Eifelheim (15 page)

Was it a greeting? This one was tall, perhaps taller than Dietrich himself, and adorned with more colorful garb than the others: a buttonless vest such as the Moors favored, loose trousers of three-quarter’s length, a belt with a variety of tokens dependent upon it, a sash of bright yellow. Such finery marked a man of rank. Dietrich, having recovered his aplomb, bowed from the shoulders. “Wabwabwabwa,” he said, repeating the greeting as closely as he could.

In response, the creature dealt Dietrich a sharp blow.

Dietrich rubbed the stinging cheek. “You must not strike a priest of Jesus Christ,” he warned. “I will call you Herr Gschert.” The easy resort to blows had confirmed his surmise that this was one gently born.

The first creature, dressed as plainly as the servant but withal possessing an air of command, smacked the table with its forearm. A chittering arose and both it and Gschert waved their arms. Dietrich could see now that the sounds were made by the horny sides of the creatures’ mouths clicking rapidly together like the twin blades of a scissors-pair. He thought it must be speech but, despite his
most intent concentration, it seemed only the noise of insects.

Whatever discussion obtained between the two reached a crescendo. The seated one raised both bare forearms and rasped one against the other. There were callused ridges along them and the gesture made a sound like ripping cloth. Herr Gschert made a move as if to strike, and the seated one stood as if prepared to return the blow. From the other side of the apartment, the servant looked on, as servants are wont to do when their betters quarrel.

But the Herr checked its swing and made another gesture entirely, a tossing motion that Dietrich had no difficulty interpreting as a dismissal, conceding whatever point had been in contention. The other creature tilted its head back and spread its arms and Herr Gschert clicked its side-jaws once, sharply, whereupon the other resumed its seat.

Dietrich could not conjugate precisely what had just happened. There had been an argument, he thought. The first creature had challenged its lord—and had in some fashion triumphed. What then was the status of the seated one? To raise a challenge implied that the party had honor, which a commoner could not possess. So. A priest, perhaps? A powerful vassal? Or the man of another lord whom Gschert wished not to offend? Dietrich decided to call this one the Kratzer, because of the gesture it had made with its arms.

Gschert leaned back against the wall and the Kratzer resumed his seat. Then, facing Dietrich, it began clicking its horned side-lips. In the midst of the insect buzz, a voice said, “Greet God.”

Dietrich started and looked to see whether somone else had entered the room.

The voice said again, “Greet God.” It issued undisputedly from within a small box on the table! Through the loose weave of a cloth stretched tightly across its face, Dietrich could discern a drum head. Did the creatures have a
Heinzelmännchen
trapped within? He tried to look through
the curtain—he had never actually seen a brownie—but the voice said, “Sit thee.”

The command was so unexpected that Dietrich could think of no other response but to comply. There was something like a chair nearby, and he fit himself—badly—into it. The seat was uncomfortable, shaped to fit a different ass than his.

Now, a third time, the voice spoke. “Greet God.” This time, Dietrich merely answered. “Greet God. How goes it by you, friend
Heinzelmännchen
?”

“It goes well. What means this word
Heinzelmännchen?”
The words were toneless and fell like the beat of a pendulum. Did the sprite make fun? The little people were wont to pranks, and while some, like the brownies, were reputedly playful, others, like the Gnurr, could be petty and malicious. “A
Heinzelmännchen
is one like yourself,” Dietrich said, wondering where this dialogue was going.

“Know you then others like myself?”

“You are the first I have met,” Dietrich admitted.

“Then, how know you that I be a
Heinzelmännchen?”

Oh, clever! Dietrich could see that a battle of wits was about. Had the creatures captured a brownie and required now Dietrich’s offices to speak with it? “Who else,” he reasoned, “could fit inside a very small box but a very small man?”

This time there was a pause in the reply, and Herr Gschert made wa-wa sounds again, to which the Kratzer, who had been staring at Dietrich throughout, made the dismissive toss-gesture. It clicked its lips together—and the sprite said, “There is no small man. The box himself speaks.”

Dietrich laughed. “How can that be,” he asked, “when you have no tongue?”

“What means ‘tongue’?”

Amused, Dietrich stuck his tongue out.

The Kratzer reached its long arm out and touched the picture frame, and the picture changed to a portrait of Dietrich himself, fully rendered in depth in the act of
sticking his tongue out. In some manner, the tongue in the portrait glowed. Dietrich wondered if he had been wrong about the demonic nature of these beings. “Is this tongue?” the
Heinzelmännchen
asked.

“Yes, that is
doch
the tongue.”

“Many thanks.”

“I
T WAS
when it thanked me,” Dietrich told Manfred later that evening, “that I began to suspect that it was a machine.”

“A machine …” Manfred thought about that. “You mean like Müller’s camshaft?” The two of them stood by a credence table near the fireplace in the great hall. The remnants of the dinner had been cleared, the children sent to bed with their nurse, the juggler thanked and dismissed with his pfennig, the other guests escorted to the door by Gunther. The hall was now sealed and even the servants sent away, leaving only Max to guard the door. Manfred filled two
maigeleins
with wine by his own hand. He proffered both, and Dietrich chose the one on the left. “Thank you, mine Herr.”

Manfred grinned briefly. “Should I suspect now that you, too, are all gears and cams?”

“Please, I was conscious of the irony.” They walked together from the credence table to stand near the fire. The ruddy embers hissed, and licked occasionally into flame.

Dietrich rubbed his hand across the roughly textured glass of his wine-bowl while he considered. “There was no cadence to the voice,” he decided. “Or, rather, its cadence was mechanical, without rhetorical flourishes. It lacked scorn, amusement,
emphasis
, … hesitation. It said ‘many thanks’ with all the feeling of a shuttlecock flying across a loom.”

“I see,” said Manfred, and Dietrich raised a finger post.

“And that was another convincing point. You and I understand that by ‘see’ you signified something other than a direct impression on the sense of sight. As Buridan said, there is more to the meaning of an utterance than the precise words uttered. But the
Heinzelmännchen
did not understand
figures. Once it learned that the ‘tongue’ is a part of the body, it became confused when I referred to ‘the German tongue.’ It did not comprehend
metonymy.”

“That’s Greek to me,” Manfred said.

“What I mean, my lord, is that I think … I think they may not know poetry.”

“No poetry …” Manfred frowned, swirled his wine cup, and threw down a swallow. “Imagine that,” he said. For a moment Dietrich thought the Herr had spoken sarcastically, but the man surprised him when he continued almost to himself, “No
King Rother?
No
Eneit?”
He lifted his cup and declaimed:

“By God, I cannot hear those lines sung without a shiver.” He turned to Dietrich. “You will swear that this
Heinzelmännchen
is only a device and not a real brownie?”

“Mine Herr, Bacon described such a ‘talking head,’ though he knew not how one might be fashioned. Since thirteen years the Milanese built a mechanical clock in their public square that rings the hours
with no man’s hand intervening
. If a mechanical device can speak the time, why cannot a more subtle device speak of other matters?”

“That logic of yours will get you into trouble one of these days,” Manfred cautioned him. “But you say it already knew some phrases and words. How was that come by?”

“They placed devices about the village to listen to our speech. They showed me one. It was no bigger than my thumb and looked like an insect, for which reason I call them ‘bugs.’ From what he overheard, the
Heinzelmännchen
deduced somehow a meaning—that ‘How goes it?’ signified a greeting, or that ‘swine’ signified that particular animal, and so forth. But he was limited by what the mechanical bugs saw and heard, much of which he did not
properly understand. So, while he knew that swine were sometimes called ‘sucklings’ or ‘yearlings,’ he did not grasp the distinction, let alone that between the first, second, and third pen or between breeding and leader sows—by which I deduce that these folk are not swineherds.”

Manfred grunted. “You still call it a
Heinzelmännchen
, then.”

Dietrich shrugged. “The name is as good as any. But I coined a term in Greek to signify both the brownie and the bugs.”

“Yes, you would have …”

“I call them
automata
, because they are
self-acting.”

“Like the mill-wheel, then.”

“Very like, save that I know not what fluid impresses an impetus on them.”

Manfred’s eyes searched the hall. “Might a ‘bug’ listen even now?”

Dietrich shrugged. “They placed them on Laurence-eve, just before your return. They are subtle, but I doubt they could have slipped into the Hof or the Burg. The sentries may not be the most alert, but they might have marked a skulking, five-shoe-tall grasshopper.”

Manfred guffawed and slapped Dietrich on the shoulder. “A five-shoe grasshopper! Ha! Yes, they would have noticed that!”

I
N THE
parsonage, Dietrich examined his rooms carefully and finally found a bug no larger than his least finger-digit nestled in the arms of Lorenz’s cross. A clever perch. The
automaton
could observe the entire room and, dark-colored as it was, remain unseen.

Dietrich left it in place. If the strangers’ intent was to learn the German tongue, then the sooner that was accomplished, the sooner Dietrich could explain the need for them to depart.

“I will fetch a fresh hour-candle,” he announced to the listening instrument. Then, having obtained one from the casket, concluded, “I have fetched an hour-candle.” He held
the candle so that it faced the bug. “This is called an ‘hour-candle.’ It is composed of …” He pinched a piece off the edge. “… of beeswax. Each numbered line marks one twelfth-part of the day, from sunrise to sunset. I gauge the time by how far down the candle has burned.”

He spoke self-consciously at first, then more in the manner of an arts master giving a cursory. Yet, what listened was not a class of scholars, but one of Bacon’s talking heads and he wondered to what extent he was understood by the device, or even whether in this instance understanding had any meaning.

VI
SEPTEMBER
, 1348
The Stigmata of St. Francis

T
HEY CALLED
themselves the Krenk, or something to which the human tongue could come no closer; but whether the term was as encompassing as “human” or as peculiar as “Black Forester” Dietrich could not immediately discern. “They certainly
look
sick,” said Max after one visit, and he laughed at the pun, for
Krenk
sounded much like the German word for “sick.” And indeed, given their spindly form and gray complexion, the name struck Dietrich as an uncomfortable bit of divine whimsy.

Theresia had wanted to go to them with her herbs. “It is what the blessed Lord would have done,” she said, which shamed Dietrich, for he himself was more concerned to see them gone than succored; and, although he admitted succor as an efficient means to that end, one must assent to the good for its own sake, and not merely as the means to another good. Yet he was reluctant to admit Theresia to the circle of those who knew of the Krenken. Beings of such strange appearance and powers would attract interest, shattering
Dietrich’s seclusion forever—and four was already a high number for keeping secrets. He contented Theresia by pleading the Herr’s instructions, but she pressed her potions upon him. The Krenken seemed to grow well or not on their use, much as did humans.