1635:The Dreeson Incident

Chapter 47

Grantville

March 4, 1635

The batch of genuine anti-Jewish fanatics whom Gui Ancelin and the Frankfurt anti-Semites had garnered from more than a dozen towns in the SoTF, mostly from Franconia, headed for the synagogue under the leadership of Fortunat Deneau. The action started as he had designed it, with a few people standing around a man who was giving a harangue on the pattern of those that the agitators had been giving in other towns throughout the SoTF in recent weeks. Harangues which the SoTF administration did not like but which it had to tolerate under its own free speech laws. The small group would then attract a few more spectators, gradually growing in size. The only thing that might make it conspicuous would be that all the spectators were male, but Deneau regarded that as unavoidable. Women in such crowds were ordinarily drawn from the town where the riot was to occur, but the public opinion in Grantville was such that if there were local anti-Semites, they did not ordinarily proclaim their opinions openly.

This harangue, unlike the ones that had been delivered in other towns, drew the attention of Henry Dreeson and Enoch Wiley, who were standing and talking outside of the Presbyterian church after the end of the eleven o'clock service. The service had run late because of communion. Enoch never saw any reason to abbreviate his sermon on communion Sundays.

As quickly as possible-which was no longer very quickly, in Henry's case-they walked over to stand in front of the synagogue door. As the harangue continued, both of them spoke to the gathering crowd. Henry, basically, tried reasoning. Wiley preached the seventeenth century Presbyterian line, in no way variant from his own twentieth century beliefs, that predestination was all and that if God wanted the Jews to convert, they would. Since they had not done so, this constituted evidence that they still had a part to play in the Divine Plan.

Deneau had not prepared for this development, having had no way to anticipate it. As he tried to think how best to proceed next, Leon Boucher showed up with a message from Dumais. The Grantville police force was now fully occupied at the hospital.

That was his signal. They would have to proceed. He sent in the remainder of the actual anti-Jewish fanatics, the ones Weitz had brought from Frankfurt am Main and other cities of the Rhine and Main rivers. A substantial number of them were veterans of prior anti-Jewish riots. He reinforced them with those from the nearby Thuringian towns who had been standing around as "spectators" up to that point. These larger numbers coalesced around the haranguer. Meininger, his name was, from Schleusingen.

By the time they were in place, however, the circumstances changed again. A number of men came running down the street shoving the table-and-chair pushcart that belonged to the Presbyterian Church. They had dragged it out from the education wing, with the piano from the old "yahoo shack" on it and Inez Wiley riding along.

They were followed by a group of women who, he noted, might for the most part be described as "advanced in middle age." The Reverend Simon Jones, had he been present, would have informed Deneau that they were "front-pew battleaxes." More specifically, they were the board of directors and a couple of committee chairmen of the Grantville chapter of the Red Cross, which had been starting a meeting in the Presbyterian church's education wing.

The men pushed the cart up next to Mayor Dreeson and Reverend Wiley. Once they set the brakes on it, Inez Wiley started to pound out a selection of hymns that she deemed most appropriate to the occasion. The Red Cross ladies started to sing.

"Ye chosen seed of Israel's race,

Ye ransomed from the fall."

Brillard stood on the bridge toward the rear of the demonstration, leaning on a balustrade and looking mildly curious. It had been his intention to carry out a simple act, precisely in accord with Locquifier's instructions. While apparently watching the man delivering the harangue, he had in fact been watching the mayor as he stood in front of the Presbyterian church. He had intended simply to shoot him there.

That his target had moved to the front of the synagogue was something of a complication. However, the opportunity was still reasonable, even if his line of shot was no longer quite so clean because of the cluster of women on the steps. Perhaps he could even add some confusion to the scene by killing the minister as well. Certainly, killing the town's Calvinist clergyman should serve to divert suspicion away from the Huguenots, if any should through some misfortune arise. While simultaneously cementing the idea that Richelieu, the persecutor of French Protestantism, was the instigator.

Brillard pulled an up-time carbine out from under his long cloak, took Dreeson and Wiley down with two quick shots, dropped the gun into the creek, and calmly walked away.

He disliked losing the gun. It was a marvelous weapon, and had cost them quite a bit to obtain. But it would be too dangerous now to keep it. Even a small carbine was not so easy to hide, once a real search got underway.

Inez Wiley reacted to her husband's fall by crashing a chord on the piano and launching into Jerusalem the Golden. The attackers, fanatics and goons alike, pulled their weapons out from under their clothes. Few had guns. The fanatics had been told that the point of this attack was to do damage to the synagogue rather than to kill people. Nobody expected that there would be any significant number of Jews in the building on a Sunday at noon. It had generally been overlooked that this day was the fourteenth of Adar, 5395, the festival of Purim, which celebrated the deliverance of the Jews in Persia from the plots of Haman the Agagite.

The significance of the date had escaped Locquifier's attention entirely, since his main interest was not in the attack at all, but in using it as a red herring to distract attention while Brillard carried out the assassination of Dreeson. Neither Ducos nor Delerue nor their Huguenot followers had anything in particular against Grantville's Jews. Their hatred was focused on Cardinal Richelieu, who was to be blamed for the attack.

The date had not occurred to the fanatics, either, in Frankfurt or elsewhere. If it had, they might have harbored a few thoughts of satisfaction along the general lines of double jeopardy, that where Haman had failed, they would succeed in their attack. However, most of them were sufficiently ignorant concerning the objects of their hatred that they had no knowledge of the Jewish calendar whatsoever. The Book of Esther was rarely included in their favorite reading matter in any case, since it tended to portray the Jews in a far too heroic light. Quite a few of them suspected God of extremely poor judgment in having selected His chosen people.

They had therefore brought mauls, axes, sledgehammers, and other implements designed mainly to destroy material objects. One of the hired goons closest to the synagogue steps attacked the piano with a sledgehammer, mainly to get it out of the way. It was blocking a significant portion of their access to the facade. It was only a small spinet type, comparatively light and easy to move around on a dolly. His second blow was sufficiently furious to tip it over. It landed on one of Inez Wiley's legs, knocking her off the piano bench and pinning her down.

The remainder of the attackers launched themselves at the building, aiming first at the expensive glass windows. The men who had been handling the pushcart grabbed metal folding chairs from it, wielding them first as shields around the bodies of Dreeson and Wiley but then, on the principle of "let the dead bury their dead," moving over to try to keep the mob away from Inez and the Red Cross women.

The assault started to waver. These were hardened thugs and street rioters, but they had never previously experienced the form of aural assault created by a dozen or so American ladies with nasal twangs launching themselves into "We're Marching Upward to Zion" without a piano to keep them on key-not necessarily because they were objectively brave, but because Inez was pinned down by part of the shattered piano and the rest of them were simply too stubborn to abandon her. They kept going a capella.

Deneau came forward and rallied the attackers.

"What on earth is going on?" Minnie, having once more experienced the tedium of the morning service at First Methodist in company of Benny, Louise, and Doreen, had successfully made her escape to eat lunch at Cora's with Denise. They planned to go up to Buster's self-storage lot afterwards to spend the afternoon riding.

They headed for the bridge.

Minnie spotted the man tossing the rifle into the creek. She took her stance next to that balustrade, marking exactly where the gun went, determined to keep marking it. Denise dashed back into Cora's and called her daddy. After the fight between Jarvis and Jermaine, he had talked to her several times about the importance of calling him when it looked like things might be starting to go down.

Especially violent things.

"People are attacking the synagogue with axes and sledgehammers, Daddy. Somebody shot Mayor Dreeson and Reverend Wiley."

"Stay right where you are, Princess Baby," he said. "I'm coming."

Nothing much changed in front of the synagogue until Buster Beasley, on the largest Harley hog in Grantville, rolled down the highway, crossed over, and rode right into the middle of the riot. He did a wheelie, scattering the rioters as he went through them.

Then, calmly parking the bike with its kickstand, he drew a. 45 automatic from his waist and started firing. He was a good shot and the range was pretty much point blank. Each shot took a man down, and all but one of them killed the man outright. The one exception would die from his wounds about six hours later.

Fortunat Deneau was the second target who came into Buster's sights. Pure happenstance; Buster had no idea who he was and didn't care anyway.

Deneau went down, killed almost instantly by a bullet that shredded one of his lungs and removed a piece of his heart.

Buster's stubborn traditionalism served him badly in the end, though. An old-style. 45 like that only had seven shots. He'd started shooting so quickly that most of the rioters were still gathered around and still armed when he ran out of ammunition. He didn't have a spare clip, just a pocketful of hastily grabbed shells-and he wouldn't have time to reload.

He didn't even try. The pistol butt worked fine clubbing down two more rioters, before someone grabbed his wrist and the wrestling started. Within two seconds, Buster had his buck knife in his left hand and that man went down too. So did the next and the next and the next, clubbed or stabbed or both. Buster Beasley was a very strong man and utterly ferocious in a fight.

But there were just too many opponents, and they were no strangers to street violence themselves. One of them finally got a clear shot at Buster with an ax. The ax took an ear off and a good part of his face. It was all over within a minute, after that, although Buster did take a last man with him. When he was on the ground he still had one of the rioters in a headlock and kept working on his throat with the buck knife even as he finally bled to death.

By that time, though, the attack was pretty well broken up.

"Where," Veleda Riddle yelled from behind the piano, "are the goddamned police?"

That question was not immediately answerable.

But Denise had not been the only person on the phones. An informal custom had developed in the town, in those businesses that operated seven days a week, that Jewish employees who were willing volunteered to work on Sundays, thus allowing church-goers to have the day off. Consequently, they were somewhat dispersed. The holiday had complicated matters, of course. Some holy days were bound to fall on the Christian Sabbath, but it was not a good thing to volunteer and then renege. As many as possible had been at the synagogue, but it had taken some time, nearly a half hour, to get all the members of the defense force together when the harangue began.

Once everyone arrived, though, the Grantville Hebraic Defense Force rather efficiently mopped up the remainder of the attackers clustered around Buster Beasley. Attacks on synagogues were not uncommon; the members of the one in Grantville were prepared. A few were briefly disoriented. None of them had before observed the phenomenon of people singing Christian hymns in order to protect a synagogue from assault.

Several assumed, at first, that the women were present to incite the mob. Not for long, though. Rafael Abrabanel, who had married an up-timer, let out resounding shrieks of, "No, you idiots!" and redirected their attention.

They did not use guns. After all, the Grantville synagogue was right in the center of town. Defense by firearms, conducted in the public street, would be as likely to hit innocent bystanders or the children in Frau Dreeson's academy across the street. An individual like Buster might not concern himself over that, but a standing organized defense guard couldn't afford to ignore the possibility.

It didn't matter. Short of guns, the defense force was quite well armed with swords and clubs-and given the prior conduct of the rioters, they certainly didn't have to worry of being accused afterward of using excessive force. By the time they were done, only four of the rioters who'd been reckless enough to stay around to brawl with Buster were still alive. And two of them would not be, within minutes. Like Buster, they'd bleed to death in the street.

Denise was the first non-combatant on the scene, when it was all over. By then, her father was dead. There wasn't any doubt about that. There was blood everywhere. His wounds were pretty ghastly.

So, she knelt by his side, holding the hand that wasn't completely mangled. She said nothing; did not weep. It was not the girl's way. Just stared at the hills above the town, not really seeing them at all.

Mathurin Brillard walked casually up to the trolley stop by the Central Funeral Home.

He could still hear shooting from the direction of the hospital, so he crossed the street, where he could catch one of the cars heading west, toward the intersection of Route 250 and the Badenburg road.

He decided he would walk from there, rather than renting a horse at the livery stable. No need to bring his face to anyone's attention.