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  There was a hiss of fear at the mention of the great man’s name and the guards muttered among themselves. Freize had expected instant respect for the famous crusader count’s name, but it only seemed to make things worse. He looked from one guard to another, trying to measure the threat they posed to Isolde.

  “This is a good young woman, a Christian lady,” Freize assured them. “You would be in terrible trouble if you handed her over to those outside. You would be destroyed if you did not help her and your village would be ruined if you hurt her or tried to convert her to your beliefs. I promise you, nothing but trouble will come if you so much as touch her.”

  “Nothing but terrible trouble comes to us, anyway,” the rabbi observed bitterly. “We are always on the brink of ruin. If this lady is dancing, she has to be with the dancers, and this is not our fault. We will be in worse trouble if her friends come and find her here.”

  The men behind him nodded. “They’ll say we stole her away,” one of them volunteered.

  “I wouldn’t let them say such a thing,” Isolde replied. “I would say that you had saved me from the dancers. I will pay you a reward. I am asking you for help. Please don’t put us outside.”

  Freize shook his head at her. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t even speak to them. Don’t promise them a reward; they will take everything that you have. God knows what they will do to you if you are in their power. We have to get away from here.”

  “We did fair business with the Jewish money changer in Venice,” she protested.

  “Yes, in Venice! Where he was under the rule of law, watched all the time by the doge’s spies, living under a curfew. But here? In a village of Jews? Where they are free to do whatever they want? Why do you think that Christians are forbidden to even enter a Jewish village? God knows what they do. We are in terrible danger.”

  “You hate us and fear us,” the rabbi said flatly. “Why come to us for help?”

  “Because I hate and fear the dancers more,” Freize admitted with incurable honesty. “I call on you to help this lady.”

  The rabbi looked uncertain. “You can stay only until the dancers leave. We can’t allow you to bring the dancing sickness down upon us.”

  “That’s all we ask for,” Freize said. “Just let us wait here, in the gateway, until they are gone. Don’t you come any closer to her; we’ll just wait here. I’ll cut the ribbons of her shoes now. I’ll get the shoes off her feet.”

  Freize held Isolde’s foot with one hand and put the blade of his knife under the ribbons that tied the shoes; but a rattle from the tambourine made her foot suddenly twitch, so that he sliced the delicate skin at her ankle. She cried out and the blood flowed from the cut, making everyone exclaim with horror at the bright red blood on the red shoes. “Isolde! I am so sorry!” Freize exclaimed.

  “You can’t cut her here!” the rabbi exclaimed, even more frightened than Freize.

  “I know you didn’t mean to—” Isolde cried. “He didn’t mean to. It was me! I moved! But I can’t keep still!”

  Frantically, Freize grabbed at her feet, throwing his jacket down and wrapping it round her feet, trying to hide the flow of blood. “Don’t let them see it!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you know what they do with Christian blood?”

  Isolde looked up at the rabbi, white-faced. “He didn’t mean to—it was my fault I couldn’t keep still.”

  “We can’t have our threshold stained with Christian blood!” the rabbi said. “They will come after us, every one of us, if they know your blood is on the gateway of our village. I am sorry, I am very sorry, but you have to go out. I cannot have a Christian bleeding in here. They will destroy us.”

  “No!” Isolde begged him in rising panic, her hands clutching at her feet. “You could not be so cruel! I will die if I have to dance another day with them. You see the trouble that I am in. You do it! Have the men hold me still and cut the ribbons of my shoes! Cut the shoes off my feet!”

  The rabbi looked from her frightened face to Freize, then he made a decision and waved one of the guards forward. “Tobias, you do it,” he said. “Hold her feet and, Zacchariah, you cut the ribbons. In the name of God, make sure you don’t cut her.”

  “No!” Freize exclaimed in sudden fear. “You may not touch her. I forbid it.”

  But Isolde trusted the rabbi. “You won’t hurt me, will you?” she asked. “The things they say about your people—they’re not true?”

  “Of course they’re true,” Freize moaned. “Who doesn’t know what they do to Christian children? Who doesn’t know that they crucify babies just as they did the Lord? Don’t you know that they will lie to us and then skin us alive and use our skin for parchment?”

  “They do that?” she whispered.

  The rabbi’s face was frozen with suppressed anger. “Of course the things that they say about us are lies,” he said coldly. “You would have to be a child or a fool to believe the slanders that are spread against us. We won’t hurt you. We have never hurt anyone since the Crucifixion, and the Romans did that. But we don’t want you here. We’re not allowed to admit you. It is against the law, your own Christian law, for you to be here. I would far rather we put you outside the gate to join your comrades in their dance than have my men touch you.”

  “They’re not my comrades,” Isolde said quickly. “Please don’t abandon me to them.”

  “Shall my men cut off your shoes? And then will you go away?” the rabbi asked. “If the shoes are cut off your feet, will you stop dancing, and when the dancers go onward will you leave? Is that your wish, Lady of Lucretili?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

  “Do you promise you will go?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I swear it.”

  “And you swear on your Bible that you will not bear false witness against us and say that we stole you away to hurt you?”

  She raised her bloodstained hand. “I swear,” she said. “I swear I will tell everyone that you took me in and saved me.”

  Freize stood, his feet jigging on the spot to the loud rhythm of the dance, torn between his fear and his need to see the shoes off Isolde’s bleeding feet. “Take care!” he said, as one man knelt before her and took Isolde’s leg in both his hands, trapping her foot between his knees, holding it so tightly that her frenzied movements were stilled. Another of the guards unsheathed his dagger. Freize, still convinced that Jews tortured Christians whenever they could capture them, rubbed sweat from his face, and danced first to one side and then the other, helpless to save her.

  Isolde leaned back against the wall, weak with exhaustion as her body twitched and swayed to the music. The man with the dagger cut through the red silk ribbons of one shoe and tore them away, throwing them down on the ground. Then, with meticulous care, he cut off the ribbons on the other shoe. He sheathed his knife.

  The rabbi exhaled, realizing that he had been holding his breath in fear that they would hurt the young woman and bring down the anger of two great lords.

  “Now get your shoes off, and we will give you a pair to walk in, and you can go.”

  “I’m grateful,” Freize stammered. “You have my thanks. And we will repay you as soon as we get safely home, I promise.”

  Isolde nodded, and leaned down and pulled at the heel of the shoe on her right foot.

  She tried again.

  She turned to Freize, her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t get them off,” she said. “My feet have swollen or something. Even with the ribbons gone, I still can’t get them off at all.”

  Ishraq held her horse by the reins while the ferryboat swayed and rocked as the boatman hauled them over the river. “Did the peddler come this way yesterday?” she asked the man.

  “He did; around noon,” he said. “Just as the dancers left town. I said to him: you could have walked around the town now that they’re gone. I said: why leave now, now that the town is safe? Carrying a great big sword sticking out of his pack. Said he had traded it for shoes. I said, they must be very