Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  Earlier Dietrich had, from boredom, found a book in Manfred’s baggage; but as it concerned falconry, it had done little to relieve that boredom, and he had found himself fretting instead over the copyist’s hand or the qualities of the illuminations. When when he heard the irregular tramp of hobnails outside, Dietrich put the volume aside and emerged from the tent.

  Attendants had built the fire back up and Max the Schweitzer was settling his men about it. He straightened in surprise. “Pastor! What is loose? You’ve been wounded!”

  Dietrich touched the bandage. “There is fighting in the village. Where is Manfred?”

  “At the chirurgeons’ tent. Fighting! Was it that sally from the watchtower? We thought them fled toward Breitnau.”

  “No, the Krenken battle among themselves — and Thierry will do nothing.”

  Max spat into the fire. “Thierry is skilled at defense. Let Grosswald handle matters.”

  “Grosswald is not least among the brawlers. It is for Manfred to decide.”

  Max scowled. “He won’t like it. Andreas, take charge of the men. Come, then, pastor. You’ll never find the chirurgeon in this maze.” He set off at a brisk pace and Dietrich had to match his stride to keep up.

  “Is he grievous hurt?” Dietrich asked.

  “He took a blow that cost him a cheek and several teeth, but I think the chirurgeon can sew it back together. The cheek, I mean.”

  Dietrich crossed himself and offered up a silent prayer for the Herr’s well-being. The man had been a strange and cautious friend for many years, peculiar in his humors and given much to contemplation since his lady had died, visceral in his tastes, yet not without depths. He was one of the few with whom Dietrich could discuss any but the most mundane matters.

  But he had misunderstood. It was Eugen, not Manfred, who sat strapped into a chair in the chirurgeon’s tent. A dentator was removing the broken teeth one by one with a pelican, a French novelty but recently come into use. The dentator’s muscles bulged with the effort and Eugen stifled cries with every pull. The junker’s face was black from the blow it had sustained. Blood spattered his brow, chin, nose, and painted the teeth exposed by the open flap of cheek a hideous scarlet. His skull grinned through the wound. Nearby, a blood-spattered chirurgeon read from a dog-eared book while he waited.

  Manfred, who stood by the chair to fortify the lad, noticed Dietrich’s arrival and, by signs, indicated that conversation would wait. Dietrich paced restlessly about the tent, his mission pressing upon him.

  Nearby stood a stained table on which the chirurgeon customarily worked and, beside it, a basket of dry sponges. Curious, Dietrich bent to take one up, but the chirurgeon stopped him. “No, no, padre! Very dangerous, those.” His patois of French and Italian, revealed him for a Savoyard. “They are soaked with an infusion of opium, mandragora bark, and henbane root, and the poison, he may transfer to your fingers. Then…” He mimed licking a finger as if to page his manuscript. “You see? Very bad?”

  Dietirch backed away from the suddenly malignant sponges. “What do you use them for?”

  “When the pain, he is so great I cannot-a cut without a danger, I moisten the sponge to release her fumes, and hold it under the man’s nose — so — until he’s sleep. But…” And he held a fist out, thumb and little finger extended, and wagged it. “Too much of the fumo, he no wake, hey? But for the most grievous wounds, maybe better he die in peace than in torment, hey?”

  “May I see your book?” Dietrich indicated the volume in the chirurgeon’s hands.

  “He is-a called The Four Masters. He describe the best-a practice of the ancients, Saracens, and Christians. Masters of Salerno compile him many years ago — before the Sicilian famigliae kill all the Angevins. This-a book,” he added proudly, “he is a copy direct from the master’s copy, but I am add to it.”

  “Finely done,” Dietrich said, returning it. “Does Salerno then teach chirurgery?”

  The Savoyard laughed. “Holy blue! Mending wounds is an art, not a schola. Well, at Bologna is a schola founded of Henry de Lucca. But chirugery is for clever hands—” He wiggled his fingers. ” — not clever minds.”

  “Ja, the name ‘chirurgeon’ is Greek for ‘hand-labor.’”

  “Oho, I see you a scholar—”

  “I have read Galen,” Dietrich ventured, “but that was many—”

  The Savoyard spat on the ground. “Galen! At Bologna, de Lucca, he cut open the cadavers and see that Galen knows shit. Galen cut up only pigs, and men are not-a pigs! I myself was apprentice when first public dissection — oh, thirty year since, I think — my master and I, we makea the cuts while important dottore, he describe what he see for the students. Hah! We need no physician to tell us what we see with our eyes. Holy blue! You have the head wound! May I see her? Ah, she is deep but… Did you clean it with the vino as de Lucca and Henri de Mondeville command? No?” He dabbed at the cut with a rag moistened in wine. “Wine that has turned is best. Now, I dry the cut and bring-a the edges together as the Lombards do. La Natura, she make a viscous fluid to bind-a the edges without the needlework. I will wrap-a the wound with hemp, to draw off the heat…”

  The dentator had by then finished his work and the garrulous chirurgeon took his leave to attend to Eugen’s cheek. The junker, sweating and exhausted from the work on his jaw and teeth, watched the approaching knife with something approaching relief. Knives he understood. The pelican had been too much like an instrument of torture.

  * * *

  “He will bear up,” Manfred said after he and Dietrich had repaired to the Herr’s tent. “The blow he took was aimed at me, so it is a scar he may wear with honor. The Markgraf himself remarked the feat and agreed on the spot that Eugen shall have his accolade. Your Hans performed a brave deed, too, which I will bring to Grosswald’s attention.”

  “It is Grosswald’s attentions that are the cause of my errand.” Dietrich explained what had happened in the village. “One faction says that Hans did the proper thing, despite his master’s command. ‘To save us from the alchemist,’ is how they expressed it.”

  Manfred, seated upon his camp chair, pressed his hands together under his chin. “I see.” He beckoned to his servant with a hand-flip and selected a sweetmeat from the tray thus proffered. “And Grosswald’s party?” He waved the servant toward Dietrich, who declined.

  “They cry that Hans, by his disobedience, upset the natural order, and this they abhor above all else. I suspect other factions, also. Shepherd is wroth with Hans, but would use his faction to unseat Grosswald, whom she holds blameworthy for stranding her pilgrims.”

  Manfred grunted. “They are as convoluted as Italians. How stood matters when you left?”

  “Once they grasped the Peace of God, many of the low-born fled to St. Catherine or the Burg, to the frustration of their attackers, who will not risk your displeasure by violating sanctuary.”

  “Well,” said Manfred, “I can’t say I like the natural order being upset, either, but Hans did me great service this day, and for my honor I would see him rewarded, not punished.”

  “What service was that, mine Herr? Would it mollify Grosswald?”

  “Grosswald is a man of uncertain humor.” Manfred checked himself, then smiled crookedly. “How accustomed to those creatures have we grown this winter, that I should think of him as a man. Hans and his Krenkl’n swooped upon the ramparts while all attention was on the breach, slew the archers there, then assaulted the bergfried and secured the treasure-hoard!”

  “Mine Herr,” Dietrich said with sudden apprehension. “Mine Herr, were they seen?”

  “Some in the camp saw them, I think — though only at a distance, for I cautioned them to remain hidden to the extent their honor permitted. The archers on the ramparts, naturally, saw them plain, as did the towermaster in the ‘murder hole’ above the gate. Him, they slew before he could pour the hot oil upon us, to the saving of many a life and horrible injury. Falkenstein’s men thought their lord’s demonic master had
come for him at last, so their appearance sowed panic to our advantage. There will be stories, but that cannot be helped, and the demons may be thought Falkenstein’s, not ours.”

  “There is a poetry in that,” Dietrich admitted, “that the legend he used to frighten others turned like a snake to bite the man himself.”

  Manfred chuckled and and drank wine from a goblet partly filled with resins to impart a sweet perfume to the beverage. “The Krenk who carried the thunder-paste — he was called Gerd — performed most valiantly. He flew at night to the base of the gate tower and planted there the paste. On the morrow, he fired it at the moment Hapsburg fired his pots de fer, so that it would seem that the shots had wrought the damage. The Duke’s captain was sore amazed! Gerd used the far-speaker to accomplish this. By Our Lady, it seemed as if he spoke to the paste and it obeyed. Dietrich, I swear upon my sword that the line between clever art and demonic powers is a hair. Hans led his companions into the bergfried in search of the Hapsburg silver, slaying or wounding all who stood before them until the stairs ran like a river of blood — though most defenders fled on the very sight of them.”

  Herrenfolk were notoriously prone to hyperbole over feats of arms. The human body could bleed a ghastly amount, but a few minutes casting sums would show the impossibility of “a river” of blood, especially if “most defenders fled.” “Did they find the copper?” he asked.

  “Hans reasoned that the greatest resistance would lie toward the treasury, and so he attacked where resistance was greatest. But…” Manfred threw his head back and laughed. “For all his fine reasoning, Hans found your wire by merest chance. Falkenstein kept his lady’s quarters heated — a tiled stove, no less! — and our Krenkl’n were drawn toward it. The wire was there. Her husband had given her the copper, perhaps to fashion jewelry from it. I suppose you philosophers can make something interesting of the coincidence. Perhaps that reason has its limits.”

  “Or that God meant for Hans to find it.” Dietrich closed his eyes and offered a brief prayer of thanks that the Krenken could proceed now with their repairs.

  “But, hear,” said Manfred. “Lady Falkenstein had a body guard assigned her and, when the Krenkl’n broke into her room, he swung his sword and cut down Gerd with a single blow. And what did our little corporal do, but straddle his comrade and ward off the armsman while the others pulled the body free! First, he brandished a chair to parry a stroke, then he slung a bullet with his pot-de-fer that struck the man a glancing blow on his helm and rendered him senseless. Then, oh, valiantly done! He traced the cross over his enemy and withdrew.”

  “He spared him, then?” Dietrich asked in wonder, knowing the krenkish choler.

  “A wonderful gesture. And Lady Falkenstein screeching all the while for fear of the Nameless One. But she says now that her bodyguard made such an heroic fight that even a very demon was moved to recognize his valor.”

  “Ach. So legends grow.”

  Manfred cocked his head. “What better story than that both foes perform heroic deeds when they face each other? By all accounts, the man voided himself at the sight of Hans; but he stood and fought when he could have run. That man will regale his grandchildren with tales of how he traded strokes with a demon and lived — if the Duke does not hang him first. But, the Duke’s silver is secured — and on its way to Vienna with the Jews — and a troop of trusted men to guard it. The other prisoners are also freed.”

  “God be thanked. Mine Herr, would you summon Hans and warn him of his lord’s anger?”

  “Too late for that, I fear. Once I had secured the treasury for the Duke, I gave Hans leave to fly his slain companion to the krenkish crypts.”

  Dietrich stood in sudden alarm. “What! We must hurry back then, before it’s too late.”

  Manfred pursed his lips. “Sit yourself, pastor. Only a fool hazards that trail in the dark. Whatever dealing Grosswald has in mind has already been dealt. However, for my honor, if Hans has not been well handled, Grosswald will pay the fine!”

  Dietrich was not certain that Manfred had the power to punish Grosswald, should Grosswald not will it. The Krenken had feared the winter’s cold; but their arrogance would warm with the weather, and their oaths might melt with the snows.

  * * *

  Dietrich slept indifferently well. He did not expect the truce among the krenkish factions to last, for their ways required submission, not balance. Their “Web” was one not of oaths and mutual obligations, but of authority and obedience, and arrived at less by the cognitive power of their wills than by the estimative power of their appetites.

  The new moon had set and, between short-lived bouts of slumber, Dietrich had watched Orion and his hounds chase Jupiter. Now the hunters, wearied of the chase, were sinking below the Breitnau heights and the Dog Star, brightest of all stars, rested yellow upon the crest of the mountain. Dietrich had read from Ptolemy in the Paris quadrivium, and Ptolemy had described the Dog Star as red. Perhaps the Greek had been mistaken, or perhaps it was only a copyist’s error; but Hans had said that stars could change, and Dietrich wondered whether this were one example of the corruptibility of the heavens.

  He shook his head. According to Virgil, the Dog Star portended death and disease. Dietrich watched it until it had dropped safely from sight, or until he fell asleep at last.

  * * *

  XV. March, 1349

  At Sext, Ember Wednesday

  Dietrich passed through the spring fields on his return, and was surprised to see the tenants and serfs engaged in their customary labors. Some called out greetings; others leaned on their spades and watched him. Herwyg One-eye, working a strip close by the roadside, asked for a blessing on his plot, which Dietrich delivered perfunctorily.

  “What news of the Krenken?” he asked his tenant. From the village came sounds of mallets and the smell of fresh bread in the oven.

  “Naught since yestere’en, when they quieted some. Most are hiding in the Church.” Herwyg laughed. “I suppose that monk’s preaching hurts less than being beaten.”

  “Then nothing was done to those Krenken who set out with the Herr?”

  He shrugged. “They’ve not returned.”

  * * *

  Dietrich rode to St. Catherine, where he found a score of Krenken in uneven rows in the nave. Some were on their feet, others in their characteristic squat. Three perched in the rafters. Joachim was in the pulpit while a thick-set Krenk wearing a head-harness translated for those who lacked one.

  “Where is Hans?” Dietrich asked into the silence that greeted his entrance.

  Joachim shook his head. “I’ve not seen him since the army left.”

  One of the squatting Krenken buzzed and the thick-set one said through the mikrofoneh, “The Beatice asks whether Hans lives. It is,” he added with the krenkish smile, “a weighty matter to her.”

  “His band performed valiantly in the conflict,” Dietrich told him, “One alone was slain and Hans avenged him in a most Christian manner. Please excuse me, I must find him.”

  He had turned away when Joachim called, “Dietrich!”

  “What?”

  “Which of them was killed?”

  “The one called Gerd.”

  This announcement, when translated, caused a great deal of clicking and buzzing. A Krenk began sawing his arms violently and repeatedly. Others reached out in quick, tentative touches, as if tapping his shoulder for his attention. Joachim, too, descended from the pulpit, and imitated the krenkish gesture. “Blessed are those who mourn,” Dietrich heard him say, “for they shall be comforted. Sorrow is a moment, but joy is joy forever in God’s presence.”

  Outside, Dietrich remounted and tugged the reins around. “Come, then, sister horse,” he said, “I must call on your service this one last time.” Kicking the horse in the ribs, he rode for the Great Woods, sending up urgent clots of mud from the sodden Bear Valley road.

  * * *

  He found Hans in the krenkish vessel. The four surviving Krenken clustered in a smal
l room lined with metal boxes on the lower level. The room’s walls were scorched, and no wonder. Each box had rows of small, glass-filled windows, within which small fires burned — bright red; dull blue. Some changed colors while Dietrich watched. Other windows were dark and the box itself marred by the fires that had wrecked the ship. One box was ruined utterly, its panels bent and twisted, so that Dietrich could see that inside were many wires and small items. It was on this box that Gottfried labored with his magic wand.

  He must have moved, for the Krenken turned suddenly. The krenkish eye, Dietrich had learned, was especially sensitive to motion. When Dietrich pulled his head-harness from his scrip, Hans sprang across the room and slapped the mikrofoneh from his hands. Then, gripping gripped Dietrich’s wrist, led him up the stairwell to the room where they had first met. There Hans activated the “speakers.”

  “Gschert controls the waves-in-no-medium,” the Krenk told him, “but this head talks only in this room. How did you know to find us here?”

  “You were not at Falkenstein, nor seen by any in the village. Where else might you have gone?”

  “Then Gschert does not yet know. The voice-canals falling under interdict forwarned us of trouble. And we had Gerd to bury and the wire to install.” Hans tossed his long arm. “It is cold here, but… I understand now what your people mean by ‘sacrifice.’ You went to the battle field?”

  “Your countrymen fought over your actions, and I thought to warn you. I feared you would return to imprisonment, or worse.” He hesitated. “The Herr said you forgave the man who killed Gerd.”

  Hans tossed his arm. “We needed the wire, not his death. This wire, drawn by a true copper smith, may prove meet to the task. No blame to the blessed Lorenz. Copper was not his duty. Come, let us return below. Remember, only Gottfried is with us in all things. Friedrich and Mechtilde have joined only from fear of the alchemist, not from next-love.”