Eifelheim (14 page)

“Five-and-twenty birds,” Seppl announced while Ulrike latched the gate. “Franz Ambach added an extra bird as a love-gift because you ransomed his cow from the Herr.”

“Give him my thanks,” said Dietrich with grave formality, “and to the others too for their generosity.” The levy on the goose-flock was fixed by custom and not by generosity, yet Dietrich always treated it after the manner of a gift. While he did much gardening of his own and owned a
milch
cow which he farmed to Theresia, his priestly duties precluded him from devoting his time to raising food; and so the villagers tithed of their own sustenance to maintain him. The remainder of his benefice came from archdeacon Willi in Freiburg and from Herr Manfred, in whose gift it lay. He pulled a pfennig from his scrip and placed it in Seppl’s palm. This, too, was a customary duty, which was why the young men of the village jostled for the privilege of delivering the tithe payments.

“I’ll put this against my second furlong,” the boy announced, dropping the coin into his own scrip, “and not use it to buy myself out of my duties, like
some
I could name.”

“You’re a frugal lad,” Dietrich said. Ulrike had joined them and stood now holding hands with the boy while Otto panted and his gaze darted from boy to girl with puzzled jealousy. “So, Ulrike,” Dietrich said, “you are prepared for the wedding?”

The girl bobbed. “Yes, father.” She would be twelve the next month, a grown woman, and the union of the Bauers and Ackermanns had been long in the planning.

Through arrangements comprehensible only to an ambitious peasant, Volkmar Bauer had organized a swap involving three other villagers, several furlongs, some livestock, and a bag of copper pfennigs, so as to settle the manse named “Unterbach” on his son. The trades had enabled both the Bauers and the Ackermanns to bring their plots together in a more compact arrangement.
Fewer turnings of the plow-team
, Felix Ackermann had explained with grave satisfaction.

Dietrich, watching the young couple depart, hoped the union would prove as loving for the couple as it promised to be advantageous for their kin. The minnesingers extolled
the virtues of affection over calculation, and peasants ever mimicked the manners of their betters; yet men had a way of loving that which might prove profitable. Love stopped no king from shopping his sons or daughters. The daughter of England, Manfred had said, was resting in Bordeaux on her way to wed the son of Castile, and for no better reason than that the union would discomfit France. Likely, love stopped no peasant, either, however long and narrow his kingdom.

At least Seppl and Ulrike were no strangers to each other, as Prince Pedro and Princess Joan were. Their parents had arranged that, too, cultivating the affections between their offspring with the same patience with which they pruned their grapevines in hopes of a future vintage.

Dietrich entered his yard, to the displeasure of the goose-tithe, and took a billet and a knife from the shed in the rear. He passed a greeting with Theresia, who was tending the beans in his garden, and, stunning a goose from the flock with the billet, he took it to the shed and tied it securely by the legs to a hook there. He slit the throat, being careful not to sever the spine lest the muscles contract and make the plucking more difficult. “I am sorry, brother goose,” he told the carcass, “that my hospitality—and yourself—has been so short-lived, but I know of some pilgrims who might be grateful for your flesh.” Then he hung the goose to bleed out.

T
HE NEXT
day, the goose now plucked, butchered, and safely wrapped in a leather game-bag, Dietrich crossed to Burg Hochwald, where Max Schweitzer awaited with two jennets harnessed and ready. “Sweet enough riding for a priest,” the sergeant promised, offering him one of the horses. “The nag is as fat as a monk—and will stop to eat at every chance, so the resemblance is no happenstance. A good kick in the ribs will start her if she does.” He gave Dietrich a leg up and waited until the priest was settled in the saddle. “Do you know the way by now?”

“You’re not coming this time?”

“No. The Herr desires I attend to certain duties. Tell me you know the way.”

“I know the way. The kiln trail to the wind-fall, then I follow the blazes as before.”

Schweitzer looked doubtful. “When you see …
them
, try to buy one of those tubes they keep in their scrips. They pointed one at us that first time.”

“I remember. You suppose it a weapon?”

“Ja. Some demons kept their hands near their scrips while we are about. A wary man’s hand would hover near his scabbard in just such a way.”

“Mine would hover near my crucifix.”

“I think it may be a sling of some sort. A miniature
pot-de-fer.”

“Can they be made so small? But it would sling such a mean bullet that it cannot be much of a weapon.”

“So said Goliath. Offer them my Burgundian quillon, if you think they may trade for it.” He had unfastened his belt and held it up to Dietrich, scabbard and all. Dietrich hefted it. “You want this sling of theirs so much? Well, that leaves only the question of how I may tell them so.”

“Surely demons know Latin!”

Dietrich did not argue terms. “They lack the lips and tongues for it. But I will do what I can. Max, who is the second horse for?”

Before the soldier could answer, Dietrich heard the approaching voice of Herr Manfred and a moment later, the lord passed through the gate in the outer wall with Hilde Müller on his arm. He was smiling down at her, covering her hand with his where it gripped his left elbow. Dietrich waited while a manservant placed a stool and lifted Hilde into the saddle.

“Dietrich, a word?” said Herr Manfred. He took the mare by the rein and stroked its muzzle, speaking a few words of endearment to the beast. When the servant had gone past earshot, he said in a low voice, “I understand that we have demons in our woods.”

Dietrich gave Max a sharp glance, but the soldier only
shrugged. “They’re not demons,” Dietrich told the Herr, “but distressed pilgrims of a strange and foreign mien.”

“Very
strange and foreign, if my sergeant can be believed. Dietrich, I do not want demons in my woods.” He held up a hand. “No, nor ‘pilgrims of a strange and foreign mien.’ Exorcise them—or send them on their way—whichever seems appropriate.”

“My lord, you and I are of one accord on that.”

Manfred stopped petting the beast. “I would be grieved to know otherwise. Come tonight, after your return.”

He released the horse, and Dietrich jerked the jennet’s head toward the road. “Move, horse,” he said. “You’ll find more to nibble yonder.”

T
HE HORSES
plodded their way past the fields, where the harvesters still labored. The salland having been gleaned, the villagers now worked their own manses. The serfs had retired to the curial barn to thresh the lord’s grain. The peasants labored in common, moving from strip to strip according to some intricate schedule that the maier, the schultheiss, and the wardens had brokered long before.

A fistfight had broken out in Zur Holzbrücke, a manse belonging to Gertrude Metzger. Dietrich stood in his stirrups to watch, and saw that the wardens already had matters in hand. “What is it?” Hilde asked as she came abreast of him on the road.

“Someone was stuffing grain in his blouse to steal it and Trude’s nephew raised the hue and cry against him on her behalf.”

Hilde sniffed. “Trude should remarry and let a man work her land.”

Dietrich, who saw no connection between one’s widowhood and another’s theft, remained silent. They resumed their progress toward the wood. Shortly, he said, “A word of caution?”

“Regarding?”

“The Herr. He is a man of appetites. It would be well
not to feed them. His wife has been dead now these two years.”

The miller’s wife said nothing for a space. Then she tossed her head and said, “What would you know of appetites?”

“Am I not a man?”

Hilde looked at him sidewise. “A fair question. If you’d pay the fine ‘under the linden,’ you could prove it to me. But the fine is double if the woman’s married.”

The heat rose in Dietrich’s neck and he watched her for a while as their horses plodded steadily onward. The Frau Müller rode with the inelegance of the peasant, flat against the saddle, bouncing against it with each step. Dietrich looked away before his thoughts could travel much further. He had tasted from that table and had found its pleasures overrated. By God’s grace, women held little appeal for him.

It was not until they had entered the forest that Hilde spoke again. “I went to pray him food and drink for those awful
things
in the woods. That was all. He gave me the sacks you see here, tied behind the saddle. If he thought a price for the favor, he did not name it.”

“Ah. I had thought …”

“I know what you thought. Try not to think about it so much.” And with that remark, she kicked heels to her horse and trotted ahead of him down the path, her legs splaying artlessly at every jounce.

R
EACHING THE
charcoal kiln, Dietrich reined his mount in and spoke a short prayer for the souls of Anton and Josef. Shortly, the horse whickered and shied and Dietrich looked up to see two of the strange creatures watching from the edge of the clearing. He froze for a moment at the sight. Would he ever grow accustomed to their appearance? Images, however grotesque, were one thing when carved of wood or stone; quite another thing when formed of flesh.

Hilde did not turn. “It’s them,” she said, “isn’t it? I could tell by the way you started.” Dietrich nodded dumbly, and Hilde heaved a breath. “I gag at their smell,” she said. “My skin crawls at their touch.”

One of the sentries swung its arm in a passable imitation of a human gesture and leapt into the woods, where it paused for Dietrich and Hilde to follow.

Dietrich’s horse balked, so he kicked until the beast followed, with notable reluctance. The sentry moved in long, gliding lopes, pausing now and then to repeat the beckoning arm gesture. It wore a harness on its head, Dietrich saw, although the bit stood free before its mouth. From time to time it chittered or seemed to listen.

At the edge of the clearing where the creatures had erected their strange barn, the mare tried to bolt. Dietrich called upon half-forgotten skills and fought the beast, turning it away from the sight, shielding its eyes with his broad-brimmed traveling hat. “Stay back!” he told Hilde, who had lagged behind. “The horses fear these beings.”

Hilde jerked hard on the reins. “Then they show better sense.” She and Dietrich dismounted out of sight of the strangers. After picketing the horses, they carried the food sacks to the camp, where several of the creatures awaited them. One snatched the sacks and, using an instrument of some sort, cut small pieces from the foods inside. These, it placed into small glass phials. Dietrich watched the creature sniff at the mouth of one phial and hold it up to the light, and it suddenly occurred to him that it was an alchemist. Perhaps these folk had never seen goose or turnips or apples and so were wary of eating them.

The sentry touched Dietrich on the arm—it was like being brushed with dry sticks. He tried to fix the creature’s uniqueness in his memory, but there was nothing that his mind could seize on. Its height—taller than many. Its coloring—a darker gray. The yellow streak that showed through the gap of its shirt—a scar? But whatever idiosyncrasies there may have been were drowned in a wild impression
of yellow faceted eyes and horny lips and too-long limbs.

He followed the sentry to the barn. The wall had a subtle and slippery feel, unlike any material he had ever encountered, likely a mixed body combining the elements of earth and water. Inside, he discovered that the barn was in fact an
insula
like the Romans used to build, for the interior was divided into apartments, meaner in size than even a gärtner’s hut. These strange folk must be remarkably poor to boast such cramped quarters.

The sentry led him to an apartment where three others awaited, then departed, leaving Dietrich curiously bereft. He studied his hosts.

The first sat directly before him, behind a table holding a number of curious objects of varied shapes and colors. A thin rectangular frame held a painting of a flowered meadow against distant trees. It was not a bas-relief, and yet it had depth! The artist had evidently solved the problem of rendering distance on a flat surface. Ach, what might Simone Martini, dead now but a handful of years, have given to study the craft! Dietrich peered closer.

There was something wrong about the shapes, something off about the colors. These were not quite flowers and not quite trees and had too much blue in their green. The blooms bore six petals of intense gold, arranged in three opposed pairs. The grass was the pale yellow of straw. A scene of the homeland from which these beings had come? It must be far, he thought, to possess such strange blossoms.

The iconography in the arrangement, the symbolism that informed a picture and called upon the painter’s true skills, eluded Dietrich. Meaning lay in the placement of particular saints or beasts, or in the relative sizes of the figures, or in their gestures or accouterments; but
no living creatures occupied the scene
, which was perhaps the strangest feature of all. It was as if the painting had been intended only as a simple reproduction of a vista! Yet, why
essay such bald realism when the eye could behold as much unaided?

The second creature sat at a smaller table to the right side of the apartment. This wore a harness on its head and sat half-turned to face the wall. Dietrich took the harness as a mark of servitude. Like any such intent upon his duties, it took no notice of Dietrich’s entrance, but its fingers danced over another painting—an array of colored squares bearing various sigils. Then the servant touched one and—the image changed!

Dietrich gasped and stumbled backward, and the third creature, the one who leaned against the left-hand wall with its long arms entwined upon themselves like vines, spread its mouth wide and flapped its upper and lower lips together, making a sound like a babe learning to talk. “Wa-bwa-bwa-bwa.”