The Hidden Palace Read online

  Dedication

  For Maya and Gavin

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part I: 1900–1908

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part II: 1911–1914

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part III: 1915

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Helene Wecker

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Of all the myriad races of thinking creatures in the world, the two that most delight in telling stories are the flesh-and-blood humans and the long-lived, fiery jinn.

  The stories of both humans and jinn are known for their changeability. A tale told by either race will alter as it spreads, the versions multiplying into a family of stories, one that squabbles and contradicts itself like any other family. A story will seem to pass out of telling, then suddenly resurrect itself, its old bones fitted with modern garments. And there are even tales that spread from one race to the other—though the versions are often so different that they hardly seem like the same story at all.

  Consider, for instance, the story of the fisherman and the jinni. The humans tell it many ways, one of which is this:

  Once, long ago, a poor fisherman stood at the edge of a lake, casting his net. His first two casts brought him nothing, but on the third he pulled from the water an old copper flask. Rejoicing, for the copper was worth a few coins, he pried the iron stopper from the flask—and out exploded a gigantic and rageful jinni. The jinni explained to the man that King Sulayman himself had caged him in the flask and then tossed it into the lake, knowing that even if the jinni should manage somehow to escape, the water would extinguish him at once. For hundreds of years the jinni had brooded upon his misfortune, until his hatred of humanity had grown so large that he’d vowed to destroy whoever released him.

  The fisherman pleaded for his life, but the jinni refused to spare him. At last the fisherman begged the jinni to answer a single question first. Reluctantly, the jinni agreed. How, the fisherman asked, did you fit into that tiny flask? You stand before me an enormous specimen, and even your smallest toe would be enough to fill it. I simply won’t believe your story until I’m convinced you were inside the flask all along.

  Furious at this doubting of his word, the jinni promptly dissolved into his insubstantial form and crowded himself back into the flask, saying, Now do you see, human?—whereupon the fisherman replaced the stopper, trapping the jinni once more. Realizing his mistake, the jinni begged the fisherman from inside the flask, promising endless jewels and riches if the man would only release him. But the fisherman, who knew better than to trust him, threw the flask and its inhabitant back into the lake, where it lies undiscovered to this day.

  When told among the jinn, however, the tale sounds more like this:

  Long ago there was a cunning human wizard, a many-times descendant of Sulayman the Enslaver, who learned of a lake where a powerful jinni lay trapped inside a copper flask. Rejoicing, for the wizard wished to bind a jinni as his servant, he disguised himself as a poor fisherman, cast a net into the lake, and drew the flask from the waters. He pulled out the stopper, and the gigantic jinni emerged before him.

  Exhausted from his long years inside the flask, the jinni said, Human, you have released me, and I shall spare your life in gratitude.

  At once the wizard cast off his fisherman’s rags. You shall serve me for all your days! he shouted, and began to cast the binding spell.

  The jinni knew that if he flew away, the spell would only follow. So, quick as a flash, he shrank himself back into the flask, pulled the stopper in after himself, and used the flame of his body to heat the copper until it scalded the wizard—who unthinkingly hurled it away from himself, into the middle of the lake.

  Nursing his burnt hand and his wounded pride, the wizard declared, Clearly this jinni would have been nothing but trouble. I shall find a better servant elsewhere. And he stalked off, leaving the flask beneath the waters—and inside it the clever jinni, who’d decided that even a cramped and solitary prison was better than a life as a slave.

  There is another story shared by humans and jinn, one that also concerns iron and magic, vows and bindings. It is known by only a very few of both races, and guarded among them as a secret. Even if you were to find them, and earn their trust, it’s still unlikely that you’d ever hear the tale—which is told as follows:

  Part I

  1900–1908

  1.

  MANHATTAN, FEBRUARY 1900

  A man and a boy exited the Third Avenue Elevated and walked westward along 67th Street, into the wind.

  It was a frigid, blustery morning, and the weather had driven most of the city indoors. Those few who remained on the sidewalks stared at the man and boy as they passed, for they were an unusual sight in this Upper East Side neighborhood, with their long dark coats and broad-brimmed hats, their side-curls bobbing above their scarves. At Lexington, the man paced back and forth, squinting at the buildings, until at last the boy found what they were looking for: a narrow door labeled Benevolent Hebrew Aid Society. Behind the door was a flight of stairs, at the top of which was another door, the twin of the first. The man hesitated, then straightened his back and knocked.

  Footsteps—and the door swung open, revealing a thin-haired man in rimless spectacles and a trim American suit.

  If circumstances had been otherwise, the visitor might have introduced himself as Rabbi Lev Altschul of the Forsyth Street Synagogue, and the boy at his side as the son of a congregant, employed for the afternoon as a translator. The man in the suit, whose name was Fleischman, might’ve thanked the rabbi for coming so far, in such dismal weather. Then the two might have discussed the task that had brought them together: the disbursement of the private library of one Rabbi Avram Meyer, recently deceased. Mr. Fleischman would’ve explained that the late Rabbi Meyer’s nephew had chosen the Benevolent Hebrew Aid Society because they specialized in book donations—but that once the Rabbi’s collection had arrived, and crate after crate of Talmudic esoterica was unloaded into their office, it had become clear that, in this case, they would need to summon a specialist.

  In response, Rabbi Altschul might’ve outlined, with something approaching modesty, his own qualifications: that he was known among his peers for his Talmudic scholarship, and had spent his entire life, first in Lithuania and then New York, surrounded by books such as these. He would’ve reassured Mr. Fleischman that the Benevolent Hebrew Aid Society had made the right choice, and that under his stewardship, Rabbi Meyer’s books would all find new and appropriate homes.

  But none of this came to pass. Instead the two men faced each other balefully over the threshold, each staring in clear distaste at the top of the other’s head: the one garbed in Orthodox hat and side-curls, and the other, in the Reform manner, as bare as a Gentile’s.

  Then, without a word, Fleischman stepped to one side, and Altschul saw the enormous library table beyond, its scarred wooden top buried beneath stacks and rows and pyramids of books.

  Rabbi Altschul’s sigh was that
of a bridegroom catching a glimpse of his beloved.

  At last Fleischman broke the silence and delivered his instructions. The rabbi, he said, must sort the books into groups, based on whichever criteria he felt appropriate. Each group would then be sent to the synagogue of Altschul’s choice. The boy translated these instructions in a nervous, whispering Yiddish; the rabbi grunted and, without a word, went to the table and began his examinations.

  Thus dismissed, Fleischman retreated to a nearby desk, picked up a newspaper, and pretended to read it while surreptitiously watching his guest. The boy, too, watched the rabbi—for Lev Altschul was a commanding figure, and a man of some mystery, even to his own congregation. He was a widower, his young wife Malke having died from a fever after childbirth—and yet the loss seemed to have changed him little. All had expected him to remarry, if only to provide a mother for the baby, a daughter he’d named Kreindel; but the year of mourning had long since come and gone, and still he showed no interest in finding a bride.

  The truth was that Lev Altschul was a man with little patience for worldly considerations. He’d married Malke in order to fulfill the command to be fruitful and multiply, and because she, too, had come from a respected rabbinical family, which he’d thought would dispose her to the role of a rabbi’s wife. But the unfortunate Malke had been completely unsuited to the task. A mouse of a woman, she’d cringed at her husband’s every utterance, and had lived in even greater terror of his congregants—especially the women, whom she’d suspected, quite rightly, of mocking her behind her back. Altschul had hoped that motherhood might strengthen his bride, but the pregnancy had turned her even paler and more querulous than before; and at the end, she’d seemed to embrace the killing fever with a certain gloomy relief. The entire experience had been so off-putting that, having fulfilled the commandment once, Altschul had no intention of doing so again. To solve the problem of a mother for little Kreindel, he now paid an assortment of young mothers in their tenement to look after her—one of whom had just arrived for the squirming girl when he received the request from the Benevolent Hebrew Aid Society that morning, asking for his help.

  He’d nearly rejected the letter out of hand. In Lev Altschul’s mind, the Reform movement and their uptown charities were an enemy second only to the Russian Tsar. He held a special contempt for their settlement workers: young German Jewesses who knocked on tenement doors, offering the ladies who answered free milk and eggs if they agreed to endure a lecture on modern hygiene and nutrition. You’re in America now, their refrain went. You must learn to cook properly. Lev had instructed Malke that no settlement woman was ever to set foot in their apartment, that he’d rather starve than accept the worm that dangled from their hook. And now that Malke was dead, he was even warier than before: for all knew that the settlement women were also agents of the Asylum for Orphaned Hebrews, the gigantic Reform orphanage uptown that stole poor Orthodox children into its bowels and made them forget their families, their Yiddish, and their traditions. In short, he was as likely to venture inside a serpent’s pit as spend an afternoon at the Benevolent Hebrew Aid Society—but in the end, the lure of an abandoned Talmudic library had worked its magic, and the rabbi had reluctantly agreed.

  Now, as Altschul walked up and down the book-lined table, the character of the late Rabbi Meyer began to take shape in his mind. The books themselves were well thumbed and well cared for, the library of a true scholar. The titles, however, told him that Meyer’s theology had been far more mystical than his own, even edging toward anathema. In fact, if the two had ever encountered each other in life, Altschul might’ve had harsh words for him. But standing in this cold and alien office, with the dead man’s precious library laid out like the grubby contents of a bookmonger’s cart, Altschul felt only a deep and sympathetic grief. In this room, he and Meyer were brothers. He’d overlook their differences, and disburse the man’s legacy as best he could.

  He began to sort the books into piles, while the boy waited nearby in nervous boredom, and Fleischman turned each page of his newspaper with a rattle and a snap. Altschul wished the man would stop making so much noise; it seemed a deliberate insult—

  He paused, his hand upon a book that was considerably older and more worn than its neighbors. Only shreds of leather were left clinging to the boards; the spine, too, had flaked away, revealing narrow bundles of pages bound with fraying catgut. Carefully Altschul opened it—and his frown deepened as he turned the pages, skimming formulae, diagrams, pages of close-written Hebrew. He could barely read most of it, but the fragments he understood told of theories and experiments and the sorts of abilities that, should the tales be believed, were forbidden to all but the holiest sages. What, in the name of God, had Meyer been doing with a book like this?

  He closed the cover, his hands trembling with unease—and now he saw that the next book in the stack was just as worn and ancient-seeming as the first. And so was the next book, and the next. Five in all he found, five books of secret knowledge that most scholars thought had vanished into legend. These were sacred objects. He should’ve prayed and fasted before even touching them. And now here they were, in America—in a Reform charity office, of all places!

  Heart pounding, he carefully moved the books to one side, away from their neighbors. Then, as though nothing had happened, he went on to the next, blessedly ordinary volume. He imagined he could feel his hands tingling, as though the forbidden writings had leached through the tattered covers and into his skin.

  It had grown dark by the time all the books were sorted. At last Altschul summoned the boy and then traveled down the table, the boy translating his instructions while Fleischman grimly wrote them down. These books—Altschul outlined with his hands one large group of stacks—were to be given to Rabbi Teitelbaum at Congregation Kol Yisroel, at Hester Street. These books—another swath of small towers—must go to Mariampol Synagogue, on East Broadway.

  “And these,” the boy said as Altschul gestured to the final, solitary stack of decrepit-looking volumes, “must be sent to Rabbi Chaim Grodzinski, the Rav of Vilna.”

  Fleischman’s pen hovered above the paper. “I’m sorry, who?”

  “Rabbi Chaim Grodz—”

  “Yes, yes, but Vilna? In Lithuania?”

  Man and boy explained to Fleischman that the Rav was the chief rabbi of Vilna, and a holy and important personage. In return, Fleischman informed them that the man could be Elijah the Tishbite for all he cared—Lithuania, for heaven’s sake! Did they think he had a pet Rothschild to pay for the shipping? No, the books would have to join their brethren in one of the other stacks, or else Altschul must deal with them himself.

  The rabbi stared at him in silent anger, and then back at the tattered relics. Without another word he snatched up the books and stalked out the door and down to the street, the boy following behind.

  That night, when the boy’s mother asked her son what had sent their rabbi uptown, he described for her the charity office, and the countless books, and the man who’d turned his newspaper pages with a rattle and a snap. But he made no mention of the books that Rabbi Altschul had carried home on the Elevated. He didn’t want to remember how the rabbi’s eyes had gleamed with a terrible fascination as he’d gazed at them, how he’d neglected to stand for their stop until the boy tapped him on the shoulder. The boy had never liked Rabbi Altschul, not quite—but until that day, he’d never been afraid of him.

  Rabbi Altschul did not send the books to the Vilna Rav.

  Instead, he wrapped them in a prayer-shawl, placed the bundle inside an old wooden suitcase, and pushed the suitcase beneath his bed, far out of reach. Then he resumed the usual course of his life: synagogue, prayer, and study. Months passed, and not once did Rabbi Altschul touch the books, even though they tempted him greatly. Neither did he make inquiries into the circumstances of Rabbi Meyer’s death—although he couldn’t help wondering if the books had played some role in it. He imagined how it might’ve happened: the excited discovery, the heedless blunde
ring through their pages, an attempt at some spell thoroughly beyond Meyer’s abilities—and then, the inevitable consequence.

  His intuition was correct, to a point. The books had indeed hastened Rabbi Meyer’s death, slowly draining his strength as he studied them—not out of a naive, hubristic desire for their knowledge, but in an attempt to control a dangerous creature, one that Rabbi Meyer had discovered and sheltered and grown to care for. The creature was a golem, a living being sculpted from clay and animated by holy magic. This particular golem had been made in the form of a human woman—one who was somewhat tall and awkward, but otherwise entirely ordinary to all appearances. The golem’s name was Chava Levy. She worked at Radzin’s Bakery at the corner of Allen and Delancey, not seven blocks from Altschul’s own synagogue. To her colleagues, she was indefatigable Chava, who could braid an entire tray of challahs in under two minutes, and who sometimes seemed to reach for whatever a customer wanted before they’d even asked. To her landlady at her Eldridge Street boardinghouse, she was a quiet, steady tenant, and an expert seamstress who spent her nights performing repairs and alterations for pennies apiece. She was so quick with these tasks that her admiring clients sometimes asked, Chava, when do you find time to sleep? The truth, of course, was that she never needed to.

  SYRIAN DESERT, SEPTEMBER 1900

  In the desert east of the human city of ash-Sham—also called Damascus—a pair of jinn chased each other across the landscape.

  They were young for their kind, mere dozens of years old. For millennia, their clan had dwelt in the shelter of a nearby valley, far from the human empires that grew and shrank and conquered one another in turn. As they flew—each of them attempting to steal the wind that the other rode, a common game among the young—one of them spied something puzzling: a man, a human man, walking toward them from the west. He was tall, and thin, and wore no head-covering. In one hand he carried a travel-stained valise.