Eifelheim (34 page)

A fight broke out when Anna Kohlmann captured Bertram Unterbaum. Oliver Becker, who thought himself entitled to that fate, knocked Bertram to the ground and bloodied his nose. But instead of running to the victor, as Oliver had no doubt imagined, Anna ran to the prostrate lad and cradled his head in her lap, earning herself years in Purgatory by the names she called the baker’s son. Oliver turned pale and fled from her tongue, some said with tears of his own.

Later, when Jakob and Bertha could not find their son to fire the oven, they found that both he and his meager belongings had vanished, and Jakob cursed the young man as a
bummer
.

Dietrich feared that the lad would carry tales of the Krenken to Freiburg, but Manfred refused to pursue him. “In
that
cold, through
those
drifts? No, he was a fool to run off, and likely a dead fool ere long.”

At that rebuke, Dietrich knelt in church for three evenings thereafter, chastising himself that he had worried over his own safety, and not that of the distraught young man.

A
T TIERCE
, on the commemoration of Priscilla of the Catacombs, the Kratzer summoned Dietrich and Lorenz to meet in Manfred’s hall with Hans and a third Krenk whom Dietrich did not know, and from whose girdle depended many curious tools. The Krenken spread across the banquet table parchments richly illuminated with intricate figures; though for all their fine precision, the execution was poor, lacking both the color and brilliance of French work and the wild exuberance of the Irish. Vines lay at precise angles and bore curiously geometric fruit: circles and squares and triangles, some with writing. Joachim, he thought, even with his indifferent draughting hand, could easily execute a more pleasing illumination.

“This drawing,” Hans explained, “is a … What do you call it when something goes forth and comes back to its starting place?”

“A circuit, as when Everard makes a circuit of the Herr’s estate.”

“Many thank. This circuit helps move our cog through the inward-curling directions to the other world. Or so the ‘servant of the essence’ has said.” By this, he indicated the third Krenk, who bore the name Gottfried. “His more cunning devices were ruined in the shipwreck and cannot be repaired, but this primitive one may serve in their stead. The essence runs from this point, the
mover
, out and back through a lattice of copper wires, and so animates our machines. This essence is contained in … storage barrels, but these barrels grow ever more depleted from lack of the generative power. This may restore them.”

Dietrich stared at the illumination. “This device will speed your departure?”

Hans did not turn his head. “It may not serve,” he admitted, “but it must be tried or we will be ‘saved by the alchemist’.” At this, the Kratzer scissored his mandibles sharply and the servant of the essence stiffened. Hans bent over the “circuit.” Dietrich had noticed how the alchemist’s
suicide had affected his strange guests. They had become more subdued, but also snapped frequently at one another.

“Is the essence that runs through the copper,” Dietrich wondered aloud, “an earth, water, air, or fire?”

Hans said nothing, so the Kratzer answered. “We call those the … ‘four seemings of a material.’ Fire, I suppose. It can burn.”

“That is because fire atoms are tetrahedral, with many sharp points. It must move very fast, that being an attribute of fire.”

Hans, who had been “reading the circuit,” raised his head from the illuminated manuscript at that and parted his soft lips in the Krenkish smile. “Yes, very fast indeed.”

“Fire seeks always its natural position, to move upward to the fourth sublunar sphere.”

“Well, this sort of fire seeks a lower position,” Hans said. “Or ‘potency,’ I think you say.”

“Then it must partake also of water, which moves toward a lower sphere—though fire and water, being contrary, do not easily mix. So, your fire-water must then flow through the copper channels as water flows through mill races and moves Klaus’s mill wheel from potency to act. Do these fruits on your vines signify machines? Ja? But to move a machine needs a strong current. The height of the dam is of great importance, since the greater the drop, the greater the work performed.”

“The potential drop in this circuit is very great,” said Gottfried, the servant of the essence, “as is the current. We have secured the remainder of the ingot left with the Freiburg smith. It will not encompass
all
repairs, but will suffice to build this device.”

“What?” said Dietrich. “That was to be the man’s payment!”

Hans tossed his arm. “Our need is greater. The ‘bug’ that traveled with you told us where his shop stood. We flew down at night and retrieved it.”

“But that is theft!”

“That is survival. Are goods not distributed according to need, as you read from your book?”

“Distributed, not taken. Hans, the natural arrogance of your people has led you from the Way. You see a thing and, if you want it and you have the power, you take it.”

“If we remain here, we die. Since life is the greatest good, it requires the greatest effort; so to work toward our escape cannot be called inordinate.”

Dietrich started. “But life is only the greatest of
corruptible
goods, so it is not the greatest good of all, which we call God. To desire what another possesses is to love yourself
more
than you love the other, and that is contrary to
charitas.”

But Hans only tossed his arm. “Joachim has sketched you accurately.” Then he turned to the smith. “Lorenz, can you draw copper finely enough?”

“Copper wants a colder fire than iron,” Lorenz said, “and then it is only a matter of piercing dies of the proper size.” He grinned at the expressionless Krenk. “No worry. I will start work once Venus is ascendant.”

“Venus …” Hans cocked his arm in a gesture indicating uncertainty.

“That planet is favorable for copper-working,” the smith answered to the Krenken’s evident puzzlement. “Since copper came first from Cyprus,” he added helpfully.

Manfred gave his grace to the enterprise with marked reluctance, not because he expected little success but because he feared too much. “If this cog of theirs is restored,” he confided to Dietrich afterward, “the Krenken will steal away, for I doubt Grosswald understands an oath of fealty. When it suits his convenience, he will discard it without a qualm.”

“Being in this very different from mankind,” Dietrich said.

A
ND SO
Lorenz drew the ingot into wire, and Gottfried arranged it on a board that mimicked the pattern on the
“circuit” drawing. When his magic wand touched a spool of dull gray metal,
the metal flowed
and dripped upon wire and pin alike, turning instantly solid once more and binding the one to the other. Metalworkers used such “plumbing-metal,” but needed fire to make it flow, and Dietrich saw no sign of a fire. The wand, when Gottfried allowed him to touch it, was not even warm.

The work required a jeweler’s touch and, when something had not been done precisely right, Gottfried would cuff his apprentices or engage in a scuffle with Hans. Even among Krenken, Gottfried was noted for his choler.

The Krenk worried over the “unclothed” nature of the wire, but his meaning remained occult, as no German word signified the clothing. When the “circuit” was ready at last, Gottfried tested it with a device he wore on his belt and—after much discussion with Hans, the Kratzer, and Baron Grosswald—pronounced himself satisfied.

T
HE NEXT
day, an indifferent snowfall littered the still air. The party gathered in the Burg courtyard. Gottfried, bundled in furs, strapped a flying harness on, from which hung in a protective sack the device he had built. His muchabused apprentice, Wittich, would carry Lorenz to the ship in a sling. The smith had begged the boon of watching; and Baron Grosswald, at Herr Manfred’s urging, had consented.

Dietrich prayed a blessing on their efforts, and Lorenz knelt upon the icy flagstones and drew the sign of the cross over his body. Before climbing the tower from which the fliers would depart, the smith embraced Dietrich and gave him the kiss of peace. “Pray for me,” he said.

“Close your eyes until you are again on solid land.”

“I don’t fear height, but failure. I’m no copper-smith. The draw is not so fine and regular as Gottfried had asked.”

Dietrich remained at the base of the tower while the others climbed the narrow, spiral stairs to the top. Just around
the bend of the spiral, the two Krenken tripped on the stumbling blocks. Hans, who had stayed behind with Dietrich, commented on the mason’s evident lack of skill.

“But no,” Dietrich said. “The stumble-steps are so attackers climbing the tower ‘trip up.’ The stairs spiral right-handwise for similar reason. Invaders cannot wield their swords; while the defenders, fighting downward, have a full swing.”

Hans shook his head, a gesture he had acquired from his hosts. “Your ineptness proves always cunning.” He pointed skyward, though without tilting his head back. “They go.”

Dietrich watched the fliers until they had become dark specks. The sentries on the walls pointed, too, but they had seen such flights now many times and the novelty of the feat had begun to fade. They had seen even Max Schweitzer fly, though with indifferent success.

“Blitzl has no little optimism,” Hans said.

“Who is Blitzl?”

Hans pointed toward the fliers as they vanished into the woodland. “Gottfried. We call those who follow his craft ‘Little Lightnings.’ During thunder-weather great bolts of the fiery fluid cross our sky, and Gottfried works with smaller versions of the same spirit.”

“The
elektronikos
!”

A Krenk’s face could not show astonishment. “You know of it? But you said nothing!”

“I deduced its likelihood from philosophic principles. When your cog failed, a great wave of
elektronikos
washed across the village, creating no small havoc.”

“Give thanks then that it was but a ripple,” Hans told him.

I
T WAS
difficult to reconstruct afterward what had happened. Gottfried was in another apartment of the vessel and did not see. Perhaps Wittich had spied a loose wire and sought to adjust it. But while he handled the unclothed wire, Gottfried opened the sluice gate, allowing the
elektronikos
to pour through the channels—and through Wittich, seeking, as fluids did, the lowest ground.

“Lorenz siezed Wittich’s arm to pull him away,” Gottfried told Manfred’s inquest afterward, “and the fluid coursed through him as well.”

Like old Pforzheim
, Dietrich thought.
And Holzbrenner and his apprentice
. Only stronger, as if a torrent had washed the man away.
Man’s days are like grass
, he thought,
the wind blows over him and he is no more
.

“The man Lorenz did not know what would befall when he touched Wittich?” Grosswald asked. He sat by Manfred and Thierry on the judge’s bench since the affair involved his folk.

Gottfried said, “He saw that Wittich was in pain.”

“But
you
knew,” Grosswald insisted.

The servant of the essence made the tossing motion and all could see the burns on his hands. “I moved too late.”

Baron Grosswald ground his forearms slowly together. “That was not why I asked.”

A
FTER LORENZ’S
poor burned body had been laid to rest, and Dietrich had given Wanda what comfort he could, Gregor came to the parsonage to offer his own condolences, “since the two of you were so close.”

“He was a pleasant and gentle man,” Dietrich said, “good to talk to and always with the air of more left unsaid. A friendship is shallow, I think, if everything between two men can be said. I’m sure there were things he wished to tell me, but there was always time for them later. Now, there is no ‘later.’ But Wanda’s grief must be the harder.”

Gregor shrugged. “She liked him well enough, but they lived as brother and sister.”

“So! I hadn’t known. Well, Paul commended such a life in his letters.”

“Oh, she took no vow of celibacy, not so long as Klaus Müller could visit. As for Lorenz, he seemed disinclined, Wanda being
Walküre
enough to daunt any man’s ardor.”

“Klaus Müller and the Frau Schmidt!”

Gregor smiled knowingly. “Why not? What joy does Hilde bring to the miller’s bed?”

Dietrich could not contain his astonishment. While Hildegarde Müller’s wantonness was well known, he had not expected the same of Wanda, a woman by no means comely. He remembered how, on Rock Monday, Lorenz had compared his wife and Klaus to the upper and nether millstones. Had the smith known of, and perhaps tolerated, his wife’s infidelity?

Fra Joachim came breathless to the door. “You are needed in the church, pastor!”

Alarmed, Dietrich stood. “What’s wrong?”

“Gottfried Krenk.” The young man’s cheeks, red from the cold, glowed on his pale face. The dark eyes flashed. “Oh, surely, no name was more wonderfully chosen! He has embraced Jesus, and we need you to perform the baptism.”