The Inquisitor's Apprentice

He knew right away that they were streganonna bells: the little silver chimes the Italians sewed onto their horses’ bridles to ward off the evil eye. A moment later a rickety cart turned onto the Bowery from the direction of Mulberry Street and Little Italy. Sacha’s knees went weak with relief. It was an Italian greengrocer, heading out to the East River Docks for an early morning pickup. And since he’d be running empty in this direction, they could catch a ride home with him — far safer than walking.

But when the cart rumbled into sight, Sacha caught his breath in fear. It was a wreck, held together with rusty nails and baling twine. The ancient nag in the traces seemed barely strong enough to walk, let alone haul a full load. Yet the cart was heaped almost to overflowing with bones and rags and all the dusty odds and ends of people’s lives that get put to the curb when no one can figure out how to fix them or remember why they were worth keeping in the first place. This was no simple greengrocer. It was the Rag and Bone Man.

The Rag and Bone Man was a legendary figure that mothers all over New York used to scare naughty children into behaving. He had a different name in every neighborhood, but he was feared everywhere. He collected scrap metal and worn-out clothes and gnawed bones for the ragpickers and the glue factories. But people said he traded in dreams too. They said he bought nightmares and lifted curses. And some people claimed he wasn’t above selling them on for future use by third parties. The rabbis scoffed at such old wives’ tales, but every woman on Hester Street still made the sign of the evil eye when the Rag and Bone Man passed by. Even Sacha’s normally sensible mother had sent him running downstairs with a bone last week, saying, “Quick, Sacha! throw it on the cart! I dreamed someone died last night!”

The Rag and Bone Man reined in his horse and peered toward the elevated tracks. He glanced at Sacha and then turned a hard stare on the shadowy watcher. Some silent challenge seemed to pass between them. Then the watcher turned away and slipped into the shadows.

For a moment Sacha struggled to make sense of this silent confrontation. Then he put it out of his mind. It didn’t matter, he told himself. Right now the only thing that mattered was getting his mother home safely.

He heard someone calling his name. It was Mo Lehrer, hurrying across the Bowery toward them, waving frantically. The Rag and Bone Man looked at Mo, nodded to Sacha, and then flipped the reins on his horse’s skeletal back and shambled off into the night.

“Did you see that?” Sacha asked when Mo reached them.

“See what?”

“Nothing. Let’s go.”

As they turned the corner onto Hester Street, Mr. Kessler caught sight of them and came running from halfway down the block.

“Danken Got you’re safe!” he cried. Then he got close enough to see his wife’s face. “What happened? Were you attacked?”

“I don’t know.” Mrs. Kessler still sounded dazed and weak. “I think there was someone there, but I…”

“Did they hurt you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did they rob you?”

Sacha’s mother looked momentarily confused. She dug around in her pockets and extracted a pitiful handful of coins that could only have tempted the most desperate thief. “Maybe Sacha interrupted them.”

“Oh, well,” Mo said comfortingly. “All’s well that ends well.”

Only when they reached their apartment did they realize that something had indeed been stolen. After a few cups of strong tea, Mrs. Kessler began to seem more like herself again. She rubbed at the back of her neck as if it hurt — and then she let out a moan of grief and horror.

“My locket!”

It was gone. Above the collar of her dress where the locket’s silver chain usually rested, there was only a bright red welt where the thief had torn it from her neck.

She wanted to go straight out and look for it, but Sacha’s father wouldn’t let her. Instead he and Sacha went. By the time they came back an hour later, covered in soot and grime, they had crawled over every inch of ground under the elevated tracks. But it wouldn’t have mattered how long they searched. There was nothing to find. The locket was gone.

“There there, Ruthie,” Mr. Kessler said, patting her shoulder awkwardly.

Sacha didn’t know what to say. That locket was his mother’s most treasured possession. It held three silky curls of baby hair: one from Bekah, one from Sacha, and one from their baby brother who had died on the boat from Russia. His mother never talked about that baby. No one on Hester Street talked about the past much — not unless they wanted to end up as crazy as poor Mrs. Lehrer. But once Sacha had come home early from school and found his mother sitting alone at the kitchen table looking at the locket and weeping as if the baby had died yesterday instead of years ago.

“I’m sorry,” he told her now. It wasn’t enough, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“It’s nothing.” His mother wiped her eyes on her apron and tried to smile. “Just a silly piece of jewelry.”

Then she started fussing over Sacha and his father, scolding them to take off their wet shoes and socks, and forcing hot tea down their throats as if the worst thing that had ever threatened her family was a head cold.

Sacha relaxed under her fussing — once she started fussing over you, there wasn’t much you could do except sit back and enjoy it. But his mind kept turning to that dark shadow under the elevated tracks.

Had the watcher been a mere bystander, or the thief himself? And what kind of thief would walk past all the jewelry stores and rich tourists and drunken sailors on the Bowery only to steal a cheap locket from a woman who was far too poor for any self-respecting criminal to bother with?

CHAPTER FOUR. Sacha Makes a Promise

WHEN SACHA WOKE the next morning, his mother and father were already up and dressed.

He slipped out of bed, steeling himself for the long, cold trip to the water pump. Then he saw that his mother had put out a fresh towel and was filling a brimming basin with hot water for him. And that wasn’t all: She’d set a second plate at the table next to his father’s and loaded it with a thick wedge of noodle kugel and a towering portion of chopped herring with eggs and onions.

“Sit!” she said, carving a massive slice of black bread off the loaf for him. “Eat! You need your strength today!”

Sacha stared, overwhelmed. Yesterday he’d been a kid. Today his mother was taking care of him just like she took care of his father — as if he were a grown man going off to work.

And she was right, crazy as it sounded. Even a lowly apprentice Inquisitor made more money than Sacha’s father earned working twelve-hour shifts at the docks. Sacha hadn’t been able to look his father in the eye for days after he’d found that out. But what could you do about it? America was a new world, where none of the old rules applied.

Only when he was already at the table eating did he realize the other amazing thing: That his mother was doing any of this at all a few short hours after she’d been knocked unconscious and robbed in the street.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her.

“How should I be feeling?”

“Well — I mean — after last night—”

His mother made a disdainful spitting sound that seemed to dismiss the violent theft of her most treasured possession as a mere triviality. “Be quiet and eat your breakfast!”

Sacha obeyed — as if he had any choice in the matter. But he couldn’t help shaking his head in wonder. He’d read enough adventure stories in Boys Weekly to be pretty sure that any normal American mother would still be lying around fainting and crying into her handkerchief after such a shock. Sacha wasn’t sure how to feel about this. Because the truth was that he often wished his family would act more normal and less … well … foreign. But on the other hand, normal parents would probably have never managed to get him and Bekah to America in the first place.