The sentry touched Dietrich on the arm — it was like being brushed with dry. 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 bearings 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. “Wabwa-bwa-bwa.”
Was it a greeting? This one was tall, perhaps taller than Dietrich himself, and adorned with more colorful garb than the others: a buttonless vest such as the Moors favored, loose trousers of three-quarter’s length, a belt with a variety of tokens dependent upon it, a sash of bright yellow. Such finery marked a man of rank. Dietrich, having recovered his aplomb, bowed from the shoulders. “Wabwabwabwa,” he said, repeating the greeting as closely as he could.
In response, the creature dealt Dietrich a sharp blow.
Dietrich rubbed the stinging cheek. “You must not strike a priest of Jesus Christ,” he warned. “I will call you Herr Gschert.” The easy resort to blows had confirmed his surmise that this was one gently born.
The first creature, dressed as plainly as the servant but withal possessing an air of command, smacked the table with its forearm. A chittering arose and both it and Gschert waved their arms. Dietrich could see now that the sounds were made by the horny sides of the creatures’ mouths clicking rapidly together like the twin blades of a scissors-pair. He thought it must be speech but, despite his most intent concentration, it seemed only the noise of insects.
Whatever discussion obtained between the two reached a crescendo. The seated one raised both bare forearms and rasped one against the other. There were callused ridges along them and the gesture made a sound like ripping cloth. Herr Gschert made a move as if to strike, and the seated one stood as if prepared to return the blow. From the other side of the apartment, the servant looked on, as servants are wont to do when their betters quarrel.
But the Herr checked its swing and made another gesture entirely, a tossing motion that Dietrich had no difficulty interpreting as a dismissal, conceding whatever point had been in contention. The other creature tilted its head back and spread its arms and Herr Gschert clicked its side-jaws once, sharply, whereupon the other resumed its seat.
Dietrich could not conjugate precisely what had just happened. There had been an argument, he thought. The first creature had challenged its lord — and had in some fashion triumphed. What then was the status of the seated one? To raise a challenge implied that the party had honor, which a commoner could not possess. So. A priest, perhaps? A powerful vassal? Or the man of another lord whom Gschert wished not to offend? Dietrich decided to call this one The Kratzer, because of the gesture it had made with its arms.
Gschert leaned back against the wall and the Kratzer resumed his seat. Then, facing Dietrich, it began clicking his horned side-lips. In the midst of the insect buzz, a voice said, “Greet God.”
Dietrich started and looked to see whether somone else had entered the room.
The voice said again, “Greet God.” It issued undisputedly from within a small box on the table! Through the loose weave of a cloth stretched tightly across its face, Dietrich could discern a drum head. Did the creatures have a Heinzelmännchen trapped within? He tried to look through the curtain — he had never actually seen a brownie — but the voice said, “Sit thee.”
The command was so unexpected that Dietrich could think of no other response but to comply. There was something like a chair nearby, and he fit himself — badly — into it. The seat was uncomfortable, shaped to fit a different ass than his.
Now, a third time, the voice spoke. “Greet God.” This time, Dietrich merely answered. “Greet God. How goes it by you, friend Heinzelmännchen?”
“It goes well. What means this word Heinzelmännchen?” The words were toneless and fell like the beat of a pendulum. Did the sprite make fun? The little people were wont to pranks, and while some, like the brownies, were reputedly playful, others, like the Gnurr, could be petty and malicious.
“A Heinzelmännchen is one like yourself,” Dietrich said, wondering where this dialogue was going.
“Know you then others like myself?”
“You are the first I have met,” Dietrich admitted.
“Then, how know you that I be a Heinzelmännchen?”
Oh, clever! Dietrich could see that a battle of wits was about. Had the creatures captured a brownie and required now Dietrich’s offices to speak with it? “Who else,” he reasoned, “could fit inside a very small box but a very small man?”
This time there was a pause in the reply, and Herr Gschert made wa-wa sounds again, to which the Kratzer, who had been staring at Dietrich throughout, made the dismissive toss-gesture. It clicked its lips together — and the sprite said, “There is no small man. The box himself speaks.”
Dietrich laughed. “How can that be,” he asked, “when you have no tongue?”
“What means ‘tongue’?”
Amused, Dietrich stuck his tongue out.
The Kratzer reached its long arm out and touched the picture frame, and the picture changed to a portrait of Dietrich himself, fully-rendered in depth in the act of sticking his tongue out. In some manner, the tongue in the portrait glowed. Dietrich wondered if he had been wrong about the demonic nature of these beings. “Is this tongue?” the Heinzelmännchen asked.
“Yes, that is doch the tongue.”
“Many thanks.”
* * *
“It was when it thanked me,” Dietrich told Manfred later that evening, “that I began to suspect that it was a machine.”
“A machine…” Manfred thought about that. “You mean like Müller’s camshaft?” The two of them stood by a credence table near the fireplace in the great hall. The remnants of the dinner had been cleared, the children sent to bed with their nurse, the juggler thanked and dismissed with his pfennig, the other guests escorted to the door by Gunther. The hall was now sealed and even the servants sent away, leaving only Max to guard the door. Manfred filled two maigeleins with wine by his own hand. He proffered both, and Dietrich chose the one on the left. “Thank you, mine Herr.”
Manfred grinned briefly. “Should I suspect now that you, too, are all gears and cams?”
“Please, I was conscious of the irony.” They walked together from the credence table to stand near the fire. The ruddy embers hissed, and licked occasionally into flame.
Dietrich rubbed his hand across the roughly textured glass of his wine-bowl while he considered. “There was no cadence to the voice,” he decided. “Or, rather, its cadence was mechanical, without rhetorical flourishes. It lacked scorn, amusement, emphasis, … hesitation. It said ‘many thanks’ with all the feeling as a shuttlecock flying across a loom.”
“I see,” said Manfred, and Dietrich raised a finger post.
“And that was another convincing point. You and I understand that by ‘see’ you signified something other than a direct impression on the sense of sight. As Buridan said, there is more to the meaning of an utterance than the precise words uttered. But the Heinzelmännchen did not understand figures. Once it learned that the ‘tongue’ is a part of the body, it became confused when I referred to ‘the German tongue.’ It did not comprehend metonymy.”
“That’s Greek to me,” Manfred said.
“What I mean, my lord, is that I think… I think they may not know poetry.”
“No poetry…” Manfred frowned, swirled his wine cup, and threw down a swallow. “Imagine that,” he said. For a moment Dietrich thought the Herr had spoken sarcastically, but the man surprised him when he continued almost to himself, “No King Rother? No Eneit?” He lifted his cup and declaimed:
“Roland raises Oliphant to his lips
Draws deep breath and blows with all his force.
High are the mountains, and from peak to peak
The sound re-echoes thirty leagues away…
By God, I cannot hear those lines sung without a shiver.” He turned to Dietrich. “You will swear that this Heinzelmännchen is only a device and not a real brownie?”
“Mine Herr, Bacon described such a ‘talking head,’ though he knew not how one might be fashioned. Since thirteen years the Milanese built a mechanical clock in their public square that rings the hours with no man’s hand intervening. If a mechanical device can speak the time, why cannot a more subtle device speak of other matters?”
“That logic of yours will get you into trouble one of these days,” Manfred cautioned him. “But you say it already knew some phrases and words. How was that come by?”
“They placed devices about the village to listen to our speech. They showed me one. It was no bigger than my thumb and looked like an insect, for which reason I call them ‘bugs.’ From what he overheard, the Heinzelmännchen deduced somehow a meaning — that ‘How goes it?’ signified a greeting, or that ‘swine’ signified that particular animal, and so forth. But he was limited by what the mechanical bugs saw and heard, much of which he did not properly understand. So, while he knew that swine were sometimes called ‘sucklings’ or ‘yearlings,’ he did not grasp the distinction, let alone that between the first, second and third pen or between breeding and leader sows — by which I deduce that these folk are not swineherds.”
Manfred grunted. “You still call it a Heinzelmännchen, then.”
Dietrich shrugged. “The name is as good as any. But I coined a term in Greek to signify both the brownie and the bugs.”
“Yes, you would have…”
“I call them automata, because they are self-acting.”
“Like the mill-wheel, then.”
“Very like, save that I know not what fluid impresses an impetus on them.”
Manfred’s eyes searched the hall. “Might a ‘bug’ listen even now?”
Dietrich shrugged. “They placed them on Laurence-eve, just before your return. They are subtle, but I doubt they could have slipped into the Hof or the Burg. The sentries may not be the most alert, but they might have marked a skulking, five-shoe tall grasshopper.”
Manfred guffawed and slapped Dietrich on the shoulder. “A five-shoe grasshopper! Ha! Yes, they would have noticed that!”
* * *
In the parsonage, Dietrich examined his rooms carefully and finally found a bug no larger than his least finger-digit nestled in the arms of Lorenz’s cross. A clever perch. The automaton could observe the entire room and, dark-colored as it was, remain unseen.
Dietrich left it in place. If the strangers’ intent was to learn the German tongue, then the sooner that was accomplished, the sooner Dietrich could explain the need for them to depart.
“I will fetch a fresh hour-candle,” he announced to the listening instrument. Then, having obtained one from the casket, concluded, “I have fetched an hour-candle.” He held the candle so that it faced the bug. “This is called an ‘hour-candle.’ It is composed of…” He pinched a piece off the edge. “…of bee’s-wax. Each numbered line marks one twelfth-part of the day, from sunrise to sunset. I gauge the time by how far down the candle has burned.”
He spoke self-consciously at first, then more in the manner of an arts master giving a cursory. Yet, what listened was not a class of scholars, but one of Bacon’s talking heads and he wondered to what extent he was understood by the device, or even whether in this instance understanding had any meaning.
VI. September, 1348
The Stigmata of St. Francis
They called themselves the Krenk, or something to which the human tongue could come no closer; but whether the term were as encompassing as “human” or as peculiar as “Black Forester” Dietrich could not immediately discern. “They certainly look sick,” said Max after one visit, and he laughed at the pun, for Krenk sounded much like the German word for ‘sick.’ And indeed, given their spindly form and gray complexion, the name struck Dietrich as an uncomfortable bit of divine whimsy.
Theresia had wanted to go to them with her herbs. “It is what the blessed Lord would have done,” she said, which shamed Dietrich, for he himself was more concerned to see them gone than succored; and, although he admitted succor as an efficient means to that end, one must assent to the good for its own sake, and not merely as the means to another good. Yet he was reluctant to admit Theresia to the circle of those who knew of the Krenken. Beings of such strange appearance and powers would attract interest, shattering Dietrich’s seclusion forever- and four was already a high number for keeping secrets. He contented Theresia by pleading the Herr’s instructions, but she pressed her potions upon him. The Krenken seemed to grow well or not on their use, much as did humans.
As summer waned, Dietrich visited the encampment every few days. Sometimes he went alone, sometimes with Max or Hilde. Hilde would change bandages and clean slowly-healing wounds, and Dietrich would teach the Kratzer and Gschert enough German through the good offices of the talking head so they would understand that they must leave. Their response had thus far been a guarded refusal, but whether from willfulness or incomprehension was unclear.
Max would sometimes sit with him in these sessions. Drill being to him natural, he was helpful with the repetition and dumb-play needed to communicate the meaning of many words. More often, the sergeant watched over Hilde like her guardian angel and would, when her unwonted ministry was concluded, escort her back to Oberhochwald.
The Heinzelmännchen acquired German quickly, for the talking
head, once he learned a usage, never forgot. He owned a prodigious memory, though the lacunae in his understanding were curious. Day, he had intuited by listening to village talk, but year puzzled him entirely until it was explained. Yet how could any breed of men, however distant their homeland, fail to recognize the circuit of the sun? So, too, the word love, which the device confused with the Greek eros through some unfortunate clandestine observations into which Dietrich thought it best not to inquire.
“He is an intuitive collection of cogs and cams,” Dietrich told the sergeant after one session. “Any words which are signs in themselves — such as refer to beings or to actions by beings — he apprehends immediately; while those which are signs for species or relations he finds a stumblestep. Hence, cottage and castle were clear, but habitation required instruction.”
Max only grinned. “Perhaps he is not so well-schooled as you.”
* * *
In September, the year paused, weary from the harvest, and inhaled deeply for the fall planting, wine press, and slaughter. The air grew cool and the broadleaf trees shivered in anticipation. Time enough, in this interstice between the summer and autumn labors, to finish the repairs from the “Great Fire,” and to wed Seppl’ to Ulrike.
The nuptials took place on the village green, where the witnesses could gather ‘round the couple. There, Seppl’ declared his intent and Ulrike, dressed in traditional bridal yellow, declared her consent, after which everyone proceeded up Church Hill. The Lateran Council had required that all weddings be public, but not that the Church participate in them. Nonetheless, despite his losses in the fire, Felix had elected a nuptial mass for his daughter’s marriage. Dietrich preached a sermon on the history and development of marriage, and explained how it was a figure of Christ wed to His Church. He was well into the contrast between muntehe, or family alliance, and friedehe, the love-match favored by the Church, when he sensed the restlessness of the congregants and the growing concupiscence of the wedding couple, and drew his discourse to a hasty and ill-reasoned conclusion.
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