irregular faces of pit-sawing, clapboards split rather than sawn, the materials and methods he remembered from centuries ago and lands across the ocean.
He’d seen the peeling paint even in the night. Now, in daylight, he could see warped clapboards hanging askew with rust streaks telling him the damage came long before the fire. He saw rot in one unburned windowsill, then another, gray weathered breaks on the sash, piles of gray droppings and white streaks on the remaining eave trim where pigeons had gotten into under-roof spaces and nested.
Yellow tape still guarded the ruin, warning people away from a crime scene. Somehow that added to the mournful sense of a building abandoned, a building that had outlived its people and use. He could still smell the salamander and sandalwood again but much fainter, fading, he might not have caught it if he hadn’t been searching. No wonder Legion had wanted him to get there while the smells hung fresh.
He picked up a nail lying close to the wall and inside the tape, pulled from interior trim the firemen had ripped loose and thrown out through a smashed window in their haste. Wrought iron, not steel, it hadn’t caught enough heat to destroy its memory. He rolled it across his palm. Square shank, hand-wrought, rose-headed by five hammer blows on a nail plate, pointed by four taps on the anvil, he remembered making them by the hundreds, by the days, the weeks as an apprentice. He’d learned to hate nails. He touched it to his tongue.
“What can you taste from rusty iron?”
He jerked and looked up, finding his nemesis. She’d done it again, materialized like a ghost out of the shadows, moving without sound, now standing inside a burned-out window of the hulk. That woman was trying to give him a heart attack. At least this time she didn’t have a gun in her hand. She did have a shaved patch and bandage on the side of her head where he’d hit her, didn’t make her look any prettier, and some kind of cast on her left wrist and hand that left her fingers free.
Both cast and bandage were stained with soot. So were her blue coveralls, especially the knees and elbows—she’d been poking around her crime scene. He got the impression that she’d be pure hell as a patient. Doctor had probably told her to stay in bed.
“Age,” he answered.
She cocked her head to one side. “Age? Talked to a guy at Historic Preservation this morning. Near as he can tell, this was the oldest synagogue in the western hemisphere. No record of construction, but it turns up in town records from 1700. What does your magic tongue say?”
He tasted the iron again—cold, rusty, bitter, tired. “About three hundred winters, I guess. It’s a simple working, not enough soul for a good memory.”
She blinked at that, and looked skeptical. Hey, he didn’t know how he knew that sort of thing. He’d just spent so much time and sweat and blood and skin on working iron, they recognized each other. He could tell the man who forged the nail hadn’t been a Jew, hadn’t liked or trusted Jews, hadn’t thought they should be allowed to build in town. They denied the Son of God. Unhappy smith, unhappy nail, endless years sunk into the wood of a building it despised. He tasted that in the iron.
He remembered a scene from long ago and another city, a burning building with dark-coated men dashing through the flames and smoke and falling embers, coming out with their clothes and hair smoldering and red shining burns on hands and faces but joy glowing through those burns, bodies protecting long rolls cased in rich cloth with knobs of silver on the ends . . .
“Did they save the scrolls?”
Lifted eyebrows—she didn’t understand what he was asking.
“The, what do they call them, the Torah? The Word of God? I’ve heard that a Jew should protect it with his life.”
The cop shook her head. “Nobody’s used this building in something over forty years. Anything that important, they’d have taken away long
He’d seen the peeling paint even in the night. Now, in daylight, he could see warped clapboards hanging askew with rust streaks telling him the damage came long before the fire. He saw rot in one unburned windowsill, then another, gray weathered breaks on the sash, piles of gray droppings and white streaks on the remaining eave trim where pigeons had gotten into under-roof spaces and nested.
Yellow tape still guarded the ruin, warning people away from a crime scene. Somehow that added to the mournful sense of a building abandoned, a building that had outlived its people and use. He could still smell the salamander and sandalwood again but much fainter, fading, he might not have caught it if he hadn’t been searching. No wonder Legion had wanted him to get there while the smells hung fresh.
He picked up a nail lying close to the wall and inside the tape, pulled from interior trim the firemen had ripped loose and thrown out through a smashed window in their haste. Wrought iron, not steel, it hadn’t caught enough heat to destroy its memory. He rolled it across his palm. Square shank, hand-wrought, rose-headed by five hammer blows on a nail plate, pointed by four taps on the anvil, he remembered making them by the hundreds, by the days, the weeks as an apprentice. He’d learned to hate nails. He touched it to his tongue.
“What can you taste from rusty iron?”
He jerked and looked up, finding his nemesis. She’d done it again, materialized like a ghost out of the shadows, moving without sound, now standing inside a burned-out window of the hulk. That woman was trying to give him a heart attack. At least this time she didn’t have a gun in her hand. She did have a shaved patch and bandage on the side of her head where he’d hit her, didn’t make her look any prettier, and some kind of cast on her left wrist and hand that left her fingers free.
Both cast and bandage were stained with soot. So were her blue coveralls, especially the knees and elbows—she’d been poking around her crime scene. He got the impression that she’d be pure hell as a patient. Doctor had probably told her to stay in bed.
“Age,” he answered.
She cocked her head to one side. “Age? Talked to a guy at Historic Preservation this morning. Near as he can tell, this was the oldest synagogue in the western hemisphere. No record of construction, but it turns up in town records from 1700. What does your magic tongue say?”
He tasted the iron again—cold, rusty, bitter, tired. “About three hundred winters, I guess. It’s a simple working, not enough soul for a good memory.”
She blinked at that, and looked skeptical. Hey, he didn’t know how he knew that sort of thing. He’d just spent so much time and sweat and blood and skin on working iron, they recognized each other. He could tell the man who forged the nail hadn’t been a Jew, hadn’t liked or trusted Jews, hadn’t thought they should be allowed to build in town. They denied the Son of God. Unhappy smith, unhappy nail, endless years sunk into the wood of a building it despised. He tasted that in the iron.
He remembered a scene from long ago and another city, a burning building with dark-coated men dashing through the flames and smoke and falling embers, coming out with their clothes and hair smoldering and red shining burns on hands and faces but joy glowing through those burns, bodies protecting long rolls cased in rich cloth with knobs of silver on the ends . . .
“Did they save the scrolls?”
Lifted eyebrows—she didn’t understand what he was asking.
“The, what do they call them, the Torah? The Word of God? I’ve heard that a Jew should protect it with his life.”
The cop shook her head. “Nobody’s used this building in something over forty years. Anything that important, they’d have taken away long
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