Eifelheim (60 page)

“The sky is deep, then?” Dietrich said.

“Immeasurably deep.”

Dietrich came to the window and gazed into the black dome overhead. “I always thought it a sphere hung with lamps. But some are near and some are far, you say, and that is why they seem brighter or dimmer? What holds them up? The air?”

“Nothing. There is no air in the void between the stars. There gives no ‘up’ or ‘down’. If you were to ascend into Heaven, you would go up and up until the earth loses its grip and you float forever—or until you came within the grip of another world.”

Dietrich nodded. “Your theology is correct. In what medium do stars then swim? Buridan never believed in the quintessence. He said that Heavenly bodies would continue always in what motion the Creator gave them, for there would be no resistance. But if the sky be not a dome that holds the air in, it must be filled with something else.”

“Must it? There was a famous …
experientia
,” Hans told him. “A Krenkish philosopher reasoned that, were the Heavens filled with this fifth element, there would be a ‘wind’ as our world moved through it. He measured the swiftness of light first one way, then the other, but he found no difference.”

“Then young Oresme is wrong? The earth does
not
move?”

Hans turned and flapped his lips. “Or there is no quintessence.”

“Or the quintessence moves with us, as the air does. There are more than two possibilities.”

“No, my friend. Space is filled with nothing.”

Dietrich laughed for the first time since finding Everard. “How can that be, since ‘nothing’ is no thing, but the lack of a thing. If the sky were filled with no thing, something would move to fill it. The very word shows it.
Vacuare
is ‘to empty out.’ But
natura non vacuit
. Nature does not empty. It needs effort to make something empty.”

“Na …” Hans replied with hesitation. “Does the
Heinzelmännchen
overset properly? Our philosophers say that the nothing does contain what we call the ‘nothingspirit.’
But I misdoubt your folk would know of this. How would you say it with your philosophical tongue?”

“The noun of
vacuare
is
vacuum
, which expresses an abstract action as a factual thing: ‘that which is in the state of having been emptied.’ So:
Energia vacuum
. But we read that ‘the spirit of God moved over the Void,’ so it may be that you have found the very breath of God in this ‘vacucum-energia’ of yours. But, attend.” Dietrich raised a finger. “Your vessel moves across insensible directions that lie within all of nature.”

“Ja. As the inside of a sphere is ‘insensible’ to those who apprehend only its surface.”

“Then, your Krenkheim star is not so far away at all. It is within you at all times.”

Hans froze for a moment, then briefly parted his soft lips. “You are a wise man, Pastor Dietrich, or a very confused one.”

“Or perhaps both,” Dietrich admitted. He leaned from the window. “I see no sign of Joachim, and it grows now too dark to go about with no torch.”

“He is in the church,” Hans said. “I saw him go in at nones.”

“So! And not yet out? It is past vespers.”

Alarmed, Dietrich hurried across the church green, stumbling a bit over the half-seen, starlit terrain, coming up with a rush against the carved support post at the northwest corner of the church. Ecke the Giantess lowered upon him; Alberich the Dwarf leered menacingly from the pedestal. The wind swayed and gave them voices. Dietrich staggered up the stairs, paused and laid a gentle hand on St. Catherine’s sinuous form, upon her sorrowful cheek. A night owl passed by with a sound that was almost silence. Fearful of what he might find within, he threw the doors open.

The starlight, attenuated by its passage through the stained glass, left the interior dim. Dietrich heard a dull, slow slapping sound from near the altar.

He ran to the sanctuary, where he tripped upon a prostrate form. There was a familiar stink to the air. “Joachim!”
he cried. “Are you well?” He remembered Everard lying in his vomit and his reeks. But this smell was the sharp, sanguine odor of blood.

He groped the body and found it nude above the waist, found the smooth young flesh streaked with bloody furrows. “Joachim, what have you done!” But he knew the answer, found the flail with his searching hands and pried it from the Minorite’s grip.

It was the knotted rope that the monk wore as cincture, sodden now with blood. “Ach, you fool! You fool!”

The body stirred in his embrace. “If I drink the cup to the full,” a voice whispered, “it may pass from others.” The head turned and Dietrich saw eyes bright in the fragile starlight. “If I suffer the pains of ten, then nine may be spared. There,” he laughed, “that’s an algebra, isn’t it?”

A cold, blue light suffused the interior of the church as Hans entered with a Krenkish lamp. “He has hurt himself,” the creature said when he had approached.

“Ja,” said Dietrich. “To take our suffering on himself.” Had he been whipping himself for the entire four hours since Hans had seen him enter the church? Dietrich seized the monk more tightly, kissed him on his cheek.

“He thought by whips to stay the small-lives?” said Hans. “That is not logical!”

Dietrich gathered the body in his arms and stood. “To the Devil with logic! All of us stand powerless. At least he tried to do
something
!”

O
N WEDNESDAY
, Manfred summoned Dietrich to the chapel to commemorate Kaiser St. Heinrich: a just ruler from a day when the Germanies had possessed both rulers and justice. “The good Father Rudolf,” Manfred explained the summons, “took my gray last night and fled.”

Dietrich had never liked the chaplain, but this news startled and disturbed him. The Herr’s chapel was well appointed with gold vessels and silk vestments, and its chaplaincy was a comfortable benefice that made few demands and stood its holder higher than a mere village
priest. Rudolf was a good man and gave God honor, but there was that small portion of his heart in which he treasured Mammon.

In the chapel’s rear stood Eugen and Kunigund and her sister Irmgard, Chlotilde the nurse, Gunther, Peter Minnesinger, Wolfram and their families, Max, and a few others of the Herr’s household, waiting quietly closed in on themselves for the Mass to begin. Dietrich lowered his voice to a whisper. “He abandoned his benefice?” Serfs would at times flee their manor. Less often, a lord would abandon his fief. But it was not seemly for any man to desert his sitting in life. “Where will he go?”

Manfred nodded. “Who can say? Nor do I grudge him the horse. Flight gives a chance, and I’d not deny a man his chances.”

Afterward, Dietrich stood at the gate to the curial grounds and gazed sightlessly over the village, thinking about Fr. Rudolf. Then he spun on his heel and walked to the cottage of Everard Steward.

“How fares your man today?” he asked when Yrmegard had opened the upper door.

Yrmegard looked over her shoulder. “Better, I think.… He …” Abruptly, she threw the lower door open. “See for yourself.”

Dietrich crossed the threshold. He took a short breath, hesitant to draw too much of the bad air into his lungs. “Peace be with all here. Where is Heloïse?”

“Who is that? The demon? I thought all demons had Jew names. I chased it out. I’d not have it squatting here ready to seize my husband’s soul should it leave his body.”

“Yrmegard, the Krenken have been with us since Kermis-day …”

“They were only waiting their chance.”

Everard’s cottage was divided into a main room and a sleeping room. The steward held several strips of land and the extra wealth showed in the opulence of his dwelling. The man himself lay in the sleeping room. His brow was dry and hot to the touch. The swellings on his chest had
been joined by others in his groin and under his arms. One, by the left arm, had grown to the size and coloring of an apple. Dietrich took a cloth to the bucket, soaked it, folded it, and laid it across the man’s brow. Everard hissed and his hands became claws.

Dietrich heard Yrmegard shush the crying boy. Everard opened one eye. “Quiet, boy,” he said. The words were slurred because his tongue was swollen and refused to stay inside his mouth. It was a slimy, gray, wet snail seeking escape from its shell. “A good boy like a porridge and the bird sings,” Everard said, with one earnest eye pinned on Dietrich.

“He is mad,” said Yrmegard, edging closer to the bed. Witold ran weeping from the cottage.

“He is conscious,” said Dietrich, “and he is speaking. That is miracle enough. Why ask for reasoned discourse?”

He tried to feed Everard some water, but it dribbled down his chin due to the unruly tongue. He coughed and groaned, but this seemed a better thing than the vomiting and shrieks of the previous day.
It is passing
, he thought in relief.

F
ROM CASTLE
hill, Dietrich took the back trail to the meadow bordering the millstream. There he found Gregor and Theresia sitting on the bank, throwing pebbles into the pond. He halted before they had seen him, and he heard, above the waters rushing onto the mill wheel, the bells of Theresia’s laughter. Then someone put the camshaft into its gear and the great paddle wheel began to groan and turn.

There had been a time when the sound of it had delighted Dietrich. It was the sound of labor lifted from the shoulders of men. But there was something in it this day of complaint. Klaus came forth from the mill to watch the wheel turn and judge the current and the drop. Satisfied, he turned and, spying Dietrich, called a greeting. Gregor and Theresia turned also and Dietrich, being thus discovered, approached them.

“You have my blessing,” he told Gregor before the mason could speak. He placed his left hand in turn on the brow of each, sketching the cross with his right as he did so. The touch served double duty: he detected no sign of fever in either, but he did not speak of that. “She is a good woman,” he told Gregor, “and pious when her terrors permit, and her skills in the healing arts are truly a gift from God. On her terrors, do not press her, for she wants comfort and not inquisition.” He turned to Theresia, who had began to weep. “Listen to Gregor, daughter mine. He is a wiser man than he believes.”

“I don’t understand,” Theresia said, and Dietrich knelt before her.

“He is wise enough to love you. If you understand nothing beside that, it would suffice an Aristotle.”

Gregor walked with him a space toward the mill. “You changed your mind.”

“I never opposed it. Gregor, you had right. Each day may be our last and, whether our time be long or short, the smallest happiness added to it is worth its while.”

At the mill, Klaus dusted his hands with a rag while the mason and the herb woman walked off together. “So?” he asked. “Does Gregor get what he wants?”

Dietrich said, “He gets what he asked for. Pray God they are the same.”

Klaus shook his head. “You are too clever sometimes. Does she know what he wants to do with her? I mean, down there. She is a simple woman.”

“You are grinding wheat today?”

Klaus shrugged. “The pest may kill us all, but there is no reason to starve while we wait.”

T
HAT WAS
the third day’s grace.

XXIV
JULY
, 1349
At Primes, The Commemoration of St. Hilarinus

T
HURSDAY DAWNED
and the wind blew hot and from the west, hissing through the black spruce and stirring the half-grown wheat. The heavens faded into a blue so pale as to be alabaster. In the distance, toward the Breisgau, small, dark plumes rose, suggesting fires in the lowlands. The air twisted from the heat, conjuring half-seen, invisible creatures to stalk the land.

Dietrich sat by Joachim’s cot and the young man turned his back so that Dietrich could anoint the welts. Dietrich dipped his fingers in the bowl he had prepared and smeared the ointment gently on the wounds. The Minorite shuddered at the touch. “You might have died,” Dietrich chided him.

“All men die,” Joachim answered. “What concern is it of yours?”

Dietrich set the bowl aside. “I have grown accustomed to having you about.”