“Yes, but I haven’t thought about that sermon in a long time. But where is it written that these acts of kindness and charity outweigh the rest of the commandments?”
She sounded just like a yeshiva student preparing for an oral argument before the beys din, and her earnest level of commitment brought me back to the days when the world was still a wide road spanning infinite horizons, and anything was possible.
“It’s in the Jerusalem Talmud,” I said, with the sweet sting of pain for a world long past reverberating like a dying echo in my head. “At the beginning of tractate Peah.”
“And what the Talmud says is law, right?”
“Well, yes and no.”
I could tell she wasn’t satisfied with that answer.
“It depends.”
“It depends?”
“The Talmud encourages us to look at every side of an issue, every detail, no matter how trivial, because the work of finding a satisfactory answer is never done.”
“But how do you enforce a rabbinic opinion if it’s not enshrined in law?”
“We don’t.”
“Then what do you do?”
“We learn to live with conflicting opinions.”
Something you folks should learn to do.
But the moment finally seemed right, and I probably wasn’t going to get another chance like this. So I lowered my voice to a whisper and asked her to talk to the wives of some municipal guards to see if they had heard anything about Janek’s shady dealings with Jacob Federn. When she told me that Kromy was her neighbor, I had to keep from shouting, Which house?
“It’s time to put that little theory of yours to the test,” said Zizka, as our rag-tag procession arrived at the butcher shop.
Had he been listening? If so, he had more than enough evidence to hand Anya over to the Inquisition for harboring un-Catholic thoughts. But I was getting the feeling that he wasn’t the type to turn in a fellow dissenter from the Roman Church.
Anya broke away and ran inside to explain the situation to her father. But old Cervenka still looked bewildered as she grabbed an apron, gave him a peck on the cheek, and disappeared through the back door of the shop. She returned in a moment carry ing the pig’s head in an enameled metal tray, and set it down on the counter.
Zizka’s men finally arrived, carry ing armfuls of weapons of various sizes. The sheriff cleared a space on the counter and spread the weapons out, looking each one over and eliminating the most unlikely prospects, explaining his rationale as he went down the line.
“A rifled arquebus like this one takes a lot of skill, but in the right hands, it will discharge a ball that can penetrate the thickest armor. And the long barrel makes it more accurate over long ranges, but I can’t see a kidnapper concealing this thing under his cloak.”
It was about three feet long. He picked up another, larger weapon.
“Spanish matchlock. Heavy weapon, fires bullets weighing ten to a pound that would unhorse a knight on a charging steed at forty paces. But too unwieldy for anything besides battlefield use. Hardly practical for our purposes.”
He was certainly in his element. He picked up another weapon and set it aside immediately.
“Double wheel-lock. Too expensive and unreliable.”
He separated three short-barreled pistols from the remaining weapons. He selected one and recognized its style in an instant.
“Italian-made,” he said, laying that one aside.
He took a bit longer examining the next one, paying particular attention to the fluted wheel and cocking mechanism.
“There are some technical peculiarities which suggest that this one was made by French gunsmiths,” he said, putting it down. He was left with one pistol about two feet long with a heavy butt.
“Here we go,” he said. “German-made. Plain barrel without ornamentation, such as an ordinary soldier might use. Some wear on the grooves, but it should do nicely.”
He and his men began the intricate process of loading the pistol with ball and wadding and powder and whatnot, tamping it down, then winding up the spring-lock mechanism. I didn’t know much about this kind of gun, but the spring-lock must have been very strong, because even Zizka, with his huge hands, was straining to get the tension right. When he was done, he let the cock down into the priming pan.
“What does your Torah have to say about the correct way to fire a pistol at a pig’s head?”
“The Torah is silent on the matter,” said Rabbi Loew. His quiet dignity did not invite a retort.