelling. An awful suspicion dawned in my mind. No one had considered the royal physicians! Were they the “patriots” Irene suspected of poisoning the King?

“The doctors,” she declaimed, pausing, “the doctors tell me that the poison was neither drunk nor eaten. If... they are to be believed.”