The Fifth Servant - By Kenneth Wishnia Page 0,172

The Encyclopedia Judaica; Frederick Engels, The Peasant War in Germany; R.J.W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550–1700 and Rudolf II and His World.

Avraham Yaakov Finkel, The Great Torah Commentators; ed. and trans., Rambam: Maimonides’ Introduction to the Mishnah; Louis Finkelstein, ed., The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion; Solomon B. Freehof, ed., A Treasury of Responsa.

David Gans, Tzemach David; Moses Gaster, ed., The Ma’aseh Book; Nachum T. Gidal, Jews in Germany; Sylvie Anne Goldberg, Crossing the Jabbok: Illness and Death in Ashkenazi Judaism in 16th-through 19th-century Prague; David Goldstein, ed. and trans., The Ashkenazi Haggadah; Philip Goodman, The Passover Anthology; Haggadah Shel Prague (facsimile of the 1526 edition).

Barry W. Holtz, ed., Back to the Sources; R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder and Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial; R. Po-Chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann, eds., In and Out of the Ghetto.

Louis Jacobs, ed., Oxford Concise Companion to the Jewish Religion; Alois Jirásek, Old Czech Legends.

Eli Katz, ed. and trans., The Book of Fables; Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis; Michael Katz & Gershon Schwartz, Searching for Meaning in Midrash and Swimming in the Sea of Talmud; David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, eds., Family Life in Early Modern Times: 1500–1789; Charles Kimball, When Religion Becomes Evil; Guido Kisch, “The Yellow Badge in History” Scott-Martin Kosofsky, The Book of Customs; Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution; Shirley Kumove, Words Like Arrows; Benjamin Kuras, As Golems Go.

David S. Landes, Revolution in Time; Helen LeMay, lecture notes on the witchcraft craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; B. Barry Levy, Planets, Potions and Parchments; Isaac Lewin, The Jewish Community in Poland; John Lust, The Herb Book.

Jacob R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book; Sonna Marešová, trans., The Prague Golem: Jewish Stories of the Ghetto; Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta; Aaron Mauskopf, The Religious Philosophy of the Maharal of Prague; Otto Muneles, ed., Prague Ghetto in the Renaissance Period; the Museum of Torture in Prague (yes, there is such a place) and their guidebook, Torture: Consideration about Tools.

Jacob Neusner, trans., The Mishnah.

Iona Opie & Moira Tatem, A Dictionary of Superstitions.

Raphael Patai, Gates to the Old City; Eduard Petiška, The Golem; Eduard Petiška and Jan M. Dolan, Beautiful Stories of Golden Prague; Shlomo Pines, “Jewish Philosophy,” in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Pinkas Slonim; Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, “Why The Jews?” Alexandr Putík, Eva Kosáková, & Dana Cabanová, Jewish Customs and Traditions; Alexandr Putík et al., History of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia.

A. A. Roback, The Story of Yiddish Literature; Yaakov Rosenblatt, Maharal: Emerging Patterns; Leo Rosten, Leo Rosten’s Treasury of Jewish Quotations; Cecil Roth, “The Feast of Purim and the Origins of the Blood Accusation,” History of the Jews, and The Jews in the Renaissance; Ruth Rubin, Voices of a People; Ctibor Rybár, Jewish Prague.

Vladimír Sadek, “Rabbi Loew—Sa Vie, Héritage Pedagogique et sa Légende” and “Social Aspects in the Works of Prague Rabbi Löw” Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, and Zohar: The Book of Splendor; Jiina Šedinová, “Old Czech Legends in the Work of D. Gans” Moses Shulvass, Jewish Culture in Eastern Europe: The Classical Period; Israel W. Slotki, trans., Niddah; Jaroslava Staková, Jii Štursa, Svatopluk Vodra, Prague: Eleven Centuries of Architecture; Adin Steinsaltz, The Essential Talmud; The Talmud: A Reference Guide; ed. and trans., Ketubot; Raphael Straus, “The ‘Jewish Hat’ as an Aspect of Social History.”

Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy; Frederic Thieberger, The Great Rabbi Loew of Prague; Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition and The Devil and the Jews; Isadore Twersky, ed., A Maimonides Reader.

Milada Vilímková, The Prague Ghetto; Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language.

Aryeh Wineman, Ethical Tales from the Kabbalah and Mystic Tales from the Zohar; Israel Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, vol. 6.

Thanks also to the moms, Victoria Peña and Judy Wishnia, for helping us out when the proverbial wolves were howling at the door.

AND NOW IT’S TIME to thank my agent, Leigh Feldman, for believing in me, for her enthusiasm and professionalism, and above all for helping me break out of the gulag; my editor, Jennifer Brehl, for her sharp eye and wit, for taking the time to nurture this book, and for saving me from my own excesses (these gals are a dream team, the best agent and editor anyone could ask for); and my wife, Mercy Peña, for putting up with long periods of economic sacrifice while I was working on this and, of course, for putting up with me in general.

And finally, thanks to God, who took a few minutes off one busy morning to personally take care of a few details that made this all possible (and who even gave me some good punctuation advice). All I asked for was a shot at this, and You gave it to me. Thanks, man. You rock. Totally.

About the Author

KENNETH WISHNIA has a Ph.D. in comparative literature, and has been widely published in various academic forums. His crime fiction has been nominated for the Edgar and Anthony awards. He currently teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Suffolk Community College. He lives with his wife and children on Long Island.

www.kennethwishnia.com

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Credits

Map by Nick Springer, Springer Cartographics LLC

Jacket design by Mary Schuck

Jacket photographs:

Street © by Andrea Pistolesi/Getty Images;

Man © by Paul Knight/Trevillion Images

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

THE FIFTH SERVANT. Copyright © 2010 by Kenneth Wishnia. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wishnia, K. J. A.

The fifth servant/Kenneth Wishnia.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-0-06-172537-1

1. Jews—Czech Republic—Prague—Fiction. 2. Inquisition—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Prague (Czech Republic)—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: 5th servant.

PS3573.I875F54 2009

813 .5'4—dc22 2009013166

EPub Edition © December 2009 ISBN: 978-0-06-196617-0

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.