Eifelheim (46 page)

But Dietrich remembered when the child Theresia skipped with that same aspergum clenched in her fist; and Lorenz the smith had carried the pail and held the cape. Had Gottfried taken up Lorenz’s old duty as he had taken Lorenz’s name? Now Theresia lingered fearful in the procession’s rear.

Manfred escorted them astride a white palfrey whose mane had been braided and perfumed and inset with fresh violets. With him were Eugen and Kunigund and—on a small white pony—little Irmgard, done up in a lace girdle to mark her chastity and with unbound hair flowing to her waist. Kunigund, being now wed, enclosed her hair with a wimple. Everard strode with his wife Yrmegard and his son Witold a few paces behind the Herr’s party. “He’s no more noble for traipsing in his lord’s muck,” Klaus whispered to his wife, loudly enough that Yrmegard scowled and gripped her husband’s arm.

Dietrich had earlier explained to Hans that this was a ceremony only for the
familia;
which was why Joachim, like the soldiers in the Burg, had remained behind. Nevertheless, the Kratzer and a few Krenkish pilgrims followed with their
fotografik
devices.

The ground was yet sodden from the previous week’s rains, and soon were hose and shoes spattered and Manfred’s horse mud-stained to her hocks. Whenever they came to a boundary marker, Richart Schultheiss would
point it out and parents would toss their children in
this
stream or bump their head against
that
tree, to general laughter and repeated demands to “do it again!”

“A curious custom,” Hans said as they progressed. “Yet it touches. One cannot love a world. It is too large. But a fleck of ground so far as his eye can see, one may hold precious above all.”

After stopping for a midday meal, and a visit by the curious to the Krenkish vessel, the villagers emerged on the far side of the Great Woods, where the ground dropped sharply toward the Bear Valley road. Manfred had reined in on a spur of rock to essay the descent when he suddenly held a palm up. “Quiet!” The chatter of the peasants gave way to louder cries of “Silence, there!” and “The Herr wants silence!”

Finally, there was the sound only of soft breezes and rustling branches from the woods behind them. Everard began to make some remark, but the Herr hushed him with a gesture.

Faintly, they heard it: the tocsin of a distant bell.

It was a single note, tolling slowly, borne half-heard like a leaf on the blustery winds. “Angelus already?” someone asked. “No, the sun is yet too high.” “Too deep for St. Catherine’s peal. Is it St. Peter’s?” “St. Wilhelm, I think.” “No, St. Wilhelm tolls three bells.”

Then the wind shifted and the faint ringing died. Manfred listened further, but the sound did not repeat itself. “Whose bell was that?” he asked Dietrich.

“Mine Herr, I did not recognize it. St. Blasien owns a bass bell called the Paternoster, but this was higher-pitched. I think it was more distant than those we usually hear, and some freak of wind brought it to our ears.”

Manfred scowled toward the Swiss, the direction from which the ringing had seemed to come. “Basel, perhaps?”

Hans cried, “Smoke! And five riders.”

Everard leapt atop a protruding boulder and shaded his eyes. “The monster has right. Altenbach’s steading burns! A dust cloud moves off toward the northeast. That five riders
are under it,” he added as he dropped off the stone, “I will take the word of the bug-eye.”

Manfred ordered his serfs across the valley to help put out the fire. Hans called the other baptized Krenken to his side. After a deal of pointing and clacking, he and Beatke leapt toward Altenbach’s steading, while Gottfried and another hopped into the woods, toward the wrecked ship. The fifth stood irresolute.

“How can they leap so far?” Klaus wondered, for this was the first time he had seen the Krenken in open country. “Do they wear seven-league boots?”

“No,” Dietrich explained, “beings made of earth move naturally toward the center of the earth. But these beings are drawn less strongly because they come from a different earth. Hans told me that on Krenkhome his weight, or ‘gravitas,’ was greater than here.”

Klaus grunted, unconvinced, and started after the others. Dietrich seized Theresia by the wrist. “Come, the Altenbachs may need your salves.”

But she pulled away from him. “Not while
they
are there!”

Dietrich held his hand out. “Will you lend
me
then your tote?” When Theresia did not move, he whispered, “And so we see it. First you recoil from these strangers from beyond the firmament; then you recoil from helping your own folk. Did I teach you this from childhood?”

Theresia thrust her bag into his hands. “Here. Take it.” And then she burst into tears. “Watch over Gregor,” she said. “That big fool risks his soul.”

As Dietrich hurried after, Gottfried and Winifred Krenk passed overhead in flying harnesses, with metal buckets of some sort dangling from them. Glancing back, he noted the small knot of villagers who had stayed behind. Theresia. Volkmar Bauer and his kin. The Ackermanns. And one of the Krenken. Well, one did not need two hundred men to fight a single fire! Yet, loping by his side were Nickel Langermann and Fulk Albrecht’s son—and even Klaus Müller! Nickel grinned. “Altenbach will owe me favors for
this,” he said. “It never hurts to have a rich peasant owe you.” Fulk said, “Hold your flap and hurry, or the fire is out before we get there.”

W
HEN, BREATHLESS
, Dietrich had reached the steading, Manfred met him at the gate. “He needs your sacrament, pastor,” he said, in a voice sharp as flint.

Dietrich entered the smoldering cottage, where the Krenken were putting the flames out with foam they pumped from their curious buckets. On the packed earth floor, Altenbach sat with his hands folded over his midriff, as if after a satisfying meal. Behind him, a woman wept. When he saw Dietrich, Altenbach grimaced. “Thank God ye’ve come in time,” he said. “I’d fain not have her journey alone. Shrive me of my sins, but be damn quick about it.”

Dietrich saw blood oozing between the fingers. “That’s a sword-cut!” he said.
And a fatal one
… This he did not voice, though he suspected Heinrich knew.

“I thought it would hurt more,” the peasant said. “But I feel cold, as if I had winter in my belly. Father, I have lain with Hildegarde Müller, and once I struck Gerlach Jaeger in anger …” Dietrich leaned close so that others could not hear the confession. For the most part, the man’s trespasses had been stirred only by short-lived passions. There was no true wickedness in him, only the stubborn pride that had driven him to live apart. Dietrich drew the sign of the cross, using his own spittle, and offered him the words of God’s forgiveness.

“Thank you, father,” Heinrich whispered. “It would grieve me to have her alone in Heaven. She
will
be with God, won’t she, father? Her sin does not condemn her.”

“Her
sin …?” Dietrich raised his head and searched the room for Altenbach’s wife, and saw that the woman weeping in the corner was Hilde Müller. Beside her, Gerda Altenbach lay with her throat slit and her clothing ripped from her, although a blanket now covered her decency. “No,” he told the dying man. “She committed no sin, but was sinned against, as St. Thomas taught.”

Altenbach relaxed. “Poor Oliver,” he said.

“Your sons are Jakop and Jaspar, no?”

“Brave lads,” he whispered. “Defend their mother …” Then he gave up his ghost. When his hands fell away, his guts spilled from him.

“All dead,” said Manfred from the doorway and Dietrich turned to him. “The two boys are in the yard.” The Herr’s glance flickered toward Gerda, rested on Heinrich. “There was a gärtner who worked for him. Calls himself Nymandus. He hid in the woodpile and witnessed all. Tried to flee from me, so he must be off someone’s manor. ‘Nymandus,’ indeed! It’s little I care for sending him back. He saw five men in mail, but much disheveled, so I take them to be those outlaws from Falcon Rock that Long-nose ran into. They defiled Altenbach’s wife, killed him and his sons, made off with his chickens and yearlings. I think the food was their object. Nymandus said the leader had red hair, which sounds like Falkenstein’s Burgvogt from the watchtower.” The Herr heaved a deep breath and stepped outside into the yard. Dietrich followed him.

“I’ll send Max out,” Manfred said, “but there are too many dells and meadows in those hills, and a small band might lurk unseen for a long time … Dietrich …” He hesitated. “The baker’s son was with them.”

“So. That was what Heinrich meant.”

“Nymandus heard his master call the boy by name. He’s hanged himself for certain now, the fool. It lacks now only his capture and a stout rope.”

“Evil companions led him astray …”

“They’ve led him to the gallows. Altenbach’s older boy—Jakop, was it?—raked him with a sickle and laid open his cheek.” He paused, perhaps reflecting on the similar wound, more honorably obtained by Eugen. “And it was Oliver who cut him down.”

Dietrich had noticed the two boys lying where they had fallen in the barnyard, a bloody sickle clasped in the elder brother’s hand. Had Oliver imagined himself a knight doing battle? He had owned a lively imagination, capable of
imposing its fruits on the world about him. Now he was a murderer of children. Dietrich whispered a prayer—for Jakop and Jaspar, for Heinrich and Gerda, and for Oliver.

“Ja,” said Manfred, noting the gesture. “I don’t know if poor Altenbach saw them fall. I hope he died thinking his sons would carry on his blood.”

In the silence that followed, the sound of the distant bell came once more. Dietrich and Manfred looked at one another, but neither said what he thought the omen presaged.

XVIII
JUNE
, 1349
At Tierce, The Commemoration of Ephraem of Syria

J
UNE CAME
and, in the timeless wheel of the seasons, the winter fields were harvested and the resting field plowed for the September planting. Fully half the plow-days were allotted to the Herr’s salland, so that while the
weistümer
called for rest from labors at eventide, the free tenants kept hand to plow on their own manses to make up the lost time. One of Trude Metzger’s oxen had died of a murrain the week before, and so she harnessed a cow to her team, though with marked lack of enthusiasm on the cow’s part.

Dietrich and Hans watched the villagers at work from a slab of granite at the edge of the Great Woods. In the rock’s crevices, Dietrich marked the large, blue flowers of adder-heads, and resolved to tell Theresia of their location. Nearby, the spring that ran near the Krenkish camp tumbled into the valley. “What foods grow you in your country?” Dietrich asked. “They must differ from those we grow here.”

Hans became as one with the granite slab on which he squatted. This absolute stillness into which the Krenken
sometimes fell no longer frightened Dietrich, but he did not yet understand what the habit signified.

Then Hans’s antennae twitched and he said, “The terms do not overset well, but we grow plants much like your grapes and beans and turnips and cabbage. Your ‘wheat’ is something strange to us; and likewise our foods include some strange to you. Greatleaf! Twelvestem! Ach! How my throat longs for their smack!”

“May you taste them soon. Is your vessel yet ready to depart?”

A parting of the soft-lips. “You tire of my company?”

“Never that, but there will be … difficulties should you remain much longer.”

“Yes. I have heard you consort with demons.” Hans’s lips gaped and he made threatening gestures. “Perhaps I will fly to this Strassburg and frighten the bishop into surrender.”

“Pray, do not.”

“Rest easy. Soon, your ‘demons’ shall trouble you no more.” He hunched forward, as if poised to leap, and stretched forth his arm. “I see movement on the Bear Valley road.”

Dietrich shaded his eyes against the distance. “Dust,” he said at last. “Use your far-speaker and alarm Baron Grosswald. I fear he must hide his people once again.”

A
T FIRST
the travelers were shadows against the westering sun, and Dietrich, waiting in the road astride his rouncy, heard the weary clop of the hooves and the whining complaints of the axle well before he could discern their features. But as they closed, he saw that the man astride the jennet wore a fringed
talith
and curled his long, graying hair into elaborate ringlets. It needed no yellow star on his cloak to identify him. A second man, meanly dressed and both sharper of feature and darker in complexion, and wearing his hair in two thick, black braids, slouched upon the wagon bench with a servant’s resignation. The awning
overhanging the wagon shielded two women garbed in veils.