Eifelheim (65 page)

The physicians of Bologna and Padua had made anatomies on bodies dried in the sun, or consumed in the earth, or submerged in running water, but Dietrich did not think they had ever done so on a body in this state. His stomach leapt through his mouth, and so visited a final indignity on the man. When he had recovered, and had refreshed his “flower-pocket,” Dietrich confirmed what he had glimpsed.

Max had been stabbed in the back. His jerkin was rent there, at the kidneys, and a great gout of blood had issued forth. He had fallen forward, in the act of drawing his quillon, for he lay upon his right arm with the handle of the long dagger in his death-hardened grip and the blade half out of its sheath.

Dietrich staggered to a nearby stone, a block that had tumbled countless years before from the escarpment overhead. There, he sobbed—for Max, for Lorenz, for Herwyg One-eye and all the others.

D
IETRICH RETURNED
to the hospital after vespers. For a time, he watched Hans and Joachim and the others walk among the sufferers, applying cool cloths to fevered brows, spooning food into indifferent mouths, washing the bandages used to cover the sores in tubs of hot, soapy water and laying them out to dry, a practice Hugh de Lucca and others had commended.

At last, Dietrich stepped inside where Gregor watched over his ailing son. “Everyone says he has my face,” Gregor said, “and maybe that’s true when he’s awake and tries to be like me; but when he’s asleep, he remembers that he is
her
firstborn, and her shade looks out at me from inside
his heart.” He was silent for a moment. “I must look after Seybke. The two of them fought. Always scuffling like two bear cubs.” Gregor craned his neck. “Gregerl’s not a pious boy. He mocks the church, despite my scolds.”

“The choice is God’s, not ours, and God acts not from petty spite, but from boundless love.”

Gregor looked around the smithy. “Boundless love,” he repeated. “Is that what this is?”

“It is no comfort,” Hans interjected, “but we Krenken know this. There is no other manner in which the world could be fashioned that would bear life. There are … numbers. The strength of the bonds that hold the atoms together; the … the strength of the
elektronik
essence; the attraction of matter … Ach!” He tossed his arm. “The sentences in my head wander; and it was not my calling. We have shown that these numbers can be no other. The smallest change in any, and the world would not stand. All that happens in this world, follows from these numbers: sky and stars, sun and moon, rain and snow, plants and animals and small-lives.”

“God has ordered all things,” Dietrich quoted from the Book of Wisdom, “by weight and measure and number.”

“Doch. And from those numbers come also ills and afflictions and death and the pest. Yet had the Herr-in-the-sky ordered the world in any other way, there would be no life at all.”

Dietrich remembered that Master Buridan had compared the world to a great clock that God has wound, and which swung now by its own instrumental causes.

“You are right, monster,” Gregor said. “It is no comfort.”

H
ELOÏSE KRENKERIN
died the next day. Hans and Ulf carried her body to the church and laid it out on a bench that Joachim had prepared. Then Dietrich left them alone for the private rites that he had implicitely condoned. Afterward, in the parsonage, Hans held his flask up to the window.

“This many days only remain,” he said, tracing the level with his fingertip. “I will not see you through to the end.”

“But after the end, we will see each other again,” Dietrich told him.

“Perhaps,” the Krenkl allowed. He placed his flask carefully upon the shelf, then walked outside. Dietrich followed, and found him balanced upon the outcropping where he liked to perch. Dietrich lowered himself to the grass beside him. His legs complained and he rubbed his calf. Below them, the shadows were long from the setting sun, and the eastern sky had deepened already to cobalt. Hans extended his left arm. “Ulf,” he said.

Dietrich followed the gesture to the weed-choked autumn field, where Ulf stood with his arms outstretched. His shadow ran like a knight’s lance across the furrows, broken by the irregularity of the plants and the ground. “He makes the sign of the Crucified!”

Hans flapped his lips. “Perhaps he does. The Herr-from-the-sky is often whimsical. But see how he shows his neck to the sky. He invites the Swooper to take him. This was an old rite, practiced among Ulf’s folk on their far island in the Eastern Sea of Storms. Gottfried’s folk and mine alike thought them foolish and vain, and Shepherd’s folk tried to suppress them. Indeed, the rite has long passed out of use, even on the Great Isle; but in times of peril, a man may turn to the ways of his forefathers and stand exposed in an open field.”

Hans unfolded from his perch, staggered, and nearly fell from the rock. Dietrich seized him by the arm, pulling him to safety. Hans laughed. “Bwah! There is an ignoble end! Better to be taken by Ulf’s Swooper than a clumsy tumble, though I would prefer a quiet death in my sleep. Ach! What is this?”

One of Manfred’s loosed falcons had come to rest on Ulf’s outstretched arm! The bird sheered, and Dietrich and Hans heard its distant cry. But when Ulf did not provide the expected morsel, the bird spread its wings and soared into the sky once more, where it circled thrice before departing.

Hans fell to a sudden squat and hugged his knees, his side-jaws agape. In the far field, Ulf leapt into the air in the manner of Krenkish dance. Dietrich looked from one to the other in bewilderment.

Hans stood erect and brushed absently from his leatherhose the grass and dirt. “Ulf will take our baptism now,” he said. “The Swooper has spared him. And if
It
can show mercy, why not swear fealty to the very Herr of mercy?”

“P
ASTOR, PASTOR!”
It was little Atiulf, who had taken to following Klaus about and calling him Daddy. “Men! On the Oberreid road!”

It was the day after Ulf’s baptism, and Dietrich had been digging graves atop Church Hill with Klaus, Joachim, and a few other men. They joined the boy at the crest and Klaus fetched him up in his arms. “Perhaps they bring word that the pest has gone,” the miller said.

Dietrich shook his head. The pest would never go. “By his cloak, it is the Markgraf ‘s herald, and a chaplain. Perhaps the bishop has sent a replacement for Father Rudolf.”

“He’d be a fool to come here,” Gregor suggested.

“Or overjoyed to leave Strassburg,” Dietrich reminded him.

“We do not need him here, in any case,” said Joachim.

But Dietrich had taken only a few steps down the hillside when the herald’s horse reared and nearly overthrew him. The rider fought the reins as the terrified beast pawed the air and whinnied. A few paces behind him, the chaplain found his mount also fractious.

“Ach,” said Gregor under his breath. “That’s done it.”

The two riders retreated into the pass between the hills before the herald wheeled his horse and, standing in the stirrups, tossed his right arm in what Dietrich mistook for the Krenkish gesture of dismissal. Then the shoulder of the hill cut them off from sight, and only a dust haze lingered to show where they had been.

They found Hans in the open space between the smithy
and Gregor’s stoneyard gazing down the high road toward Oberreid. “I thought to warn them off,” he said, swaying slightly. “I had forgotten that I was not one of you. They saw me and …”

It was Klaus, of all people, who placed his hand on the Krenkl’s shoulder and said, “But you
are
one of us, brother monster.”

Gottfried stepped from the shadows of the clinic. “What matter if they saw? What can they do but release us from
this?
The one in the fancy cloak threw something in the dirt.”

Gregor trotted down the road to retrieve it. Hans said, “It sorrows me to betray you, Dietrich. By us is motionlessness hard to see. I forgot myself and stilled. Habit. Forgive me.” And so saying, he collapsed into the dust of the crossroads.

Klaus and Lueter Holzhacker carried the twitching body into the hospital and laid it on a pallet there. Gottfried, Beatke, and the other surviving Krenkl’n gathered round him. “He was sharing his portion with us,” Gottfried said. “I did not learn of it until yesterday.”

Dietrich stared at him. “He sacrificed himself, as the alchemist did?”

“Bwah-wah! Not as the alchemist did. Arnold thought the extra time would gain us the repairs. Well, he was not a man of the
elektonikos
, and who is to say he was wrong to hope? But Hans acted not from carnal hope, but from love of us who served him.”

Gregor had come up with a parchment bound up in string. He handed it to Dietrich. “This is what the herald dropped.”

Dietrich untied the string. “How long …?” he asked Gottfried. The servant of the
elektronik
essence shrugged his shoulders as a man might. “Who can say? Heloïse went to the sky in but a few days; the Kratzer lingered for weeks. It is as with your pest.”

“How reads the bill?” Joachim asked, and Dietrich pulled his spectacles from his scrip.

“If there be no priest among us,” he announced when he had finished, “laymen are authorized to hear one another’s confessions.” He raised his head. “A miracle.”

“What miracle,” said Klaus. “That I should confess my sins to the mason, here? That
would
be a miracle.”

“Na, Klaus,” said Lueter. “I’ve heard you confess after a couple of steins of Walpurga’s brew in you.”

“Archdeacon Jarlsberg writes that there are no more priests to send.”

“A miracle indeed,” said Klaus.

“Half the benefices in the diocese are vacant—because their priests did not run off like Father Rudolf. They stayed with their flocks and died.”

“Like you,” said Klaus. And Dietrich laughed a little at the comment.

Gregor frowned. “Pastor isn’t dead. He isn’t even sick.”

“Nor you, nor I,” said Klaus. “Not yet.”

D
IETRICH SAT
by Hans’s pallet all day and slept there at night. They spoke of many things, he and the monster. Whether a vacuum existed. How there could be more than one world, since each would try to rush toward the center of the other. Whether the sky was a dome or a vast empty sea. Whether Master Peter’s magnets could make a machine that would never stop, as he had claimed. All those matters of philosophy that had so delighted Hans in happier days. They spoke, too, of the Kratzer, and Dietrich was convinced more than ever that, if love had any meaning in the hidden hearts of the Krenkl, that Hans and the Kratzer had loved one another.

In the morning, the portcullis of the castle opened with a clatter of chains and Richart the schultheiss, with Wilifrid the clerk and a few others galloped furiously down Castle Hill and out the Bear Valley road. Shortly thereafter, the bell in the castle chapel tolled once. Dietrich waited, and waited; but there came no second stroke.

T
HAT AFTERNOON
, the villagers held an irregular court under the linden and Dietrich asked the gathering which of them Ulf had found free of the small-lives. About half raised their hands, and Dietrich noted that they sat for the most part at a distance from their neighbors.

“You must leave Oberhochwald,” he said. “If you stay, the small-lives will invade you, as well. Take also those whose fever has broken. When the pest has gone, you may return and set things aright once more.”

“I’ll not return,” cried Jutte Feldmann. “This place is accursed! A place of demons and sorcery.” There were mutters of approval, but some, like Gregor and Klaus, shook their heads and Melchior Metzger, grown suddenly old, sat on the grass with a grim look on his face.

“But, where would we go?” asked Jakob Becker. “The pest lies all about us. In the Swiss, so also in Vienna, in Freiburg, in Munich, in …”

Dietrich stopped him before he could enumerate the whole world. “Go south and east into the foothills,” he said. “Shun all towns and villages. Build shelters in the forest, keep fires burning, and stay near the fires. Take flour or meal, so you will have bread. Joachim, you will go with them.”

The young monk stared at him open-mouthed. “But … What do I know of the forest?”

“Lueter Holzhacker knows the forests. And Gerlach Jaeger has ranged about hunting deer and wolves.” Jaeger, who had been hunkered down a little to the side of the group whittling on a limb, looked up and spat. “By m’self,” he said, and resumed whittling.

Everyone looked at everyone else. Those whose blood harbored the small-lives, but who had not yet fallen ill, hung their heads, and a few stood and walked off. Gregor Mauer shrugged and looked at Klaus, who tossed his arm Krenkishly. “If Atiulf is hale,” he suggested.

When the villagers had dispersed, Joachim followed Dietrich to the millpond, just above the sluiceway to Klaus’s mill. The wheel turned in bright splashes of water, but the
stones were silent, which meant the cam was disengaged. The mist cooled, and Dietrich welcomed the relief from the heat. Joachim faced the gurgling water where it jostled into the sluice, so that he and Dietrich stood with their backs to each other. For a time, the hissing water and the groaning wheel were the only sounds. Turning, Dietrich saw the young man staring at the bright, crisscrossed lines of sunlight that quartered the choppy stream. “What is wrong?” he asked.