Infinite 01 - Infinite Sacrifice

supper.
    After our grace, Simon looks up and asks Daniel, “How bad were things in France?”
    Daniel looks up with one eye narrow and one eye wide. “You cannot imagine the horrors I have witnessed.”
    We all sit, quiet. Simon attempts again, “I only ask because I have heard rumors about what occurred in Strasburg.”
    Daniel dips his bread in the stew, pops it in his large mouth, and states, “They are not rumors. I was there.”
    We all wait for him to speak again; I wonder if he ever will.
    “It was Friday, the thirteenth of February, when they rounded us all up like wandering cattle, hitting us with sticks as they drove us toward the cemetery. I held in my arms my precious Rebecca, who was still asleep upon my shoulder, and my wife by my side. The sky was grey and dull, as the winter sun hid behind thick clouds, and we all cried out when we saw the massive bonfire burning among the graves. They forced us to strip our clothes. I woke up Rebecca, taking off her little dress and stockings, and she cried because she was cold.” He pauses with that difficult imagery.
    Moments later he continues, “The villagers pounced on our clothes after we threw them in a pile and stuffed their pockets with our savings we carried on us.” He turns to Simon with his finger pointing to the sky. “That is the whole reason they brought us there!”
    He breathes out, trying to calm himself. “They told us they were going to burn us to keep God from seeking vengeance for our sins and bringing the plague to their city. Jews tried to run in every direction. Many pushed through the mob and out into the streets only to be chased down and beaten with clubs in the sewers. They called out to us, ‘Either come and absolve your sins through baptism of water or we will baptize you with fire!’
    “I turned to my wife, and she shook her head stubbornly. But I could not think of Rebecca burning in the fire. It was a terrible sight, as devout Jews walked into the flames. I heard their screams of agony and smelled their burnt hair and flesh!” He pauses again, then continues, “I turned to take Rebecca over with me to the water, and Sarah grabbed her from me and leapt”–he begins to sob—“leapt into the flames with her.”
    We all wait with tears in our eyes as he pulls himself together again and blows his nose in a cloth he carries, in two loud trumpets.
    “I knew I disappointed Sarah greatly. She was the daughter of an esteemed rabbi and extremely pious. I was too much of a coward to join them in the flames and took conversion with a thousand other cowards as twice that number of Jews died for what they believed in. Coward. Such a coward.” He sits there shaking his head.
    Malkyn speaks, “God forgive them for such heinous acts upon humanity.”
    “All spring they were murdering Jews. Killing them, stuffing their bodies in barrels, and floating them down the Rhine. Even after I converted, they kept threatening me. But when the plague arrived and I treated sick Jews and gentiles alike, a mob came accusing me of murdering gentiles. Poisoning them with the plague! They dragged me down to the well and demanded I tell them what poison I put in. Of course I said, ‘I have no poison.’
    “They insisted I was on a mission to kill all the Christians to achieve world domination.
    “Domination!” He throws his hands in the air but lets them fall like soft snow.
    “They stripped me of my clothes, put a crown of thorns on my head, and smashed it into my skin with mailed fists. Then they made ropes of thorns and thrust them up into my genitals. Who wouldn’t confess after that?”
    Simon winces at this and nods in agreement.
    “So,” he continues, “I told them I didn’t put poison in, but I saw another Jew put poison in. They asked which Jew, and I described a plague victim dying in my care. They wanted to know what he’d done, so I told them he dropped an egg-sized tablet out of a wrapped package into the town well. When they demanded the name of the poison, I thought of belladonna, the only poison I knew. They refused to believe me, said this was a poison never seen before, and threatened to send me to hell.
    “They thrust the rope back up with such force, the roping caught in my skin. I told them what they wanted to hear, that the Jew said he made it from the hearts of good Christians and Holy Communion wafers.”
    Malkyn, Simon, and Emeline all look down at this.
    “The mob set on the man I described, and although he