Eifelheim (7 page)

Dietrich saw Fra Joachim, smudged black by smoke and gripping a bucket and hurried after him. “Joachim, wait.” He caught up in a few steps. “We will say a Mass in thanksgiving. ‘
Spiritus Dómini
,’ since the altar is vested already in red. But let us delay until vespers, so everyone can rest from the labor.”

Joachim’s sooty face showed no emotion. “Vespers, then.” He turned away; and again Dietrich caught his sleeve.

“Joachim.” He hesitated. “Earlier. I thought you had run off.”

The Minorite gave him a stiff look. “I went back for this,” he said, rapping the bucket.

“The bucket?”

He handed it to Dietrich. “The holy water. In case the flames proved diabolical.”

Dietrich looked inside. A residuum of water lay in the bottom. He gave the bucket back to the monk. “And since the flames proved material, after all?”

“Why then, one more bucket of water to fight them.”

Dietrich laughed and gave Joachim a slap on the shoulder. Sometimes the intense young man surprised him. “There, see? You do know something of logic.”

Joachim pointed. “And who does logic tell you hauled the buckets that put out the fires in the Great Woods?” A thin, gray pall lingered over the forest.

At that, he resumed his progress toward the church, and this time Dietrich let him go. God had sent Joachim for a reason. A trial of some sort. There were times when he envied the Minorite his ecstasies, the cries of joy he wrang from God’s presence. Dietrich’s own delight in reason seemed bloodless by comparison.

D
IETRICH SPOKE
with those who had lost their homes. Felix and Ilse Ackermann only stared back dumbly. Everything they had salvaged from the ruin of their home they had wrapped into two small sacks, which Felix and his daughter Ulrike carried across their backs. The child, Maria, clutched a wooden doll, blackened and covered with a rag of scorched fabric. It looked like one of those African men that the Saracens sold at slave markets around the Mediterranean. Dietrich squatted beside Maria.

“No worries, little one. You will stay with your uncle Lorenz until the village can help your father build a new home.”

“But who will make Anna better?” Maria asked, holding the doll up.

“I will take her to the church and see what I can do.” He tried to take the doll gently from the girl’s grasp, but found he had to pry her fingers away.

“All right, you worthless sons of faithless wives! Back to the castle with you. Don’t straggle there! You’ve had yourselves a break in the routine
and
a bath in the millpond—and high time, too!—but there’s still work wanting to be done!”

Dietrich stepped aside and let the men-at-arms pass. “God bless you and your men, Sergeant Schweitzer,” he said.

The sergeant crossed himself. “Good day to you, pastor.” He gestured toward the castle with a toss of his head. “Everard sent us down to help fight the fires.” Maximilian Schweitzer was a short, thick-shouldered man who, in disposition, reminded Dietrich of a tree stump. He had wandered down from the Alpine country a few years before to sell his sword, and Herr Manfred had hired him to take his foot soldiers in charge and act against outlaws in the high woods.

“Pastor, what …” The sergeant frowned suddenly and glared at his men. “No one told you to listen. Do you need me to hold your hands? There’s only the one street through the village. The castle is at one end and you’re at the other. Can you figure the rest out yourselves?”

Andreas, the corporal, bawled at them and they moved on in a rough line. Schweitzer watched them go. “They’re good lads,” he told Dietrich, “but they want for discipline.” He tugged at his leather jerkin to straighten it. “Pastor, what happened today? All morning I felt like … Like I knew there was an ambush laid for me, but not when or where. There was a fight in the guardroom, and young Hertl broke down in sobs in the common room for no reason at all. And when we laid hand to knife or helm—to anything metal—there would be a short, stabbing pain that—”

“Were any hurt?”

“By such a small dart? Not in the body, but who knows
what damage was done to the soul? Some of the lads from back up in the forest, they said it was elf-shot.”

“Elf-shot?”

“Small arrows, invisible, fired by the elves. What?”

“Well, the hypothesis ‘saves the appearances,’ as Buridan requires, but you are multiplying entities without need.”

Schweitzer scowled. “If that is mockery …”

“No, sergeant. I was but recalling a friend of mine from Paris. He said that when we try to explain something occult, we should not suggest new entities to do so.”

“Well … elves are not
new
entities,” Schweitzer insisted. “They’ve been around since the forest was young. Andreas comes from the Murg Valley and he says it might have been the Gnurr playing tricks on us. And Franzl Long-nose said it was the
Aschenmännlein
out of Siegmanns Woods.”

“The Swabian imagination is a wonderful thing,” Dietrich said. “Sergeant, the supernatural lies always in small things. In a piece of bread. In a stranger’s kindness. And the devil shows himself in mean and shabby dealings. All that shaking this morning and the booming wind and burst of light—all that was too dramatic. Only Nature is so theatrical.”

“But what caused it?”

“The causes are occult, but they are surely material.”

“How can you be so—” Max froze and stepped onto the wooden footbridge that spanned the stream below the mill, peering toward the woods.

“What is it?” asked Dietrich.

The sergeant tossed his head. “That flock of acorn-jays took sudden flight from the copse on the edge of the woods. Something’s moving about in there.”

Dietrich shaded his eyes and looked where the Swiss had pointed. Smoke hung lazily in the air, like streamers of teased wool. The trees at the edge of the wood cast dark shadows that the climbing sun failed to dispel. Within the motley of black and white, Dietrich spied movement, though at this
distance, he could make out no details. Light winked, as one sometimes sees when the sun glints off metal.

Dietrich shaded his eyes. “Is that armor?”

Max scowled. “In the Herr’s woods? That would be bold-faced, even for von Falkenstein.”

“Would it? Falkenstein’s ancestor sold his soul to the Devil to escape a Saracen prison. He has despoiled nuns and holy pilgrims. He badly wants a reining-in.”

“When the Markgraf grows irritated enough,” Max agreed. “But the gorge is too hard a passage. Why would Philip send his henchmen up here? Not for profit, surely.”

“Might von Scharfenstein?” He gestured vaguely toward the southeast, where another robber baron had his nest.

“Burg Scharfenstein’s taken. Hadn’t you heard? Its lord seized a Basler merchant for ransom, and that proved his undoing. The man’s nephew disguised himself as a notorious freelance they’d heard tale of and went to them with word of easy spoils a little ways down the Wiesen valley. Well, greed dulls people’s wits, so they followed him—and rode into an ambush laid by the Basler militia.”

“There’s a lesson there.”

Max grinned like a wolf. “‘Do not vex the Swiss.’”

Dietrich studied the woods once more. “If not robber knights, then only landless men, forced to poach in the forest.”

“Maybe,” Max allowed. “But that’s the Herr’s lands.”

“What then? Will you go in and chase them off?”

The Swiss shrugged. “Or Everard will hire them for the grain harvest. Why hunt trouble? The Herr will be back in a few days. He’s had his fill of France, or so the messenger said. I’ll ask his will.” He stared a while longer at the woods. “There was a strange glow there, before dawn. Then the smoke. I suppose you’ll tell me that was ‘Nature,’ too.” He turned and left, touching his cap as he passed Hildegarde Müller.

Dietrich saw no more movement among the trees. Perhaps he had seen nothing earlier, only the swaying of saplings within the forest.

III
AUGUST
, 1348
At Compline, The Vigil of St. Laurence

“D
ISPÉRSIT,” SAID
Dietrich. “Dédit paupéribus; justítia éjus mánet in saéculum saéculi: córnu éjus exaltábitur in Glória.”

Joachim answered him. “Beátus vir, qui tímet Dóminum; in mandátes éjus cúpit nímis.”

“Glória pátri et Fílio et Spirítui Sáncti.”

“Amen.” That they said in unison, but with no echo from the church save that of Theresia Gresch, who knelt solitary on the flagstones of the nave in the flickering candlelight. But Theresia was a fixture, like the statues that lurked in the niches in the wall.

There were only two sorts of women so perfervid in their devotions: madwomen and saints, nor were the two species entirely distinct. One must be a little mad to be a saint, at least as the world measured madness.

Theresia had the soft, round face of a maiden, though Dietrich knew her for twenty. She had never to Dietrich’s certain knowledge gone with a man, and indeed, still spoke with simplicity and innocence. At times, Dietrich knew jealousy on her account, for the Lord had opened Heaven to those who became as little children.

“… from the oppression of the flame which surrounded me,” Joachim read from the Book of Wisdom, “and in the midst of the fire I was not burnt …” Dietrich gave silent thanks for their deliverance from the fires three days before. Only Rudolf Pforzheimer had died. His aged heart had stopped when the
elektronik
essence had been at its thickest.

Dietrich shifted the book to the other side of the altar
and read from the Gospel of Matthew, concluding, “If any man will come after me, let him take what he has and give it to the poor.”

Joachim cried, “Amen.”

“Na, Theresia,” he said as he closed the book, and she sat back on her heels to listen with a guileless smile. “Only a few feasts possess a Vigil-Night. Why is St. Laurence among them?” Theresia shook her head, which meant she did remember, but preferred that Dietrich tell her.

“A few days since, we remembered Pope Sixtus II, who was killed by the Romans while praying Mass in the catacombs. Sixtus had seven deacons. Four were killed at the Mass with him and two others were hunted down and killed the same day. That is why we say, ‘Sixtus and his companions.’ Laurence was the last of the deacons, and eluded capture for several days. Sixtus had given him the possessions of the Church for safekeeping—including, so they say, the cup from which Our Lord drank at the Last Supper and which the Popes had used at Mass until then. These he had distributed to the poor. When the Romans found him and ordered him to hand over ‘all the wealth of the Church,’ Laurence took them into the hovels of the city and showed them the poor, declaring—”

“There
is the wealth of the Church!” Theresia cried and clapped her hands together. “Oh, I love that story!”

“Would that more Popes and bishops,” Joachim murmured, “loved it as much.” Then, seeing himself heard, he continued more forcefully: “Remember what Matthew wrote of the camel and the needle’s eye! Someday, O woman, artisans may fashion a singularly large needle. Somewhere in far Arabia may live an exceedingly small camel. Yet if we take the Master’s words at their least meaning, it is this: Wealthy lords and bishops—those who dine at groaning tables, who sit their asses on satin pillows—are not our moral guides. Look to the simple carpenter! And look to Laurence, who knew where true treasure lay—where thief cannot steal nor mice consume. Blessed are the poor! Blessed are the poor!”

Ejaculations like that had put Joachim’s order in deep disfavor. The Conventuals had disavowed their brothers in the face of it, but the Spirituals would not hold their tongues. Some had burned; some had fled to the Kaiser for protection. How much better, Dietrich thought, to escape notice entirely. He raised his eyes to heaven, and something seemed to move among the candle-sent shadows in the rafters and vises in the clerestory. A bird, perhaps.

“But poverty is not merit enough,” Dietrich cautioned Theresia. “Many a gärtner in his hut loves riches more than does a generous and open-handed lord. It is the desire and not the possession that diverts us from the straight path. There is good and ill in any besitting.” Before Joachim could dispute the point, he added, “Ja, the rich man finds it more difficult to see Christ because the glitter of the gold dazzles his eyes; but never forget that it is the man that sins and not the gold.”