The congregation for the Saturday evening service at the close of the Sabbath filled the small synagogue in Hammelberg. Several out-of-town visitors brought the number well above the minimum of ten men required for the service. It was not a congregation that placed great value on formality or decorum. Each man prayed at his own pace through many of the prayers, and at times, there were quiet conversations while slower members of the congregation caught up with the rest.
After the braided candle had been extinguished and the last words of the hymn to Elijah the Prophet had faded, the congregation began to drift apart. Several small groups remained in the schul talking quietly as others left.
"Reb Yakov," a large man said. "I enjoyed your comments on the Torah portion this afternoon. You say you're from Hanau? What brings you to Hammelberg?"
"Who are you again?" the rabbi asked, looking up.
"Yitzach ben Chiam, from Kissingen," the man said. His accent held almost no hint of Judische Deutsch in it, less even than in the speech of the Jews of Hammelberg. If they had not been speaking in a synagogue, the rabbi and his companions would have taken him for a Christian.
"We're on our way to Poland," the rabbi said.
"Poland? It's a long way to Poland, and with the war, is this a safe route?"
"Is anything safe for a Jew in this world? The route up the Fränkische Saale valley is direct enough. Moische Frankfurter here has traveled this way to the Hanover fair twice. He knows the road and he has his father's notes from many more trips. So far, they've proven to be pretty good."
"But the war?"
"Now that King Gustav has left Poland, the war in that land is over, so Polish life is getting better. It doesn't take much to make it better than life in this war-torn land. For the moment, the war is all in the north, and without wishing ill on those living there, we hope it stays that way. Tilly and Pappenheim are tied up at Magdeburg, and that should keep King Gustav busy and out of the way. After we cross the Thüringer Wald, we'll stay well south of the armies."
The conversation continued until only the out-of-town guests remained. Yossie listened quietly; Yakov handled the questions. He and his two companions had faced similar questions a week previously, in the Jewish quarter of Aschaffenberg. That had been their first Sabbath away from home.
After a short while, the two women in the group rejoined their companions. They had spent the Sabbath day visiting with the Jewish women of the town. The synagogue served many purposes. It was a house of prayer and a school for the Jewish children of Hammelberg and it housed the community ovens. The bath house was attached and when there were out-of-town Jewish visitors it served as a makeshift inn.
"It must take a fair amount of silver to travel all the way to Poland," Yitzach said.
"That's why we're traveling with an experienced merchant," the rabbi said. "Reb Moische, why don't you explain how we can afford this trip."
"If we wanted to travel quickly, like a court Jew," Moische said, "we'd hire a coach and trade horses at every town. Where the roads are good, we could make a hundred miles in a day covering the entire distance at a trot. At that speed, we could go to Poland and back in a few weeks.
"If we had expensive trade goods, silk, spices, fine pottery from Delft, we'd hire teamsters from Frammersbach to drive our freight wagons, and we might make thirty miles a day. Before this twice cursed war began, my father could afford that."
Yitzach chuckled. "Is it news that the war has ruined trade?"
"No," Moische answered, "but there are still goods that you can buy low here and sell high there. It does slow the trip to a crawl, stopping at every village to buy and sell, but if you have a horse and a cart and you know the market, well, Yossie, you can make a profit. What have you bought and sold?"
Yossie wondered why Yitzach was so curious about their business. "Not much, but I didn't start with much either."
The merchant grinned. "Didn't start with much. Just books. Now what have you got?"
Yossie had enjoyed the way Moische had parried Yitzach's questions, giving almost no information in his answers. Now, he was puzzled to find that he was being asked to say more. After a Sabbath day spent in study together, they were not total strangers, so he only hesitated briefly before answering. "Well, when we left Hanau, Rav Yankel and I had a chest of copies of the Hanau Prayerbook, unbound, and a few boxes of other books, mostly Jewish but some Christian."
Yitzach ben Chiam looked startled. "So many books? What did you do, rob a Yeshivah or a print shop?"
Yossie chuckled. "We didn't rob it. Rav Yankel and I used to work at Hans Jacob Hene's printing press in Hanau. Master Hene died last year, may his memory be a blessing, and the new owner, well, he doesn't deal in Jewish books the way Master Hene did, so there was little reason for either the books or us to stay."
"So you are paying for a trip with books?"
"We sell and trade. There are forges and glassworks in the Spessart, and there is a paper mill in Lohr. We found a good market for scrap iron and rags. Now that we're in the Fränkische Saale Valley, we're trading empty wine bottles for full whenever we can. Friday, I sold some prayer books, bentschers, and a Chumash here."
"You'd better be careful which Christian books you show people in this valley," Yitzach said. "This is a Catholic valley now. If you have books of the lives of the saints, you'll do well, but if you have Lutheran or Calvinist books, be careful with them."
As the conversation wound down, the Sabbath lamp that had burned since Friday evening was extinguished. Aside from small splashes of moonlight shining through the small eastern windows, the only light came from the eternal flame over the ark holding the Torah scrolls. It was not long before the only sound in the building was the sound of gentle snores.
Sunday morning, there was work to be done. Buying and selling within the Jewish community was safe, but it was not a day to travel. Christians didn't like to be reminded that there were Jews living among them on their holy day, so the gates to the Jewish quarter remained closed.
While the merchants traded what they could, Rabbi Yakov ben Pinchas and Yosef ben Shlomo of Hanau worked as teachers in the Hammelberg schul. It was familiar work for the old Rabbi. He'd taught at the cheder in Hanau for many years, working only part time as a typesetter and proofreader at Hans Jacob Hene's print shop. He'd also worked part time as a scribe, writing the occasional marriage contract or divorce papers, or even repairing a Torah scroll when needed.
For Yosef ben Shlomo, the day's work as a school teacher was a new experience. Yossie had been a full-time print-shop worker since his parents died. Not an apprentice, though. Jews could not take apprenticeships in any of the guild trades.
Monday, after morning prayers, Yitzach ben Chiam set off with the group of travelers toward Kissingen. To Yossie, the small horse Yitzach was riding seemed large. Certainly, it was bigger and healthier than the old horse pulling the cart he and his sister shared with the old rabbi.
"Tell me," Yitzach said. "How is it that you can buy and sell so freely? I'm a Schutzjude. I know the laws that limit what we can do."
"Reb Moische, that's your business," Yossie said.
The young merchant, Moische ben Avram, gave a bow from beside the horse he was leading. "At your service. I might ask how you make a living. You face the same trade restrictions as we do."
"I'm a broker, cattle, feed, wine, you name it, I connect sellers with buyers. That's basically all a protected Jew is allowed to do aside from making loans."
"So do you ever take someone's cattle, for example, and give them silver now, before you go to look for a buyer?"
"Sure. Of course, what I do is loan them the value of the cattle, and then the buyer pays back the loan, plus a bit of interest, plus a commission."
Rabbi Yakov coughed. "But of course, you never take more than one sixth of the value."
"What?" Yossie asked. He had been admiring the way Moische had turned Yitzach's question away from their business.
"One sixth. It follows from Parshas Behar. Come Yossie, we just read it two days ago on Shabbos. What the Christians call Leviticus chapter twenty-one, but I forget the verse number. It says 'And if you sell anything to your fellow or buy anything from your fellow's hand, you shall not wrong one another.'"
"I know the text, but where does it say one sixth?"
"That is the oral tradition, the Talmud."
"But it says your fellow's hand, doesn't that mean only other Jews, not the goyim?"
"Except that the goyim around here worship our God, so they aren't idolaters. They bind themselves by the laws against theft and dishonesty, so we must treat them as our fellows in business."
"A good lesson, Rabbi," Yitzach said. "Was it Rabbi Chananya who said that where words of Torah are exchanged, the divine presence is there? But for the sake of argument, since I only act as a broker, not buying or selling, it doesn't strictly apply, does it?"
"Your status as a broker is just a legal fiction to satisfy the Christian authorities," the Rabbi said. "Of course, to support that fiction, you have to give your buyer an exact accounting, so he knows exactly what fee he is paying. A successful Shutzjude must always charge prices that are even more fair and more honest than any Christian merchant or they will cancel your protection and send you packing."
"That puts it well," Yitzach said. "Now, though, I think I'll send myself packing. My horse and I would both rather move a bit faster than you're walking. But, why not spend the night at my place? It's just outside Kissingen. When you reach the village of Aura on the north bank of the Saale, turn north up the hill to the next crossroads, then east across the upland toward Kissingen. My house will be one of the first you come to. It is on the hill looking down on Kissingen, easy to find. But if you get lost, just ask for me by my goyische name, Isaac Kissinger."
The Fränkische Saale valley led them along a winding path to the northeast through a land of chalky hills and vineyards. When the two loaded carts turned aside at the next cluster of farmhouses in the hope of selling something, Yitzach's horse quickly passed out of sight around the next bend.
The travelers slowed in every village they passed to see if they could find someone who wanted empty wine bottles or some of the ironwork Moische Frankfurter had picked up at a forge in the Spessart. They had pruning hook blades, sickle blades, hoe blades and shovel blades for sale. Whenever they had earned a surplus of silver, Moische disappeared into one of the wine cellars along the way to see if he could buy bottles of wine.
Moische did not need to emphasize that it was dangerous to have too much silver. They had already been robbed once on the trip. It was a small loss because the thieves only took silver, not the books, rags or scrap iron that represented the bulk of their wealth at that time. Wine was a more dangerous cargo than rags or scrap, but a thief who could easily take all of their silver would only be able to carry a few bottles of wine.
As required by law, they were all clearly identified as Jews. The three men in the group wore Jew badges, yellow circles, on their outer cloaks. The two women wore veils that were marked with the two blue stripes reserved for the Jews over their hair combs.
For Yossie and his sister, approaching each cluster of houses was an uncomfortable experience, even after two weeks of travel. They had always lived in the large Jewish communities of Frankfurt am Main and Hanau, while the others had much more experience in the larger world. Yossie's experience with non-Jews was limited to those who routinely dealt with Jews. Here in the Fränkische Saale valley, Jews were rare. Sometimes when they approached a village, children announced their arrival as if they were devils. Some of the men would cross themselves defensively after completing a trade.
Monday afternoon, with the sun low behind them, the travelers turned east toward Kissingen, although the old road sign spelled it Kissick. The valley of the Fränkische Saale was spread out below them to the right, turning north ahead of them and winding lazily away to the southwest behind them. There were vineyards on both sides of the road, but higher up the hills were woodlands. A haze of smoke rose from the valley ahead of them, marking the location of the Kissingen salt works.
"These vines aren't well kept," Moische Frankfurter said, walking beside Yossie. "And did you notice the empty houses in village we just passed?"
"The war, I suppose," Yossie said, as he led the horse pulling the rear cart.
"There hasn't been war in this valley for a decade," the young merchant said. "I suppose, though, that the taxes to pay for the war would be almost as hard on many farmers. Some of them seem to have more wine than they can sell."
"So the Christians are leaving the land, too?"
"More likely, when the families can't afford the taxes, their sons leave to take jobs as mercenaries."
"Can you two men talk about something less grim?" asked Basya, Yossie's sister. "How about a song?" she added, reaching into the back of the cart in front of her and pulling out her copy of the Shmuelbuch and starting to lead them in song.
"Rav Joseph said that if men sing and women respond, the law is broken," Yakov grumbled, quoting from the Talmud under his breath as he walked beside Yossie. "But if women sing and men respond, it is as if fire is sweeping a field of flax."
For the last mile into Kissingen, Basya led the travelers in verses from the epic ballad of Samuel the prophet, King Saul and King David. The subject was biblical and the dialect was Jewish, but the ballad form was as German as the countryside around them. Everyone in the group knew the melody. Only the old rabbi did not join in. Yossie kept his silence through a few verses, not wanting to offend his teacher, but when Yakov made no further comment about the evils of allowing women and men to sing together, Yossie finally joined in the song.
The house of Isaac Kissinger was easy to find. It was one of a small cluster of farmhouses on the hillside above Kissingen. All of the buildings were old, made of ancient plastered stonework below with timber, wattle and daub above.
"Welcome to Kissingen, almost," Yitzach said, greeting them from the door. "Jews aren't allowed in town after dark, so we must live outside the walls, closer to the farmers we serve. Let me help with the horses; they'll be comfortable in the field out back. We'll eat after we settle the horses. I warned my wife you were coming, so there's plenty to eat. We'll be done in time for afternoon prayers."
Yitzach's wife Chava was not as round as her husband, but she looked comfortable. He also had a daughter, Gitele, who was close to Yossie's age and who seemed to be alternately fascinated and shy in his presence.
Over the meal, as was the custom, zmiros took priority over conversation. Songs based on the Psalms or other biblical verses met the need for words of Torah at the table without sounding academic. Some of the tunes were very simple and repetitive, easy for the smallest child to join in, while others were complete psalms, sung like ballads. When everyone was done eating, Yitzach took out his bentscher and led them in the chanting the long grace after meals.
As the sun approached the horizon, the men gathered for the afternoon prayer service, abbreviated because there were only four of them, not the ten required for the full service. They finished just before the sun touched the western horizon. As soon as the sun was down, while the light was still good enough to read, they started again with the evening service.
"Praised be to the Lord, God of the universe, who has commanded us to count the days of the Omer," Yitzach said, "on this, the thirty-third day of the Omer."
"Amen," the other three replied, ending the service. There had been thirty-three days since the start of Passover, and until the festival of Shauvos, every day was to be counted.
"So," Yitzach said. "Time for a haircut, but we'll do that tomorrow. Chava, Gitele, we need to talk. Come, everyone, back to the table."
"I have a proposition for you," Yitzach said, as they sat down at the table by the light of one candle. "My son doesn't want to take up the life of a Shutzjude. He's a scholar at the Yeshiva of Heidingsfeld. I've married off one daughter and I think it's time for me to find someone to carry this house into the next generation. I'd like to find a husband for Gitele, and that won't be in Kissingen. Your trip to Poland has me thinking that perhaps we should join you.
"So, here is my proposition. Stay through the week, and then we'll come with you. That will give me time to transfer my protected status and will give us time to pack up what we can take with us. Waiting a bit will be worth your time because Wednesday is market day. That will give you a chance to lighten your load by getting rid of all those empty bottles before we leave the best of the Franconian vineyards."
There were several replies. "Father!" Gitele said. "Can we afford a week's delay?" Yankel asked. "Is it safe?" Gitele added. "How long have you been planning this?" Moische asked.
"There are too many Jews around Kissingen," Yitzach said. "We've known that for a while. If some of us don't leave soon, the Christians will force us out. Last winter Chava and I decided we should go, so this spring we've been watching for a group to join. Poland, Hungary, Turkey, they all look better than German lands."
"Too many Jews?" Yankel asked. "Do you have a minyan?"
"No, Rav Yakov," Yitzach said, pausing to count under his breath. "There are eight over age thirteen. When I was a child, there was a minyan, but that was before the war."
"There are three of us," Yankel said. "So together, we have one extra. So long as we are here, we have enough for a Torah service."
"It's a long walk. My brother lives down by the river."
"Tell them I have a sefir Torah in my luggage," the old rabbi said. "We can do the full service Thursday and perhaps on Shabbos if the walk is not too far."
"I can't promise they'd come on Thursday," Yitzach said. "There is work to be done. If you stay through Saturday, though, they will come."
"I don't want them to come on Shabbos if they have to walk over two thousand cubits."
"The walk is longer," Yitzach said, "but we know our eruv laws. When one of us wants to visit the other on Shabbos, we arrange to eat a Shabbos meal at my cousin's place, halfway between."
"So Reb Yitz," Moische asked, once it was clear that the Rabbi was satisfied that no laws would be broken by the proposal to gather a minyan for Shabbos. "How many other groups of travelers have you spoken to?"
"There was a group of Jews out of Wertheim two weeks ago. They were traveling fast and didn't want more people. Last week another group came through. Like you, they were from Frankfurt and trying to peddle their way east. I would have been tempted to go with them if they had seemed competent. I've heard rumors of other groups but not everyone who travels up this valley stops in Kissingen to talk with me."
"Thank you for the compliment," Moische said, with a laugh.
"Don't thank me too soon," Yitzach said. "First, my wife and daughter need to be convinced that you are competent enough for us. And I suspect that we need to convince you that we are competent enough for you."
For the next hour, the travelers repeated many of the answers they had given two nights before in Hammelberg. This time, though, there were fewer evasive answers.
"My wife and I left Frankfurt Monday a week after Passover ended," Moische explained. "I'd hoped to leave the week before, the first Monday right after Passover, but that didn't work out. Instead, we left on the eighteenth day of the Omer. That seemed good enough, and eighteen is a lucky number."
"It took a day to pack up Reb Yankel, Yossie and Basya in Hanau, and then we spent the Sabbath of Parshos Emor with the Jews of Aschaffenburg. Last Monday, we set off into the Spessart. In a week, we made it to Hammelberg, buying and selling as we went.
Yitzach interrupted. "You know, Reb Moische, yesterday I asked how you could manage, buying and selling across the countryside, and we got off into matters of commercial law and legal fictions and Talmud. You never answered my question."
Moische Frankfurter answered, "A merchant can't afford to disclose the secrets of his trade."
Yossie chuckled. "He never lets us suggest a price, ever. Before we buy or sell, he always looks in his book and then tells us what offer to make, and he tells us what the final price should be. Sometimes, he's wrong, but mostly, his advice is good."
"When I'm wrong," Moische said, "It's because of the war. I've been this way twice before, to the Hannover fair and back, by way of Meiningen and Erfurt. My father did it many times. The first rule for any merchant is to constantly watch the prices of everything."
"I know that well enough," Yitzach said. "But I only need to know the prices of goods in and around Kissingen. You need to know the prices everywhere."
"We only know the prices where my father or I have been before. Of course, you have to correct for the season." He paused. "So, Reb Yitzach, if you come with us, what will you bring as trade goods?"
The answer to that question emerged after morning prayers and breakfast Tuesday, while Moische's wife and Chava set to work cutting the men's hair. Between Passover and Shavuos, the thirty-third day of the Omer was the only day on which it was auspicious to have a haircut, so all of the men took their turn.
"So," Yitzach said, while his wife worked around his head with comb and shears. "What I propose to do is slaughter a cow and make sausage. I'll sell the meat I can't preserve and buy trade goods with the profit. There aren't more than a handful of Jews east of here. The Protestants did a good job of driving us out of Saxony back before my lifetime, so you'll want kosher meat that will keep. My sausage should keep all summer if it stays dry and out of the sun. I'll need help, though, because we'll have to keep the fire smoking, and we'll need to shave an awful lot of beef very thin.
"You're a shochet?" Moische asked.
"The best in Kissingen, if you discount my brother's son Ari. He's the one I want to take over this place. I also have a cousin who is competent. We take turns buying cattle at the Neustadt market. Most of the meat we sell to Hammelberg."
"Where did you study?" Yankel asked.
"Heidingsfeld, where my son is now. When my father died, I left the yeshivah and came home to take over his business."
The cow was slaughtered that morning, and everyone was put to work, under the able direction of Yitzach and his wife. The larger butchering job, of course, was left to the shochet himself, but then the meat had to be salted and rinsed to get the blood out, and every bit of meat had to be stripped from the carcass excepting the hindquarters. That part would go, at a discount, to the Christian butchers in town because kosher preparation of the loins would have been too much work.
By evening, the big chimney in Yitzach's kitchen was festooned with thinly sliced beef hung from freshly cut willow twigs. Larger cuts of meat hung awaiting sale or additional work the next day. They'd stripped the derma from the intestines for use as sausage casing, and the smell of grilling liver filled the house.
Yossie was the strongest of the travelers, with years of experience doing hard physical labor at the printing press. Because of his strength, he spent a good part of the day chopping firewood from Yitzach's woodpile for the kitchen fire. The wood had to burn to charcoal on one side of the kitchen hearth, then the hot coals were swept over to the other side to provide dry heat under the meat. When the wood supply was adequate and the fire burning properly, he was put to work at the cutting block, shaving thin curls of beef. For a break in that job, he was sent to the salt works for a sack of salt. By nightfall, Yossie's arms ached as much as they had ever ached after a long press run.
Wednesday morning, Yossie was spared from more physical labor. The evening before, Moische and Yitzach had asked him to come with them into town to help in the marketplace. The three of them woke up before sunrise, said their morning prayers quickly and ate a cold crust for breakfast before setting out.
Market day in Kissingen was busy. At the town gates, farm carts vied in friendly competition with merchants. The Jews knew their place and held back, waiting their turn. Once the crowd around the gates had thinned, they paid their Jew tax to the guard at the gates, as required by law, and then entered the town. In Kissingen, Jews were permitted to buy and sell in the marketplace, but the protocol at the town gates guaranteed that they would always get the least desirable spaces.
Once the three of them had staked out their spot, Isaac took his cart to the Christian butchers so he could sell the non-kosher cuts of meat while Yossie and Moische arranged what they had to sell. They had straw-packed baskets of the flat bottles used for Franconian wines, window-glass, ironwork, books and paper.
"Today," Moische said, "make all sales in silver. Here's the price list, what you should open the haggling with, what they should offer, and where you should go for the final price. I want to spy out the market to see if I am right on the prices, so for now, you run things."
Yossie felt a bit abandoned. Then he straightened his shoulders. He'd been the buyer at other markets, after all. Not just for himself, either. He'd done it for Master Hene's print shop and he knew how things worked. Buying and selling door-to-door the last two weeks helped, but he'd never been in charge of a market stall before. It certainly didn't help that he was a complete stranger in Kissingen.
His first few sales were small; bottles by the twos and threes, a shovel blade, a pruning hook, and two sheets of paper. Then, to Yossie's surprise, a man came to buy four full baskets of bottles.
"So, Jew, where are they from?" the man asked, pulling one of the flat green bottles from its straw packing and looking at it with care.
"Paul Fleckenstein's glassworks in Heigenbrucken, on the Lohrbach," Yossie answered. He remembered being fascinated as he watched the glassblower manipulating the red hot glass. That such green glass could be made by melting the red Spessart sandstone was almost magical.
Only after inspecting several more bottles with equal care did the man begin to dicker seriously. The man knew what he was doing, but with Moische's price recommendations in mind, Yossie was prepared.
Moische came back shortly after that to amend the price list. "You need to read the sales," Moische said, after Yossie described what he'd sold. "If you're buying wine from the vineyard next door, or if you make it for your own use, you reuse bottles. Break a barrel of wine into bottles, drink them up, and then refill the bottles when you break open the next barrel. If you sell just one or two bottles, you're probably just replacing broken glass.
"But think. If you're selling wine for shipment to far away places, you buy enough empty bottles to hold a whole barrel of wine and the empties never come back. Your last sale means that someone in town is still shipping wine to someplace far away. The local wine is good enough to grace a noble's table, which is why we are buying as much as we can with our profits."
"You've been tasting Christian wine?" Yossie asked, mildly taken aback.
"Of course. How else would I know its value in trade?" Moische said. "We're forbidden to drink the wine of idolaters, but I don't drink, just taste. It is very good wine, but then, Reb Yitzach's wine is no worse, and he has promised to bring a bit of that along with us."
Soon after Moische left for another round of spying on the marketplace, Yossie found himself facing a Catholic priest. Christian clergymen had always made him uncomfortable.
"My son," the priest said, with an alarming smile that might have been intended to be friendly. "I hear you have books for sale."
"A few, Father," Yossie said, in his best German. He knew that for a Jew to show insufficient respect could lead to trouble. He was more alarmed to be addressed as "my son" than to be addressed merely as "Jew."
Yossie went around the back of the cart to show the books. Moische had shifted their goods around carefully so that the Jewish and Protestant books were all on the cart they had left behind at Yitzach's house.
"Have you read this?" the priest asked, holding up a book.
Yossie leaned over to look. It was a volume of St. Thomas Aquinas. "My Latin is poor, Father, but I like what I know of the Saint's logic."
"If your Latin were better," the priest said, "you would find that the logic of Aquinas is compelling. The only way to salvation is through our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ."
Yossie groaned inwardly, fearing that the conversation was becoming a trap. "I have no desire to engage in a religious disputation, Father. All I want to do is find a good home for these fine books."
"Where did you get them?" the priest asked.
"They are from the estate of Master Hans Hene of Hanau, may his memory be a blessing."
The priest looked startled. "The printer? I had not heard that he died! May his soul rest in peace. And you, a Jew, why do you bless his memory?"
"Should I curse a man simply because he was not of my religion?" Yossie asked. "I worked in Master Hene's print shop for many years."
In the end, the encounter with the priest turned out better than Yossie had feared. He even sold the volume of Aquinas and a supply of paper to the priest. Not long after that, he sold all that was left of the green-tinted window glass they'd purchased in the Spessart.
Moische, meanwhile, had been searching out what they should buy with their profits. It was no surprise to Yossie that this included more wine, but Moische also bought several empty barrels.
"Why these?" Yossie asked, grimacing after taking a sniff at one of the bung holes. The strong vinegar smell made it clear that that they were old wine barrels.
"Vinegar prevents vermin," Moische said. "These should sell well after we leave the vineyards."
By the week's end, all of the travelers were sick of the sight and smell of beef in all of its forms. They had dealt with everything from raw beef, dried strips of beef, cooked beef, suet, and, most of all, sausage.
Friday afternoon, in addition to keeping a charcoal fire going under the hanging meat, they began to heat kettles of water to be added to the bath. As the Sabbath drew closer on Friday afternoon, each of them left work in turn to bathe and change into their best clothes. The meat was prepared to the point that what work remained could wait for Sunday. What the sausages needed most was to hang in the chimney over the banked fire for as long as possible.
Yossie had never encountered a private bath before. In Frankfurt and Hanau, and even in Hammelberg, the bathhouses had been communal affairs. The structure was not as old as the house, but it had obviously been there for generations. The masonry lining was sound but undecorated, and the room was plain. The bath met the letter of the law, being dug into the ground and open to the sky. As with every other bath he had used, the opening to the sky was a narrow chimney that ended just above the water in one corner. Anything more would have let in far too much cold air in the winter.
Yossie washed himself using a clean rag and a pot of warm water so as not to pollute the bath water with dirt when he finally immersed himself. The five pots of boiling water they had added to the bath had not warmed it enough that he wanted to spend much time there, but that was not the point. The point was to make a clear separation between the week past and the Sabbath to come, a spiritual cleansing.
Once he was dry and dressed, Yossie helped Yakov bring the case holding the old rabbi's Torah scroll in from their cart. The case was large and heavy enough that it took two men to carry it comfortably. It was not ornate, but nonetheless its solid construction signaled that it held something precious. The scroll inside was the most central symbol of Judaism, but it was also precious because of the labor it represented. The many sheets of parchment sewn into the scroll had all been specially prepared, as had the ink. Yakov himself had written every letter in the scroll, using exactly the letter forms required by tradition.
Yitzach led the evening service welcoming the Sabbath, as was his right as master of the house, but he also made a point of involving the others. Of the eleven men that made up their congregation, three were still young, one not much over thirteen, and Yossie enjoyed watching their response when they were asked to lead some of the simpler prayers.
After the evening kiddush over bread and wine had been said, their guests left for their Sabbath dinners. As promised, Yitzach's brother and his two nephews left with his cousin. As the men left, the women rejoined the group and Yankel asked a question that was also on Yossie's mind.
"Reb Yitzach, you did not begin your service with the Kaballos Shabbos psalms."
"No," Yitzach said, "and neither did my father, nor his father, nor his. Welcoming Shabbos with psalms is a beautiful innovation, but what's wrong with the order of the traditional service?"
"Saying the Kaballos Shabbos psalms helps to put you in the right frame of mind for the service," Yankel said. "It makes your prayers more effective."
Yitzach shook his head. "That would imply that our reward is not for carrying out the six hundred and thirteen commandments in the Torah. That our reward is not for prayer, repentance and doing justice, but for being in the right frame of mind. That sounds like something a Lutheran would say; that we are saved by our faith, not by what we do."
So began an argument that would relieve the boredom of many long hours in the days to come. On one side were the pietist innovations of the Kaballah, while on the other was the traditional Jewish emphasis on obeying the commandments.
To Yossie, who had grown up since the time that kabalist thought had swept through the urban centers of Jewish Europe, the debate was an eye opener. For him, the Kaballos Shabbos psalms and the hymn welcoming the Sabbath bride were simply the way the Sabbath evening service had always begun, not a statement of a new radical theology.
The next morning, Yitzach's brother and nephews arrived with a disturbing story that drove all thought of theological controversy aside.
"We were on our way home last night after dinner," his nephew Ari said, while they waited for the rest of their small congregation to arrive. "As we passed the crossroads tavern, a farmer came out and called out to us. He sounded like he'd had too much to drink. 'Hey Jews,' he said, 'have you heard the news from Magdeburg? The siege is over. They set fire to the town.' He said he'd heard the story from a post rider."
To the travelers this was an alarming rumor, although the fact that it had come from a drunkard added an element of doubt. They had been relying on the siege to keep the armies tied up in the north, out of their proposed path. It was the Sabbath, though, so until sunset, their first order of business was prayer and study. As soon as they had ten assembled, they began the Sabbath morning service.
Their makeshift synagogue centered on the table where they had eaten dinner the night before. Now, it was covered with a clean cloth to serve as the reading table. The case holding Yankel's Torah scroll was set on end on a sideboard against the eastern wall, marking the direction they were to face while praying.
For an hour, they read the Psalms, blessings and prayers of the morning service. They wore their fringed prayer shawls as hoods over their heads as they swayed with the rhythm of prayer. Yitzach's voice was very good. As he had the evening before, he made room in the service for the younger men to help lead parts of the service.
The Torah portion was Parshas Bechukosai, the end of the book of Leviticus. There had not been a full Sabbath service in Kissingen for many months, and the blessings and curses of chapter twenty-six had not been chanted in Kissingen for many years.
As Yossie listened to Yankel chant the ancient curses that were promised if Israel failed to obey the commandments, he wondered about Magdeburg. What must that town have done to bring on the horrors that were rumored to have come? He'd been very young when Wallenstein's army had come through the lower Main valley. The army had ensured the restoration of the Jewish community of Frankfurt, but they had created hardship for the entire region. His parents had died that winter, and his only memories from that time were of overwhelming loss and hunger.
Sunday was another day of hard work for everyone. Yitzach and his family were busy at work packing their own belongings for the trip. Moische and Yitzach had purchased quite a bit of wine with their earnings from the market, and all of the bottles needed to be very carefully packed into baskets with straw.
While the others packed, Yossie was put back to work maintaining the fires to smoke and dry their newly made sausages. When he found that they were low on firewood, he was surprised that Yitzach simply handed him a wood collecting basket and pointed him up the hill at the woodlands above.
"But Reb Yitzach," he asked, "is it safe working in public on the Christian Sabbath?" He had never before been outside of the walled Jewish quarter of a town on a Sunday.
"Close to home, yes," Yitzach answered. "My family has lived in this house since the Jews were expelled from Kissingen long before my time. Since I am a cottager here, so long as I pay my Shutzgeld, I have the right to gather wood up there. My neighbors all know you are with me, so go, before the fires burn too low. But do not cut wood, my rights extend only to dead wood that is on the ground or that you can break from trees with your hands."
So, on a beautiful May Sunday, Yossie found himself up in the hills to the northwest of Yitzach's house gathering firewood. The view to the east out over Kissingen was quite beautiful, and even the sound was beautiful. He could hear the faint sounds of Christian hymns from the nearest village church, and later, the sounds of church bells from the big church in Kissingen itself. It seemed impossible that the such a day could be contained in the same world that contained the horrors that were rumored to have occurred in Magdeberg.
Yossie walked the woods with his eyes on the ground and tree trunks for the wood that was needed. Only when he stopped to adjust the shoulder straps of the wood basket did he take the time to admire the view. There was no smoke from the salt works because it was Sunday so the view to the east was clearer than it had been all week. The crags of old fortifications on the hilltops east of Kissingen held his gaze. He guessed that some of those ruins dated back to before the first Crusade, back to the time when Jewish life in German lands had been as safe and peaceful as the scene before him.
It was perhaps the third time he stopped that he saw a very strange thing. The eastern sky filled with light, so bright that the whole world seemed dark in its aftermath. Fortunately the flash was too brief to injure his eyes, but it left an afterimage that Yossie could study. A half circle of purple showed against his eyelids every time he blinked during the next minute or so, as if he had stared for too long at sun as it rose over the eastern horizon. Whatever it was, it had been larger looking than the sun. Where the sun wasn't even the width of one finger at arm's length, the half circle Yossie saw after every blink was as wide as three fingers side by side.
By the time Yossie had carried his load of sticks down to the cluster of houses where Yitzach lived, what he had seen seemed unimportant. Once the afterimage had faded from his vision, the day went on as before, just as beautiful and with just as much work remaining to be done. The hills still rose above the valley of the Fränkische Saale, and the old ruins were unchanged.
Monday morning, Yitzach's nephew Ari arrived in time for morning prayers, along with his young wife Rivke. Yitzach's wagon and the two carts were already loaded, so all that remained to be done after breakfast was to give Ari the big iron key to the house and hitch up the horses.
"Before you go," Ari said, "you need to hear what I heard this morning. Rivke and I stopped by the town gate on our way over and asked if there was news. There is, and it might matter to you. Magdeberg has indeed fallen, that was not just drunken babble. Last Tuesday, General Tilly's troops set fire to the town."
"Blessed be the righteous judge," Yakov said.
"Amen," Yossie said, a bit surprised.
Ari continued. "With the town burning, the armies will have to move if they are to eat. Be careful what road you take, Uncle Yitz."
"We will," Yitzach said.
"Don't go to Meningen if there is even a rumor that the armies are turning south," Ari said. "Go via Prague instead of Leipzig."
As they set off on the road north along the Fränkische Saale, Yossie continued to mull over the news of the sack of Magdeburg.
"Rav Yakov," he asked, as he and the old rabbi walked alongside their horse, "Why did you say 'Blessed be the righteous judge' about Magdeburg?"
"Because, Yossie, that is what you should say when you hear that someone has died."
"But we don't know anyone who died."
"If they ended the siege by burning the town, tens, hundreds, perhaps thousands died," the old rabbi said, in a sad voice. "You know they are dead, burned to nothing but smoke, and every one of them a divine self portrait, made in His own image, whether they are Lutheran or Catholic or Jewish."
Yossie listened to the quiet clop of the old horse's hooves on the earth and grass of the roadway while he thought. There was little reason for a Jew to sympathize with Lutherans, particularly in Saxony. The Lutherans there had been particularly harsh ever since Luther had penned his diatribe against the Jews. All of that had been generations ago, but it was still fresh in the memory of the Jewish community. Even so, Yossie could not see the burning of Magdeburg as just retribution for the evil that Martin Luther had done.
The fact that the sack had occurred on the thirty-third day of the Omer only added to his confusion. By tradition, that day was a day of release from mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. What good purpose could be served by mass murder on that date? Yossie had listened to the chanting of the Book of Lamentations every summer on the ninth of the month of Av. With his childhood memories of the hardships of the war, he could easily connect the text of Lamentations to the experience of the doomed at Magdeberg.
They heard more news of Magdeburg Tuesday morning as they got ready to leave Neustadt. Yitzach knew the innkeeper there, and he came out to say goodbye to them while they were hitching up the horses.
"Isaac," he said. "I will miss doing business with you."
"You will see plenty of my nephew Leow," Yitzach said, as he checked the attachment of the harnesses to the whiffletree of his wagon. "I put my house and business in his hands. He will come to the Neustadt cattle market as often as I did. Call him Ari and he will know that I trust you."
"Is Ari his secret Jew name?" the innkeeper asked.
"Not a secret," Yitzach said, with a chuckle. "But it means the same as Leow in the language of Israel. Come, we must be off."
"Before you go," the innkeeper said. "Did you hear about Magdeburg?"
"Terrible," Yitzach said. "Blessed be the righteous judge, but I cannot see any justice in the news I have heard."
The innkeeper shook his head sadly. "Indeed. But had you heard that General Pappenheim has pulled his troops south, and that General Tilly's army is spreading south over Saxony to feed itself. Be careful which way you go on the way east!"
"And I hope the armies stay far from this valley," Yitzach said, in parting. "May he who blessed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob bless all those who care for the wayfarers of the world."
Despite the news, none of the travelers suggested turning back. They had little choice but to continue north out of Neustadt. It was possible that Yitzach might have been able to resume his old place in Kissingen, but the others had no home to return to. None of the Jewish communities they knew of to the south or west were prosperous enough to provide more than temporary refuge. Yossie knew that if he and his sister were to return to Hanau, they would be welcome only until they had spent the last of their silver. They were better off as homeless peddlers, but only so long as they could stay away from the war.
Two miles north out of Neustadt, there was a fork in the road. To the north was the road they had intended to follow, the road to Meiningen, Suhl, Erfurt, Weimar and Leipzig. This was the road Moische had been on before, but with the news from the north, it no longer seemed a prudent path.
"We should turn east here," Yitzach said, after the two carts had pulled up to his wagon at the fork.
"Reb Yitzach," Moische said. "I have never been that way."
"Which is safer?" Basya asked. "Would you rather follow a familiar road toward armies locked in battle or a new road that may miss them?"
"It is not entirely a new road," Yitzach said. "I was as far as Hildburghausen once. The road follows the Saale to Königshofen then goes overland. Hildburghausen is a town of tailors and there is one last Jew there."
"How far?" Yossie asked.
"A day's ride on a good horse," Yitzach answered. "At the rate we are going, stopping at every village to buy and sell, we will be there by the Sabbath."
Basya gave a nervous chuckle.
"What's the joke?" Moische asked.
"It will be Shabbos Parshas Bemidbar. The Torah portion begins 'In the wilderness,' and that is where we will be going once we leave the last Jewish house in the land."
Yitzach chuckled. "We aren't already in the wilderness? In any case, we won't have a minyan there unless there is a miracle. You'll have to wait a year to hear the start of the Book of Numbers chanted properly. Rav Yankel, what do you think?"
The old rabbi had listened without comment up to that point. Now he sighed. "God seems to have offered us little choice in this matter. Let us visit this town of tailors."
"Reb Yitzach," Moische asked, after they started on the road east. "What should we buy, what should we sell?"
For the next few miles, that topic consumed the men while they left the women to lead the horses. Yitzach explained that the lands they were passing into were croplands, but that after they reached Hildburghausen, the land would change. The Thüringerwald began there, a region like the Spessart where the economy was dominated by woodsmen, charcoal burners, miners and smiths.
"There is another thing," Yitzach said. "We will leave Catholic Franconia when the hills of the Thüringerwald come in view. You'll be able to sell those Protestant books of yours again."
With each little farm village they visited, Yossie noticed something else. Despite their Jew badges, despite the clear proclamation of status in the women's blue striped scarves and the rectangular combs that supported them, more and more of the people they met did not recognize them as Jews.
They were just strangers to many of the farmers, just refugees like so many others who the war had uprooted. Their Judische Deutsch accents no longer marked them as Jews, but only as being from far away.
Yossie found that there was an unexpected benefit of traveling with Yitzach and his family, the food. Moische's wife Frumah was not a very good cook, so Yossie's sister Basya had had done most of the cooking on the way to Kissingen. She was a competent camp cook, but she was not very creative. Yitzach's wife Chava had quickly taken charge as they traveled onward, and the result was rewarding.
That night, for example, as they camped in a fallow field with the permission of the local village, Chava made bread. She had mixed up a batch of dough in the morning, so that it was ready for baking by nightfall. Of course, they had no access to a kosher oven, but Chava twisted the dough around green willow twigs so they could toast individual servings of bread over their fire.
While the women bustled about their campsite making dinner, the men took care of the horses and then took out their prayer books for the afternoon and evening prayers. Without the minyan of ten men required for the full service, each prayed at his own pace. To keep the commandment to love the Lord with all their strength as well as with all their heart and all their spirit, they swayed to the rhythm of their words.
All of the men prayed aloud, mostly in an undertone, but whenever one paused in his prayer and heard the other say one of the prescribed blessings, he would respond with an amen. So it was that Yossie, who finished his prayers last, was answered with two loud amens as he counted the forty-first day of the Omer.
After dinner, they sat around the embers of their small fire and talked before going to sleep.
"I keep hoping for more news of Magdeburg," Moische said, "but in these little farming villages, it seems that we are telling people the news as often as we are hearing anything new."
"At least there is no news of troops coming our way," Basya said.
Yossie wasn't sure that the lack of news was reassuring. They were traveling on a minor road through villages that seemed out of touch with the larger world. It seemed quite possible that an army could travel faster than rumors of its presence through such a countryside.
"We should hear news tomorrow," Yitzach said. "Either in the town of Königshofen or at the crossroads village where we cross the high road from Meiningen to Bamberg."
"Reb Yitzach, what should we buy and sell tomorrow?" Moische asked. For the next few minutes, the two of them discussed business. They concluded that disposal of the last of their wrought iron from the Spessart should be a priority, before they got too close to the forges of the Thüringerwald. They had been buying scrap iron since they left Kissingen for the same reason.
"What about the paper we bought at Lohr?" Yossie asked. "And when do we start to sell the wine we bought?"
"I think there is a paper mill east of the Thüringerwald," Moische said, "So we should try to sell the rest of the paper on this side of the hills. The wine we hold until we are over the hills. It was the common wine of farmers' tables around Kissingen, here it is still common in inns and taverns. On the other side of the Thüringerwald, this wine will be reserved for the tables of the highborn."
"But Reb Moische, what if our worst fears come true?" Basya asked. "What if the armies do come south?"
"We can hope they come to go west into the lands we have left," Moische said. "Mainz, Frankfurt, Würzburg, those are tempting targets."
"Blessed be he who protects the innocent," Yitzach said. "Wherever the armies go, they strip the land. Perhaps, to be safe, we should buy food, grain and hard cheese. If the armies go elsewhere, we'll lose little. If they come close, we'll make a profit, and if they come too close, it may save our lives."
"That suggests that we should buy quickly, before everyone hears the news," Moische said. "And it suggests that we should stop telling what news we know. When they hear, people will start hoarding, just in case the armies come here."
"A good idea, Reb Moische, but we can likely make the profit safe," Yitzach said. "There won't be many farms in the Thüringerwald, so if we find that the armies are going west, we can sell in the woods to miners and woodsmen. On the other hand, if we find that luck is against us, we should keep as much food as we can as we move east."
"Listening to you men makes me shiver," Basya said. "You make it sound like we are standing in front of a drunkard with a pistol, not knowing whether the ball will go to the left or right."
Yankel chuckled sadly. "Basya, that's exactly where we stand. Yitzach has just given us advice that is, I think, as precious as the advice Yosef gave to Pharaoh when he interpreted the dream of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of lean." The old Rabbi paused. "There is one thing, though. It would be wrong to let a man sell us his grain without letting him know the news. You must tell a man the value of his wares if he offers too low a price."
"Where does it say that in Torah?" Moische asked.
Yitzach answered, quoting Torah. "You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind."
The travelers came in sight of Hildburghausen on Thursday afternoon as they descended into the valley of the Werra. The hills of the Thüringerwald rose to the northeast beyond the town, far higher than the rolling uplands they had crossed since leaving the valley of the Fränkische Saale.
Much of the land they had crossed had been croplands. At every stop, they had purchased whatever grain they could, until they had filled the small wine barrels Moische had bought. In a period of only two days, they had seen a noticeable rise in price as news of southward troop movements became more widely known.
"So Yossie," Yitzach asked, as the two walked beside the pair of horses pulling his wagon. "You and Rav Yankel used to work for the same printer, but there seems to be more than that between you."
Yossie nodded. "Reb Yitz, I was an orphan, and Rav Yankel was my teacher in the Hanau Cheder."
"What happened to your parents?" Yitzach asked. Moische fell back to join them, leaving his wife and daughter in charge of their cart.
"We were in Frankfurt when Fettmilch drove us out. You have to ask Reb Moische about that, I was too young to remember. After we were driven out, we came to Hanau, and then war came and there were hard times. I was five, young and strong enough to survive. My folks died that winter."
"Reb Moische?" Yitzach asked.
"I was seven when Fettmilch ruined Frankfurt. We fled just ahead of the mob into the cemetery. Everyone who didn't make it there was killed. I was old enough to know the story of the Book of Esther, so I knew that when Fettmilch called himself the new Haman, he would be hanged just like Haman was in the Bible. In that, my childish faith was eventually rewarded. We had almost nothing after that, but I remember the charity of complete strangers in the days that followed. Even Christians were ashamed of what Fettmilch had started."
"It seems that we Jews are doomed never to live in one place for very long," Yitzach said.
Nobody responded, so they walked in silence beside the horses for a while, until they were on the bridge across the Werra.
"Reb Yitz," Moische said, "I didn't come back to you to relive that awful day. What I wondered is, how do we find the one Jew who you say lives here? Do we just walk up to people and ask where is the Jew?"
"That would work," Yitzach said, "but he has a name, Gutkind, I think. Was it Samuel Gutkind?"
Hildburghausen had grown too big for its walls, so they were already in the town before they reached the city gate. The guard there sent them around the street that ringed the wall, and in short order, they found their destination.
Samuel Gutkind, as it turned out, was a half burgher, entitled to live within the city but outside the walls. He was not the only Jew. He had a son, and there was an elderly couple living with him as servants. The household reminded Yossie of some of the wealthier Jewish households of Hanau, but without the students and other boarders that filled those houses to the bursting point.
Over dinner, they learned that Samuel was emphatically Samuel or even Herr Gutkind, not Reb Schmuel. He made his living as banker to the merchants and petty nobility of the area. Techncally, he was a Schutzjude, but he seemed to think of himself as a minor court Jew.
They spoke at length about the news from the North. They heard that General Pappenheim had moved to Halberstadt. It was a town none of the travelers had heard of, but Samuel said that he had heard that it was in the Harz mountains. The travelers were alarmed to hear that there had been news from as far south as Erfurt and even Rudolstadt of trouble. Erfurt had been on their intended agenda only a week ago.
"So tell me," Moische said, after they had exhausted the news from the north. "Have you heard any other strange tales recently?"
"Moses, there are always strange tales," Samuel said. "What leads you to ask?"
"Wednesday noon we stopped to do business in Königshofen and we heard quite a tale. The man who told it said that he heard it here in Hildburghausen. What he told us is that the pit of Hell has opened up beside some town to the east of here."
"Schwarzburg," Yossie added. "He said that the very pit of Hell opened there on Sunday." Yossie didn't mention the flash he had seen in the east that day, but he couldn't help but wonder.
"And what did you make of the story?" Samuel asked.
"We thought little of it until evening when we heard another tale in the small crossroads village of Trappstadt, or was it Drebstadt," Moische said, and then paused. "There, we met a merchant going south from Suhl. He said he'd heard the story from the east of Suhl. What he had heard was that on Sunday, the whole world to the east exploded with a flash and a roar like cannon fire. When the noise was finished, where there had once been mountains, there were valleys and where there had once been valleys, there were now mountains."
Moische paused. "After hearing two different tales, we wonder if perhaps something has happened in the Thüringerwald. You see why we ask?"
"I do, Moses Frankfurter, I do," Samuel said. "And I can add to the tale. When I first heard about the pit of Hell opening at Schwarzburg, I thought it was nonsense, of course. But you must know something. I have occasional dealings with the Count. I know some of his men from Schleusingen."
"And?" Moische asked.
"I was in town today. I ran into a man I know, a guard. He said that they had a message from Schwarzburg. An official message, mind you, not just some rumor from an ignorant shepherd."
"So?" Moische asked, after the silence had drawn out for too long. "What did it say?"
"How do I know? Am I privy to the Count's mail? No. But the story is that the pit has swallowed the whole road from Schwarzburg to Rudolstadt, and that it is many miles around. They say that the guards at Swarzburg have sent spies into the pit, and these spies say that they have seen things there that cannot be of this world."
"So is this pit really Hell?" Gitele asked.
Yakov sighed. "These spies are supposed to have gone into the pit and then returned to tell of what they saw. Does that sound like Hell?"
"No, Rav Yankel," she said.
He nodded. "If this was the Christian Hell, I doubt their devil would have let them return. Not only that, but I doubt that the Christians are right about Hell, anyway. Whatever wonder this is, we can be sure that God made it and that, like all of the rest of creation, it contains sparks of the divine as well as any temptations or threats there may be."
Yossie expected Yitzach to object to the Kabalistic reference the old Rabbi had just made. In the last week, he had objected to most such references to what he called 'the absurd kabalistic creation myth.' He would not accept the idea that God's first attempt at creation had ended in failure, with shards of the broken divine spheres scattered through the world.
"Anyway," Samuel went on, "I think that whatever has happened and whatever threats come from this pit, it could be good for us. If the road east is cut, the garrison at Schwarzburg will have to buy supplies from this side of the Thüringerwald. That will bring good silver to the local farms. It is also good news to find that this pit, whatever it is, has blocked the most direct path from the Saxon plains."
"Reb Samuel," Moische asked. "What is good about blocking the road east? We need to go that way."
"The path we need to block is the road south," Samuel said. "There are too many stories of Catholic mercenaries coming south. There are stories of farms burned as far south as Rudolstadt and Badenburg. Where there are raids, I would expect there must be whole mercenary companies not too far behind. If you want to go east, stay well south."
Samuel Gutkind had arranged for their carts to be safely stored in the barn of a townsman who owed him silver. There were enough cats living in the barn that they didn't fear rats getting into their supplies. As a result, they slept securely that night and through the weekend, although not in great comfort. Samuel Gutkind's house had room enough for them, but only one spare bed, and that was taken by the women.
The men talked into the night Thursday after dinner. They wondered what to make of the story of the pit in the Thüringerwald, but that story was so strange that they focused most of their attention on the news of the war. The speed with which the Catholic mercenaries had come south was particularly troubling. Yossie participated in the discussion, but he found it frustrating. They needed more than rumors if they were to find any useful answers to their questions.
Friday, Basya and Gitele made a disturbing discovery about their host. The men were in town, seeing what there was to be bought and sold while they listened for news. The two girls had volunteered to help in the kitchen with the preparation of their Sabbath dinner. There, they found that their host did not keep kosher.
"What do you mean, not kosher?" Yakov asked, when the men had returned to the house to bathe and get ready to greet the Sabbath.
"His bread," Basya said. "After we braided the challah for Shabbat dinner, the cook took it to the Christian baker down the street to be baked in his oven."
The old rabbi sighed. "For a moment, I thought we were having ham for our Shabbat dinner, or bloodwurst, or sour cream in our chicken soup. The bread dough was kosher?"
Basya nodded.
"What about the meat?"
Gitele answered. "Rav Yakov, Saul took care of that. He killed two chickens."
"Well?" the rabbi asked. "Did he do it right? Your father is a shochet; you've seen it done."
"I saw no errors, but the knife he used was just a good carving knife."
"Did he check that the knife edge was perfect first, and did he make the cut in one swift and painless stroke?"
She nodded. "As nearly as I could tell."
Yitzach grumbled, "I should have volunteered my services as a shochet."
The rabbi paused, thinking. "We all knew when we started this trip that it would be hard to keep all of the commandments after we left Franconia. If I were still in Hanau, I wouldn't eat such food, but we aren't in Hanau, or even Kissingen. Rabbi Hillel said we should not judge people until we have been in their place. Tractate Sanhedrin says that we hold people to a lower standard when they live in border towns where they are influenced by non-Jewish neighbors."
The rabbi paused. "Could I keep kosher this well if I lived here bemidbar, in the wilderness? I don't know the answer because I've never tried. In other times, I would have recommended that no Jew should willingly live in a place like this. Now, I find that I would be much worse off if there were no Jews here in Hildburghausen. In any case, it would be wrong to embarrass our host. Yitzach, before the sun sets, bring one of those excellent sausages of yours from the wagon. It will make a good cold lunch tomorrow for all of us, including our host. Bring bottles of your wine for Kiddush and Havdalah."
Rabbi Yakov ben Pinchas of Hanau led services that Sabbath, at the invitation of Samuel Gutkind. Of course, without ten men to make a minyan, they had to skip some of the prayers, but the rabbi had the quotation in hand to comfort them.
"It says in the Torah that in every place where my name is mentioned, I will come and bless you," Yakov reminded them. "The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Chalafta concluded from this that when even one person studies Torah alone, the holy spirit is there."
The travelers devoted Saturday afternoon to study. They were nervous about news from the north and east, but for the duration of the Sabbath, they could escape their concerns. Tradition allowed the Sabbath to be set aside in the face of mortal danger, but only when the threat was immediate. Lacking an immediate threat, all of the travelers welcomed the opportunity to escape into study.
They had only known Yitzach for two weeks, but it was becoming clear that he and Yakov were two of a kind, despite their disagreements over almost everything having to do with the Kaballah. Yossie was fascinated by the chains of argument they wove, and he noticed Moische following the discussion with equal interest.
Their host, on the other hand, was not the studious type. While his guests sat down to an afternoon of study, he excused himself and left for a walk. Yossie was a bit surprised by that. In the towns where he had lived, Jews and Christians never mingled on the weekend.
The freedom to walk the streets on Sunday was even more of a surprise. On Saturdays, the gates of the Hanau and Frankfurt am Main Jewish quarters had been closed by the Jews to keep out the Christians, but on Sunday, it was the Christians who had barred the gates. When Samuel invited them out Sunday afternoon, Yossie had to ask.
"Joseph," Samuel answered, using what Yossie could not help but consider his Christian name. "In the morning, when the Christians are supposed to be in their churches, I would never go out. In the afternoon, though, so long as I don't do anything they will notice as a violation of their Sabbath, there are no real problems. So come with me, gentlemen. I want you to hear with your own ears what I heard yesterday afternoon."
Samuel led the four men on a pleasant stroll around the outer reaches of the town, never leading them into the walled town proper. Their destination was an inn where the road to Schleusingen came down into the town. Yossie doubted the wisdom of entering such a place on the Christian Sabbath, but their host seemed unconcerned. In spite of that, he did urge them into a dark corner before excusing himself to go get the man he wanted them to meet.
Yossie looked around the dark room nervously while they waited. He had been in similar inns along the road from Hanau, and with very mixed results. In some, they had been rudely treated. In others, tolerated for their silver. Sometimes, the owners were friendly enough but other guests had made things difficult. The fact that they could not eat the landlord's food never helped.
"Here, friends," Samuel said, leading a small man to their table. "This is Johann. If you want to leave for the east tomorrow, you need to hear what he has to say. I suggest you buy him a good drink and make the landlord happy."
Johann, as it turned out, was a dispatch rider from Schleusingen. It also turned out that his definition of a good drink was closer to a full meal. He claimed to know every road in the region, and there was little reason to doubt his claim.
Much of Johann's story duplicated what they had already heard, but there were some new details. "We had a messenger from Schwarzburg Friday, asking about buying grain and supplies from this side of the Thüringerwald. That's why I'm here. They say that the pit that has opened blocked their normal supply route from the east, and that even if the road can be reopened, there is a new town in the pit."
"A town?" Moische asked. Yossie noticed that Moische was imitating the local accent surprisingly well. "Why is that a problem?"
"Because," Johann said, "this town is big. The garrison at Schwarzburg has sent spies into the pit, and they say that there is no way this town can feed itself. They say that there isn't enough farmland in the pit to feed the town. It is mostly hills and forests."
"Ah," Moische said, "so they will drive up the price of food all around, whether they buy or steal what they need."
"Right," Johann said. "And there are raiders in the valley of the Saale. Even if the pit had not opened, I think Schwarzburg would be buying food on this side of the hills fairly soon."
"Well," Yakov said, with a smile. "Now, at least, we have proof that it's not the pit of Hell. Even if spies could enter Hell and return, they wouldn't find a town there."
Johann laughed. "Trust a Jew to see the logic of that. The town has a name too. They call it Grantville."
"A French name? How do you know this?" Moische asked.
"I ate with the messenger from Schwarzburg," Johann said. "He hadn't been into the pit himself, but he watched from the wall while a delegation came up out of the pit to speak with the Captain of the guard. After that, before he returned to Schleusingen, the Captain showed him a letter from inside the pit."
"And?" Moische prompted.
"For this much, you owe me another drink," Johann said, raising his empty mug with a grin.
After Johann's request had been satisfied, and after a bit of prompting, he continued his story. "What about the letter from inside the pit? I didn't see the letter myself. What I heard, though, was that it was printed like a book, not written, and that it was signed by a woman with a Jewish name."
He paused briefly, but before they could ask, he waved off their questions. "No, I didn't hear the name. Apparently it was a name the Captain of the guard at Schwarzburg knew, though. Some famous court Jew's name."
"Why are we wasting our time on this?" Moische asked, and then paused to answer his own question. "It is an amazing story, but we are trying to go to Poland. What we really need to know is, what road to the east is the safest?"
Johann paused only briefly. "You can't go through the pit, that is sure. From what I hear, it is straight down except for a path that no horse could follow, much less a cart. To go north of the pit, you would have to go north to Suhl and Badenburg, and the war threatens that route. If I were you, I'd go south. Take the road to Eisfeld, and then either continue south of the Frankenwald, or take the hill road east from Eisfeld until you meet the Saale south of Saalfeld."
"What about the mercenaries in the valley of the Saale?" Moische asked.
"Well, there perhaps, this new town of Grantville will be of some use. There are stories of skirmishes between men from Grantville and Catholic mercenaries from the north. I'm not sure that I believe the stories, but they say that armies will not pass Grantville without paying a price. Even if these are just stories, they might delay the Catholic push south, and if they are true, all the better."
"Why in heavens did you buy goats?" Basya asked shortly after they set out on Wednesday morning. She was annoyed at having to help deal with the animals again.
"We had to buy something with the profit from what we sold in Eisfeld," Moische said. "Yitzach said the goats were a good buy, and it seems that anything edible we can take east will bring a premium. Don't forget what Chava did with our first day's worth of milk last night. That was a good meal."
"I suppose it would be nice to have our own milk for Shavuos," Basya said.
"What worries me is this road," Yossie said, carefully leading the horse and cart around a mud hole. "You can hardly call it a road. It's worse even than the road from Eisfeld yesterday."
At first, Yossie hadn't been happy with Moische and Yitzach about their decision to go east from Eisfeld instead of south. They had spent much of Monday discussing their options as they approached Eisfeld. Moische's notes included considerable material he and his father had gathered on the towns of the Saxon plains, but nothing that would help them on the southern route. Without good information, Moische thought that the path south of the Frankenwald would not get them to Poland by the fall. As far as they knew, that route would probably deliver them to Prague by fall. None of them knew much about Prague, but without a source of income, a winter spent in any of Europe's major Jewish ghettos could easily exhaust their resources. By noon Monday, they had all agreed to risk the route through the southern Thüringerwald and across the south edge of the Saxon plains.
The forest pressed in close on each side of the narrow road through the hills of the Thüringerwald, except where charcoal burners or woodcutters had recently been at work. The day before, as they started into the hills, they had passed a sawmill along the upper Werra, but after that, they had passed into real wilderness. There had been no sign of human activity for miles, until they came to the village of charcoal burners where they had spent the night.
"Tell us again, Reb Moische, why are we going north on a bad road, toward a place that only yesterday we were trying to avoid?" Basya asked.
"Because last night after we ate, I had a long talk with a charcoal burner. While we dickered about the price of charcoal and flour, he told me that the road east was rough. He said it was better for pack horses than wagons, worse even than this road. He also said that we'll be able to sell his charcoal at a forge we are supposed to pass fairly soon, and that the road gets better after that." Yossie had already heard this answer. He had asked much the same question in private, not wanting to alarm the others by openly challenging Moische's judgment.
"But what about this strange new town?" Basya asked. "We heard it called the pit of Hell just a few days ago, and now we're going there?"
"The charcoal burner told me that he'd heard that the road was open. Not only that, he said he'd heard that the road through Grantville is now the best road to the Saale valley."
"We should trust this man?" Basya asked.
"We will find out soon enough," Moische said, with a shrug. "The man said that the edge of the pit is less than a day's travel. If it turns out he was wrong about the road, we should be able come back to him tomorrow and tell him about it."
"Unless there are demons in the pit of Hell," Basya said, under her breath so that only Yossie could hear.
Silence fell on the group as they walked along with their horses. It was broken only by the muffled clop of hooves, the groaning of loaded wagon axles and the occasional bleat of a goat. The track wound northward through the forest for some miles, with only scattered stumps and clearings providing evidence of human presence.
Gitele finally broke the gloomy silence. "Basya, get out your Shmuelbuch. Let's have a song."
For the next mile, song rang out through the forest. As usual, Yakov objected under his breath, but Yossie noticed after they had been singing for a while that the old rabbi's lips were moving with the words.
They fell silent when they came in sight of a small cluster of woodsmen's cottages. Up to that point, the track they had been following ran north along a broad rounded ridge. At the little village, the road seemed to get even worse as it turned east and descended into a small valley.
They had to go carefully down the steep valley. At times, they had to walk beside the wheels of their carts, ready to grab hold of a spoke to ease the load on the horses. The brook they were following was of no account at first, but each muddy trickle they passed added to it. As the brook grew, the descent grew even steeper.
By noon, they could hear the sounds of a forge in the valley below them. The sound of the trip hammer reached them first, and then the rhythmic splash of a waterwheel grew to fill the silence between hammer blows. A shoulder of the hillside blocked their view of the forge until they were almost on it, and then they found themselves in a small village where their valley met a much larger one.
The master smith came out to deal with them while his apprentices continued at work. Yossie was drawn by the orange glow of the iron bar the apprentices were manipulating under the trip hammers. As in the smithies he had seen in the Spessart, the great shaft of the water wheel was made from a single tree trunk that extended the entire width of the building. There were cams on the shaft at many different points. Some were simple pegs set into the shaft to work small equipment while others were blocks of wood pegged and bound to the shaft. One cam worked the bellows for the forge while another cam worked the trip hammer. Two more cams were positioned under the arms of a great bellows that was directed into a large furnace. That bellows was idle, with its arms propped up so they didn't bear on their cams.
"Yossie!" Moische called. "It's time to dispose of the scrap iron."
Yossie went back to the carts to make sure they didn't sell the scraps he'd set aside.
"Explain to me again," Moische asked, "why we don't want to sell the broken knife blades?"
Yossie hesitated. "I want them. I don't think I can explain it properly, but there is something I learned to do from Master Hene that I want to try someday. To do it, I need good steel, and knife steel is good."
The smith weighed their scrap, minus Yossie's small hoard of broken blades. Once the weight was known, Moische and the smith began dickering. Yossie listened, fascinated both by the smith's accent and by the way Moische was adapting his own speech to match.
When it came time for the smith to pay for the charcoal and scrap, he turned to Moische. "There is one problem. Food is expensive, and until my son returns from Suhl, there will be no silver to spare."
Moische shrugged, "Silver attracts thieves. What can you offer in trade?"
"Wrought iron bars."
"Iron bars?" Moische asked. "Where am I going to sell iron bars? Don't you have something useful I could sell? Shovels, hoes, sewing needles?"
"I make tools for the mines up the valley to the west, nothing you could sell. But to make the tools, I have to make good iron bars first. Those, you can sell to any smith, anywhere." His expression broadened into a mild grin. "It must be easier to haul bars out of the hills than your shovels or sewing needles. Perhaps the people in this new town of Grantville will want iron bars. I hear there are great craftsmen there."
"What do you know of this Grantville?" Yitzach asked.
"Not much," the smith said, scratching his head. "They say it is a place of wonders. Two weeks ago, there was just the wild defile of the Schwarza. Then they say there was a flash, and there was a great pit with a town in the bottom. Now, just this Monday and in just one day, I hear that the people of Grantville built almost a mile of good road so that the way into the pit is open."
"Is the road open to the Saale?" Moische asked.
"So I hear," the smith answered.
"Have you heard anything about how the people of this town treat strangers passing through?"
"There are strange stories. They are said to be very polite, treating common men like princes. On the other hand, there is a story that ten of them fought a battle with a hundred of General Tilly's mercenaries and killed every one. And then there is the story that they have welcomed accursed Jews into their midst. What of this is true and what is just idle chatter I cannot say."
Yossie was still thinking about what the smith said as they forded the Schwarza. It was reassuring that there were no more rumors of Hell opening ahead of them, but even the story of the new road was alarming. Could a town possibly build a mile of mountain road in a day?
The ford across the Schwarza was well traveled, but the bank was steep enough that they had to put their shoulders to the spokes to help their horses pull their loaded carts up out of the water.
"Do you think he knew we were Jews?" Basya asked, after they had worked the last cart up onto the road along the north bank.
"I don't think so." Yossie said. "I hate to say that I prefer ignorance, but I think I prefer it to having to explain being a Jew to people who speak so casually of our damnation."
The valley of the Schwarza was deep, winding and narrow, but the bottom was flat and the road was better than anything they had seen since Eisfeld. Near each little cluster of houses, there were kitchen gardens, with spring vegetables starting to show green against the carefully tilled black soil. Most of the open land in the valley was pasture, home to cattle, sheep and goats.
The valley reminded Yossie of the valley of the Lohrbach in the Spessart, although the hills here were higher. Like the Lohrbach, this was an industrial valley. Shortly after they crossed the Schwarza, they passed a copper smelter that poured a thin stream of acrid smoke into the air above.
"Reb Moische," Yossie asked, "how do you shift your accent so readily?"
"What do you mean?"
"When you speak to people here, you speak in their accent."
"I don't really notice myself doing it. I suppose it's part of being a merchant." Moische paused, looking at the people watching them from a cluster of houses they were approaching. "Yossie, tell me what you see?"
Yossie looked. "A little village?"
"There are too many people here," Moische said. "And there were too many people in that village by the forge."
"What do you mean?" Yossie asked.
"It is like the Judengasse in Frankfurt," Moische said. "There, we lived four or five families in a house because the Germans made us live that way. Why are they living that way here?"
As they walked onward next to their loaded wagons, Yossie looked more carefully at the village they were passing. Indeed, it was crowded. There were women working in the kitchen gardens and men working in the pastures beyond, but there were also healthy men and women who seemed to have nothing to do.
Just beyond the village, there was another copper smelter, and then the valley turned. The view opened up to the northwest as they rounded the bend. The flat valley floor went on for about a mile, and then it was blocked by a low hill that was crowned by the black stone battlements of a castle. It could only be Schwarzburg castle.
The road rose slowly along the northwest wall of the valley to the north end of the castle. As they walked up the gentle grade, they saw that the Schwarza looped south around the other end of the castle through a narrow defile. The hills rose sharply on both sides, far higher than the castle, but above the castle itself, there was only sky.
No castle is complete without at least a small village nearby. Schwarzburg was no exception, with several houses and a tavern clustered by the ramp up to the gate. A rough road came down the hillside to the gate, and the crossroads at the gate served as a small village square.
It was only when the travelers reached the crossroads that they saw the enormity of what had happened to the east. To the north and south of Schwarzburg, the high hills of the Thüringerwald ended in mirror smooth cliffs curving gently eastward. Beyond the cliffs, the entire country changed, with hills that were both lower and rougher. Even the trees were a lighter shade of green.
Yossie stood in silence, stunned by the sight. Yakov spoke a blessing under his breath. "Praised be the Lord, God of the universe, who makes the wonders of creation."
"Amen," Yossie answered, oblivious to the guard approaching behind him.
"It's quite a sight," the guard said, startling all of them.
"Yes," Yitzach answered. Yossie found the guard's accent difficult, stronger even than the accents of the people they had spoken to at the forge.
"Sir," Moische began. "I noticed as we came down the valley that the villages we passed seem crowded. Have people been fleeing this, this . . ." He broke off in mid sentence and waved at the strange land to the east, "from this Grantville?"
The guard looked at Moische closely. "So you have heard some of what has happened?"
"We have been hearing rumors for a week as we came east. First, they said that the pit of Hell had opened here, but I never imagined anything this big."
"I was here when it happened, "the guard said. "You would have thought it was Hell, too, with the great flash of light and the loud bang. Then, there was the roar and steam that came from the great mill down there." He paused. "You are right that there are too many people in the valley, but Grantville is not the reason. They fled up the Schwarza ahead of bands of stragglers and foragers who have come south to strip the land since the murderous business at Magdeburg. Once the pit opened, the return to the Saale valley was blocked until the road was opened. Now, some have been brave enough to return to their homes through the pit, and it seems that this town of Grantville has shown that it can offer some protection."
"So the road really is safe?" Moische asked.
"So it seems," the guard said, speaking as if he really did not believe it himself.
"By the way," Moische asked, "is it possible that the castle would need to buy flour or onions or fine wine? We have them to sell."
While Moische dealt with the guard and then with the castle steward, Yossie excused himself and walked down toward the edge of the pit.
The view was fascinating. After it looped south of the castle, the Schwarza came north and then plunged over the edge of the pit in a waterfall. Beyond the waterfall, there was a valley that was much lower, and in that valley was a strange building. It was like nothing Yossie had ever seen. It was gigantic. Made of red brick, the building had windows bigger than any cathedral window. It was surrounded by towers and secondary structures, some of brick, others made of materials that Yossie did not immediately recognize. Yossie guessed it was the great mill that the guard had mentioned, although neither noise nor steam came from it.
The raw scar of a new road wound up from the valley below to one of only two places where the hills within the wall of cliffs came up to the level of the Schwarza valley. From there, the new road continued a short distance to meet the old road down from the castle gate. The banks of the new road were a loose jumble, but the road surface itself was packed hard and scraped to perfection except where wheels and hooves had disturbed the new surface.
At the point where the new road crossed the line of the cliffs there was a little hut. Despite its strange construction, Yossie could see that it was a guard hut. He hesitated briefly and then decided to investigate. He had no reason to believe that the guard hut would be any different from the many guard posts he had passed at city gates.
A man stepped out to bar his way when he came within twenty paces of the hut. Yossie had never had a chance to look closely at different kinds of guns, but there was no doubt that the man was carrying a gun of some kind. He wasn't pointing the gun at anything as he stood there, blocking the road. In fact, his posture was not that different from the way a pikeman would have barred a city gate.
Yossie slowed, but he continued to approach the guard. It seemed plain enough that whoever had built the road had the right to collect tolls for its use. Yossie would not have been surprised if the guard were to demand payment of Jew taxes.
The man's clothing was as odd as the hut. It was cut close to the body and very well tailored. At the same time, he could see that it was worn. It seemed odd that a man who could afford such excellent tailoring would allow himself to wear clothing that was beginning to fray or, for that matter, to take a job as a guard.
"Can you read?" a second man called from inside the hut, in strongly accented German. Yossie hadn't even seen the man until he spoke.
"Yes," Yossie answered. He was puzzled both by the question and by the construction of the hut. Inside the very thin wooden planking, there was a second wall that seemed to be made of piled sacks of something.
The paper the man handed Yossie was even more remarkable. It was printed using a type font that looked like the fonts used in many books he had seen from Italy and Holland. The language was a literate German, but the spellings and wording were odd.
Welcome to Grantville, We do not pretend to understand how Grantville was transported to this time and place, but it was a shock to us. At one moment we were living in the state of West Virginia in the United States of America in the year 2000. The next moment, we found ourselves in the midst of the Thüringerwald in the year 1631. Most of us speak English, so we ask for your patience.
While we are eager to welcome visitors, we must warn you that we take the law seriously. We do not tolerate murder, theft, rape or fraud. Our ideal is swift, impartial justice, free from bribery or favoritism.
As you travel into Grantville, beware of traffic. Some of our vehicles are self propelled and very fast compared to what you are familiar with. We urge you to stay to the right side of the road so that oncoming vehicles can pass to your left.
Many of our customs may surprise you, just as many of your customs will surprise us. As we meet, expect occasional misunderstandings, and try to be tolerant. We hope that these warnings help you to enjoy your visit to Grantville.
Yossie read the strange document through again. The mixture of topics was dismaying, jumping from law to traffic to the most improbable topic of all. "The year 2000?" Yossie asked, looking up at the man who'd handed him the paper. "On the Christian calendar?"
"The year 2000 on the Christian calendar," one of the men replied, speaking in slow English. The words were similar enough to the German that Yossie could follow.
"Can you write?" the man in the hut asked, awkwardly reading the line from a piece of paper. When Yossie said yes, the man handed him a small board with a sheet of paper clipped to it, along with the strangest pen Yossie had ever seen. "Write your answers in the blank spaces after each question," he read, stumbling over some of the words, "and write as you would for a child to read."
Yossie stared briefly at the shiny silver clip that held the paper to the board and at the strange pen. The paper had questions on it, though, and it seemed that he was required to answer them.
The idea of printing a form with blank spaces to be filled in by someone else was not entirely new to Yossie, but he had never encountered a form like this before. Names of people traveling together? Number of carts or wagons? Place of origin? Place of destination? Merchandise for sale? Do you seek refuge in Grantville?
Some of the questions were easy, others required squeezing in quite a bit in a small space. Professions of travelers? Merchant, teacher, printer, and butcher was the best short answer Yossie could give in the space available.
Yossie felt a bit foolish because his handwriting looked almost illiterate. Part of the problem was trying to write with such a strange pen, and part of it was writing while standing holding a clipboard. The real problem, though, was that he had to write his answers in the Roman alphabet, not the comfortable Hebrew alphabet that he had grown up with. As Yossie worked through the questions, he realized that he was better at setting type in Roman letters than he was at writing them out by hand.
The rest of the group arrived shortly after Yossie had handed the finished form to one of the men. For the next few minutes, he answered questions from his friends, frequently by saying that he didn't know the answer. He was so busy describing what he had learned that he hardly noticed the return of the guard who had taken the paper with all of his answers.
"Welcome to Grantville," the man said, reading awkwardly from another sheet of paper. "Please go down the road here. Drive carefully, and where there is space, keep to the right when there is traffic. A guide will meet you before you have gone far."
The next hour went by in a confusing whirlwind. The new road down into the valley was familiar in form, mere dirt, if unnaturally made and unusually smooth. The road at the bottom, though, was unfamiliar. The surface was too perfect, as if the entire road was a single smooth grey slab of stone. Their carts seemed to traverse it with no effort at all. There were so many strange things that it was only when they were well down into the valley of Grantville that Yossie noticed what the guards had not done. They had not demanded any silver, neither a toll for use of the road nor Jew taxes!
Their guide met them while they were passing the great mill. His clothing and weapons matched those of the guards at the border, but he was riding a horse. When he joined them, he nodded politely and then fell in beside the team pulling Yitzach's wagon.
The gigantic brick building of the great mill was imposing, but the strange woven wire fencing surrounding it signaled something stranger. There was also a huge pile of charcoal, if that was what it was. It was a far greater supply than could possibly be used by any forge or glassworks that Yossie had ever seen.
Beyond the mill was a small village, or at least Yossie took it to be a village. It was a cluster of long rectangular houses, some of them sitting on strange black wheels. The entire village sat on ground that looked freshly scraped, as if the village had only existed for a few days.
When they finally came to the town of Grantville, nothing about it was familiar. There was no doubt that it was a town, even though the houses were too far apart. Some houses were brick, but many were apparently built of sawn planks. All of the houses had too many windows, and many had panes of glass larger than Yossie had ever seen before. Strangest of all was the fact that there was no town wall. In fact, Yossie saw no signs of any defensive works.
As the surroundings grew progressively more alien, the horses and goats grew skittish. They shied away from the strange wheeled vehicles parked by the side of the road. Yossie guessed that the bright colors or the dazzle of light off of the highly polished surfaces was the problem. When one of the vehicles came into sight moving toward them, it came faster than a gallop yet it had no visible source of power.
Their guide held up his hand in warning, motioning them to the right side of the road as it came toward them. The vehicle slowed as it passed. As Yossie held tightly to his horse, he caught a brief glimpse at least three people through the perfect glass windows of the strange vehicle. After the vehicle had passed, Yossie found himself laughing at the encounter and at the antics of the goats.
They saw men, women and children on walkways beside the streets, but few people were actually walking in the streets. The men were mostly dressed like the men they had encountered at the guard post, but they also saw two men who looked like common soldiers. The women were a shock. To say that they were dressed scandalously would be an understatement. Some wore clothes that were the same as men's clothing, well tailored and close enough to the body to reveal every curve. Other women wore skirts or short trousers that showed entirely too much flesh. While Yossie could not help staring, he noticed that the men nearby did not seem to notice anything unusual.
Eventually, their guide dismounted and then gestured that they should follow. "Come, comen," he said, demonstrating how similar the word was in English and German.
A woman came from a nearby brick building to meet them. "Welcome to Grantville," she said, in strongly accented but fluent German. She turned to their guide and they exchanged a quick babble of words. Yossie guessed that it was English, and then she turned back to them. "Your wagons will be safe," she said. "The animals are welcome to eat the grass. Come in please."
She led them through a door that was made from a single perfect pane of glass. Next to that was a window that was made of an even larger pane. Just those two panes were worth a king's ransom but the room inside was obviously not a center of wealth. The table around which they were invited to sit was old and worn, and no two of the strange metal chairs seemed to match.
"My name is Claudette Green," the woman said, taking out a sheet of paper. "I'm a Red Cross volunteer. Our men at Schwarzburg say you are from Frankfurt am Main, Hanau and Bad Kissingen. Am I right?"
Yossie was puzzled by the term red cross; he wondered if it might be a Christian order of some kind. What puzzled him even more was how she knew what he had written on the printed form at Schwarzburg.
Yitzach grumbled. "I have never heard it called Bad Kissingen."
She frowned at a bright red book that said something like Baedecker written on the cover. "Is the town Bad Kissingen, on the Fränkische Saale river, between Bad Neustadt and Hammelberg?"
"It must be the same town," Yitzach said, "But nobody calls Kissingen and Neustadt bath towns." He paused to scratch his head. "Is this perhaps something from the future?"
The woman, Frau Green, frowned. "I think this is something from my past and your future. One or two hundred years before my time, there was a belief that bathing in mineral springs would cure disease. Over the years, many towns that had such springs changed their names to advertise the fact. Does that make sense?"
"There are salt springs in Kissingen," Yitzach said, with a nervous chuckle. "A valuable source of salt, but some people do say soaking in the springs soothes the aches and pains of age."
While the woman went over much of the information that Yossie had written on the paper at Schwarzburg, Yossie continued to wonder how the information had come to her. Certainly, nobody had passed them on the road as they came into town. As Yossie studied the woman, he realized that his initial guess about Frau Green's age was obviously wrong. She was not a young woman, but she was in very good shape. Her clothing would have seemed scandalous only an hour ago, but her skirts were longer than most they had seen on the street, and her sleeves were full length.
While Frau Green asked about rumors they had heard about troop movements, Yossie wondered about the table where they sat. It looked like wood, but the feel of the table top was more like stone, and where one corner was chipped, he could see that it was a thin layer of something like horn glued down on top of what could only be thin iron plate.
"You listed grain as something you have to sell," Frau Green said. "Is it good for planting?"
"I think so." Moische said.
"If it is good, we need it to help save lives this coming winter. We must plant every acre we can. Raiders have stripped the valley of the Saale, so there is no margin of safety for the people. Will you sell?"
Just when Yossie expected the dickering to begin, she changed the subject. "You said you were going to Poland. I have a warning about that. The road east from here is very unsafe. We think we can defend Grantville and some of the nearby German towns, but the situation farther east is bad. Also, our history books tell us of a great battle near Leipzig later this summer."
During the silence that followed, Yossie tried to grapple with the idea of a history book from the future. Would it be like the Book of Life in which God seals man's fate at the close of Yom Kippur? Even as he thought of that, he realized that it could not be. A book written by mere men could not be divinely perfect. That was reserved for God alone.
"What would you have us do, turn back to Frankfurt?" Moische asked, breaking the silence.
"No," Frau Green said. "The history books also tell us that King Gustav of Sweden will be in Frankfurt this coming winter. Of course, our history books say nothing of Grantville being here. Our presence could change the course of the war, but for now, I believe that you would be safer here than either to the east or west."
"But," was all Moische could say. "Do your history books say how the Swedes will get from Leipzig to Frankfurt?"
"I wish they did, but no," she said. "There is no need to make any decisions in haste. You said you wanted to rest from your travels for a few days. Do so. We can find a place for you . . ."
She was interrupted by a loud ringing from an unfamiliar looking device that sat on a small desk in a corner.
"Excuse me," she said, walking over to the source of the interruption. The device stopped ringing when Frau Green picked up part of it.
To Yossie's amazement, she began to speak into the thing as if it was another person. "Hello," she began, an unfamiliar word, "Lesley Hawker?" Very faint sounds of a woman's voice replied to her words, apparently from the device itself. This strange conversation continued for a minute or two.
"Pardon me," Frau Green said, finally, lowering the device from her face. She paused, looking at their confused expressions. "This is a telephone," she said. "It is a machine for speaking to someone far away."
Yossie recognized the Greek roots of the strange word as the woman explained it in her strangely accented German. Was this the device that allowed Frau Green to learn what he had written back at Schwarzburg?
"I have found a farm at the edge of town where your animals can spend the weekend in comfort. I am not so sure that I can find as much comfort for you. There is an old barn on the farm where you could store your carts, but I have no beds to offer. I must apologize that there are many people in town who will not take guests, and there are eight of you."
Moische smiled. "We have spent nights under the stars before. Is there somewhere we could wash?"
Frau Green resumed her strange conversation using the telephone, pausing at one point to push at little buttons on the device with her fingers, and then she set it down and smiled. "It is set. Orville Mobley will be here soon. He owns the farm where you can stay, and he says you may use his bath room. He will show you where he lives on the way to his farm; the distance is not far."
It was almost sunset by the time Herr Mobley showed them to the run-down barn that would be their home for the next few days. They sent him away with two bottles of wine in payment and then the men set to work saying their afternoon prayers. At the end of their evening prayers that day, they blessed the forty-ninth and final day of the Omer.
Saturday afternoon, Yossie, Moische, Yitzach and Yakov were sitting on improvised benches in the open door of Herr Mobley's barn. They were engrossed in study when they saw a stranger approaching up the road from Grantville. The man was dressed like many of the men they had seen in Grantville in the past few days.
"Hello!" the man called, as Yitzach and Yakov closed their Bibles and set them out of sight. They had heard that word hello often enough in the last few days to understand that it was a neutral greeting.
Yossie and Moische got up to greet the stranger.
"Good afternoon," the man said, in the clearest German they had so far encountered among the people of Grantville. "I should introduce myself. I am Albert Green. My wife Claudette has been helping with the Red Cross. She told me that you met with her on Wednesday afternoon."
"We did," Moische said.
There was an awkward moment of silence. Yossie wanted to ask what the Red Cross was. The mere presence of the word cross in the name suggested that it was a Christian organization, and that made him cautious about the topic.
"Well," Herr Green continued, "I came up here to welcome you to Grantville, and to say that if you wish to stay in town, the Red Cross has found more permanent places that might be good for you."
"What is this Red Cross?" Yossie asked, curiosity overcoming his reluctance to invite conversation that might touch on religion.
"It is an organization, a charity that is devoted to helping the victims of war and disasters. In the world we come from, it was founded in response to the horrors of the great wars of the nineteenth century."
"What kind of place have you found for us?" Moische asked, turning the conversation away from dangerous ground and interrupting Yossie's next question.
"You are eight?" Herr Green asked. "How many families are you?"
It took them a while to explain that they were really three independent groups. Along the way, Yossie found himself explaining that he and his sister Basya were not Yakov's children.
"Let me see if I understand," Herr Green said. "Joseph, you and your sister, Basya—that name is strange to me—are from Hanau. Jacob here is also from Hanau. And that is the only reason you use Hanauer as your last name?"
"Yes," Yossie said. "What did you expect?"
"In America, where we come from, and in Europe in our time, last names were always inherited. I am Albert Green because my father was named Green, and my grandfather before him. The people I have studied about in this time, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli and other churchmen, they had family names too."
"Many Germans do," Yossie said, carefully avoiding the far more natural word goyim.
"Well, let's return to the question of housing," Herr Green said, abandoning what could have become a dangerous topic. "When the Ring of Fire brought Grantville here, some families were out of town, and their houses now sit empty. Also, there are some houses that have been empty longer. Grantville was not a prosperous town, and people moved away. If you were one big family we would have difficulty finding a large enough house, but if we can divide you between two smaller houses, it should be easy."
"Surely you do not propose to simply give us houses?" Moische asked.
"No, Moses," Herr Green said with a smile. "There will be a," he paused, "I don't know how to explain a mortgage, a loan to pay off. After the loan is paid, you will own the house."
Yossie was somewhat taken aback by the man's smile. It was not the fact that he was smiling that bothered him, but rather, the perfection of his teeth. "So how do we earn the money to pay off this loan?" he asked, remembering their discussion of the financial risk of spending the winter in Prague.
"Get jobs. Joseph, you are a strong young man, do you have a trade?"
"I worked for a printer in Hanau."
"Perhaps you could be a printer here. What Grantville really needs, though, is strong men who are willing to work in the coal mine. I think we will be able to employ any man who is willing and able to work. Coal, or what we can make from it will be essential to our ability to defend Grantville against the war that now surrounds us.
"Moses, you are another strong young man, do you have a trade?"
"I am a merchant, as much as that is possible with the war."
"A shopkeeper?"
"No, I travel, buy here, sell there. The war has ruined trade, though."
Herr Green paused, and then smiled, "It may be that your services will be valuable. There are things Grantville will need to buy from the world around us, and things I think we will be able to sell.
"Isaac?" he asked, turning. "What about you?"
Yitzach paused before he answered. "I am a butcher, and in Kissingen, I was also a cattle merchant."
"People will always want to eat," Herr Green said. "Grantville may need a butcher. Your services may be quite valuable if you know the cattle markets of the region well enough to buy beef to feed us.
"Jacob, you haven't said much," he went on, "what is your trade?"
"I worked a little for the same printer as Joseph, but my main job was as a teacher."
"What did you teach?" Herr Green asked, interested.
"Mostly, reading and writing to young children, but I have also taught," he paused. "I have taught Bible to older students."
Yossie knew that Yakov's awkward pause had been a stumble over the words Talmud and Torah, neither of which was a word appropriate for use in a conversation with an unknown Christian.
"Good," Herr Green exclaimed. "I have also taught Bible. Right now, though, Grantville needs German teachers. Do you think you could help in our school, teaching German to our children, or even to adults?"
The old rabbi was startled. "It would be permitted? You do know that my German, well, it is not the local dialect."
"We have a whole town full of people who speak nothing but English and need to learn German, and we have only a very few who speak the language. I may be the only one who has studied German the way it is spoken in this century. Indeed, I have noticed that your accent is different from the local Germans, but that seems a small matter when you are an experienced teacher.
"Are there any questions you have?" he asked changing the subject, and then he immediately interrupted anything they might have asked. "Tomorrow is Sunday. If you want to go to church, I can help. Grantville has many churches. We have a Catholic church and several different Protestant churches."
Yossie was not alone in being surprised at the man's ignorance. It was one thing to meet a charcoal burner or a smith who did not recognize that they were Jews, but this man was obviously well educated.
Yakov cleared his throat, and then spoke carefully. "Herr Green, we have heard hints about Grantville's toleration of religious differences even when we were in Hildburghausen last week, when many people were still calling it the pit of Hell. Now you tell us of Catholic and Protestant churches together in the town. Am I right?"
"Yes," he said, and then hesitated. "People called Grantville the pit of Hell?"
"Yes," Yakov said, with a smile. "The people of Schwarzburg saw it as a great pit opening in the earth, with thunder and lightning. The first rumors that reached the west from there were terrifying."
"Yet you came here? You are very brave men."
"Either that or we are fools," the Rabbi said. "The story you people tell of coming from the year 2000 is hardly reassuring. We tried very hard to avoid coming here, until all of the alternatives sounded even worse. But we were speaking about toleration of religious differences in Grantville, were we not?"
"When my wife told me about your group, she said that there was something that set your group apart from other Germans she had met. If it is a matter of religion, truly, you need not fear."
"Thank you," Yakov said, and then hesitated. "We are Jews."
Yossie did not know what reaction he expected, but he certainly did not expect Herr Green's reaction.
"I must apologize for my stupidity," Herr Green said. "I have intruded on your Shabbat and I have been blind to hints that a man of my education ought to have seen. Ah, shalom alachum to you."
"Alechum sholem," Yakov said, while Yossie marveled. The fact that the man had pronounced the Hebrew greeting at all was incredible, even though the man's pronunciation was quite bad. Outside of the print shop in Hanau, he had never encountered a Christian who knew any Hebrew at all.
"Those yellow circles on your coats, they identify you, yes?" Herr Green asked, pointing.
"They are Jew badges," Yakov said.
"They are a symbol of one of the most shameful things that Christians have ever done," Herr Green said forcefully. "I say this as a committed Christian. Under the laws of Grantville, nobody will ever require such badges. If you wish to remove them, you are welcome to do so."
"Imperial law demands that we wear the badge," Yakov said.
"Imperial law does not apply in Grantville!" Herr Green said.
"That is a dangerous boast," Moische said. "I am curious, though, about the multiple churches of Grantville. I am no expert on Christians, but so far as I understand, Protestants believe that Catholics are doomed to eternal hellfire for their beliefs, and Catholics believe the same of Protestants. How did this change in your time, so that Protestants and Catholics could live together in peace?"
Yossie knew that Moische and the old Rabbi were deliberately exaggerating about the inability of Catholics and Protestants to live together. In lands where the Catholic Church had forcefully put down Protestants, relations were indeed grim, but in towns such as Hanau, however, the churches did coexist.
Herr Green frowned. "We never really solved our problems. Perhaps we never will. Some churches have agreements with each other, but others allow no compromise on issues of doctrine. If we have made any progress, it's in learning to live and work with people with whom we disagree. You cannot force a person to believe in God! In my country, the United States of America, we determined that the government must remain neutral in all matters of religion."
Herr Green paused. "I suppose I should be as open with you as you have been with me. I am a minister, a pastor in a church that was, in parts of America, one of the dominant Protestant churches. Now, I find that when I try to explain my church to German Catholics or to German Lutherans, they react as if I am a dangerous heretic."
None of them responded to this remarkable admission. After an awkward pause, Herr Green, or rather, Pastor Green continued. "My church is called the Baptist Church. There are a few Baptists in this time in England, and there are some common beliefs shared between Baptists of my time and some of the Anabaptists of this time."
He paused, but again, there were no questions. "As I said before, when my wife met with you, she said that there was something different about you. I came up here to find out about that. I came to welcome you and tell you about the churches of Grantville. What I hoped for was that you might be a group of Anabaptists, so that I could speak about religion to Germans of this time who would not consider me as a cousin of the Devil."
There was another pause. This time, though, it seemed that Pastor Green was done. Moische broke the silence. "I do not know how to respond to what you have said. I wonder, though, about what you said about our welcome to Grantville. Do your offers of houses and work change now that you know we are Jews?"
"No," Pastor Green said. "You are still welcome."
Yakov cleared his throat. "Even if we Jews are doomed to burn in Hell by your Christians from the future, just as we are by the Christians of this time?"
"I would not have put it so bluntly, uh, is it Rabbi Jacob?"
"Yes, I am a rabbi," Yakov said, surprised.
"You are right," Pastor Green said, "That is how many Christians see Jews. We sincerely wish you would accept the salvation offered by Jesus Christ. Despite that, you are welcome. It would be entirely wrong for us to make your welcome to our community conditional on your acceptance of any faith."
Yakov nodded slowly. "I thank you for your honesty, Pastor Green. You have certainly given us something to think about as this second day of Shavuos comes to an end."
"Second day of what?" Pastor Green asked.
"The festival of Shavuos, Christians call it Pentecost."
"Pentecost?" Pastor Green asked. "Why, I suppose you are right, tomorrow is the seventh Sunday after Easter. The feast of weeks? Isn't the Hebrew for week shavuah? So in that case, the plural is shavuoth, isn't it?"
Yakov nodded. "Jews from Spain, Africa and Turkey, pronounce it shavuot. We Jews in Germany pronounce it shavuos."
"It's good to find that the Hebrew course I took in seminary wasn't a complete loss," Pastor Green said, with a smile. "Shavuos is a harvest festival, am I right? The day of the first fruits?"
Yossie was amazed to hear such a conversation as Yakov replied, "In Shemos, what you would call the book of Exodus, Shavuos is described that way. It is in the section called Ki Tisha, soon after the story of the Golden Calf."
"Chapter thirty-four," Pastor Green said.
"Yes," Yakov said, with a smile. "It is one of the three Chagim, what is the German word . . . pilgrimage festivals. But it is more than that. We also consider it a celebration of the giving of the commandments at Mount Sinai, because the very same text connects Shavuos so closely to Sinai."
Pastor Green seemed to enjoy this turn of conversation. "For Christians, we also think of it as a commemoration of revelation, but in our case, for the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, as recorded in the Book of Acts. But I am curious about one thing, you said the second day of, of Shavuos? I don't remember anything in the Bible about two days."
"Your memory is right," Yakov said. "I think you know that the Jewish calendar is based on the lunar month. According to the Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin, each month was counted from the sighting of the new moon by observers on the walls of the Temple in Jerusalem. If we were in the holy land, we would celebrate for only one day, but here we are in galus, in exile far from the land. To account for the uncertainty in the date, the Talmud says we should celebrate for an extra day. Of course, we also have an arithmetic formula that lets us know when the new moon will be observed in Jerusalem, but we keep the festivals for an extra day anyway, to remind us of our exile."
Yossie had never heard Yakov speak so freely about Jewish matters to a Christian, even in the protected context of Master Hene's print shop. Yossie was used to censoring his language carefully when speaking to Christians, carefully avoiding the use of the Hebrew words that made up a large fraction of his Jewish dialect. Now, he was shocked to hear Yakov letting down his guard.
Pastor Green excused himself to leave shortly after that, and then it was time for their afternoon prayers. After they had finished the final meal of the Sabbath, though, they talked long into the evening about what they had learned from Pastor Green about the town of Grantville and the strange world from which it had come.
"Reb Yakov," Yossie asked, after the talk had turned from detail back to generalities. "I still don't understand something. What made you start talking about the Talmud with a Protestant preacher?"
The old rabbi paused, stroking his beard. "It was a mistake, at first. I never should have mentioned Shavuos to him, but I did. Once the topic came up, though, he seemed to enjoy it, so I said more, and more. I suppose you could say I was testing the tolerance he spoke of with such evident pride."
"So have you reached any conclusions?" Basya asked.
"Have you?" Yakov asked.
"Reb Yakov, I wish I'd been listening to the original conversation," she said. "But listening to you men talking, it sounds like this preacher may be telling the truth about Grantville."
"He may be," Yakov said. "So I think we will stay a while to learn more about these people."