down among his brothers, clutching his injured limb.
Just then I got a good wallop on the back of the head. I was down for a moment or two myself, but I shook it off and climbed back into the fray, fists raised. As I stood up again, I saw none other than Brother Andrew McClain standing close by with a fellow in each hand, shaking them as a ratter does two rats before knocking their heads together.
'Hallo, there, Tommy, my boy!' he roared with evident pleasure. 'Grand day for a scrap, isn't it?' He laid hands on another fellow, but I knew that there would be no healing involved. When last I saw him, he was singing a hymn as he knocked combatants about.
I'd lost sight of Barker. I stepped up on the lip of a gas lamp and looked across a sea of men beating the tar out of each other for no good reason. It was like a war, only with poor ammunition. Bottles flew, boards cracked, and elbows separated people from their teeth, but there were no fatalities. I couldn't tell if one side was prevailing over the other, and I couldn't find my employer anywhere.
Just then, a strong-looking chap seized my leg and pulled me off the gas lamp, intent on mischief. As I fell into him, I reached for his nose, and slid a thumb into his eye socket. Barker says that the eye is the most sensitive organ of all. This fellow obviously agreed, or would have if he weren't busy holding his face and cursing. My luck went dry then. I met my match with the next man. He was more cautious, and he had a good right cross. We took turns beating on each other and posturing, waving our fists in the air, when there was a sudden, awful din.
At first, I thought it was elephants, an entire herd of them coming our way. That would certainly put to rout the members of the league, along with everyone else. Elephants are undiscriminating as a species. My opponent and I broke off in mid-blow and craned our necks to see what the next thing to come along would be. It felt like the end of the world. As I watched, something large and gray began to loom over the crowd, but it was not an elephant. The creature looked human. My mind turned to the legend of the golem that Israel had told me about. Had he somehow come to life? He had, but not in the way I expected. He was painted on a banner with a menacing attitude, a very tall banner, held aloft on a long pole. The crowd began to part at the far end of Middlesex, and a phalanx of Jewish men came marching along, four across and ten deep, clad in their voluminous black coats and fedoras. The men in front were holding shofars to their lips, the curling ram's-horn instruments of Old Israel. The sound was unearthly. It jangled on the nerves like a clarion cry, calling everyone to attention. The crowd, Jew and Gentile alike, stopped in their tracks, jaws hanging open in astonishment at these resolute young men in their side curls and beards, as if to say, 'What's next?' One Whitechapel wag tried to make some snickering remark, but it died in the sudden hush. I recognized some of the men in the ranks from that strange assembly a few days before. One was the impassioned zealot Asher Cowen, who spoke so eloquently to us all. This was the Golem Squad.
The young orator spoke loudly in his own tongue, and every man came to an abrupt halt. He spoke again, and they all answered in unison, like a crack regiment. He spoke in English next, perhaps for the benefit of the crowd.
'A sword for the Lord!' he cried, and they answered in kind. Then each man reached into his coat and pulled out an actual sword, twenty-four inches of newly minted steel, glinting magnificently in the morning sun. On the blade, in swirling Hebrew characters, were the symbols I had seen on the banner at the meeting, the script that formed the word 'golem.' So, this was their defense against the pogrom. These men were prepared to defend their home here to the death. The shofars blasted again, and I felt a holy chill go down my spine. The blasts rattled the casements of the windows. Could these old city buildings withstand what had brought Jericho to its knees?
With a savage cry, the new army charged into the fray, their swords waving in the air. As they ran by, and just before my opponent resumed our fight with a clout to the jaw that rang bells in my ears, I saw a face I recognized. It was distorted by war cries and resolution, but I recognized it nonetheless. It was my new friend, Israel Zangwill, in his coat and hat, a sword in his hand, leaping into the melee. And you will think me fanciful, but I'd swear I caught a glimpse of Jacob Maccabee behind him.
Well, that was it. I wasn't going to be outdone by a spindle-shanked teacher and a fastidious butler. I bent down, retrieved the fallen cricket bat from the street, and caught my adversary one that would have gone over the wall at Lords. He raised a hand, either to admit the touch or to raise some objection, then he retired from the field or, rather, fell onto it.
A hand plucked at my shoulder, and I brandished the bat, but it was only Racket, in his long coat and cabman's topper.
'Don't crown me, Mr. L!' he said, raising his hands. 'I'm on your side. Old Push is in hot pursuit after the ringleader. He wants me to take you to where he's got him pinned down.'
Racket and I dodged our way through the crowd. Swords flashed in the sun, and there were cries and curses in the air in several languages. As one sword came down on a big fellow's shoulder, I noticed something: the swords were not sharpened. They were mostly being used to frighten and confuse the attackers. My mind went back to the old Bible story of Gideon and how he had used torches, clay pots, swords, and shofars to put to flight an army much larger than his own. As I watched men in twos and threes fleeing back to Whitechapel to bind their bleeding heads and fix their broken bones, I saw the old trick was winning again. This pogrom, unlike the others in Europe, would not succeed. You should never fight a creature when its back is to the wall.
Racket and I were soon around the corner and clambering aboard the hansom. What a day! My head was bleeding, my ears were ringing, most of my knuckles were barked, and I had never felt better in my entire life.
Racket cracked his lash over Juno's head, and her ironclad hooves dug into the grime-covered road. We rattled at a fast clip down Aldgate High Street. Barker had done fast work, slipping off like that and going after the real leader. I was a little put out with him for not including me in his plans, but I'd had a great time at the little to- do the league had set up for us. Now all we had to do was catch the slippery beast that had instigated this whole show, and we could go collect our fee. I didn't know who it was, but I hoped at least Barker did.
Abruptly, a loop of rope fell around my neck. I jumped and looked up. The trap was open, but Racket's familiar whiskers were nowhere to be found. I seized the rope and tried to pull, more annoyed than alarmed, but it was suddenly drawn tight. Very tight. The hemp bit into the flesh of my throat.
Slowly, I was hauled up out of my seat, as someone heaved upon the rope. My shoulders came in contact with the edges of the trap, but my head was pulled through. For a second or two, I found myself looking out over the top of the cab. I wanted to turn around and see my attacker, but I couldn't breathe, and my fingers couldn't loosen the rope enough for me to catch my breath. I wanted to cough, to gasp, to drag oxygen into my tortured lungs, but I couldn't. Spots began to appear in front of my eyes, as if someone were spattering India ink on me. The last thing I remembered before I passed out was the voice of Pokrzywa's funny little mystical rebbe, Reb Shlomo, saying, 'Look out for trapdoors!'
28
The pain that caused me to pass out was as nothing compared to the pain that awakened me again. My head throbbed, my muscles burned, and my heart was hammering in my chest. Searing pain radiated out in waves to my toes and fingertips and back. It felt as if I had been in pain for hours, perhaps forever.
I willed my eyes to open, to move beyond the pain, but what I saw made no sense. I was disoriented. Perhaps I was having a nightmare. I was in some sort of large, dark room, my head close to the ceiling. My eyes refused to focus. Something flitted in front of me, causing my head to move back and strike a post behind me. More pain. The post and I began swaying. Where was I? Flit, there it was again. Limbs. I think it was a man's limbs I saw, but they were upside down. No, it was I who was upside down. I was tied to a post and suspended from the ceiling somehow. I lifted my head, slowly, and focused on my body. I was near naked and lashed to the post, only it wasn't a post. It was a cross.
Finally, I was able to focus my eyes on the ropes that bound my wrists and ankles. They that bore my entire weight. My chest was on fire, and breathing was difficult. Every joint felt dislocated. What I had first taken for the ceiling was in fact the floor under my head. The cross, suspended from a rope going up into the darkness, was affixed to a pulley in the top of the building.
