Authors: Michael Flynn
“The philosophy of the likelihood of events,” Dietrich said. “That intrigues.”
“Though less so,” Joachim said dryly, “than Godhead made flesh. The Son of God, Hans, assumed the appearance of men at his Incarnation.”
Hans listened silently to his head harness. “The
Heinzelmännchen
informs me that ‘incarnation’ in your ceremonial tongue likely means ‘enfleshment.’ ”
“Ja, doch.”
“But … But this is wonderful! Never have we met a folk able to assume the form of another! Was your lord a being of … No, not fire, but of that essence which gives impetus to matter.”
“Spirit,” Dietrich guessed. “In Greek, we say
energia
, which means that principle which ‘works within’ or animates.”
The Krenk considered that. “We have a … relationship … between spirit and material things. We say that ‘spirit equals material by the speed of light by the speed of light.’ ”
“An interesting invocation,” said Dietrich, “though occult in meaning.”
But the Krenk had turned away to interrupt his fellows with untranslated exclamations. A furious debate arose among them, which ended when the alchemist donned his own head harness and addressed Dietrich. “Tell me of this lord of pure
energia
and how he enfleshed himself. Such a being, when he returns, may yet save us!”
“Amen!” said Joachim. But the Kratzer snapped his
side-lips. “Enfleshment? The atoms of the flesh would not fit. Can Hochwalder impregnate Krenk? Wa-bwa-wa.”
Arnold flung his arm. “A being of pure
energia
might know the art of inhabiting a foreign body.” He took a seat at the table. “Tell me, will he come soon?”
“This is the season of Advent,” Dietrich said, “when we await his birth at Christ Mass.”
The alchemist trembled. “And when and where does he enflesh himself?”
“In Bethlehem of Judea.” The remainder of the evening passed in catechetical instruction, which the alchemist noted diligently on the wonderful writing slate all Krenken carried in their scrips. Arnold asked Joachim to translate the Mass into German so that the
Heinzelmännchen
could in turn translate it into Krenkish. Dietrich, who knew how poorly the figures of one tongue might sit upon another, wondered how much of the sense would survive the journey.
V
IGIL-NIGHT CAME
and, with it, those villagers who otherwise seldom saw the inside of the church. With them, came Arnold Krenk. Some, upon spying this peculiar new catechumen, slipped quietly outside, including Theresia. When the Mass of the Catechumens ended, and Brother Joachim, holding high the book of Gospels, led Arnold Krenk forth for instruction, a few crept back in for the Mass of the Faithful. But Theresia was not among them.
Afterward, Dietrich threw on a coat and, gripping a torch, picked his way to the foot of the hill, where Theresia’s cottage stood. He banged on the door, but she did not answer, pretending to be asleep, and so he doubled his efforts. The noise brought Lorenz from his smithy to stare at him bleary-eyed and to cast an appraising glance at the stars before returning to his slumbers.
Finally, Theresia opened the upper half of her door. “Will you allow no sleep?” she asked.
“You ran from Mass.”
“While demons are present, there can be no true Mass, so I have not broken the Christ Mass law. You have, father, because you have not prayed a proper Mass.”
This was too subtle for Theresia. “Who told you so?”
“Volkmar.”
The entire Bauer family had also departed the church. “And is Bauer then a theologian? The
doctor rustica?
Will you come to the Sunrise Mass?” Never had he need of the question. In the past, his daughter had attended all three Christ Masses.
“Will
they
be there?”
The customs and ceremonies of the village interested the Kratzer, so also many of the stranded pilgrims. Some of them surely would attend with their
fotografia
and
mikrofonai
. “They may.”
She shook her head. “Then, I must not.” She started to close the door.
Dietrich put his hand up to stop it. “Wait. If ‘in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no man or woman,’ how in Christ can I bar anyone from the table?”
“Because,” she answered quite simply, “these demons are neither man nor woman, neither Jew nor Greek.”
“You are a disputatious woman!”
Theresia closed the upper door. “You should rest for the Sunrise Mass,” he heard her say.
Returning to the parsonage, he expressed his frustrations to Joachim and wondered if he might bar the Krenken from some Masses so Theresia and the others would attend. “The simple answer is that you cannot,” the monk replied, “and like much that the Christ taught, the simple answer will suffice. Only schoolmen burden such things with quibbles.” He reached across the table and seized Dietrich’s wrist. “We are engaged in a wonderful task here, Dietrich. Should we bring these henchmen of Satan to the arms of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be far off. And when the Third Age of the World comes—the Age of the Holy Spirit—our names shall be writ in gold.”
But as he lay down to nap until the Sunrise Mass, Dietrich thought,
But will Theresia’s name be writ among them?
A
S OFTEN
happens, fear showed itself in hostility. Theresia threw snowballs at the Krenken whenever she encountered them in the open, having learned of their particular sensitivity to cold. “Of course the cold bothers them,” she told Dietrich after he had chastised her. “They are accustomed to the fires of Hell.” One time, her icy missiles struck a Krenkish child. After this, some of the Krenken, knowing that the mere sight of them would drive her wild, would in acts of petty revenge brave the cold merely to show themselves at her cottage window. Baron Grosswald applied the Krenkish discipline to these transgressors—not for love of Theresia Gresch, but to maintain the precarious peace—and warmth—he had eked from Herr Manfred’s disposition.
Even Joachim was moved to express his disappointment. “Had you asked me who in this village would sit before the Lord,” he said one afternoon while he mended a tear in his habit, “I would have named the herb woman. Lorenz told me she was mute when she arrived with you.”
Dietrich, who was sweeping the floor, paused over sudden memories. “And so for two years more.” He cast a glance at the crucifix on the wall, where Jesus also twisted in torment.
Why, O Lord, have you afflicted her so? Job at least was a wealthy man and so may have merited affliction, but Theresia was only a child when you took everything from her
. “Her father was a Herr in the Elsass,” he said, “and the Armleder burned their manor down, killed her father and brothers, and raped her mother.”
Joachim crossed himself. “God’s peace upon them.”
“All for the crime of being wealthy,” Dietrich added pointedly. “I do not know if her father was a cruel lord or a kind one, whether he held vast sallands or only a poor knight’s patch. Such distinctions meant nothing to that army. Madness had laid hold of them. They held the
type
wicked, not the person.”
“How came she to escape? Tell me the mob did not … !” Joachim had gone white and his lips and fingers trembled.
“There was a man among them,” Dietrich remembered, “who had opened his eyes and was desperate to escape their company. Yet he had been, even so, a leader, and could not slip away unremarked. So he asked for the girl as if he would bed her. The uprising had collapsed by then. They were dead men walking, and so without the law, for what greater penalty could be heaped upon them? The others thought he had only taken the child to some private place. By morn, he was many leagues distant.” Dietrich rubbed his arms. “It was through this wicked man that the girl came to me, and I brought her here where the madness had never touched and she could know a little peace.”
“God bless that man,” Joachim said, crossing himself.
Dietrich turned on him. “God bless him?” he shouted. “He slew men and urged others to slaughter. God’s blessing was far from him.”
“No,” the monk insisted quietly. “It was always there beside him. He had only to accept it.”
For a moment, Dietrich did not speak. “It is hard to forgive such a man,” he said at last, “whatever kindness moved him at the end.”
“Hard for men, perhaps,” Joachim retorted, “but not for God. What befell him afterward? Did the Elsass Duke take him?”
Dietrich shook his head. “No man has heard his name in twelve years.”
T
HE INTERVAL
between the Vigil-Night and the Epiphany was the longest holiday of the year. The villagers paid extra dues to stock the lord’s banquet table, but were exempt from all hand-service, and so a festive spirit came over all. A spruce tree was again erected on the green and hung about with flags and ornaments, and even the meanest cottage did not lack for its dress of holly, fir, or
mistel
.
But the merrymaking did not extend to the Krenken. A too-literal translation of
advent
into the Krenkish tongue had led the stranded travelers to expect the actual arrival of the much-heralded “lord from the sky,” so their disappointment was keen. While he was pleased that the strangers had looked forward to the Kingdom of Heaven, Dietrich cautioned Hans against naive literalism. “Since thirteen hundred years the Christ is ascended,” Dietrich explained after the Mass for St. Sebastian, while Hans helped him clean the sacred vessels. “His disciples, too, thought he soon would return, but they were mistaken.”
“Perhaps they were confused by the pressing of time,” Hans suggested.
“What! Can time then be pressed like grapes?” Dietrich was both startled and amused, and smacked his lips in Krenk-like laughter while he placed his chalice in its cupboard and locked it. “If time may be ‘pressed,’ then it is a being on which one may act, and
being
consists of subject and aspect. A thing that is movable alters in its aspect, for it is
here
, then it is
there;
it is
this
, then it is
that.”
Dietrich wagged his hand back and forth. “Of motions, there are four: change of substance, as when a log becomes ash; change of quality, as when an apple ripens from green to red; change of quantity, as when a body grows or diminishes; and change of place, which we call ‘local motion.’ Obviously, for time to be ‘pressed’—here
long
, there
short
—there must be a
motion
of time. But time is the
mea sure
of motion in changeable things and cannot measure itself.”
Hans disagreed. “Spirit travels so fast as the motion of light when there is no air. At such speeds, time passes more quickly, and what is an eye-blink for the Christ-spirit is for you many years. So your thirteen hundred years may seem to him only a few days. We call that the pressing of time.”
Dietrich considered the proposition for a moment. “I admit two sorts of duration:
tempus
for the sublunar realm
and
aeternia
for the heavens. But eternity is not time, nor is time a portion of eternity—for there cannot be time without change, which requires a beginning and an end, and eternity has neither. Furthermore, motion is an attribute of changeable beings, while light is an attribute of fire. But one attribute cannot inform another, for then the second attribute must be an entity and we must not multiply entities without necessity. Thus, light cannot have motion.”
Hans ground his forearms together. “But light
is
an entity. It is a wave, like the ripples on the millpond.”
Dietrich laughed at the Krenk’s witticism. “A ripple in the water is not an
entity
, but an attribute of water that results from a breeze, or a fish, or a stone thrown into it. What is the medium in which light ‘ripples’?”
Hans said, “There is no medium. Our philosophers have shown that …”
“Can there be a ripple without water?” Dietrich laughed again.
“Very well,” Hans said. “It is only
like
a ripple, but is composed of … very small bodies.”
“Corpuscles,” Dietrich supplied the word. “But if light were composed of corpuscles—a different proposition from being a ‘ripple in no medium’—those bodies would impress themselves upon our sense of touch.”
Hans made the tossing gesture. “One cannot argue with such reasoning.” He rubbed his forearms together slowly but, as the rasps were muffled by the fur, he made no sound. “When the
Heinzelmännchen
oversets ‘motion’ or ‘spirit,’” he said at length, “the Krenkish terms I hear may differ from the German terms you spoke. By me, the falling rock is in ‘motion,’ but not the burning log. When I say that by pressing a certain type on the talking head, I release spirit from the fires of the storage barrels and so animate the matter, I know what I have said, but not what you have heard. Have you finished your up-cleaning? Good. Let us to the fire in the parsonage. Here is by me too cold.”
They proceeded to the vestibule, and while Dietrich shrugged into his overcoat and pulled his collar close against the chill, the Krenk spoke further. “Yet you did speak a truth. Time is truly inseparable from motion—duration depends on the degree of motion—and time does have a beginning and an end. Our philosophers have concluded that time began when this world and the other world touched.” Hans clapped his two hands in illustration. “That was the beginning of everything. Someday, they will again clap, and all will begin anew.”
Dietrich nodded agreement. “Our world indeed began when touched by the other world; though to speak of ‘clapping hands’ is but a metaphor for what is pure spirit. But, to press a thing, some actor must press upon it, since no motion exists save by a mover. How might we press upon time?”
Hans opened the church door and crouched for the bounding leaps that would take him quickly through the cold to the parsonage. “Say rather,” he answered cryptically, “that time presses upon us.”
T
HE CUSTOMS
of the manor required Herr Manfred to feast the villagers in the Hof during the holy days, and so he selected according to the Weistümer certain households from the manor rolls. By Oberhochwald, the customary number was twelve, to honor the Apostles. Those who, like Volkmar and Klaus, held several manses, sat beside the lord with their wives and ate and drank off the lord’s own dishes. Gärtners were invited also, though these brought their own cloth, cup, and trencher.