Eifelheim (49 page)

Outside, Ockham studied the indigo sky. “Which way is east? Very well. Let us apply experience. Now, if I move my hand rapidly, thus, I feel the air pushing against it. So, if we are moving toward the east, I should feel an east wind on my face, and I—” He closed his eyes, and spread his arms. ”—feel no wind.”

Joachim, climbing Church Hill, stopped in the path and gaped at the scholar, who seemed to have adopted the attitude of the Crucified.

Ockham turned toward the Lesser Wood. “Now, if I face north …” He shrugged. “I feel no change in the wind whichever direction I face.” He paused expectantly.

“One must arrange the experience,” Dietrich insisted, “so that all matters affecting the conclusion are accounted for, which Bacon called
experientia perfectum.”

Ockham spread his hands. “Ah, so the common senses are insufficient for this special sort of experience.” Grinning as if he had triumphed in a quodlibet, he returned to the parsonage, Dietrich again in his wake. Joachim, following, latched the door and went to the pot for a stein of ale. He sat at the table beside Dietrich and tore a piece of bread off the loaf and listened with a smirk.

Dietrich pressed the argument. “Buridan considered the objections to a turning earth in his twenty-second Question on the heavens, and found a response for each, save
one. If the entire world moves, including earth, water, air, and fire, we would no more feel a resisting wind than a boat drifting with the current feels the motion of the river. The one compelling objection was that an arrow loosed straight up does not fall west of the archer, which it would if the earth were turning underneath it, for an arrow moves so swiftly that it cuts
through
the air and thus would not be carried along by it.”

“And this Oresme has resolved the objection?”

“Doch. Consider the arrow at rest. It does not move. Therefore, it begins already with the motion of the earth and, when loosed, possesses two motions: a rectilinear motion up and down, and a circular motion toward the east. Master Buridan wrote that a body impressed with motion, will continue in its motion until the impetus is dissipated by the body’s gravity or other resisting forces.”

Ockham shook his head. “First the earth moves, then the people move with it to explain why they do not constantly stumble; then the air must move with it to answer a second objection; then the arrow, to answer another; and so further. Dietl, the
simplest
explanation for why the stars and the sun appear to circle the earth is that they
do
circle the earth. And the reason why we feel no motion in the earth is that the earth does not move. Ah, ‘Brother Angelus,’ why waste your powers on such trivia!”

Dietrich stiffened. “Do not call me that!”

Ockham turned to Joachim and said, “He would be at his readings before the morning bells and stayed at it by candlelight after the evening bells, so the other scholars called him—”

“That is a long time since!”

The Englishman tilted his head back. “May I still call you
doctor seclusus?”
He grunted and sought another bout of ale. Dietrich retreated into silence. He had thought to share a fascinating idea, and Will had somehow created a
disputatio
. He should have remembered that, from Paris. Joachim glanced from one to the other. Ockham returned to the table. “This is the last of the ale,” he said.

“There gives more in the kitchen,” Dietrich answered.

They discussed the “calculators” at Merton and the death of Abbot Richard of Wallingford, who had invented a new “triangular” geometry and an instrument, the rectangulus, much favored by navigators. “And to speak of navigators,” Dietrich added, “the Spanish have discovered new islands in the Ocean Sea.” He had the tale from Tarkhan, who had it in turn from his master’s agents. “They lie off the coast of Africa, and boast great flocks of canaries. So it may be that a ‘new way’ across Ocean may be found, leading to the ‘oversea lands’ on Bacon’s map.”

“One may more easily explain Bacon’s Land by a cartographer’s imagination and the lure of blank spaces.” Ockham smiled and added, “Much as your rustic wood-carvers here have filled in the walls of your church with giant grasshoppers and the like.”

Joachim had a slice of pumpernickel in his mouth and nearly choked until Dietrich had helped him to swallow some ale to help it down. Ockham rose, saying, “I’ll fetch more ale from the kitchen.” But Joachim gasped, “No, there waits also a giant grasshopper.”

Unsure of the jest, Ockham barked puzzled laughter.

XIX
JUNE
, 1349
At Nones, The Commemoration of Bernard of Menthon

M
ANFRED STYLED
his banquet “a symposium,” and promised a quodlibet between Dietrich and Ockham as the postprandial entertainment. But as some entertainments were not to everyone’s taste, this did not supplant Peter’s singing or the dwarf’s acrobatics or the juggler’s display of plates and knives. The dwarf’s trained dog drew but a pursed lip from Will Ockham; but Kunigund and Eugen
laughed hugely, especially when the dog tugged the dwarf’s hose down to reveal his bare ass. Einhardt, like Manfred, paid more particular attention to the singing. “Einhardt has held me ill,” Manfred had confided earlier to Dietrich, “for missing the bohorts, so this is my peace to him.” Dietrich, having verified the knight’s famous stink, gave thanks that his corpulent wife, Lady Rosamund, sat between them.

The sideboard was laden with game birds and aged venison, and continually refreshed by a never-ceasing bustle of servants bearing platters, retrieving empty trenchers, and spreading on the floor fresh rushes mixed with flowers to surrender their scents when stepped upon. Behind each seat a page awaited the diner’s every need. Tarkhan ben Bek, brushed and combed into respectability, did service for his master, for Malachai’s rites did not permit him to eat of Manfred’s bounty, but only of his own provisions, prepared under his supervision. Normally, two of Manfred’s hounds would prowl the room, scavenging scraps that fell from the table; but, from respect for the Jew’s sensibilities, the animals had been barred from the feast. Their piteous howling could be heard faintly from the kennels outside.

Eugen sat at Manfred’s right and Kunigund, his left. Beside them were Dietrich and Will, with Malachai the Jew to Will’s right. Malachai’s wife and daughter remained in seclusion, disappointing Eugen, who had anticipated the exotic sight of veiled women. Lady Rosamund was hardly compensation.

To Einhardt’s left, at the table’s foot sat Thierry von Hinterwaldkopf. The knight had already delivered his required service-days, but Manfred hoped to induce him to serve additional days from love to help hunt the outlaws.

In the corner beside the fireplace, Peter Minnesinger sat with his two assistants. “If it please mine Herr,” he said, twisting his strings until they sang true, “I would sing from Parzival.”

“Not that horrid French tale!” Einhardt complained.

“No, lord knight.” Peter draped his hair and settled the lute upon his lap. “I would sing Wolfam von Eschenbach’s version, which all men know is the noblest rendition of the story.”

Manfred waved a hand. “Something less weighty,” he said. “Something touching love. Play
Falcon Song
.” A devotee of the New Art, Peter oft complained of Manfred’s fondness for the old-fashioned minnesong, in which all was figure and symbol, and would have preferred a more modern lyric, in which real people moved through real landscapes.
Falcon Song
was, however, artfully constructed, and no line could be changed without spoiling its symmetry. Its author, anonymous as poets of olden days often were, was known only as “He of Kürenburg.”

Listening, Dietrich marveled at how God could appear in sudden and unexpected places, for
Falcon Song
had given him God’s answer to the problem of Ilse and Gerd. It mattered not that Ilse had been baptized and Gerd had not, for God would bring lovers together.

And more than lovers. Had Dietrich not raised Theresia as he’d have her be? Had she not “flown to other lands”? Had he not seen her since, “gracefully flying”? Surely, God would bring them together once again. A tear wound its way down his cheek and Kunigund, ever attentive to those about her, noticed, and placed her hand on his.

A
FTERWARD, AMID
the clatter of silverware and krautstrunks, table-talk settled on matters of the world. The House of Bardi had followed the House of Peruzzi into insolvency, Ockham told them, and Malachai added that silver had become scare. “It is all going East, to the Sultan to pay for silk and spices.”

Dietrich said, “In his tractate on money, that mine Herr gave me, young Oresme wrote that money can be understood just as the rainbow or magnetism. He states that, ‘If the prince sets a ratio on the coins that differs from the values of silver to gold in the market, the underrated coin will vanish from circulation, and the overrated alone remains current.’”

“A philosophy of money?” said Ockham.

“Silver
does
buy more gold in the East,” Malachai said, tugging his beard.

“So it ‘flies to others lands!’” laughed Kunigund.

“May God not keep silver asunder from those who love it,” added Thierry with a sly glance at the Jew.

“Bah!” said Einhardt. “Then the prince merely fixes the prices of silver and gold in the market to match the values he sets on the coin.”

“Perhaps not,” Dietrich replied. “Jean Olivi argued that a thing’s price derives from the assessments of those who seek to buy it—regardless what merchants demand or princes decree or however much labor went into its making.”

Ockham laughed. “It’s Buridan’s wicked influence. Oresme is his pupil, as was Brother Angelus, here.” He nodded to Dietrich. “And another from Saxony, called ‘Little Albert,’ is already much talked of. Ah, Dietl, you should have stayed at Paris. They would speak of you in the same way.”

“I leave fame for others,” Dietrich answered curtly.

W
HEN TALK
turned later to politics, Ockham recounted the infamous progress of the Wittelsbach court through
Italy twenty years before, when they had burned the Pope in effigy. “After all,” he said, “what say has a Frenchman in the election of the Roman Kaiser?”

“Sauwohl!” said Einhardt, saluting with his cup.

“I had thought to use this as the topic for the disputation,” said Manfred, gesturing with a haunch of venison for the wine to be poured. “Tell us your arguments, Brother Ockham, if they are not merely that you ate at Ludwig’s table?”

Ockham rested his chin on his palm and curled one finger by his ear. “Mine Herr,” he said after a moment. “Marsiglio wrote that
no one
could gainsay the prince in his own land. Of course, he meant that ‘Jacques de Cahors’ could not gainsay Ludwig—which pleased Ludwig greatly. And what he really meant was that he was a Ghibelline, and blamed the Pope for every ill in Italy.”