Eifelheim (44 page)

“Three!” said Joachim.

The Kratzer hesitated a moment and his mandibles parted, as if on the edge of speech; then he said. “In our language, the terms would mean the ‘sower,’ the ‘eggmaker,’ and the … The
Heinzelmännchen
does not overset the word. Call it the ‘wet nurse,’ though it nurses
before
the birth. Bwa-wa-wa! We are truly ‘der,’ ‘die,’ and ‘das’! To watch one’s niggling crawl into the nurse’s pouch is said to be a profoundly moving experience … Ach, I have grown too soon old, and such matters are for the young. Mwa-waa. Never more will I see my nest-brothers.”

“You must not lose hope,” said Joachim.

The Kratzer turned his great yellow eyes on the monk. “Hope! One of your ‘inner words.’ I know what you signify by ‘swine’ or ‘palfrey’ or ‘schloss,’ but what is ‘hope’?”

“When all else is lost,” Joachim told him, “it is the one thing you may keep.”

A
T THERESIA’S
cottage, Dietrich’s knock was answered first by silence, then by a furtive movement by the shutters, then by the upper door opening. Awkwardly, Dietrich pulled from his scrip the bag of medicines he had prepared
and extended them to the woman who had been the only daughter in his life. “Here,” he said. “I made these for you. One is a sleep-inducement made of mandrake for which some instruction is required.”

Theresia did not take the bag. “What temptation is this? I am no witch, to deal in poisons.”

“‘The dose makes the poison.’ You know that. I taught you.”

“Who gave you this poison? The demons?”

“No, it was the Savoyard physician who treated Eugen.” Only a chirurgeon, but Dietrich did not mention that. He shook the bag. “Take it, please.”

“Which is the poison? I won’t touch it.”

Dietrich took the sponge he had infused with the Savoyard’s mixture.

“I wish you hadn’t made it. You never dealt in poison before
they
came.”

“It was the Savoyard, I told you.”

“He was only their instrument. Oh, father, I pray every day that you break free of their spell. I have asked for help for you.”

Dietrich felt cold. “Who have you asked?”

Theresia took the remainder of the bag from him. “I remember when I saw you first,” she said. “I could never remember, but now I do. I was very small, and you seemed enormous. Your face was all blackened from smoke and people were screaming. There was a red beard … Not yours, but …” She shook her head. “You snatched me over your shoulder and said, ‘Come with me.’” She began to close the upper door, but Dietrich held it back.

“I thought we could talk.”

“About what?” And she closed the door firmly.

Dietrich stood silently before the cottage. “About … anything,” he whispered. He had longed so for her smile. She had always delighted in his gifts of medicines.
Oh, father!
the child cried in his memories.
I do love you so!

“And I love you,” he said aloud. But if the door heard, it
did not answer, and Dietrich had barely dried his tears before he reached the parsonage at the top of the hill.

S
HORTLY BEFORE
vespers on Holy Thursday, a herald arrived from Strassburg bearing a parcel sealed with ribbons and with the episcopal arms impressed into bright red wax. The herald found Dietrich in the church preparing for the morrow’s Mass of the Pre-sanctified, the only day of the year when no Consecration was prayed. Warned by the farspeaker, Hans and the other Christian Krenken, who were helping drape the crosses and statues in black, had leapt into the rafters and hidden themselves in the shadows above.

Dietrich inspected the seals and saw no sign of tampering. He hefted it, as if its weight would reveal its matter. That someone as august as Berthold II knew his name frightened him beyond measure. “Know you what this touches upon?” he asked the herald.

But the man denied knowledge and departed, though with many a wary glance at his surroundings. Joachim, who was also helping in the church, said, “I think rumors have reached the bishop’s ears. That man was sent to deliver a message, but he was also told to keep his eyes open.”

The Krenken dropped to the flagstones and resumed their work with the shrouds. Gottfried, last to drop, said, “Shall we give him something to see?” Then he departed, laughing.

Dietrich slit the seal on the packet and unfolded it. “What is it?” Joachim asked.

It was an indictment from the episcopal court that he had baptized demons. If there were any surprise in the contents, it was that they had been so long in coming.

It came suddenly upon Dietrich that it was on this night, at about this time of day, that the Son of Man had been betrayed by one of his own. Would they come for him tonight, as well? No, he had a month’s grace to respond.

He read the document a second time, but the words had not changed.

“A
MONTH’S
grace,” said Manfred when Dietrich came to his scriptorium with the news.

“By law,” Dietrich answered. “And I must provide a list of my enemies, so the investigating magistrate may decide whether the charges have been laid in malice. There must be at least
two
witnesses before a judge will act. The bill does not name them, which is unusual.”

Manfred, sitting in his curule chair at his desk, curled his fingers under his chin. “So. How long is your enemy list?”

“Mine Herr, I did not believe I had any.”

Manfred nodded toward the indictment. “You have at least two. By Catherine’s wheel, you are naïve for a priest. I can name a dozen here in the village.”

Dietrich thought irresistibly of those who had objected to Hans’s baptism, who feared the Krenken beyond reason. The punishments for false witness were severe. Years ago, a man in Köln who had accused his son of heresy out of spite over the lad’s disobedience had been placed in the stocks, where he had died. Dietrich went to the slit window and sucked in the evening air. Firelight glowed in cottage windows in the valley below. The forest was a rustling black under a twinkling sky.

How could he name
her
, and deliver her to such a fate?

6
NOW
Tom

T
OM AND
Judy met at the Pigeon Hole to discuss her latest findings over a couple of cheesesteak hoagies. Searching for Pastor Dietrich, Judy’s worm had turned up a ton of
klimbim
. “Do you know how many medieval Germans have been named Dietrich?” She rolled her eyes up to Heaven, but secretly she knew how much work one eureka took. The journey of a thousand miles really does begin with a single step; it just doesn’t end there. “Wrong century; wrong kingdom. Saxony, Württemberg, Franconia … A ‘Dietrich’ in Cologne, even a ‘Dietrich’ in Paris. Those, I could eliminate. The tough ones had no particular year or place associated with them. Those I had to read one by one. And
this
one?” She waved the printout in the air. “The idiots didn’t put ‘Oberhochwald’ in their index. Otherwise, it would have popped out long ago.” She bit her hoagie savagely. “Jerks,” she muttered.

This
was a book excerpt. During the 1970s, an enterprising group of liberals had published a book called
Tolerance Through the Ages
, whose contents were intended to show enlightened attitudes in many times and places. Along with Martin Luther King’s
I have a dream …
speech and Roger Williams’s
The Bloody Tenet
was a letter from Pastor Dietrich to his bishop.

“Quite a remarkable man,” said Tom, folding the printout.

“Yes,” said Judy quietly. “I should have liked to have known him. My parents were also ‘helpless wayfarers.’ They lived in a boat on the water for three years before their ‘Pastor Dietrich’ found them a home.”