Ring of Fire III Read online

  He had gone half the way to the blockhouse when a suspicion began to churn in his gut. Bt the time he had turned and sprinted back up the low rise to the commander’s tent, his misgiving had become a certainty. Pulling the flap aside, he burst into the dim interior.

  One orderly looked up from his tasks, startled.

  He was the only person in the tent. Of course.

  O’Rourke smiled and shook his head; it was sad to think that after all these years, he was still so easily conned. He should have seen it coming: O’Donnell would want to slip out of the camp as stealthily as he had come in. And he’d have—rightly—known that O’Rourke would have had none of that: two guards, at least, to escort one of the last two princes of Ireland. But O’Donnell had given him the slip.

  Again.

  O’Rourke went over to stand by the table they’d shared but two minutes earlier. He rested his hand on the back of his earl’s chair. And smiled:

  See you in Amiens, old friend.

  Falser Messiah

  Tim Roesch

  Lost in Grantville, 24th of Av, 5394

  (T minus 5 hours and 43 minutes)

  “I am not the Son of God!” he screamed at the library.

  At least he thought he was screaming in the direction of the library.

  With eyes red with tears, Shabbethai Zebi ben Mordecai spun about, glaring at the world which was suddenly bright and out of focus, frightening and repulsive. The world he could not wait to see each morning and wept over as he closed his eyes every night was suddenly wrong.

  Or, maybe, he was wrong.

  Memories came; out of focus, silent, out of any order.

  He remembered his mother crying on the dock in Smyrna as he left on a ship, a real ship, with his father and elder brother.

  His mother had not waved at him.

  He remembered how eager he was to learn everything and show his father what he had learned and how hard it was, all of a sudden, to get his father to simply look at him.

  There was the trip to this magical place, Grantville. Here, he had forgotten how often his questions went unanswered, his small discoveries went unnoticed, how often his father and elder brother seemed to talk quietly to each other and occasionally looked at him as if he had done something wrong.

  Here was the town of Deborah and an entire community of Jews who lived and worked amongst non-Jews and not once, not even once, had he heard a single bad word or seen an evil look directed at any Jew, and how exciting it was and how he wanted to ask questions.

  No Sabbath had ever been so beautiful as his first in Deborah. Never had he sung the Torah so fervently, so fervently he did not remember, until now, how his singing caused so much silence.

  “Why, Abba?” he whispered, sniffing. Grantville had been a magical place and now it felt like it was burning and he was the fire. “Abba!”

  No answer. No one looked at him. They told him what to do and where to be and conversations stopped when he entered rooms and there was arguing but never did anyone look him in the eye or ask him how his day went or what new and magical thing had he learned today.

  Silence.

  Even the other children viewed him with suspicion. Games ended when he joined them. Meals were quiet and even during prayer he felt he prayed alone.

  So, as he had learned in the schools in Smyrna, the Jewish ones with dour old men who were quick with a harsh word to those who seemed inattentive, he went to answer his questions. He went to the library at Grantville.

  He listened and heard his father and his elder brother and rabbis, learned men, arguing about him, about little Shabbethai Zebi and how his name was in the library, the great library in Grantville.

  In a place where Jews could move about freely, it had been simple for him to go to the library.

  And now?

  Silence.

  He tried hard in the silence of the library to translate an entry in a book, an entry that had his name in English.

  A girl saw him and, miracle of miracles, she spoke Greek and this English that not even his own father could understand well, let alone read, and she had told him.

  “You are the Messiah? You are the son of God?”

  What was he to do? What could he do?

  The silence shouted at him as he ran from the library and out into the streets of Grantville.

  Shabbethai Sebi: Son of God. Messiah.

  “I am not the son of God!” Shabbethai shouted, though his voice had less strength. He spun about looking for something familiar, something to hold onto, something not silent.

  Grantville was not silent but its voice was not familiar to him. There were people and magical things called “cars” and horses, and children screaming.

  Shabbethai sniffed and looked about, hunting the source of the screaming.

  There had been a time when he had screamed like that, screamed with the pure joy of play and running and jumping.

  Now, since that last view of his home in Smyrna and his mother standing motionless, crying on the dock, there had been silence.

  “I am not the Son of God.” Shabbethai tried to smile, tried hard and the smile almost came to his face. His steps began tentatively, slowly but soon he was running again, running as if he was being chased or, maybe, he was chasing something.

  He ran toward the sound of screaming, away from silence.

  Grantville Public Library, 24th of Av, 5394

  (T minus 5 hours 1 minute)

  Julie Drahuta trudged up the steps of the Grantville Public Library.

  The day hadn’t been that long. It was just that it was Friday, the end of the week, and her thoughts had been on the weekend until the phone call.

  The work of a social worker slash police officer who specialized in child welfare in a town filled with seventeenth-century Germans and twentieth-century Americans—West Virginians, to be more precise—meant her work was rarely finished, weekend or no weekend.

  If there was a minor problem or a major one and if it involved children, which it often did, Julie was called in. She had earned a reputation of solving difficult and delicate problems, of translating cultural languages and norms from one century to another, from one religion to another, from one family to another.

  Julie’s Flying Mom Squad, made up of Protestant, Catholic, Lutheran, and even Jewish mothers, multiplied her effectiveness but it also kept her on call twenty-four/seven.

  Of course, what had truly brought her to the attention of almost everyone were the Pascal children; Blaise and his sister, Jacqueline. Their father had sent them to Grantville to protect them from their historical notoriety. Who would protect Grantville from them?

  Julie Drahuta, of course!

  The Pascal children were reminders to every up-timer just where and when they were. Blaise showed up in religious texts, math texts and almost every encyclopedia had an entry about him. Heck, even she knew of Pascal’s Triangles before the Ring of Fire.

  Blaise embraced twentieth-century tech with a passion that was frightening, if not life-threatening. Jackie liked to write and learn languages.

  Were there more children hiding in the history books? Hopefully they would go somewhere else. The Pascals were enough.

  It was Jackie Pascal who had called her. The girl’s problems rarely required police or fire intervention. This was why Julie didn’t bring backup with her as she trudged up the stairs.

  Tina Jones, an assistant librarian, met Julie at the front door to the library; snapping Julie out of her daydreaming about the impending weekend and the relative dangers of the Pascal children.

  Julie knew that the circulation desk was a throne to Tina and for her to come out from behind that desk meant something serious had occurred, something more serious than a misshelved book or an angry scholar who felt that his dignity had been assaulted because a child was often asked to translate for them. Jacqueline was really, really good at languages.

  “What’s up?” Julie smiled. Julie rarely smiled when she was happy. This situation
had the makings of unhappy written all over it.

  “It could be nothing, nothing at all. Or it could be everything. I don’t know what to think.” Tina Jones was the one Jacqueline Pascal went to for permission to use the phone to call Julie away from her nice, neat and tidy “end of the week” thoughts. Jackie’s first two words over the phone were the words that brought Julie to the library.

  “Officer Drahuta.”

  Jacqueline only called Julie “Officer” when it was real serious.

  “I have done something bad. Come quick. Oh, come to the library. Please.”

  “Jacqueline is quite upset.” Tina’s voice shook Julie out of her thoughts.

  “What did she do, Tina, misfile a romance novel, again? Was she loudly critiquing Chaucer or Melville?” Julie smiled. “Remember that time she was reading that Barbra Cartland novel? I thought we’d have to call the EMTs for a mass cardiac event.”

  Tina Jones, library aide, averter of eyes when Jacqueline Pascal roamed the stacks of books far away from the children’s section, was not smiling. She was fiddling with her necklace, the one with the silver cross dangling from it.

  “I hope it is nothing.” Tina hurried across the library’s main floor to the reference section. “I hope Jackie is wrong. She’s only eight. Maybe she’s imagining things. I hope she is. She does have an excellent imagination. Some of the books in this library will be authored by that girl, someday.”

  Julie followed Tina to a far corner of the reference section. There, before a large study table crowded with books, some open, some closed, stood Jacqueline Pascal. The girl was standing straight, as if asked by a judge to stand and hear judgment.

  “Have you been in ‘that’ section of the library again, Jacqueline?” Julie asked, smiling. Jacqueline loved historical romances. Worse, she seemed to be able to memorize entire passages and repeat them in at least four languages, loudly. Worse, she knew exactly what she was reading.

  “No.” Jacqueline looked over at the table and lifted a large book. It was a volume from the Encyclopedia Britannica. There were other volumes from other encyclopedias on the desk as well. Jacqueline opened the book she had picked up and held it against her chest, the entries facing Julie.

  “Right there.” Tina pointed at one of the entries.

  Julie looked at both Tina and Jacqueline then carefully took the book.

  “Sabbatai Sebi?” Julie asked finally, looking up.

  “Keep reading,” Tina prodded.

  “Sabbatai Sebi, born 1626, died 1676. That makes him forty years old when he died?” Julie asked. “Born in Turkey. So there’s a kid in Turkey...”

  “Fifty,” Jacqueline whispered, correcting Julie.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Julie frowned then continued reading. “Jewish mystic, whose Messianic claims produced an unparalleled sensation throughout the world, was born in Smyrna.”

  “That’s in Turkey,” Jacqueline whispered helpfully, looking at a nearby atlas, open on the table. That was Jackie, Julie thought, thorough to a fault. “I think I translated the word Messiah wrong. I looked it up. Oh, Julie...I translated it into ‘son of God.’ How could I?”

  “It says he thought he was Jesus Christ,” Tina whispered. “And people believed him. He was an ‘unparalleled sensation.’ ”

  “He was trying to translate this entry into Greek. I helped him. I’m sorry,” Jacqueline added, close to tears.

  Julie closed her eyes, hiding her face behind the open volume. “He’s eight years old. Was he eating in the library, pulling loaves and fishes out of thin air? Making wine flow from the reference shelves? Was he talking to God too loudly?”

  Had another “historical” child come to Grantville?

  “Julie!” Tina snapped. “It isn’t funny! Did you read the rest of it?”

  “The boy would be, what, eight years old, Tina! It doesn’t matter what the rest says. He is not the man this book says he is. He is an eight-year-old boy.”

  “And I told him he was the son of God.” Jacqueline looked prepared to be led to the gallows right this moment.

  “Simple mistake. Could happen to anyone. Okay, where’s the kid? I’ll talk to him, then to Rabbi Yaakov, though I am certain Rabbi Yaakov and even Rabbi Fonseca know they got a Messiah running around somewhere. If people just communicate, so many problems just disappear. I should have been in the loop.”

  “He said today was his birthday,” Jacqueline added. “I should have been careful. When I translated the word Messiah...he ran. I wasn’t thinking. I remember when Blaise found his name in that encyclopedia. I should have been more careful. Blaise ran away, too.”

  “Yeah, and he came back, didn’t he? Why do you think it’s this Sabbatai Sebi?” Julie asked. “Maybe the kid was doing research on False Messiahs for a school project?”

  “He told me his name,” Jacqueline said. “Why would he lie about that?”

  Julie closed the book she held and set it down on the table. “Jesus Christ has the right to live in Grantville. Tina, let go of that cross before you bend it or cut yourself. Jacqueline, please go call Madam Delfault and tell her I am taking you out to Deborah to help me find the boy. I don’t think we’ll be disturbing their Sabbath Celebration if we go now. Sundown isn’t for a few hours yet. Sundown is like around 7:30 and it’s about 2:30 so...what? Five hours? And, Tina? I would appreciate it if you didn’t start a rumor that the Messiah has come to Grantville until at least I confirm that this boy is, in fact, the boy mentioned in this book. Okay?”

  “I wouldn’t dare.” Tina looked like she wouldn’t.

  “I am serious,” Julie added. “Jackie? Phone?”

  Jacqueline ran off.

  “I didn’t know?” Tina whispered.

  “What? About false messiahs?” Julie asked, pulling her radio out of her purse, “The Jews believe Jesus was a false messiah. That’s one of the reasons they’ve been massacred all over Europe.”

  “I thought it was about having the Sabbath on Saturday or something. I don’t know. I guess I never thought much about it. There weren’t many Jews in Grantville. I just didn’t think about it.”

  “Somebody should go through the entire encyclopedia, twice, and make a list of the famous people who might show up so at least I can prepare. I’ve read up on Blaise. Seems there’s someone named Fermat who might walk into the library looking for a certain pain in the ass, but at least Fermat’s an adult now. He’s beyond my pay grade, thank God. Just a second, Tina. Central? This is Officer Drahuta, over.”

  “Go, Julie,” came the answer over the radio.

  “I’m heading up to Deborah with Jacqueline Pascal so she can help me ID someone. You heard anything about a missing boy, Mimi?”

  “Not a word, Julie,” Mimi Rowland, the dispatcher on duty answered. “I know Blaise has been with Steve behind the fire station in his disaster containment shed all afternoon. This isn’t about that boy, is it? Do you need some backup?”

  “No, Mimi, not that boy. Tell me if you hear anything about a missing child, okay? Over.”

  “Gotcha, over.”

  “What if it is, you know, Him?” Tina asked.

  “Well, I will tell ‘Him’ to come back here and put away his books.” Julie shrugged. “My quiet weekend destroyed by an act of God.”

  Somewhere in Grantville, 24th of Av, 5394

  (T minus 5 hours 14 minutes)

  “Hey! You! Come here!” A boy waved at Shabbethai. He was a good-looking boy with a welcoming smile, the sort of smile that did not suggest violence or cruelty.

  Shabbethai had learned early to recognize that smiles were not merely smiles. Smiles required understanding as the word of God did. They were complicated and to misunderstand one could be deadly or worse.

  Shabbethai approached with caution.

  “You wanna play with us?” The boy who spoke now was smaller. Shabbethai could tell there was little in the way of cruelty in this younger boy.

  The game seemed to involve a stick and a ball. That w
as comforting. Games with only sticks involved hitting and when hitting was involved, Jews got hit if they were available.

  “He’s too little,” another, older boy said. This boy looked different from the one who had called him over. Shabbethai thought he would not like it if this boy smiled.

  “He makes the teams even. So, you wanna play with us?” The first boy smiled and that settled it.

  Shabbethai couldn’t quite understand the words. He understood “you” meant him and “us” meant them. It didn’t look like they meant to kill him. Besides, there were three girls watching. Boys rarely, in his wide experience of eight years, were cruel around girls.

  So Shabbethai nodded his head and hoped for the best. Already the thoughts of being the son of God and curiosity and books being translated from English to Greek by some girl who had looked at him with wide eyes were receding.

  “I don’t think he understands English,” one of the children said.

  Shabbethai understood “English” and the head shaking meant “no.”

  “No English good.” Shabbethai smiled hopefully, stringing some English words together.

  “That’s okay,” the boy with the welcoming smile said. “My name is Joseph Drahuta. Call me Joe, okay? Joe.” The boy pointed at himself and said “Joe” again.

  “Shabbethai Zebi,” Shabbethai pointed at himself.

  “Sprecken she dutch?” the boy named Joe asked in very bad German. Even his German was not that bad, Shabbethai thought, very much to himself. It would never do for a Jewish boy, lost in a non-Jewish part of town, to laugh at a non-Jew or criticize them, no matter how deserved it was.

  “Your German is funny.” One of the younger girls laughed and clapped. Shabbethai understood the “your” and “German” part. The word “funny” was not one his father had taught him.

  “He doesn’t look German,” stated the other boy; the one with the smile Shabbethai knew he didn’t want to see. “No German would wear hair like that.”