bind it with a cloth and bury it in a shallow grave. And just as the dust cannot leave the place where it is buried, so will the assassins be unable to escape the confines of the city until the knot is untied and the dust is scattered once again by the winds.”
The Christians watched wide-eyed as I knelt next to the dried blood, gathered some dirt and grit from the floor, and sprinkled it into the pouch.
Rabbi Loew drew in a sharp breath, but I kept going, waving my hand back and forth over the pouch while reciting a litany of oaths in Hebrew and Yiddish. Then I slipped the pouch under my cloak and followed the great rabbi into the street.
“Where to now?”
“The offices of keyser Rudolf’s consulate in Old Town Square,” said the rabbi.
“Don’t get used to leading us around like this, Jew,” said Zizka.
“Don’t worry, we won’t,” I said.
The sheriff looked me in the eye. “Keep talking like that and I’ll lead you both straight to the gallows.”
“Really, Ben-Akiva,” cautioned the rabbi under his breath. “You have to be careful not to incite the goyim with that kind of abracadabra talk.”
“They’re the ones who made up the rules to this dirty game, Rabbi. I’m just bluffing my way through it. Maybe it’ll throw a scare into their thick hides. It worked all the time on Polish peasants.”
“Well, these are not Polish peasants. They’re sophisticated burghers.”
We marched down the Geistgasse, guarded in front and behind, looking every bit like prisoners being taken to the stock house. Tradesmen and house wives stopped and stared as we waded through a stream of lambs being driven to market to be slaughtered and roasted for Easter. A group of street kids started tagging along, pelting us with clods of dirt and laughing and chanting their nasal nyah-nyahs.
“Barook anooka hakh anakha laka haka shmaka!”
“What are they saying?”
The rabbi said, “I believe they are trying to make fun of the Holy Tongue.”
A wet clump of mud struck my shoulder and spattered on Zizka’s tunic.
Zizka said, “All right, knock it off, kids. You’re not helping me any.”
Some of the boys made crude farting noises with their mouths and ran off, the streets echoing with their laughter.
We turned onto Dlouhá Street and caught a strong whiff from a big pile of rotting vegetable and animal matter. It was much bigger than the small-town dunghills, but it didn’t smell any different.
Suddenly the street opened up into the big square and a bumpkinish “Oh my God” came out of my mouth.
The Old Town Hall’s square bell tower was three or four times taller than the Old-New Shul. It must have been two hundred feet high. Bigger than anything had a right to be. Huge. Talk about having more power than you knew what to do with. It was an overwhelming display of Christian dominance. What chance did we have against such power?
The square was jammed with merchants and carpenters setting up for the Easter festivities, the men whistling springtime airs and nailing their display booths together while the women stirred steaming pots of vegetable dye and prepared colorful strips of cloth for Sunday’s decorations. A solemn procession snaked through the middle of the square to the entrance of Our Lady of Týn, bearing tall crosses draped with purple-and-black cloth. The pious processionists took little notice of the sheriff and his quartet of armed guards leading a pair of convicts to the imperial consulate.
Some of the whistling stopped as the craftsmen spied the yellow rings on our cloaks that clearly marked us as Jews. But they kept right on working.
On the far side of the dunghill stood the public pillories, overflowing with the sagging limbs of thieves, swindlers, and other petty criminals whose crimes did not approach the level of blasphemy. Two women stood off to the side of the raised platform with their hands shackled behind them and leather masks covering their mouths. I wondered what their crime was. Licentiousness? Infidelity? Cursing in public?
“Disobedience,” the sheriff explained. “They must wear the Mask of Shame for three days for talking back to their husbands.”
Imagine if we had that law, I thought. My wife talked back to me three times a day. Or, she used to, when she was talking to me.
We kept walking. The streets were full of statues of Christian heroes. We passed a tall pedestal bearing a moss-covered statue of some bearded saint with a starry halo, a flowing robe, and two fat cherubs at his