Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  He had not entered the wood since the krenkish vessel’s departure, and the expression of summer foliage had altered its aspect considerably. The woods-masters and wild roses suffused the air with their fragrances. Bees hummed. New growth had obscured many of the blazes that Max had cut. Yet, the horse seemed purposeful. Dietrich supposed that she smelled the water and gave her free rein.

  Unseen creatures bolted from their path, disturbing the shrubs and the hazel. A blue-winged tail-mouse watched his progress for a space before flying off. Petrarch, it was said, found peace in nature and had once climbed Mount Ventoux near Avignon for no reason but the prospect from its summit. Perhaps the savagery of his writings, his distortions and libels, owed something to his love of savage places.

  Dietrich came upon the clearing where the stream pooled before completing its rush down the mountainside. The horse dipped her head and began to drink and Dietrich, reflecting that he too would grow thirsty on the road, dismounted and, hobbling the mare with a hippopede, walked upstream a few paces to drink.

  A stone fell into the pool, and Dietrich leapt back. Above him, upon a projecting ledge where the water tumbled into the pool, squatted Heloïse Krenkerin. Dietrich awoke his head harness. “Greet God,” he told the other through the private canal.

  The Krenkerin reached to the side and slung another stone into the pool. “Greet God,” she said. “I thought your kind avoided these forests.”

  “They are fearful places,” Dietrich agreed. “What brings you here?”

  “My folk find… quiet-inside-the-head in places like this. It has… what is your word… Maze. Balance.”

  “Arnold used to sit there so,” Dietrich said. “I spied him once.”

  “Did you… He, too, was of the Great Isle.” She threw another stone into the pond, refreshing ripples that had begun to subside. Dietrich waited, but she said no more until he turned to go.

  “When you stand still,” Heloïse said, “you seem to vanish. I know that is the way our eyes are fashioned, and the Ulf tried to explain how yours were different; but he is only… one-who-laborswith-machines-for-physicians, and not a physician himself.” She tossed another stone. “But that makes naught.” The stone struck directly in the center of the fading ripples, and Dietrich thought that each of her tosses had struck precisely the same spot. Was it the motion of the water that drew her aim? Humans gauged distance more exactly than krenken; but krenken gauged motion more exactly. Thus God assigned to each folk gifts suitable to their being.

  “How fares Ulf?” the krenkerin asked. “Shows he the spots?” And she extended her arm so that Dietrich could see the dark-green mottling that presaged the strange starvation of his guests.

  “Not that I have seen.”

  She ran a finger around a large blemish. “Tell me, is it better to die quickly or slowly?”

  Dietrich looked down while he scuffed the dirt with his foot. “All beings seek naturally to live, so death is an evil, never to be sought for its own sake. But all beings seek also to avoid pain and terror. As to die quickly lessens these, a quick death is therefore, if not a ‘good,’ at least a lesser defect of the good. But a quick death gives also no chance for repentance and expiation to those one has wronged. So, a slower death may also be thought a lesser evil.”

  “It is true, what is said of you.” A fifth stone followed the others. “The Ulf stayed because Hans asked for his particular skills, and he obeyed as if Hans had been a… one-set-above.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “I could not fore-leave him. Yet, each day I smell my death step closer. That is not right. The Death ought to swoop like your hawk; not stalk like your wolf. ‘So it was; so it is.’”

  “Death is but a doorway to another life,” Dietrich assured her.

  “Is it.”

  “And our Herr, Jesus Christ, is the gate.”

  “And how pass I through this gate-that-is-a-man?”

  “Your hand is already on the latch. The way is love, and you have shown that already by your acts.”

  So also had her husband. It wondered Dietrich, as he returned to his horse, that both had stayed because each believed the other would. Thus does one turn from care because it is a duty to duty because one cares. He stepped into the stirrup and seated himself. “Come to me when you return to the village,” he said, “and we will talk.” With that he tugged the reins and headed the gray toward the trail.

  The horse had indeed been a sign, and a miracle as well. The sign had been to lead him here, so that God might gently admonish him through the mandibles of a stranger. The cup would pass from Heloïse no more than it had passed from the Son of Man in the Garden, so what presumption it was to think that it could pass from him! “Lord,” he prayed, “when did I see You sick or in distress and fail to comfort You?”

  He leaned forward and stroked the horse’s head and she gave him a whicker of pleasure. “You are a miraculous horse,” he told her, for God had permitted her to come into the presence of a Krenkl without panic.

  Along the way back, he said a prayer for the repose of the soul of Father Rudolf. God had presented Dietrich the means of flight, and with it a warning of the rewards awaiting flight.

  * * *

  The horror built much like a rainstorm: first a few, then a period of quiet when folk believed the menace past, then a few more, until at last a torrent. Folk cowered in their homes. In the fields, crops rotted and hay wilted unscythed. A few joined Dietrich and the Krenken at the hospital. Joachim, when he had recovered from his stripes; but also Gregor Mauer, Klaus Müller, Gerda Boettcher, Lueter Holzhacker. Theresia Gresch labored over her herbs, preparing those that eased pain or induced sleep, though she would not enter the smithy.

  Gottfried had dedicated the hospital to St. Laurence, though Dietrich suspected that he meant the late smith, not Sixtus’ deacon. Having been told by Dietrich of the Knights of the Hospital, the creature took to wearing a surcoat with the cross of the Order blazoned on the upper left.

  Folk sickened slowly — and suddenly; from coughing fits — and boils. Herwyg One-Eye seemed to blacken before Dietrich’s horrified gaze, as if a shadow had passed across his soul. Marcus Boettcher lingered, like Everard, in agony and convulsions. Volkmar Bauer’s entire family perished: his wife, Seppl, even Ulrike and her newborn babe. Only the vogt himself lived, and he precariously.

  Days fell together: Margaret of Antioch, Mary Magdalen, Appolinaris, James the Greater, Berthold of Gasten… Losing track of the feasts, Dietrich celebrated unnamed ferial days.

  Burials brought people out. Marcus Boettcher. Konrad Feldmann and both his girls. Rudi Pforzheimer. Gerda Boettcher. Trude and Peter Metzger. At each death, Dietrich rang the church bell. Once for a child, twice for a woman, thrice to signify a man. Who would hear, he wondered? He imagined the peals drifting ever fainter over a landscape devoid of life.

  The churchyard filled, and they dug graves in fresh ground that Dietrich consecrated irregularly. Again and again, Dietrich told himself, Not all die. Paris lived, and Avignon. Even in Niederhochwald, a handful had survived. Hilde seemed to grow better, and Little Gregor, and even Volkmar Bauer.

  Reinhardt Bent would steal no more furrows from his neighbors, nor Petronella Lürm glean the Herr’s fields. Fulk’s woman, Constanz, died in the sudden fashion. Melchior Metzger led a delerious Nickel Langermann to the hospital. “It isn’t fair,” the young man said, as if blaming Dietrich. “He had the murrain and he grew well. Why strike him this second time?”

  “There is no ‘why,’” Hans answered from the bedside of Franz Ambach. “There is only ‘how,’ and that no one knows.”

  * * *

  Ulf had been working with a device that magnified very small things, by which Dietrich had named it mikroskopion. Through this, Ulf had studied the blood of both the stricken and the hale. One day, when Dietrich had come to the parsonage to wake Joachim for his turn in the hospice, Ulf showed them on the image-slate numberless black flecks of varied sha
pes and sizes, like dust motes caught in a beam of sunlight. Ulf indicated one particular curl. “This one never appears in hale blood; but always in those stricken.”

  “What is it?” Joachim asked, only half-awake.

  “The enemy.”

  But it was one thing to know the face of the enemy, and quite another to slay him. Arnold Krenk might have succeeded, or so Ulf said. “Yet, we have not his skills. We can but proof a man’s blood and say if the enemy is present within him.”

  “Then,” said Joachim, “all who do not yet bear this mark of Satan must flee.”

  Dietrich rubbed the stubble on his chin. “And the ill can be restrained from flight, lest they spread the small-lives farther abroad.” He glanced at Joachim, but said nothing of logic. “Ja, doch. It is little enough, but it is something.”

  * * *

  Max was the natural leader of such a flight. He knew the forests better than any but Gerlach the hunter, and was more accustomed to leading men than was Gerlach.

  Dietrich went to the Herr’s stables and saddled a sleek, black courser. He had tightened the cinch and was proposing that the beast accept the bit when Manfred’s voice said, “I could have you flogged for your presumption.”

  Dietrich turned to find the Herr behind him, bearing a great hunting bird on his left forearm. Manfred nodded toward the horse. “Only a knight may ride a courser.” But when Dietrich began to remove the bridle, he shook his head. “Na, who will care? I came forth only because I remembered my birds, and thought to free them before they starved. I was in the rookery when I heard you fumbling around. I plan to unbar the kennel and the stable, too, so it is well you came now. I suppose you mean to flee as Rudolf did.”

  The ease of the supposition angered Dietrich, not least because it struck too truly; but he said only, “I go to find Max.”

  Manfred raised his gauntlet and stroked the falcon, which craned its head, side-stepped a bit on the thick, leather glove, and screeched. “You know what the gauntlet means, don’t you, precious one? You yearn to spread your wings and fly, aren’t you? Max has flown, too, I suppose, or he would have returned ere now.” Dietrich made no answer, and Manfred continued. “But it is bred into his character to return to me. Not Max; this beauty. Max, too, now that I think on it. He’ll circle and circle, searching for the welcoming arm below and will not see it. Is it right to release him to such sorrow?”

  “Mine Herr, surely he will adjust to his new circumstances.”

  “So he will,” Manfred answered sadly. “He will forget me and the hunts we carried out together. That is why the falcon symbolizes love. You cannot keep a falcon. You must release him, and then he will return of his own will, or…”

  “Or ‘fly to other lands’.”

  “You know the term? Did you study falconry? You are a man of parts, Dietl. A Paris scholar. Yet, you know horsemanship and perhaps hunting with birds. I think you were gently born. Yet you never speak of your youth.”

  “Mine Herr knows the circumstances in which he found me.”

  Manfred grimaced. “Most delicately put. Indeed, I do. And had I not seen you stay the mob at Rheinhausen, I would have left you there. Yet it has, on the whole, been well. I have copied many of our conversations in memoranda. I never told you that. I am no scholar, though I think myself a practical man, and I have always delighted in your ideas. Do you know how you make a falcon return to you?”

  “Mine Herr…”

  “Dietrich, after all these years, you and I may ‘duzen,’ and dispense with formalities.”

  “Very well,… Manfred. One cannot make a falcon return, though one may easily bar it from returning. A falconer must master his emotions, must make no sudden moves that could frighten the bird off.”

  “Would that more lovers knew that art, Dietrich.” He laughed and then, in sudden silence, his face grew long. “Eugen has the fever.”

  “May God save him.”

  Manfred’s lips twitched. “His death is the end of my Gundl. She’ll not live without him.”

  “May God deny her wish.”

  “Do you think God hears you any more? I think He has gone away from the world. I think He has grown disgusted with men and will have no more to do with us.” Manfred stepped outside the mews and, with a sweep of his arm, launched the falcon. “God has flown to other lands, I think.” He watched for a moment, admiring the bird’s beauty, before he ducked back inside the mews. “I hate to break troth with him in such a manner.” He meant the bird.

  “Manfred, death is but a falcon launched to ‘fly to other lands’.”

  The Herr smiled without humor. “Apropos, but perhaps too easy. When you return with the black, give him hay, but do not stable him. I must see to the other beasts.” He turned, hestitated, then spread his arms. “You and I may never meet again.”

  Dietrich took the embrace. “We may, should God grant us both our hearts’ desires.”

  “And not our deserts! Ha. So we part on a jest. What else can a man do amidst such sorrow?”

  * * *

  Dietrich did not at first notice Max, save that the heavy buzz of flies under the summer heat led him to the spot. He hunched his shoulders and slid from the horse’s back, tying the beast with special care to a nearby oak. Procuring a kerchief, he plucked blossoms from patches of wildflowers and crushed them within the cloth to release their perfume before tying the kerchief to his face. He broke off a branch from a hazel bush and, using it as a broom, swept it across the sergeant’s body, dispersing its aerial diners. Then, with as much dispassion as he could muster, he looked upon the carcass of his friend.

  The anatomists of Bologna and Padua had made anatomies on bodies dried in the sun, or consumed in the earth, or submerged in running water, but Dietrich did not think they had ever done so on a body in this state. His stomach leapt through his mouth, and so visited a final indignity on the man. When he had recovered, and had refreshed his ‘flower-pocket,’ Dietrich confirmed what he had glimpsed.

  Max had been stabbed in the back. His jerkin was rent there, at the kidneys, and a great gout of blood had issued forth. He had fallen forward, in the act of drawing his quillon, for he lay upon his right arm with the handle of the long dagger in his death-hardened grip and the blade half out of its sheath.

  Dietrich staggered to a nearby stone, a block that had tumbled countless years before from the escarpment overhead. There, he sobbed — for Max, for Lorenz, for Herwyg One-eye and all the others.

  * * *

  Dietrich returned to the hospital after vespers. For a time, he watched Hans and Joachim and the others walk among the sufferers, applying cool cloths to fevered brows, spooning food into indifferent mouths, washing the bandages used to cover the sores in tubs of hot, soapy water and laying them out to dry, a practice Hugh de Lucca and others had commended.

  At last, Dietrich stepped inside where Gregor watched over his ailing son. “Everyone says he has my face,” Gregor said, “and maybe that’s true when he’s awake and tries to be like me; but when he’s asleep, he remembers that he is her first-born, and her shade looks out at me from inside his heart.” He was silent for a moment. “I must look after Seybke. The two of them fought. Always scuffling like two bear cubs.” Gregor craned his neck. “Gregerl’s not a pious boy. He mocks the church, despite my scolds.”

  “The choice is God’s, not ours, and God acts not from petty spite, but from boundless love.”

  Gregor looked around the smithy. “Boundless love,” he repeated. “Is that what this is?”

  “It is no comfort,” Hans interjected, “but we Krenken know this. There is no other manner in which the world could be fashioned that would bear life. There are… numbers. The strength of the bonds that hold the atoms together; the… the strength of the elektronik essence; the attraction of matter… Ach!” He tossed his arm. “The sentences in my head wander; and it was not my calling. We have shown that these numbers can be no other. The smallest change in any, and the world would not stand. All that hap
pens in this world, follows from these numbers: sky and stars, sun and moon, rain and snow, plants and animals and small-lives.”

  “God has ordered all things,” Dietrich quoted from the Book of Wisdom, “by weight and measure and number.”

  “Doch. And from those numbers come also ills and afflictions and death and the pest. Yet had the Herr-in-the-sky ordered the world in any other way, there would be no life at all.”

  Dietrich remembered that Master Buridan had compared the world to a great clock that God has wound, and which swung now by its own instrumental causes.

  “You are right, monster,” Gregor said. “It is no comfort.”

  * * *

  Heloïse Krenkerin died the next day. Hans and Ulf carried her body to the church and laid it out on a bench that Joachim had prepared. Then Dietrich left them alone for the private rites that he had implicitely condoned. Afterward, in the parsonage, Hans held his flask up to the window.

  “This many days only remain,” he said, tracing the level with his fingertip. “I will not see you through to the end.”

  “But after the end, we will see each other again,” Dietrich told him.

  “Perhaps,” the Krenkl allowed. He placed his flask carefully upon the shelf, then walked outside. Dietrich followed, and found him balanced upon the outcropping where he liked to perch. Dietrich lowered himself to the grass beside him. His legs complained and he rubbed his calf. Below them, the shadows were long from the setting sun, and the eastern sky had deepened already to cobalt. Hans extended his left arm. “Ulf,” he said.

  Dietrich followed the gesture to the weed-choked autumn field, where Ulf stood with his arms outstretched. His shadow ran like a knight’s lance across the furrows, broken by the irregularity of the plants and the ground. “He makes the sign of the Crucified!”