The Alchemist's Door by Lisa Goldstein Page B

he repented his outburst immediately. “Go outside and play. I’m busy here.” Arthur turned and ran from the room.
    A good deal of the time Jane fussed around him, cooking and cleaning and taking care of the children. “Go outside,” she told him more than once. “You’re underfoot here. I can’t get anything done with you around.”
    Finally he took her advice. He soon found, though, that the city no longer pleased him the way it once did. His steps were uncertain, like a sick man’s, and he rarely left his side of the river.
    One day he heard the sound of a crowd shouting. He turned a corner and saw that three or four men had backed a boy against a wall. One of the men pummeled him with a club and the others laughed loudly. Another kicked him roughly in the stomach. The boy fell to the ground.
    â€œHere!” Dee called, running forward. “Stop that! I’ll call the watch!”
    The men looked up. He had no idea how to summon the watch, he realized. And he had spoken in English; they could not possibly have understood him.
    The attackers left the boy and advanced toward him. The man in the lead grinned savagely and raised his club.

    Dee spoke a few words, hoping to stop them, to take control of the club. Nothing happened; his magic was not strong enough.
    Suddenly he heard more shouting; it sounded a long distance away. Three men hurried toward them, their daggers out. The thugs ran. The watch, Dee thought. He had summoned them, and like Kelley’s angels they had come.
    The man at the head of the watch said something to him in Czech. Dee shook his head. The man shrugged, attempted something in gestures which Dee did not understand, and then led the others away.
    â€œWait!” Dee said. “What about him? He’s hurt!”
    The men did not stop. Dee bent over the boy. He was older than Dee had first thought, eighteen or nineteen, with long, unkempt sandy-colored hair. An ugly rash had broken out on his face, and he looked terribly thin, almost malnourished.
    â€œAre you all right?” Dee asked in German.
    The boy said nothing. Another Czech speaker, Dee thought. But then the boy picked himself up, gingerly testing every limb as he went. “No, of course I’m not all right,” he said in German. Speaking aggravated the cut on his lip, and he winced.
    â€œWhere’s your home?” Dee asked.
    â€œI don’t have a home.”
    â€œWhere do you live, then?”
    The boy said nothing. He headed down the street. Dee hesitated and then followed him.
    After a time they came to the walled city Dee had seen earlier. The boy went through the open gates. Should he go on? Who were these people, anyway?
    Rabbi Judah Loew came to the gateway to greet the boy. Where had he come from? What was happening here? It was like a dream, people and places from the past all blending together, none of it making any sense.

    Loew stopped when he saw Dee. The boy brushed past him rudely. “What are you doing here?” Loew asked.
    â€œI—the boy is hurt.”
    â€œWhat business is it of yours?”
    â€œI thought I’d help,” Dee said. He had not remembered the man being so prickly. “And what about you? What are you doing here?”
    â€œI live here.” Loew laughed. “Don’t look so confused. This is the Jewish Quarter.”
    â€œOh,” Dee said stupidly. He understood a good many things now. Why the boy had been attacked, for one thing, and why the watch had not stopped for him. Jews were probably not welcome outside the walls of the Quarter.
    His curiosity, never far from the surface, rose within him. “Who is the boy?” Dee asked. “Why is he so angry?”
    â€œHis name is Izak,” Loew said. “He’s none of your concern.”
    â€œVery well,” Dee said stiffly. It was no wonder the Jews huddled together in their own town, he thought; if they were all as clannish and