Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  Dietrich accepted the cup, though he only sipped from it. “What befell at Benfeld?”

  “The devil is loose. Berthold. Lacks all honor. Flies with the wind. A bishop!”

  “If you would have better bishops, let the church choose them, and not kings and princes.”

  “Let the Pope choose, you mean? Pfaugh! There would be French spies in every court of Europe. Drink!”

  Dietrich pulled a chair across from Manfred and sat. “How has Berthold driven you to this intemperance?”

  “This,” Manfred filled his cup, “is not intemperance. It’s what he’s not done. He’s lord o’ Strassburg, but does he lead? A few lances would’ve settled things.” He smacked the table with the flat of his hand. “Where is that Unterbaum boy?”

  “You sent him to the Swiss to learn the true state of affairs.”

  “That was on St. Blaise’s Day. He should be back by now. If that gof has run off -.”

  “He’d not run from Anna Kohlmann,” Dietrich answered mildly. “Perhaps the road delays him. He took great pride in wearing the messenger’s cloak. He’d not lightly throw it over.”

  “It makes nothing,” said the Herr in sudden swing of temperament. “Learned all ’n Benfeld. Y’know what happened in the Swiss?”

  “I heard the Basler Jews were gathered up for banishment.”

  “Would they had been banished. Mob stormed th’ compound an’ set it afire, so… All died.”

  “Herr God in heaven!” Dietrich half-stood, crossing himself.

  Manfred gave him a sour look. “I’ve no love for usurers, but… there was no charge, no trial, only th’ mob run wild. Berthold asked Strassburg what they intended regarding the Jews, and th’ councilors answered that they ‘knew no evil of them.’ An’ then… Berthold asked th’ burgomeister, Peter Swaben, why he’d closed th’ wells and put th’ buckets away. By me, that was mere prudence, but there was great outcry against Strassburg’s hypocrisy.” Manfred emptied his cup again. “No man ’s safe when the mob runs loose, Jew or no. Wants only a grudge — as well you know.”

  At that reminder, Dietrich drained his own cup and it shook as he replenished it.

  “Swaben an’ his council stood fast,” Manfred continued, “but the next morning, th’ minster bells ’nounced a procession of the Cross-Brothers. Th’ bishop detests them — all th’ better folk do — but he daren’t speak while th’ vulgar favor them. They — Drink, Dietrich, drink! They marched two-by-two, the flagellants did, heads bowed, somber habits, cowls thrown up, bright red crosses front, back, cap. Up front, walked their Master, an’ two lieutenants with banners of purple velvet and cloth of gold. All this in utter silence. Utter silence. Unnerved me, that silence did. Had they shouted or danced, I might’ve laughed. But that quiet awed everyone who saw, so th’ only sound was th’ hissing breath of two-hundred brothers. I thought it some enormous serpent, winding through th’ streets. In th’ minster-place, they chanted their litany, and I could think of but one thing.”

  “And what was that?”

  “How bad th’ poetry was! Hah! Th’ cursed melody entangles m’ thoughts. I need Peter Minnesinger to exorcise it. Wish I’d laughed, now. Might’ve broken the spell. Cathedral chapter all ran off, naturally. Two Dominicans tried to halt a procession out near Miessen an’ were stoned for their troubles, so who dares oppose’m now? I was told Erfurt closed its gates against them, and Bishop Otto suppressed them in Magdeburg. An’ th’ tyrant of Milan erected three hundred welcoming gibbets outside the city walls, and the procession went elsewhere.”

  “The Italians are a subtle folk,” Dietrich said.

  “Hah! At least Umberto had a spine. The brothers stripped to the waist an’ processed slowly in a circle ’til, at the Master’s signal, the singing stopped and they threw themselves prostrate on the ground. Then they rose and whipped themselves with leather straps while the three in the center kept a tempus, so that th’ smacking proceeded in unison. Meanwhile, th’ crowd groaned and shivered and wept in sympathy.”

  “The brotherhoods were less quarrelsome in the beginning,” Dietrich ventured. “A man required his wife’s permission to join -.”

  “Which I suppose many were all too happy to give, hah!”

  “- and provide four pence a day to support himself on the road. He made a full confession, vowed to neither bathe nor shave, nor change clothes nor sleep in a bed, and to maintain both silence and chastity regarding the other sex.”

  “A serious vow, then; though a hairy, malodorous one. And all for thirty-three days and eight hours, I was told.” Manfred’s brow creased. “Why thirty-three days and eight hours?”

  “One day,” Dietrich told him, “for each year of Christ’s life on earth.”

  “Truly? Hah! I wish I’d known that. None of us could cipher it. But th’ old leaders have all died or quit in disgust. Now, th’ Masters claim to absolve from sin. They denounce mother Church, revile th’ Eucharist, disrupt th’ Mass, and drive priests from their churches before looting them. They enroll women now, and one hears that some vows are no longer held so dear.” Manfred tilted his cup, swirled the remnants of his wine, and sighed. “I fear the curse of sobriety is overtaking me… The flagellants heard of the council’s obstinancy and ran wild through the Jewish quarter, drawing the townsmen after them. The Strassburgers rioted for two days, deposed Swaben and his council, and installed another more to their liking. In the end, the bishop, lords, and Imperial Cities agreed to expel their Jews. On Friday the 13th, the Strassburg Jews were taken up, and led the next day into their own cemetery into a house prepared for them. Along the way the crowd jeered and threw offal and ripped their clothes to find any concealed money, so that many were almost naked when they arrived.”

  “An outrage!”

  Manfred stared into the dregs of his cup. “Afterward,” he said. “Afterward, the house was fired, and I am told that nine hundred Jews perished. The mob looted the synagogue where they held their secret rituals, and found the horn of a ram. None knew its purpose, and it was supposed a means to signal the enemies of Strassburg.”

  “Oh, dear God,” said Dietrich, “that was the shofar. To celebrate their holy days.”

  Manfred refilled his cup. “Perhaps you should’ve been there to educate them, but I don’t think they were in a humour for learned discourse. Lover-God, I would gladly kill nine hundred Jews, if they came at me under arms and properly girded for war. But to burn them all… Women and children… A man of honor protects women and children. Disorder cannot be tolerated! If a man is to be relaxed to the pyre or the headsman, let it be after a proper inquisition. Men must be ruled! That was Berthold’s sin. He truckled to them when he should have sent his knights to trample them under their hooves. I tell you, Dietrich, this is what befalls when the low-born impose their will! Give us lords like Pedro of Aragon or Albrecht von Hapsburg!”

  “Or Philip von Falkenstein?”

  Manfred stabbed a forefinger at him. “Do not try me, Dietrich! Do not try me.”

  “What of the Jews who escaped?”

  A shrug. “The Duke’s man named Hapsburg land as sanctuary, so I suppose now they will all heigh for Vienna — or Poland. King Casimir was said to have extended a similar invitation. Oh, hold,” Manfred said around a swallow of wine. He coughed and placed the goblet unsteady on the table. Dietrich snatched it before it could topple and spill its contents. “There’s to be a war.”

  “A war? And you forgot until now to mention this?”

  “I, am, drunk,” Manfred said. “One drinks to forget. The Freiburg guilds have determined to break Falcon Rock. The Falcon has fouled his own nest. His ward, Wolfrianne, ran off and married a Freiburger tailor. Philip captured the man, and when she came below the walls to plead for his release, her jealous guardian returned him to her — headlong from the highest battlement. The tailor’s guild demanded vengeance and the others will strike from solidarity.”

  “And how does that affect you?”

  “You know my
mind on Falkenstein… But the Duke’s man promised aid to the Freiburgers. They bought their liberties from Urach with the Duke’s silver, and their prosperity is now Albrecht’s hope of repayment. Von Falkenstein robbed the Hapsburgs of one such payment.” Manfred nodded to Dietrich as if to remind him. “He’ll not lose another.”

  “He’s called you out, then, for your knight-service.”

  “As Niederhochwald,” Manfred said, “But I expect Markgraf Friedrich will join, too. Then… Hah! The lords of Oberhochwald and Niederhochwald will ride out together!” He drained his cup and turned the flagon bottoms-up to no avail. “Gunther!” he shouted, thowing the flagon against the door. “More wine!” Then, in a whisper to Dietrich, “He’ll bring th’ rot-gut, now he thinks I can’t taste th’ difference.”

  “So,” Dietrich said. “Another war, then.”

  Manfred, slouching in his high seat, flipped a hand palm up. “The French war was a fancy. This one’s duty. If success can’t be won now — with the Freiburg guilds, the Duke, and the rest combined — then it cannot be done at all. But Baron Grosswald will not commit himself.” He tossed his head toward the door and, by extension, toward the south tower, where the krenkish guests were housed. “I bespoke him on my return, and he said he’d not hazard his sergeants against Falkenstein. What use their magical weapons, if I can’t employ ’em?”

  “The Krenken are few,” Dietrich suggested. “Grosswald wishes to lose no more of his band than he already has. The last of their children died yesterday. Surely he will face an inquest when he has won his way home.”

  Manfred slapped the table. “So he trades his honor for safety?”

  Dietrich turned on him in sudden fury. “Honor! Are the wars such a joy, then?”

  Manfred shot to his feet and stood with his hands on the table before him, leaning a little forward. “A joy? No, never a joy, priest. At the wars, we must forever swallow our fears and expose ourselves to every peril. Moldy bread or biscuit, meat cooked or uncooked; today enough to eat and tomorrow nothing, little or no wine, water from a pond or butt; bad quarters, tent for shelter or the tree branches overhead; a bad bed, poor sleep with armor still on our backs, burdened with iron, the enemy an arrow-shot away. ‘ ’Ware! Who goes there? To arms! To arms!’ ” Manfred gestured broadly with his empty Krautstrunk. “With the first drowsiness: an alarm. At dawn: a trumpet. ‘To horse! To horse! Muster! Muster!’ As sentinels, keeping watch by day and by night. As foragers or scouts, fighting without cover. Guard after guard, duty after duty. ‘Here they come! Here! There are too many — No, not so many — News! News! This way — That — Come this side — Press them there — Go! Go! — Give no ground! — On!’” The Herr arrested his motions, suddenly aware that his voice had risen and that he had been pacing and and waving his arms wildly and Gunther stood dumbstruck in the doorway. Manfred spun back to the table and took up his cup, looked inside, and placed it back empty. “Such is our calling,” he said more quietly as he fell back to his seat.

  Silence lingered. Gunther replaced the wine flagon and carefully left. Then Manfred raised his head and speared Dietrich with his gaze. “But you’d know something of that, would you not?”

  Dietrich turned away. “Enough.”

  “You’ve friends among the Krenken,” he heard Manfred say. “Explain to them what duty means.”

  * * *

  At dawn, those serfs who owed service as messengers donned cloaks with the Hochwald arms and bore the news to the lower valley and to the knight-fiefs. From Church Hill, Dietrich watched the horses dance along the snow-filled roads.

  The snow that had lain thick all winter around the manor, a barrier keeping at bay the turmoil beyond the woods, was melting. Already tracks had been trampled through it. The men who carried messages would carry also rumors, and odd tales about Oberhochwald’s guests would begin to circulate.

  * * *

  Two weeks to the day, on the first Monday in Lent, horses pawed at the mud below the castle walls and snorted bright vapors in the cool March breeze. Colorful, snapping banners marked the knights who had mustered from their fiefs. Armsmen checked weapons and hitched their burdens for the trek into the valley. Wagons creaked; donkeys neighed; dogs barked. Children shouted with excitement or kissed fathers who waited afoot with solemn faces. Women, steadfast, refused to weep. The expected summons had arrived from the Markgraf, and the Herr of Oberhochwald was going to the wars.

  Manfred’s palefridus was raven-black and speckled over with white dots, as if lately bathed with soap. Its thick mane was parted on the left side of its neck, and its headgear splendidly decorated with the Hochwald colors. Hardly had Manfred mounted than it reared from joy, delighted at its master’s weight in its saddle. Two of Manfred’s hounds came running — behind the horse, ahead of it, behind it once more — leaping with excitement. They were trackers and they thought that this would be a hunt.

  Manfred had covered his armor with a surcoat bearing his arms. His helm, slung behind his saddle for the journey, shimmered in the sunlight. His sword hilt was covered with gold. Around his neck he wore a strap with a horn shaped like a griffin’s talon that measured nearly half an armlength. Its thicker end flared into a bell and, where it tapered toward the tip, the device was decorated with pure gold and held in place with deerskin thongs. It was lustrous, like a precious stone, and when he blew on it, “it sounded better than all the echoes in the world.”

  His body servant was less splendidly mounted and, for saddle, he used an old feedbag. Over his right shoulder he carried the Herr’s travel-bag, packed with the sundries of camp, and over his left, his lord’s shield, slung in piggy-back fashion. With the quiver also in his right hand and the spear tucked under the shield, he seemed more fearsomely armed than the man he served.

  “It pleases,” Manfred said to Dietrich, who stood beside the black horse in the trampled muck of dirt and melting snow. “The Duke had called on me for six and a half men, and I dislike choosing which to send home early. They maneuver for the privilege, y’know, but never openly. Whoever receives the grace earns the enmity of his peers, and more often than not overstays his obligation rather than be thought cowardly. Now I can add the Duke’s half-man to the Markgraf’s half-man and so obtain a whole one.” He threw his head back and laughed, and Dietrich mumbled some response. Manfred cocked an eye at him.

  “You think a jest unseemly? What else might a man do marching toward possible death?”

  “It is no light matter,” Dietrich answered him.

  Manfred slapped his gauntlets against the palm of his left hand. “Well, I’ll pray my penance afterward, as a soldier must. Dietrich, much as I would tend my manor in peace, peace needs the consent of all, while one alone may raise a war. I swore an oath to protect the defenseless and punish peace-breakers, and that includes peace-breaking Herrenfolk. You priests say to forgive your enemy, and that is well, or revenge follows revenge until eternity. But between a man who will stop at nothing and one who will hesitate at anything, the advantage is generally to the former. The pagans had right, too. It is a false peace to be overforgiving. Your enemy may read forbearance as weakness and so be drawn to strike.”

  “And how do you determine the question?” Dietrich asked.

  Manfred grinned. “Why, that I should fight my enemy — but fairly.” He twisted in his saddle to see whether his corps was yet assembled. “Ho! Eugen, to the fore!” The junker, astride a white Wallachian, galloped past the cheering assembly with the Hochwald banner planted in his stirrup.

  Kunigund ran to Eugen’s horse and, having grabbed the check reins, cried, “Promise me you’ll come back! Promise!” Eugen begged a kerchief from the girl to wear as a favor. This, he tucked in his girdle, declaring that it would keep him from harm. Kunigund beseeched her father. “Keep him safe, father! You won’t let anyone harm him!”

  Manfred leaned to touch Kunigund on either cheek. “As safe as my arm and his honor permit, sweetling, but all lies in God’s hands. Pray for him, Gundl
, and for me.”

  His daughter ran to the chapel before any could see her weep. Manfred sighed after her. “She listens overmuch to the minnesingers, and holds all farewells as in the romances. If I should not return,” he added, but the sentence dangled. Then, more quietly, “She is my life. I mean for Eugen to wed her, once he has won his spurs, and that he should protect Hochwald in her name; but should he… Should neither of us return… If that befalls, see that she weds well.” He turned his gaze on Dietrich. “I entrust her to you.”

  “But, the Markgraf…”

  “Graf Friedrich would keep her unwed, the longer to milk my land for his own pocket.” His face clouded. “Had the boy lived, and Anna with him… Ach! There’d be none to gainsay that woman were she my burgvogt! There was a wife worthy of a man! Half of me died when I heard the midwife’s wail. These past years have been empty.”

  “Is that why you went off to the French wars?” Dietrich asked. “To fill them?”

  Manfred stiffened. “Mind your tongue, priest.” He yanked on the bridle reins but, looking up, checked his turn. “Ho! What have we here?”

  A clamor had gone up from the waiting knights and their attendants. Some in the encampment were pointing to the sky and cheering. Others shrieked in terror as five Krenken in flying harnesses settled like fallen leaves from the sky onto the horse-pawed field. They carried hand-held pots-de-fer strapped round their middles and long, slim tubes slung over their shoulders. Dietrich recognized Hans and Gottfried — and thought it passing strange that the Krenken had once seemed so alike to him.

  Wails rose from those who, having come from remote holdings, had not yet seen a Krenk. A camp-follower from Hinterwaldkopf waved in the air a reliquary she wore round her neck. Others slipped off with fearful backward glances. Franzl Long-nose slapped some of the retreating camp-followers with his staff. “What, would ye run from a handful of grasshoppers?” he laughed. Some knights half-drew their swords, and Manfred called out in his battle-voice that the strangers were travelers from a distant land who had come to lend their aid with their cunning weapons. Then he added sotto voce to Dietrich, “My thanks for persuading Grosswald.”