Sister Emily's Lightship by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online

with them every day. They do not know story from history. It is all the same to them.”
    Shana shrugged and went back to her own work; but as she said the prayers over the Sabbath candles that evening, she added an extra prayer to keep her beloved husband safe.
    Who says the Lord G-d has no sense of humor? Just a week went by and Shmuel once again passed along the High Street and heard the miller’s daughter sobbing.
    â€œNa—na, Tana,” he said. “What goes this time?”
    â€œI am to be married,” she said.
    â€œThat is not an institution to be despised. I myself have a beautiful bride. Happiness is in the marriage bed.”
    This time she did not bother to hide her genuflection, but Shmuel was used to the ways of the goy.
    â€œMy father-in-law-to-be, the mayor, insists that I produce the wedding costume, and the costumes of my attending maidens besides.”
    â€œBut of course,” Shmuel agreed. “Even beyond the gates…”—and he gestured toward the ghetto walls—“even there the bride’s family supplies…”
    â€œMyself!” she cried. “I am to make each myself. And embroider them with my own hands. And I cannot sew! ” She proceeded to weep again into her apron, this time so prodigiously, the gillyflowers would surely have grown from the watering had the Lord G-d been paying attention as in the days of old.
    â€œA-ha!” Shmuel said, reaching into his pockets and jangling several coins together. “I understand. But my dear, I have the means to help you, only…”
    â€œOnly?” She looked up from the soggy apron.
    â€œOnly this time, as you have prospects of a rich marriage…”—for gossip travels through stone walls where people themselves cannot pass; it is one of the nine metaphysical wonders of the world—number three actually.
    â€œOnly?” To say the girl was two platters and a bottle short of a banquet is to do her honor.
    â€œOnly this time you must pay interest on the loan,” Shmuel said. He was a businessman after all, not just a Samaritan. And Samaria—like Burgundy, was a long way from there.
    Tana agreed at once and put her X to a paper she could not read, then gratefully pocketed three gold pieces. It would buy the services of many fine seamstresses with—she reckoned quickly—enough left over for a chain for her neck and a net for her hair. She could not read but, like most of the girls of Yka-terinislav, she could count.
    â€œI do not like such dealings,” Shana remarked that evening. “The men at least are honorable in their own way. But the women of the goyim …”
    â€œI am a respected moneylender,” Shmuel said, his voice sharp. Then afraid he might have been too sharp, he added, “Their women are nothing like ours; and you are a queen of the ghetto.” If she was appeased, she did not show it, but that night her prayers were even longer over the candles, as if she were having a stern talking to with the Lord G-d.
    Ah—you think you know the tale now. And perhaps you are right. But, as Shmuel noted, some do not know story from history. Perhaps you are one of those. Story tells us that the little devil, the child stealer, the black imp was thwarted. Of such blood libels good rousing pogroms are made.
    Still, history has two sides, not one. Here is the other.
    Tana and her Leon were married, of course. Even without the cloth it was a good match. The miller’s business was a thriving one; the mayor was rich on graft. It was a merger as well as a marriage. Properties were exchanged along with the wedding pledges. Within the first month Tana was with child. So she was cloistered there, in the lord mayor’s fine house, while her own new house was being built, so she did not see Shmuel again.
    And then the interest on the loan came due.
    A week after Tana’s child was delivered, she had a visitor.
    It was not