The Last Jew Read Online Free PDF Page B

bad, that one?'
    'No. Not at all.'
    'I thought not, he is not a bad young shit, that young Jew.'
    'Were others abroad hereabouts last night?' Espina asked, and the shepherd told him that not long after the boy's departure a pair of horsemen had passed, almost riding him down but unhailed and unhailing.
    'Two, you say?' He knew he could depend on the old man to be accurate. The shepherd would have watched them closely, happy to see armed night riders go away without stopping to take a lamb or two.
    'The moon was high. I saw a man-at-arms, a knight surely, for he wore fine mail. And a priest or a monk, I did not note the color of his robe.' He hesitated. 'The priest had a saint's face.'
    'Which saint did he resemble?'
    'No saint in particular,' the shepherd said, annoyed. 'I mean to express that he had a beautiful face touched by God. Features that were holy,' he said, and crossed himself.
    Diego grunted, and ran to direct his dog toward four sheep moving away from the flock.
    Curious, Bernardo thought. A face touched by God? He collected his horse and mounted. 'Be with Christ, Señor Diaz.'
    The man shot him a sardonic glance. 'Christ be with you, Señor Espina,' he said.
     
    A short distance beyond the hard-browsing sheep the earth became richer and fatter. Bernardo rode through vineyards and several fields. In the field adjacent to the priory's olive grove he stopped and dismounted, tying the horse's reins to a bush.
    The grass was flattened and crushed by hooves. The number of horses seen by the shepherd, two, seemed to fit the amount of disorder.
    Somebody had learned of the silversmith's commission. They knew Helkias had been nearing the end of his work, and they would have watched his house for signs of just such a delivery.
    Here was the confrontation.
    Meir's cries would not have been heard. The olive grove that was rented by the priory was in uninhabited open country, a stout walk from the religious community.
    Blood. Here the boy received the cut in his side from one of their lances.
    Along this grass-flattened swathe, down which Bernardo slowly walked, the horsemen had run Meir ben Helkias before their mounts like a quarried fox, inflicting the wounds on his back.
    Here they had taken his leather bag and its contents. Nearby, covered with ants, were two pale cheeses of the type described by Diego -- the young bearer's excuse for being abroad. One of the cheeses was intact, one had been broken and ground, as by a great hoof.
    From here they brought the youth off the trail, into the added cover of the olive trees. And one or both of them took him.
    Finally, his throat was slit.
    Bernardo felt light-headed and faint.
    He was not so distant from Jewish boyhood that he had forgotten the fear, the apprehension of armed strangers, the knowledge of terror because so much evil had gone before. Nor so distant from Jewish manhood that he did not feel these things still.
    For a long moment, in his mind he became the boy. Hearing them. Smelling them. Sensing the giant, ominous shapes of the night, the huge horses moving at him, coming at him in the blackness.
    The cruel thrusting of sharp blades. The rape.
    Physician again, Bernardo wavered under the sinking sun and turned blindly toward the mare, escaping. He didn't believe he would hear the soul of Meir ben Helkias screaming, but he had little desire to be in this place when the next darkness came.  
     
    4
    The Questioning
     
    Espina realized quickly that he could glean only a small and finite amount of information about the murder of the Jewish boy and the theft of the ciborium. Almost everything he knew had come from his examination of the body, his discussion with the old shepherd, and his inspection of the site of the crimes. The most evident fact that faced him, after a week of fruitlessly going about the town asking questions, was that he had been neglecting his patients, and he threw himself into the safe and comforting daily work of his practice.
    Nine days after he