Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  “Judge her not too rashly, either.”

  “I’m no philosopher, to mince words. If we are to grapple with a foe, let us at least name him. Men like you are a challenge to women like her.”

  “Men like me…?”

  “Celibates. Oh, how tasty are the grapes that dangle out of reach! How much more desired! Dietrich, you haven’t granted me pardon.”

  “Oh, surely. I take the words of the Lord’s Prayer. I will pardon you as you pardon her.”

  Surprise contorted the monk’s features. “For what must I pardon Hilde?”

  “For having such ‘a woodpile stacked by the hut’ that you dream of her at night.”

  Joachim blanched and his jaw muscles knit. Then he looked at the snow. “I do think on them, what they felt — might feel like in my hands. I am a miserable sinner.”

  “So are we all. Which is why we merit love, and not condemnation. Which of us is worthy to throw the first stone? But let us at least not blame another for our own weakness.”

  * * *

  In the kitchen, Dietrich discovered Theresia huddled in a tight corner between the hearth and the outer wall. “Father!” she cried. “Send them away!”

  “What ails you?” He reached to her, but she would not emerge from her corner.

  “No, no, no!” she said. “Evil, wicked things! Father, they’ve come for us, they mean to take us down down down to hell. How could you let them come? Oh, the flames! Mother! Father, make them go away!” Her eyes did not apprehend Dietrich, but looked on another vision.

  This affliction he had not seen in many years.

  “Theresia, these Krenken are the distressed pilgrims from the woods.”

  She clutched at the sleeve of his gown. “Can you not see their hideousness? Have they enchanted your eyes?”

  “They are poor beings of flesh and blood, as we are.”

  The monk had come to the door of the kitchen outbuilding, a bundle of staw for the bedding balanced on his shoulder. He dropped it and rushed to the alcove where he went to his knee before Theresia.

  “The Krenken terrify her,” Dietrich told him.

  Joachim held his hands out. “Come, let us go down to your own cottage. There are none there to frighten you.”

  “She ought not to be frightened of them,” Dietrich said.

  But Joachim turned on him. “In the name of Christ, Dietrich! First, give comfort; then juggle your dialectic! Help me lift her out of there.”

  “You are a handsome boy, brother Joachim,” Theresia said. “He was handsome, too. He came with the demons and the fire but he wept and he carried me away and saved me from them.” She had taken two more steps, supported by Joachim and Dietrich on either side, when she shrieked. Hans and the Kratzer had come to the kitchen door.

  “I would observe this woman,” the Kratzer said through the talking head. “Why do some of your folk respond so?”

  “She is not one of your beetles or leaves, to be studied and divided by genus and species,” Dietrich said. “Fright has awakened old memories in her.”

  Joachim took Theresia under his arm, placing himself between the herb woman and the Krenken, and hurried her through the door. “Make them go away!” Theresia begged Joachim.

  Hans clicked his horny lips and said, “You shall have your wish.”

  He did not ask Dietrich to translate the remark for the girl, and the priest could not help but wonder if it had been an involuntary exclamation, not meant for overhearing.

  * * *

  That evening, Dietrich tramped into the Lesser Wood and cut down pine branches, which he wove into an Advent wreath for the coming Sunday. When afterward he looked into the kitchen, he saw Joachim’s quilted, goose-down blanket laid over the shivering body of Johann Sterne.

  XII. January, 1348

  Before Matins, the Epiphany of the Lord

  Winter fell like a shroud. The first snow had barely slumped under the pale sun when a second fell upon it, and path and pasture vanished alike into anonymity. The mill stream and its pond froze clear to the bottom, and fish could be spied mid-wriggle in the wintry glass. Peasants in their cottages, employed in mending and repair, threw another log on the fire and rubbed their hands. The wider world had been emptied out and a pall of gray woodsmoke hung over the silence.

  The Krenken huddled miserably before their hosts’ firesides, seldom venturing out. The snow had halted all thought of repair to their ship. Instead, they talked about how they would someday repair it.

  But after a time, even the talk ceased.

  * * *

  The complines of St. Saturnius brought a wind buffeting the parsonage’s shuttered windows. A low sussurus moaned through chinks in the planking. Hans had gone to the outbuilding to prepare special krenkish foods for himself and the Kratzer. Joachim hunched over the refrectory table where, under the Kratzer’s critical eye, he whittled Balthazar from a bough of black oak, to add to his crèche figurines.

  The door flew open, and the alchemist burst into the room and hopped immediately to the fireside, where he opened Gregor’s fur coat and luxuriated in the flames. “In Germany,” Dietrich said as he went to close the door, “the custom stands that we knock on the doorpost and await permission to enter.” But the alchemist, whom they had named after Arnold of Villanova, made no answer. He clacked some announcement to the Kratzer, and the two fell into an animated discussion which the Heinzelmännchen did not translate.

  Dietrich took up the stew pot that he had earlier hung to simmer over the fire and served Joachim. The Krenken were a rude and ill-mannered folk. Small wonder they quarreled so among themselves.

  Hans returned from the outbuilding with two plates in his hands. At sight of the alchemist, he hesitated, then handed one to the alchemist and the other to the Kratzer. He sat himself across the table from Joachim.

  “That was kindly done,” Joachim said curling another shaving from Balthazar’s back.

  Hans tossed his arm. “Were but one morsel left, it would be Arnold’s to swallow.”

  Dietrich had noticed that even Gschert deferred to the alchemist, though Arnold was clearly an underling. “Why?” He spooned some soup into a wooden bowl and gave it to Hans, along with a stick of little-bread.

  Instead of answering, Hans picked up the Christ-child that Joachim had previously carved. “Your brother tells me that this portrays your lord-from-the-sky; but the philosophy of the likelihood of events concludes that folk from different worlds must have different forms.”

  “The philosophy of the likelihood of events,” Dietrich said. “That intrigues.”

  “Though less so,” Joachim said dryly, “than Godhead made flesh. The Son of God, Hans, assumed the appearance of men at his Incarnation.”

  Hans listened silently to his head harness. “The Heinzelmännchen informs me that ‘incarnation’ in your ceremonial tongue likely means ‘enfleshment’.”

  “Ja, doch.”

  “But… But this is wonderful! Never have we met a folk able to assume the form of another! Was your lord a being of… No, not fire, but of that essence which gives impetus to matter.”

  “Spirit,” Dietrich guessed. “In Greek, we say energia, which means that principle which ‘works within’ or animates.”

  The Krenk considered that. “We have a… relationship… between spirit and material things. We say that ‘spirit equals material by the speed of light by the speed of light.’”

  “An interesting invocation,” said Dietrich, “though occult in meaning.”

  But the Krenk had turned away to interrupt his fellows with untranslated exclamations. A furious debate arose among them, which ended when the alchemist donned his own head harness and addressed Dietrich. “Tell me of this lord of pure energia and how he enfleshed himself. Such a being, when he returns, may yet save us!”

  “Amen!” said Joachim. But the Kratzer snapped his side-lips. “Enfleshment? The atoms of the flesh would not fit. Can Hochwalder impregnate Krenk? Wa-bwa-wa.”

  Ar
nold flung his arm. “A being of pure energia might know the art of inhabiting a foreign body.” He took a seat at the table. “Tell me, will he come soon?”

  “This is the season of Advent,” Dietrich said, “when we await his birth at Christ Mass.”

  The alchemist trembled. “And when and where does he enflesh himself?”

  “In Bethlehem of Judea.” The remainder of the evening passed in catechetical instruction, which the alchemist noted diligently on the wonderful writing slate all Krenken carried in their scrips. Arnold asked Joachim to translate the Mass into German so that the Heinzelmännchen could in turn translate it into krenkish. Dietrich, who knew how poorly the figures of one tongue might sit upon another, wondered how much of the sense would survive the journey.

  * * *

  Vigil-Night came and, with it, those villagers who otherwise seldom saw the inside of the church. With them, came Arnold Krenk. Some, upon spying this peculiar new catechumen, slipped quietly outside, including Theresia. When the Mass of the Catechumens ended, and Brother Joachim, holding high the book of Gospels, led Arnold Krenk forth for instruction, a few crept back in for the Mass of the Faithful. But Theresia was not among them.

  Afterward, Dietrich threw on a coat and, gripping a torch, picked his way to the foot of the hill, where Theresia’s cottage stood. He banged on the door, but she did not answer, pretending to be asleep, and so he doubled his efforts. The noice brought Lorenz from his smithy to stare at him bleary-eyed and to cast an appraising glance at the stars before returning to his slumbers.

  Finally, Theresia opened the upper half of her door. “Will you allow no sleep?” she asked.

  “You ran from Mass.”

  “While demons are present, there can be no true Mass, so I have not broken the Christ Mass law. You have, father, because you have not prayed a proper Mass.”

  This was too subtle for Theresia. “Who told you so?”

  “Volkmar.”

  The entire Bauer family had also departed the church. “And is Bauer then a theologian? Will you come to the Sunrise Mass?” Never had he need to ask the question. In the past, his daughter had attended all three Christ Masses.

  “Will they be there?”

  The customs and ceremonies of the village interested the Kratzer, so also many of the stranded pilgrims. Some of them surely would attend with their fotografia and mikrofonai. “They may.”

  She shook her head. “Then, I must not.” She started to close the door.”

  Dietrich put his hand up to stop it. “Wait. If ‘in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no man or woman,’ how in Christ can I bar anyone from the table?”

  “Because,” she answered quite simply, “these demons are neither man nor woman, neither Jew nor Greek.”

  “You are a disputatious woman!”

  Theresia closed the upper door. “You should rest for the sunrise mass,” he heard her say.

  Returning to the parsonage, he expressed his frustrations to Joachim and wondered if he might bar the Krenken from some Masses so Theresia and the others would attend. “The simple answer is that you cannot,” the monk replied, “and like much that the Christ taught, the simple answer will suffice. Only schoolmen burden such things with quibbles.” He reached across the table and seized Dietrich’s wrist. “We are engaged in a wonderful task here, Dietrich. Should we bring these henchmen of Satan to the arms of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be far off. And when the Third Age of the World comes — the Age of the Holy Spirit — our names shall be writ in gold.”

  But as he lay down to nap until the Sunrise Mass, Dietrich thought, But will Theresia’s name be writ among them?

  * * *

  As often happens, fear showed itself in avoidance and hostility. Theresia threw snowballs at the Krenken whenever she encountered them in the open, having learned of their particular sensitivity to cold. “Of course the cold bothers them,” she told Dietrich after he had chastised her. “They are accustomed to the fires of Hell.” One time, her icy missiles struck a krenkish child. After this, some of the Krenken, knowing that the mere sight of them would drive her wild, would in acts of petty revenge brave the cold merely to show themselves at her cottage window. Baron Grosswald applied the krenkish discipline to these transgressors — not for love of Theresia Gresch, but to maintain the precarious peace — and warmth — he had eked from Herr Manfred’s disposition.

  Even Joachim was moved to express his disappointment. “Had you asked me who in this village would sit before the Lord,” he said one afternoon while he mended a tear in his habit, “I would have named the herb woman. Lorenz told me she was mute when she arrived with you.”

  Dietrich, who was sweeping the floor, paused over sudden memories. “And so for two years more.” He cast a glance at the crucifix on the wall, where Jesus also twisted in torment. Why, O Lord, have you afflicted her so? Job at least was a wealthy man and so may have merited affliction, but Theresia was only a child when you took everything from her. “Her father was a Herr in the Elsass,” he said, “and the Armleder burned their manor down, killed her father and brothers, and raped her mother.”

  Joachim crossed himself. “God’s peace upon them.”

  “All for the crime of being wealthy,” Dietrich added pointedly. “I do not know if her father was a cruel lord or a kind one, whether he held vast sallands or only a poor knight’s patch. Such distinctions meant nothing to that army. Madness had laid hold of them. They held the type wicked, not the person.”

  “How came she to escape? Tell me the mob did not…!” Joachim had gone white and his lips and fingers trembled.

  “There was a man among them,” Dietrich remembered, “who had opened his eyes and was desperate to escape their company. Yet he had been, even so, a leader, and could not slip away unremarked. So he asked for the girl as if he would bed her. The uprising had collapsed by then. They were dead men walking, and so without the law, for what greater penalty can be heaped upon them? The others thought he had only taken the child to some private place. By morn, he was many leagues distant.” Dietrich rubbed his arms. “It was through this wicked man that the girl came to me, and I brought her here where the madness had never touched and she could know a little peace.”

  “God bless that man,” Joachim said, crossing himself.

  Dietrich turned on him. “God bless him?” he shouted. “He slew men and urged others to slaughter. God’s blessing was far from him.”

  “No,” the monk insisted quietly. “It was always there beside him. He had only to accept it.”

  For a moment, Dietrich did not speak. “It is hard to forgive such a man,” he said at last, “whatever kindness moved him at the end.”

  “Hard for men, perhaps,” Joachim retorted, “but not for God. What befell him afterward? Did the Elsass Duke take him?”

  Dietrich shook his head. “No man has heard his name in twelve years.”

  * * *

  The interval between the Vigil-Night and the Epiphany was the longest holiday of the year. The villagers paid extra dues to stock the lord’s banquet table, but were exempt from all handservice, and so a festive spirit came over all. A spruce tree was again erected on the green and hung about with flags and ornaments, and even the meanest cottage did not lack for its dress of holly, fir, or mistel.

  But the merry-making did not extend to the Krenken. A too-literal translation of advent into the krenkish tongue had led the stranded travelers to expect the actual arrival of the much-heralded “lord from the sky,” so their disappointment was keen. While he was pleased that the strangers thus looked forward to the Kingdom of Heaven, Dietrich cautioned Hans against naive literalism. “Since thirteen hundred years the Christ is ascended,” Dietrich explained after the Mass for St. Sebastian, while Hans helped him clean the sacred vessels. “His disciples, too, thought he soon would return, but they were mistaken.”

  “Perhaps they were confused by the pressing of time,” Hans suggested.

  “What! Can tim
e then be pressed like grapes?” Dietrich was both startled and amused, and smacked his lips in Krenk-like laughter while he placed his chalice in its cupboard and locked it. “If time may be ‘pressed,’ then it is a being on which one may act, and being consists of subject and aspect. A thing that is movable alters in its aspect, for it is here, then it is there; it is this, then it is that.” Dietrich wagged his hand back and forth. “Of motions, there are four: change of substance, as when a log becomes ash; change of quality, as when an apple ripens from green to red; change of quantity, as when a body grows or diminishes; and change of place, which we call ‘local motion.’ Obviously, for time to be ‘pressed’ — here long, there short — there must be a change in quality and hence a motion of time. But time is the measure of motion in changeable things and cannot measure itself.”

  Hans disagreed. “Spirit travels so fast as the motion of light when there is no air. At such speeds, time passes more quickly, and what is an eye-blink for the Christ-spirit is for you many years. So your thirteen hundred years may seem to him only a few days. We call that the pressing of time.”

  Dietrich considered the proposition for a moment. “I admit two sorts of duration: tempus for the sublunar realm and aeternia for the heavens. But eternity is not time, nor is time a portion of eternity — for there cannot be time without change, which requires a beginning and an end, and eternity has neither. Furthermore, motion is an attribute of changeable beings, while light is an attribute of fire. But one attribute cannot inhere in another, for then the second attribute must be an entity and we must not multiply entities without necessity. Thus, light cannot have motion.”

  Hans ground his forearms together. “But light is an entity. It is a wave, like the ripples on the mill pond.”