“…as the trial continued, the rabbi sent the Golem to fetch Dinah the midwife from the netherworld. The Golem came down this street and entered the ancient Jewish cemetery and descended into the netherworld, where he found the midwife Dinah and fetched her back to this world to testify at the trial in the synagogue.” The guide seemed to be wrapping up one of the Golem stories as she opened the wrought iron gate set into the wall behind her. The hinges squealed. Appreciative shivers and smiles ran through the guide’s followers. Some of the crowd “ooohed” and “ahhhed.”
“When you enter the cemetery,” the guide continued, “please stay on the paths and avoid walking on the graves, in which people have been buried several layers deep, each on top of the other, since 1439. When you come to the grave of Rabbi Judah ben Leow, who died in 1609 and was the creator of the Golem, you can ask for his prayers and observe the tradition of leaving a small pebble on the gravestone so that he will remember your request when he counts the stones each night.” The tour members began to slide past the guide, through the gate, into the cemetery.
Sophia found herself caught in the tide of tourists flowing towards the iron gate and into the old cemetery. This had been one of the sights she had wanted to visit in Prague, but she had no ticket. She was certain the guide would turn her away.
Just as she reached the gate, a man stepped from the group and went to the guide to ask a question about one of the Golem stories recounted earlier in the tour.
“Excuse me,” he began, his voice thick with a drawl from the southern United States, “but did I hear correctly that you said the rabbi’s wife made the Golem fetch water like Mickey Mouse did in the Disney movie?”
The guide turned to answer the man’s question. Sophia slipped through the gate
Thousands of gravestones, tilted at amazing angles, filled every inch of the cemetery. Sophia made her way along the pathway, as did other members of the tour she had stumbled into. Some followed other paths that peeled away from this one. Exceptionally large black birds sat among the treetops. The juxtaposition of brilliantly green leaves against the jet-black feathers was startling. Seeing the pale green sky through the occasional breaks in the leafy canopy made the scene more surreal.
Intricate carving adorned each of the headstones. Sophia could make out Czech as well as Hebrew letters spelling out the names of the deceased. There were various emblems on the stones—many with Stars of David but also menorahs and pairs of hands with interlocking fingers raised in priestly benediction. Some stones were nearly worn smooth while others looked as sharp as the day they had been carved. Some of the graves had pebbles perched atop the headstones.
Sophia made her way around a bend in the path and nearly stumbled into a group that had been reverently placing pebbles on a gravestone. She waited for them to continue on their way.
This gravestone had more pebbles and rocks balanced on it than she would have guessed possible. She peered at the marker and realized that this was the grave of the famous rabbi.
“Oh, Rabbi Loew,” she whispered under her breath, “why did you leave your staff in the attic where no one can get it?”
She wanted to ask for his assistance, his guidance. But she had no rock, no pebble with her. She anxiously searched the ground around her feet. She couldn’t take someone else’s pebble, but perhaps if one of the stones in the pathway were crumbling…
There! A cobblestone that was cracked and coming to pieces along the edge of the path. She reached down for a small pebble half-submerged in the dirt. She brushed it off and—carefully, delicately—added her pebble to the mounds already dangerously high on the rabbi’s headstone.
“Please, Rabbi Loew,” she whispered. “Help us. Show us where your staff is and how to get it. You made the Golem to protect Prague and now we need your staff to protect Prague again.”
What had the tour guide said about the Golem fetching a midwife from the netherworld?
“Please, rabbi,” Sophia added to her request. “If you can, come back from the netherworld and give us your staff. If Prague has ever needed your protection, now is the time!”
Sophia thought again.
“But, please, rabbi… be careful! Others might come to steal your staff and use it against the city,” she warned the grave marker. “Don’t let them take it!”
She stood a moment longer. Would her husband the priest approve of her prayer to the rabbi? Or of her wish that the rabbi return from the grave to assist them? She wasn’t sure but she knew that she wanted—that the academics needed—the rabbi, or someone very much like him, to assist them in their efforts to save Prague.
She glanced about. Were any of the cemetery caretakers watching her? Would they be offended? She crossed herself and began walking along the pathway again.
As Alessandro and Sophia set out after lunch to find the Old-New Synagogue, two other academics paused at the doors of the Angel House before joining the afternoon sessions of the conference.
Peter Thomlinson, the much older and overweight professor who divided his teaching between the universities in Edinburgh, Scotland and Brasov, Romania, turned to the younger Sean O’Neill from Dublin.
“I am here for the Evil conference,” Peter began his attempt to work with the ill-tempered Irishman. “You are here for the Monsters conference, I believe?”
“Yes, I am here for the Monsters conference,” Sean replied curtly. “We seem to be working together to identify and recover the chalice of Prague, whatever that august relic might be. So tell me,” he turned to Peter, his accent rippling across his words as if across the surface of a pond, “what is your area of expertise and why might we have been chosen to work together on this particular tool in the magical arsenal of Prague?”
Peter stood still and scratched his chin, squinting at the sidewalk. Then he lifted his face to Sean. “I don’t know,” he confessed. His own accent, originally English but overlaid with years of teaching in Scotland, was as distinctive as Sean’s. “My expertise I can tell you. Why the lottery selected us, I cannot fathom.” He took a breath and swallowed. “Perhaps you can begin, and tell me your field of expertise,” Peter suggested, starting to walk again.
“I teach in the Department of Béaloideas, the department of Gaelic folklore, at the University College in Dublin,” Sean announced. “Celtic mythology is one of my specialties.”
“I see,” murmured Peter. “I teach in the departments of literature in both Brasov and Edinburgh. My primary interests are also in folklore and mythology, but since I spend half of every year in Brasov, in Transylvania, I focus on the vampire lore of the Carpathian Mountains.”
“But you have no real grasp of the mythology of the chalice as a magical implement?” Sean asked.
“No, I am afraid I do not,” Peter confirmed Sean’s suspicions. “Why don’t you enlighten me on the importance of this chalice.”
Sean took a deep breath and blew it out his nose in a kind of snort. “Well, clearly you understand that there is more to this mythological image than I can possibly communicate in a five minute walk down the street.” They came out onto the broad walkway at the end of the street. “Do you have any idea where we are walking, by the way?”
Peter pointed to a small break between the buildings opposite them. “If we go through there, we can come out on the Old Town Square,” he explained. The square seemed as good a place as any to begin their search for the chalice of Prague.
“All right,” muttered Sean. Peter struggled to keep up with the younger, trimmer Irishman.
They turned into the next plaza that Peter had directed them towards and found themselves walking past the pale green Estates Theatre. Peter pointed to it as they passed. “Did you know that it was here that Mozart’s Don Giovanni premiered and which still functions as an opera house?” He was succumbing to a game of one-upmanship with the younger Irish scholar and knew that it was foolish even as he heard himself doing it. Sean seemed to bring out the worst in those around him, Peter realized, which w
as why there had been such a palpable sigh of relief around the breakfast table that morning when it was his name—and not their own—that had been matched with Sean’s.
Sean gave a muffled snort in response. Peter pointed down a street that led away from the Estates Theatre and Sean followed the Englishman down a narrow street lined with gothic buildings with shops on the ground floors selling both cheap trinkets and more expensive, delicate souvenirs and mementos. After walking in silence down the crowded lane, they stepped into the Old Town Square. Peter wheezed, the walk evidently having exhausted him already.
Before them loomed the great Astronomical Clock on the tower of the Old Town Hall. People milled about, some staring up at the clock and its amazingly intricate images. Others seemed in search of a seat and a beer at one of the many outdoor taverns. Some were looking at one or more flyers for concerts that students in elaborate period costumes were attempting to distribute. Tour groups were being paraded along, the guides lecturing in a cacophony of languages and pointing in every direction as they went.
“Not much different than Times Square in New York, is it? All the hustle and bustle of the world, right here.” Peter drank it in joyfully, even as he fought to catch his breath.
Sean glared about him. “Times Square? This? I suppose, if Times Square were to be magically teleported back to the fourteenth century and reduced to less than half its size.”
Peter sighed. It was a losing proposition, it was. There was apparently no way he could either impress Sean or gain his good will. So he swallowed his pride and asked, “Now, what were you going to explain to me about the image of the chalice in … what was it? Celtic mythology?”
“Well, yes,” Sean began his lecture about magic and chalices. “Celtic mythology is still important here, especially in terms of magic. The chalice or cup was used by the feminine deities to grant favors or wishes to the heroes and is an emblem of fertility, being related to the womb of the goddess. It appears as the cooking pot that is never empty and the cauldron in which the brew of wisdom is prepared by the Fates. The chalice is also the great Cauldron of regeneration in a slightly different guise and appears in the legends of King Arthur as the Holy Grail.”
“Cauldron of regeneration?’ repeated Peter. “The cycle of death and rebirth, yes?”
“Exactly, my dear Professor Thomlinson,” Sean answered in what seemed like disdain. “Death. Rebirth. Immortality. The cauldron could also be used for scrying and divination by both goddesses and priestesses. Of the four tools, the chalice is associated with both water and—together with the pentacle—the feminine principle. It is perhaps the most multivalent of the four tools, and the most variable in terms of size.”
“Meaning it can be anything from a small cup to an elaborate goblet to a large pot or an even larger cauldron.” Peter struggled to breathe and then wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief he pulled from a pocket. “Well, since this chalice of Prague could be almost any of the ancient cups or bowls associated with the city or its prehistory, don’t you agree that this is a good place to begin our search?” He swept his hand across the square, coming to rest as he pointed at the clock face above them.
Sean sputtered in protest but, running his eyes across the great clock, stopped abruptly, narrowing his eyes.
A myriad of carved figures stood around the clock, each holding something in its hands. Some were difficult to make out at this distance, but the two men drew closer to the clock and, peering more intently at the carving, were able to make out the various details. The skeleton held a sickle and an hourglass. The turbaned Turk was wielding a cruelly curved scimitar. The banker held a moneybag, heavy with coins. Vanity was a man admiring himself in a mirror.
At that moment, the clock began to ring and the bells struck the hour. The skeleton rang his handbell and the other figures wagged their implements at the crowd below, warning them of the dangers of sin and the coming of judgment. The people gathered below for the show whooped and hollered their appreciation. Wooden doors above the clock opened and the wooden figures of the apostles paraded past the crowd, each holding his identifying emblem: Peter his keys, Paul the sword that beheaded him, Santiago his pilgrim shell and broad-brimmed hat, John the Evangelist his cup.
Sean gasped. He turned to Peter. “That figure! The apostle! He was holding—”
“Yes. A cup.” Peter kept his eyes on the clock as the wooden doors slowly closed and the golden rooster between and above them ceased flapping its wings. “There are no cups in the hands of the other figures of the clock, but they do suggest tantalizing possibilities, do they not?”
Sean turned back to the clock. “The chalice we are looking for could be as small as that in the hand of the figure. Hidden, but in plain sight.”
“Precisely,” Peter agreed. “It could be any one of the beautiful, historic goblets on display in the treasuries of the Strahov Monastery or the medieval art collection of the St. Agnes Cloister or even at the Loreto chapel.”
“Or buried in—what is the name of the place where the foundress-seer of Prague is said to be buried? Vyšehrad, isn’t it?” Sean snapped his fingers. “Libuše, the prophetess who established the first settlement here, was most likely a Celtic princess and would have had a great cauldron that she used in her divinations. That would most likely be the great chalice of Prague, I should think.”
“Perhaps,” conceded Peter, shifting his considerable weight from foot to foot. “But how would we obtain it without major excavations of the Vyšehrad complex? No, I think the chalice must be something we have a chance of identifying and retrieving. Why else would George be seeking it? It must be here somewhere but—as you say—hidden in plain sight. A race for a prize hidden in front of our noses.”
“Well, it certainly is that. How should we proceed? Shall we each take half of the historic churches and museums of Prague and examine their collections in the course of the afternoon?” Apparently, Sean couldn’t help slipping a snide remark into the conversation.
Peter chose to ignore the tone of the query. “Well, maybe not the entirety of their collections in one afternoon. But we could determine the most likely collections and concentrate on those. I have my museum guide,” he patted his back pocket, “and we could sit here on the square with a beer and organize our next steps.”
Sean agreed with the plan Peter proposed. They found a seat in one of the outdoor pubs and, after their mugs of beer arrived, bent over Peter’s museum guide. Sean took a notepad out of the satchel that always hung over his shoulder and made notes as they discussed the likelihood of various museum collections having the magical chalice.
“First off,” Peter suggested, “we know that one of the magical tools—the staff—is on this side of the river and another—the sword—is across the river in the foundations of the bridge. So we can suspect that the chalice will probably be here in the Old Town or across the river in the immediate vicinity of the bridge. Don’t you agree?”
Sean sipped the foaming mug. “Seems logical.”
“Also, the chalice is likely to be among the older artifacts of the city.” Peter flipped through his museum guide. “Given those two constraints—proximity to the river and older objects rather than more recent—let’s see which collections seem likely.” He chewed one lip as he turned pages in the guide, eyeing photos. Peter muttered as he pointed out the possibilities to Sean.
“The Knights Hospitaller Church, though a likely repository for an object like the chalice, has no treasury on public display. The treasury of Our Lady of Victory might fit the bill, however.” Sean wrote it down. Peter ran his finger down a page. “Strahov has paintings and books on display, though they might have the chalice locked up in the sacristy. Of course, so might the St. Vitus cathedral. Our Lady of Tyn? No treasury on display. Most of the churches in the Old Town, in fact, are functioning parishes without museums attached. Hmm…. The St. Agnes Cloister collection might not be such a long shot after all.”
Sean jotted down
Peter’s opinions and then looked at the list. “So far, only the St. Agnes Cloister seems likely on this side of the river and Our Lady of Victory is the most likely one across the river.” He looked across the table at Peter and took another, much longer, sip of the beer in his mug.
“What if,” Sean mused, “the chalice is so well hidden in plain sight that there is no way of knowing which chalice it is in any of these collections? There should be a back-up plan.”
It was Peter’s turn now to sit back and sip his beer thoughtfully. “Yes,” he agreed, looking off into the distance. “A secondary plan makes excellent sense.” He turned his attention back to Sean. “Any suggestions?”
Sean swallowed another long pull from his mug, then thought out loud. “If we cannot identify the Chalice of Prague, as it were, what would we do next? Where would we obtain a chalice charged with enough magical energy to protect the city? One that is already primed and ready to use?”
“Yes, not just any chalice will do. We would need to be consistent with the principles of magic as well as with the practicality of obtaining the chalice in question….” Peter added his own musings aloud.
Sean doodled absentmindedly on his notepaper. “A chalice easy to obtain but consistent with the principles of magic and that is already involved with the fate of the city.” His voice trailed off as the pen hovered over the paper. He and Peter both stared down at the scribbling.
There was a circle in the margin of the paper, a circle with a house in the middle of it. In the midst of the house was the simple rendition of a chalice or goblet, with a handful of simple stars filing the space between the house and the circle. Peter looked into Sean’s eyes. It seemed too preposterous, too outlandish to suggest. And yet…
“A chalice already involved with the magic of the city and its fate. Do you realize what your drawing suggests, m’boy?” exclaimed Peter, reaching across the table and clapping Sean on the back.
Sean continued to stare at the image he had created.
“Why not use the chalice that George and Magdalena used to revitalize the curse against Prague? Genius! Brilliant in its simplicity! And perfectly in accordance with the principles of magic!” Peter was almost giddy. Sean seemed embarrassed and pulled his shoulders up around his ears.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 53