Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  Afterward, Hans replenished the fire barrels of the talking head by unfolding a triptych made of glass. This glass converted sunlight into the elektronik essence. Philosophically, one sort of fire might be converted into another sort of fire, but the practical alchemy eluded him.

  “Why has the pest come here?” Dietrich asked suddenly.

  Hans watched the sigil on the body of the Heinzelmännchen that signified how full the fire barrels were. “Because it has come everywhere else. Why not here? But, Dietrich, my friend, you speak of it like a beast that goes and comes with a purpose. There is no purpose.”

  “That holds no comfort.”

  “Must there be comfort?”

  “Life without purpose is not worth living.”

  “Is it? Listen, my friend. Life is ever worth living. My… You would say, my ‘grandsire.’ My ‘grandsire’ spent many — months — huddled in a broken nest — a town — wrecked by… by an aerial assault. His nest-brothers were gone down in flames. His nurse had died in his arms from a violent expression worse than that of black powder. He did not know where he would find his next meal. But his life was worth living, because in such straits, finding that next meal gives purpose; the next dawn marks your success. Never was he more alive than in those months when he lived so close by death. It was my own hatching-brood — which wanted for nothing — that found life oppressive.”

  * * *

  When Tuesday dawned with no further instances of the pest, the villagers crept from their cottages and spoke together in hushed voices. Word had come from the manor that Everard was resting and his fever seemed a little milder. “Perhaps the village will escape with no worse,” Gregor Mauer said, when Dietrich passed through the village that morning.

  “May God grant it so,” Dietrich answered. They stood in the mason’s workyard, amidst stone dust and chips. Gregor’s two sons idled nearby in leather aprons and wearing thick gloves. Little Gregor, a hulking youth near ten stone in weight, held a plumb in his hand and was swinging it absently.

  “Pastor…,” Gregor seemed oddly hesitant. He studied the dust in his courtyard, pushing it with the sole of his boot. A glower sent his sons off. Little Gregor poked his younger brother with his elbow and grinned at his father over his shoulder.

  “No respect,” said Gregor. “I should have sent them away for their ‘prenticing.” He sighed. “Pastor, I would wed Theresia. She is your ward, to give in marriage.”

  Dietrich had not looked for this day. In his heart, Theresia remained a tear-stained waif, blackened with the soot of her burning home. “Does she understand your wish?”

  “She consents.” When Dietrich made no answer, he added, “She is a sweet woman.”

  “She is. But her heart is deeply troubled.”

  “I have tried to explain about the Krenken.”

  “There is more than that. I think she impresses her inner demons upon the outer ones.”

  “I… don’t understand.”

  “Something Hans told me about the soul. The Krenken have made a philosophy of it. I call it ‘psyche logos.’ They have divided the soul into parts: the self — that which says, ‘ego,’ the conscience — which sits above ego and rules it, the original sin below it, and, naturally, the vegetative and animal souls of which Aristotle wrote. They say…” He grew suddenly irritated with himself. “But that is of no matter. What I mean is…” He smiled briefly. “There stand matters in her past of which you know nothing.”

  “It is less her past than her future that concerns me.”

  Dietrich nodded.

  “Then we have your blessing?”

  “I must think on it. There is no man I’d rather give her to than you, Gregor. But it is a decision for the rest of her life, and not one to be made on a moment’s fancy.”

  “The rest of her life,” Gregor said slowly, “may be no long time.”

  Dietrich crossed himself. “Do not tempt God. None else have fallen ill.”

  “Not yet,” Gregor agreed, “but the end of the world is coming, and in heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage.”

  “I told you I would think on it.” Dietrich turned to go, but Gregor’s shout turned him round.

  “We don’t need your permission,” the mason said, “but we wanted your blessing.”

  Dietrich nodded, hunched his shoulders, and left the stoneyard.

  * * *

  After vespers, Dietrich ate a simple meal of bread and cheese washed down with ale. He had cut extra pieces for Joachim, but the young monk had not reappeared. Hans squatted by the open window, listening to the insect song called up by evenfall. From time to time, the Krenkl bit into a piece of bread that had been dipped into the life-giving elixir. Even so, some bruises had already marked his skin. The stars, reflected in his huge eyes, seemed to twinkle inside his head. “There stands a sentence in my head,” he said, “that one of those must be Home-star. If God is good, He’d not abandon me with no glimpse of it. I only wish I knew which. Perhaps…” He extended a long forearm, a long finger, “…that one. It is so bright. There must be some reason it is so bright.” He buzzed with his side lips. “But no. It is bright because it is close. The philosophy of chances tells me that Home-star is unknowably distant, in an unknowable direction, and not one of those lights even shines in Krenkheim’s skies. Even that tenuous bond is denied me.”

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

  “Unmeasurably 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 ‘nothing-spirit.’ 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 ‘vacuum-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, star-lit 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!”

  * * *

  On Wednesday, Manfred summoned Dietrich to the chapel to commemorate Kaiser St. Heinrich in his chapel: 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 sightless 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 and 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.

  * * *

  From Castle Hill, Dietrich took the back trail to the meadow bordering the mill stream. There his 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 cam shaft 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 begun 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 d
usted 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.”

  * * *

  That was the third day’s grace.

  * * *

  XXIV. July, 1349

  At Primes, The Commemoration of St. Hilarinus

  Thursday dawned and the wind blew hot and from the west, hissing through the black spruce and the 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 annoit 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. “It is only a matter of when and how. What concern is it of yours?”

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

  As he rose, Joachim twisted to face him. “How goes it with the village?”

  “It has been three days, with no further afflictions. Folk are telling one another that the pest has moved on. Many have returned to work.”

  “Then my sacrifice has not been in vain.” Joachim closed his eyes and laid his head back. In moments, he was again asleep.