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.