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“I’m sorry,” Freize said, shuffling his feet in the dust. “I am very sorry.”

  “When will it end?” Isolde asked.

  The rabbi’s smile was twisted with bitterness. “We say ‘La-shanah haba’ah bi-Yerushalayim: Next year, Jerusalem.’ ” He looked down at her white, tear-stained face. “I see your fear now, but this is what every Jewish woman feels every day. There is not a woman in this village who has not tasted fear like yours, who has not cried as you are weeping now. So, though I am sorry for you, we cannot take a knife to you. Truly, we dare not. We can do no more for you than put you outside the gates when the dancers are gone.”

  “I said that I would bear witness for you!” Isolde reminded him.

  “They would say that we raped you,” the rabbi said bluntly, ignoring Freize’s exclamation of horror. “And that we had driven you mad. When you are hated, as we are hated, nobody can even hear a true word about you. They become deaf. It is how they keep up their hatred. They can hear any lie, but not a simple truth.”

  “I am so sorry,” Isolde said helplessly. “I am so sorry for you and your people. I did not know. I did not understand.”

  For a moment he looked at her, his dark eyes narrowed. “Oh really? Are you saying that you didn’t know?” he pressed her. “Are you sure? But your friend here knew. He knows all the things that people say against us, don’t you?”

  Freize bent his head, nodded.

  “And if your father was a lord, he must have agreed to protect Jewish moneylenders and Jewish traders on his lands. You must have seen them? He must have made them pay for their protection. He must have let his men loose on them now and then, to remind them to pay.”

  Isolde blushed a deep red in shame. “He was a true crusader, he did not make war on his own village,” she said quietly. “He fought in the Holy Land.”

  “Then he must have killed Moors, and he worked Jews to death,” the rabbi told her. “And you knew. You are the same as all Christians. You all know. You all always know. But you try not to think about it. And when we cry out for help you try not to hear. And when someone asks you what happened to a Jewish family who is missing from their shop, or a Jewish writer whose books are no longer on sale, or a trader who is no longer at his shop, you say that you did not know, that you were not sure, that you could not be certain. You say that you are good neighbors, but you did not notice. You buy our treasures at a good price; you move into our houses. You don’t ask where the owners have gone. You say that it is within the law. You say that you are sorry, but what could you have done? You say that you cannot be blamed for crimes that are done in your name, to the glory of your God. You say you didn’t know. But not knowing is a choice that you make, it is as bad as doing.”

  “In my part of the world . . . ,” Freize started.

  “Your part of the world is the same as anywhere in the world.” The rabbi swept over his objection. “We are hated all over the world for no reason that makes any sense. You have to make up reasons. And they still make no sense. But it means that when the Jews are taken, you can say that you didn’t know, but it probably had to be done.”

  Isolde acknowledged that he was right. “I am sorry,” she said. “I am very sorry. I did know. I chose not to know.”

  “We endure,” he said bravely. “We pray that it never gets any worse for us, the People, than it is today. We pray that the day never comes when someone, a new madman, speaks against the Jews and everyone listens, and many act, and everyone else says that they did not know. By coming here, you have put us into great danger. By staying, you continue to endanger us. If you truly have pity on us, then you will go.”

  Isolde turned to Freize, her eyes filled with tears, her bloodstained feet twitching in the red shoes. “He’s right. We have to go out to the dancers,” she said. “We can’t stay here.”

  Luca rode as hard as he dared down the twisting track, through the dark woods, back to Lord Vargarten’s castle. He pulled up his horse before the gateway and shouted: “I need to get a message to his lordship. The dancers are threatening the Jewish village. He has to send help.”

  “Why would he help the Jews?” one of the guards asked. “Let them dance away with the other madmen.”

  The other muttered an obscenity and the two of them laughed together.

  “I’ll speak to him myself,” Luca decided, not trusting them. “Open the gate.”

  As he rode into the castle garth, Lord Vargarten himself came out of the great hall and down the stone steps. His wife stood in the doorway of the hall and looked down on Luca with her cold gaze.

  “You again,” she said, without a word of welcome.

  “I’ve come for help,” Luca said shortly, swinging down from his horse and greeting his lordship. “The dancers have stolen the Lady of Lucretili and she and my comrade Freize have found sanctuary in the Jewish village, but the dancers have all but set siege to them. We have to go and move them on again.”

  “You should have put them all to the sword when you first had them,” her ladyship said flatly from the top of the stone stairs. “Then you would not be troubled now.”

  “We should have done,” his lordship agreed.

  “I could not allow it,” Luca said. “It would be against everything that I believe in. But this is different now—it’s worse. My lord, we have to go to the aid of the Lady of Lucretili.”

  “She’s breaking the law if she’s in the Jews’ village,” his lordship said. “And I will punish them for kidnapping her. They will pay for it.”

  “She was running from the dancers,” Luca said desperately. “What else could she do? They have probably saved her life.”

  Lord Vargarten shook his head in disapproval. “It’s worse to be with Jews than with dancers,” he said. “The dancers are mad, but the Jews are the enemy of the world, beyond the mercy of God.”

  “I beg you,” Luca urged him. “I serve the Order of Darkness. I am commanded to seek the help of the lords spiritual and temporal in my work to discover the causes of the end of days. The lords are commanded to help me.”

  “But you’re not discovering the causes of the end of days,” her ladyship pointed out. “You’re trying to rescue your traveling companion from a situation she should never have gotten herself into. Why should we lift a finger to help you? Why should my lord risk himself and his men for a woman who has chosen to go dancing, and has danced off to the Jews? She went off with vile people, as bad as animals, and now finds herself among vile people, as bad as vermin.”

  Luca looked up at her, trying to control his rage at her words. “My lord told me that you lost your own sister to the dancers. Can you not pity Lady Isolde? Do you not want to see her come safe home? Don’t you know that she would ride out for you, if she were in her castle and you were missing?”

  “I would never go to a Jewish village,” she said disdainfully. “No dance would lead me there. I believe in the purity of my family, of my people.” She turned to her husband. “Of course, it shall be as you wish. If you think you should ride out for the second time, once again showing mercy to madmen, and go on to save this woman who has run from her friends to the Jews.”

  He looked grim. “Certainly, I feel less merciful now.”

  “I beg you,” Luca said again. He could hear his voice tremble and he knew himself to be at the edge of despair.

  His lordship’s answer was to bellow toward the guardhouse, and the muster bell was rung. “We’ll take the horsemen only,” Lord Vargarten said. “That should be enough, and we’ll be quicker.” His squire came running down the steps with his padded jacket and his helmet. His groom brought his horse from the stable.

  “You have no armor at all?” Lord Vargarten asked Luca.

  “I am an Inquirer of the Church,” Luca exclaimed. “Of course I have no armor.”

  “Then someone will probably knock your head off with a rock,” Lord Vargarten said cheerfully. “You’d better ride behind me. Stay close. Borrow a leather jacket. Will you at least take a swo