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

Shmuel, of course. He would never have been allowed into the woman’s section of a Christian house, never allowed near the new infant.
    It was Shana.
    â€œWho are you?” asked Tana, afraid that in her long and difficult pregnancy her husband had taken a Jewish concubine, for such was not unheard of. The woman before her was extraordinarily beautiful.
    â€œI am the wife of Shmuel Zvi Bar Michael.”
    â€œWho is that?” asked Tana. For her, one Jewish name was as unpronounceable as another.
    â€œShmuel Zvi Bar Michael,” Shana explained patiently, as to a child. “The moneylender. Who lent you money for your wedding.”
    â€œMy father paid for my wedding,” Tana said, making the sign of the cross as protection for herself and the child in her arms.
    Shana did not even flinch. This puzzled Tana a great deal and frightened her as well. “What do you want?”
    â€œRepayment of the loan,” Shana said, adding under her breath in Yiddish: “Vi men brokt zikh ayn di farfl, azoy est men zey oyf” which means “The way your farfl is cut, that’s how you’ll eat it.” In other words, You made your bed, now you’ll lie in it. Trust me, you don’t want to ask about farfl.
    â€œI borrowed nothing from you,” Tana said.
    Talking as if to an idiot or to one who does not understand the language, Shana said, “You borrowed it from my husband.” She took a paper from her bosom and shoved it under Tana’s nose.
    Tana shrank from the paper and covered the child’s face with a cloth as if the paper would contaminate it, poor thing. Then she began to scream: “Demon! Witch! Child stealer!” Her screams would have brought in the household if they had not all been about the business of the day.
    But a Jew—any Jew—knows better than to stay where the charge of blood libel has been laid. Shana left at once, the paper still fluttering in her hand.
    She went home but said nothing to her husband. When necessary, Shana could keep her own counsel.
    Still, the damage had been done. Terrified she would have to admit her failures, Tana told her husband a fairy tale indeed, complete with a little, ugly black imp with an unpronounceable name who had sworn to take her child for unspeakable rites. And as it was springtime, and behind the ghetto walls the Jewish community of Ykaterinislav was preparing for Passover, Tana’s accusations of blood libel were believed, though it took her a full night of complaining to convince Leon.
    Who but a Jew, after all, was little and dark—never mind that half of the population both in front of and behind the walls were tall and blonde thanks to the Vikings who had settled their trade center in Kiev generations before. Who but a Jew had an unpronounceable name—never mind that the local goyish names did not have a sufficiency of vowels. Who but a Jew would steal a Christian child, slitting its throat and using the innocent blood in the making of matzoh—never mind that it was the Jews, not the gentiles, who had been on the blade end of the killing knife all along.
    Besides, it had been years since the last pogrom. Blood calls for blood, even if it is just a story. Leon went to his friends, elaborating on Tana’s tale.
    What happened next was simple. Just as the shammes was going around the ghetto, rapping with his special hammer on the shutters of the houses and calling out “Arise, Jews, and serve the Lord! Arise and recite the psalms!” the local bullyboys were massing outside the ghetto walls.
    In house after house, Jewish men rose and donned their tefillin and began their prayers; the women lit the fires in the stoves.
    Then the wife of Gdalye the butcher—his new wife—went out to pull water from the well and saw the angry men outside the gate. She raised the alarm, but by then it was too late. As they hammered down the gate, the cries went from the streets to Heaven,