Eifelheim (26 page)

Dietrich had no answer, only that it was the sort of historical irony that had appealed to students in Paris and he
was no longer a student and this was not Paris. “The calendar is wrong in any case,” he said.

“As Bacon and Grosseteste showed,” the prior agreed. “Franciscans are not backward in natural philosophy. ‘Only the man learned in nature truly understands the Spirit, since he uncovers the Spirit where it lies—in the heart of nature.’”

Dietrich shrugged. “I intended a jest, not a criticism. Everyone talks about the calendar, but no one does anything to fix it.” In fact, since the Incarnation signified the beginning of a new era, it had been symbolically assigned to March 25, New Year’s Day, and December 25 necessarily fell nine months after. Dietrich nodded at the crèche. “In any case, a pretty display.”

“It is not ‘a pretty display,’” the prior admonished him, “but a dread and solemn warning to the mighty: ‘Behold your God: a poor and helpless child!’”

Taken somewhat aback, Dietrich allowed the prior and the abbot to escort him toward the vestibule; proceeding slowly, for the abbot, an elderly man with a wisp of whitish hair ringing his bald headskin, walked with a hobble.

“Thank you, for bringing us word of Brother Joachim,” said the abbot. “We will inform the Strassburg friary.” His eyes pinched in thought. “A devout boy, I recollect. I hope you have taught him the dangers of excess. The Spirituals could use a little restraint.” The abbot glanced sidelong at his prior. “Tell him an accommodation may be reached. Marsilius is dead. I suppose you have heard. They’re all dead now, save Ockham, and he is making his peace with Clement. He’s to go to Avignon and beg forgiveness.”

Dietrich stopped short. “Ockham. Do you know when?” He could not imagine Will begging pardon of anyone.

“In the spring. The chapter will meet and make a fomal plea. Clement seeks a way to take him back without making it too obvious what a fool John was to expel him.” The abbot shook his head. “Michael and the others went too far
when they went to the Kaiser. It is not for us to order the affairs of kings, but to care for the poor and lowly.”

“That,” said Dietrich, “may require you to order the affairs of kings.”

The old man was silent a moment longer before saying mildly, “Have
you
learned the dangers of excess, Dietl?”

R
ETURNING TO
the Dear Lady Church, Dietrich noticed that one of the fishwives setting up her booth had paused in her labors to watch him. He shivered against the breeze and pulled his hood up and pressed on. When he glanced back, she was tying the tent ropes. He had imagined her interest. People had long forgotten.

The Strassburg diocese governed the Elsass, the Breisgau, and most of the Schwarzwald; but an archdeacon resident in Freiburg spoke in the bishop’s name. Dietrich found the man praying at the Atonement Chapel and thought it a good sign that a man so highly placed should be discovered on his knees.

When the archdeacon crossed himself and rose, he saw Dietrich and exclaimed, “Dietrich, my old! How goes it by you? I’ve not seen you since Paris.” He was a soft-spoken man, gentle in demeanor, and with a pressing urgency to his eyes.

“I have now a parish in the Hochwald. Not so grand as yours, Willi, but it is quiet.”

Archdeacon Wilhelm crossed himself. “God-love-us, yes. Too much excitement down here these past years. First, Ludwig and Friedrich fighting over the crown, then the barons—Endingen, Üsenberg, and Falkenstein—laying waste the Breisgau over God-knows-what for six years—” He gestured at the Atonement Chapel, which the barons had built in token of the peace. ”—then the Armleder smashing and burning and hanging. So the madness ran from the imperials, to the Herrenfolk, to the common ruck. God be praised for these ten years of peace—God and the Swabian League. Freiburg and Basel enforce the
peace on the barons now, and Zürich, Bern, Konstanz, and Strassburg have joined, as you may have heard. Come walk with me. Have you heard from Aureoli or Buridan or any of the others? Did they survive the pest?”

“I haven’t heard. I’m told Ockham is to make his peace.”

Willi grunted and stroked his black-and-white beard. “Until he picks his next quarrel. He must have dozed when his class discussed ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ Maybe the Franciscans don’t teach that at Oxford.”

In the nave, the overhead vault seemed to go on forever and Dietrich saw what Gregor had meant about illuminating the interior. By the tower entrance stood a fine statue of the Virgin flanked by two angels, carved in the old style of the previous century. The stained-glass lights were modern, save for the small round ones in the south transept, which were also in the old style. “I have a troubling theological question, your grace.”

“It must be troubling if I’ve become ‘your grace.’ What is it?”

Dietrich handed him the packet and explained in elliptical terms his thoughts regarding the Krenken, whom he described only as strangers of a terrible mien, governed in large measure by instinct rather than reason. Could folk so governed have souls?

“If one is to err,” Willi said, “best to err on the side of caution. Assume they have souls unless proven otherwise.”

“But their lack of reason …”

“You give reason too much weight. Reason—and will—are always impaired to some degree. Consider how a man will pull his hand from the fire without first weighing arguments
sic et non
. Being subject to habits and conditions does not deprive a being of a soul.”

“What if the being owned the seeming of a beast,” Dietrich ventured, “and not that of a man.”

“A beast!”

“A swine, perhaps, or a horse, or a … or a grasshopper.”

Willi laughed. “Such a vain argument! Beasts possess the souls appropriate to them.”

“And if the beast could speak and build devices and …?”

Willi stopped walking and cocked his head. “Why so agitated, Dietl, over a
secundum imaginationem?
Such questions make fine school-puzzles in logic, but they have no practical significance. We were made in God’s image, but God had no material body.”

Dietrich sighed and Willi placed a hand on his arm. “But for the sake of old Paris days, I will give the matter thought. That is the problem with the schools, you know. They should teach the practical arts: magic, alchemy, mechanics. All that dialectic is in the air.” The archdeacon waved a hand above his head, fluttering the fingertips. “Na, folk like nothing better than a good disputation. Remember the crowds at the weekly quodlibets? I’ll tell you my first thoughts.” The archdeacon pursed his lips and lifted a forefinger. “The soul is the form of the body, but not as the shape of a statue is
formatio et terminatio materiae
, for
form
does not exist apart from
material
. There is no
whiteness
without a white
object
. But the soul is not a form in this simple sense, and in particular, is not the shape of the material it informs. Therefore, the shape of a being does not affect the being’s soul, for then something lower would move something higher, which is impossible.”

“The Council of Vienne declared otherwise,” Dietrich suggested. “The ninth article decreed the soul to be a form as any other form.”

“Or seemed to. Poor Peter Aureoli. He tried so hard to reconcile that decree to the teachings of the Fathers, but that’s what happens when you let a committee of amateurs muck around in these matters. Now, Dietl, give me an embrace and I will part to consider your problem.”

The two wrapped arms for a few moments before granting each other the kiss of peace. “God be with you, Willi,” Dietrich said when they parted.

“You ought to visit Freiburg more often,” the archdeacon said.

O
UTSIDE THE
minster, Dietrich craned his neck searching the gargoyles infesting the eaves until he found the one that Gregor had mentioned: a demon clinging to the walls with spindly limbs, but with its ass stretched over the plaza. Runnels in the limbs channeled rain water through the figure’s ass onto the marketplace below. Folks called it “The Shitter.”

Dietrich’s laughter attracted the attention of a frowsy dame selling smoked fish at a nearby booth in the minster-place. “Good day, t’ye, priest,” the woman said in the accents of the Elsass. “Nothin’ like the Ladychurch where you come from, I wager.”

“No. Nothing like it. But here there is nothing like where I come from, either.”

She gave him a peculiar look. “Contrary, are ye? I knew a man like that once, I did. I could show him a beautiful sunrise and he would quote some Paris high-and-mighty who thought it might be the Earth turning below the sun. Always had a second way to look at things.” She cocked her head and studied him. “I saw y’ before, and y’ favor him some … Here, put your hand here. One thing I’d never forget is the touch of his hand on my breast.”

Dietrich recoiled, and the woman laughed. “But he weren’t no cold fish,” she said. “No, he never recoiled from these sweet things. Nor from this more tart one, eh?” She laughed again, but slowly fell quiet. When Dietrich turned away, her voice halted him before he had taken more than a few paces. “They looked for ‘im,” she said. “Maybe more’n I did, for they wanted to hang ‘im and I didn’t want near that much. I don’t suppose he was the right man for me, anyways, fine-spoken as he was. They don’t look for him no more, but they might still hang ‘im, if they happen on ‘im.”

Dietrich hurried across the square to Butter Alley, where he vanished into the nest of streets that led to the
Swabian Gate. At the last, he glanced behind and saw that a boy had joined the fishwife—a dark-haired lad of perhaps twelve years, lithe and well-muscled and dressed as a fisherman. Dietrich hesitated a moment longer, but though the boy spoke to his mother, he never lifted his gaze and so Dietrich never saw his face.

O
VER THE
next few days, as the market bustled, Dietrich avoided Minster Place. He arranged with a coppersmith to draw the ingot. “Provided,” Dietrich told him, “you draw it fine enough to pass through this eye.” And he held up a device that the Krenk had given him.

The smith whistled. “The gage
is
surpassing fine, but naturally the finer the draw the less copper I use, so I certainly have the motive.” He laughed a little sharply. Behind him, his apprentice sat on a swing with the drawing pliers in his hand, watching his master negotiate.

“When will it be done?”

“I must draw the wire in several reductions so it does not harden. You see, first I soften it with fire, and hammer a bit of the material through a die-hole. Then my apprentice grips it with the pliers and swings back and forth, pulling with each swing more wire through the hole. But I cannot draw it so fine as this all at once or the strand will break.”

Dietrich was not interested in the finer points of copper-smithing. “So long as the breaks are not hammered together.”

The coppersmith studied the ingot with covert avarice. “Two hundred shoes … Three days.”

In three days, the market would end and Dietrich could leave this town of prying eyes. “That pleases. I will be back in that time.”

H
E BESPOKE
also a glazier on the cost of repairing the broken church windows and secured a promise from the man to come up the mountain in the springtime. “I hear ye’ve got locusts up there,” the glazier said. “Poor harvest.
A fellow down from St. Blasien said he heard locusts all over the Katerinaberg.” The man thought a little more, then added with a wink, “An’ he says the monks at St. Blasien drove off a demon. Hideous lookin’ creature broke into the storerooms to steal food. So the monks set a trap one night and repelled it with fire. The demon fled toward the Feldberg, but the monks burned down half their kitchen in the feat.” He tossed his head, laughing. “Burned down half their kitchen. Heh. You folks live near the Feldberg. You didn’t see the creature come to nest, did you?”

Dietrich shook his head. “No, we did not see that.”

The glazier winked. “I think the monks were celebrating the wine harvest. I seen plenty o’ demons that way, myself.”

W
HEN THE
market ended, the wagons departed for the Hochwald with bags of coin, bolts of cloth, and a satisfied smile on Everard’s face. Dietrich did not go with them, for the coppersmith’s promise had proven optimistic. “It just wants a different draw,” the man insisted. “The gauge is so fine that it keeps breaking.” It was a plea to accept a thicker wire, but Dietrich would not hear it.

He misliked tarrying, yet without the wire the Krenken would stay forever, and he had had a vision of what that would mean.
They might still hang ‘im, if they happen on ‘im
. He stayed in the chapter house at the minster, dining with Willi and the others, but he never left by the south doors and he never ventured toward the River Dreisam, where the fishermen’s huts lined the autumn-starved flow. He prayed for the woman and for her boy—and for her man, if she had found a new one—and he prayed that he might at least remember her name. Now and then, he wondered if he had mistaken a fishwife’s ribald jape. It had all happened somewhere else. It had all fallen into a shambles under the walls of Strassburg, trampled under the hooves of the Alsatian chivalry, far from the Breisgau. It asked too much of coincidence that she be here. It demanded too much cruelty of God.