The Inquisitor's Apprentice

CHAPTER THREE. Watcher in the Shadows

MR. KESSLER SLAMMED his book down, jumped to his feet, and was gone before Sacha even knew he was leaving.

Cough or no cough, Sacha’s father took the steep stairs two at a time. Sacha stumbled headlong behind him, keeping one hand on the wall to steady himself in case he tripped over something in the pitch-black stairwell. He could hear Mo behind him, wheezing like a steam locomotive but still keeping up with them all the way down the stairs and across the garbage-strewn back lot.

By the time they made it past the privies and caught a glimpse of the water pump, Mr. Kessler was already walking back toward them. One look at his face told Sacha that something was very wrong.

“What is it?” he asked.

His father pointed to a splintered board leaning against the wall beside the pump. Two words had been chalked onto it in crooked capital letters that were already beginning to wash away in the rain:

PUMP BROKE

“She must have gone to get water somewhere else,” Mr. Kessler said disgustedly. “Without taking us with her like any sensible woman would. We’d better split up or we’ll never find her.” He frowned at Sacha. “And you’d better go home.”

“I’m not a child!” Sacha protested. “I’m coming with you!”

His father gave him a put-upon look. But then he shrugged his shoulders. “Fine. But stick with Mo. I don’t want you getting lost too. You can check the Canal Street pump. I’ll cover the rest of the neighborhood.”

Canal Street glistened black and silver under the moonlight. The rain was falling in earnest now, and a rich, loamy smell wafted up from the sidewalks — a reminder that there was still living earth somewhere deep beneath the city.

Half the streetlights were broken, as usual, so the only-in-New-York mishmash of Jewish, Chinese, and Italian storefronts seemed to belong to a world of ghosts and shadows. Bloomingdale Brothers was closed. The Napoli Café and the perpetually busy Lucky Laundry (CHANGE YOUR SOCKS, CHANGE YOUR FORTUNE!) were both locked and shuttered. Even Rabbi Kessler’s little storefront synagogue was deserted, though his students often lingered on the front stoop talking Kabbalah long after Mo Lehrer had locked up for the night.

Sacha honestly tried to wait for Mo like his father told him to. But after about half a block, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He veered into the middle of the empty street — always the safest route at night, since you never knew who was hiding behind the heaps of garbage on the sidewalks — and took off running.

As he stepped off the curb, he heard glass shatter under his feet and saw the shards of a broken spell bottle skittering away across the cobblestones. He could just make out the five-cornered symbol of Pentacle Industries on the label. And he could practically hear his mother kvetching about J. P. Morgaunt’s monopolies and asking why people thought they could find happiness at the bottom of a spell bottle — and was it her imagination, or was the neighborhood getting worse lately?

Oh God, what if something had happened to her?

He pushed the thought out of his mind and kept running.

Soon Canal Street opened out into the Bowery. Rain-slicked cobblestones rolled away like waves on a storm-tossed ocean. Open construction pits gaped like scars. Arc lamps buzzed and flickered high overhead, casting a sickly glow that only made the shadows under the elevated railway tracks look blacker and more dangerous. The pump was under those tracks — and Sacha didn’t even want to think about what else might be lurking under there at this time of night.

Sacha had never seen the Bowery so deserted. There was no one on the street at all, not even the usual collection of drunks and spellfiends. The only sign of humanity was the demonic grin on the twenty-foot-high billboard of Harry Houdini that soared above the marquee of the Thalia Theatre.

Sacha crossed the street, squared his shoulders, and stepped into the darkness under the tracks.

As soon as his eyes adjusted to the shadows, he saw what he hadn’t been able to see from the street: the bucket, lying beside the pump where his mother must have dropped it. And a few feet beyond it, his mother lay senseless on the cobblestones. He was at her side in an instant. When he touched her face and spoke to her, she moaned softly. Sacha felt a sharp spike of relief. Maybe she’d just fainted, he told himself. But he knew she’d never fainted in her life.

“Mama,” he asked when her eyes finally opened, “what happened?”

She looked at him as if she’d never seen him before. Then she passed a hand over her forehead and shuddered. “I… I don’t know.”

He helped her to her feet and turned back to get the bucket.

“Leave it!” she gasped. And then, in a quieter, more controlled voice: “Your father and Mordechai can come back for it later.”

Sacha obeyed. Or at least he started to. But when he looked toward the street, he saw a dark figure standing between them and the light, blocking their escape. At first he thought it was Uncle Mordechai. But then he realized it was too short to be Mordechai. He told himself it was just one of the bums who slept under the tracks on rainy nights. Still, there was something about the shadowy figure that made the hair on the back of Sacha’s neck stand up like a dog’s hackles.

“Who’s there!” he called, trying to make it sound like a challenge and not a question.

The shadow didn’t answer, but a ripple shivered through the air around them. And not just the air. Sacha could have sworn the ground moved too. It felt as if the whole city had just shuddered underfoot like a horse twitching off a fly.

Then Sacha heard the silvery tinkle of bells.

He knew right away that they were streganonna bells: the little silver chimes the Italians sewed onto their horses’ bridles to ward off the evil eye. A moment later a rickety cart turned onto the Bowery from the direction of Mulberry Street and Little Italy. Sacha’s knees went weak with relief. It was an Italian greengrocer, heading out to the East River Docks for an early morning pickup. And since he’d be running empty in this direction, they could catch a ride home with him — far safer than walking.

But when the cart rumbled into sight, Sacha caught his breath in fear. It was a wreck, held together with rusty nails and baling twine. The ancient nag in the traces seemed barely strong enough to walk, let alone haul a full load. Yet the cart was heaped almost to overflowing with bones and rags and all the dusty odds and ends of people’s lives that get put to the curb when no one can figure out how to fix them or remember why they were worth keeping in the first place. This was no simple greengrocer. It was the Rag and Bone Man.

The Rag and Bone Man was a legendary figure that mothers all over New York used to scare naughty children into behaving. He had a different name in every neighborhood, but he was feared everywhere. He collected scrap metal and worn-out clothes and gnawed bones for the ragpickers and the glue factories. But people said he traded in dreams too. They said he bought nightmares and lifted curses. And some people claimed he wasn’t above selling them on for future use by third parties. The rabbis scoffed at such old wives’ tales, but every woman on Hester Street still made the sign of the evil eye when the Rag and Bone Man passed by. Even Sacha’s normally sensible mother had sent him running downstairs with a bone last week, saying, “Quick, Sacha! throw it on the cart! I dreamed someone died last night!”

The Rag and Bone Man reined in his horse and peered toward the elevated tracks. He glanced at Sacha and then turned a hard stare on the shadowy watcher. Some silent challenge seemed to pass between them. Then the watcher turned away and slipped into the shadows.

For a moment Sacha struggled to make sense of this silent confrontation. Then he put it out of his mind. It didn’t matter, he told himself. Right now the only thing that mattered was getting his mother home safely.

He heard someone calling his name. It was Mo Lehrer, hurrying across the Bowery toward them, waving frantically. The Rag and Bone Man looked at Mo, nodded to Sacha, and then flipped the reins on his horse’s skeletal back and shambled off into the night.

“Did you see that?” Sacha asked when Mo reached them.

“See what?”

“Nothing. Let’s go.”

As they turned the corner onto Hester Street, Mr. Kessler caught sight of them and came running from halfway down the block.

“Danken Got you’re safe!” he cried. Then he got close enough to see his wife’s face. “What happened? Were you attacked?”

“I don’t know.” Mrs. Kessler still sounded dazed and weak. “I think there was someone there, but I…”

“Did they hurt you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did they rob you?”

Sacha’s mother looked momentarily confused. She dug around in her pockets and extracted a pitiful handful of coins that could only have tempted the most desperate thief. “Maybe Sacha interrupted them.”

“Oh, well,” Mo said comfortingly. “All’s well that ends well.”

Only when they reached their apartment did they realize that something had indeed been stolen. After a few cups of strong tea, Mrs. Kessler began to seem more like herself again. She rubbed at the back of her neck as if it hurt — and then she let out a moan of grief and horror.

“My locket!”

It was gone. Above the collar of her dress where the locket’s silver chain usually rested, there was only a bright red welt where the thief had torn it from her neck.

She wanted to go straight out and look for it, but Sacha’s father wouldn’t let her. Instead he and Sacha went. By the time they came back an hour later, covered in soot and grime, they had crawled over every inch of ground under the elevated tracks. But it wouldn’t have mattered how long they searched. There was nothing to find. The locket was gone.

“There there, Ruthie,” Mr. Kessler said, patting her shoulder awkwardly.

Sacha didn’t know what to say. That locket was his mother’s most treasured possession. It held three silky curls of baby hair: one from Bekah, one from Sacha, and one from their baby brother who had died on the boat from Russia. His mother never talked about that baby. No one on Hester Street talked about the past much — not unless they wanted to end up as crazy as poor Mrs. Lehrer. But once Sacha had come home early from school and found his mother sitting alone at the kitchen table looking at the locket and weeping as if the baby had died yesterday instead of years ago.

“I’m sorry,” he told her now. It wasn’t enough, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“It’s nothing.” His mother wiped her eyes on her apron and tried to smile. “Just a silly piece of jewelry.”

Then she started fussing over Sacha and his father, scolding them to take off their wet shoes and socks, and forcing hot tea down their throats as if the worst thing that had ever threatened her family was a head cold.

Sacha relaxed under her fussing — once she started fussing over you, there wasn’t much you could do except sit back and enjoy it. But his mind kept turning to that dark shadow under the elevated tracks.

Had the watcher been a mere bystander, or the thief himself? And what kind of thief would walk past all the jewelry stores and rich tourists and drunken sailors on the Bowery only to steal a cheap locket from a woman who was far too poor for any self-respecting criminal to bother with?