Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  Dietrich clapped him on the shoulder. “Those were also a fractious lot, I have read.”

  As the others filed past, Joachim came to Dietrich and embraced him. “Fare well,” Dietrich told him. “Remember, listen to Gerlach.”

  The hunter, at the wooden bridge cried out, “Heaven, ass, and welkin-break!”

  Joachim smiled wanly. “To the peril of my soul.” The others had gone back to the village and the two were alone. Joachim looked back toward the village and a shadow seemed to pass across his features as he took in the mill and the oven, the mason’s yard, the smithy, Burg Hochwald, St. Catherine’s church. Then he brushed at his cheek and said, “I must hurry after,” and shifted the blanket-bundle he wore around his shoulder. “Or I’ll be left, and…” Dietrich reached out and pulled the monk’s cowl up over his head.

  “The day is hot. The sun can strike you down.”

  “Ja. Thank you. Dietrich… Try not to think so much.”

  Dietrich placed his palm on the other’s cheek. “I love you, too, Joachim. Take care.”

  He stood on the green watching the monk depart; then he moved to the bridge to catch a final glimpse before they vanished between the shoulders of the autumn fields and the meadow. They bunched up there, naturally, where the way was narrow, and Dietrich smiled, imagining Gerlach’s profanity. When there was nothing more to be seen, he returned to the hospital.

  * * *

  He moved Hans that night out into the open so that the Krenk could gaze on the firmament. The evening was warm and moist, having the characteristics of air, being moved to that state from the corruption of fire, for the day had been hot and dry. Dietrich had brought his breviary and a candle to read by, and he was adjusting his spectacles when he realized that he did not know the day. He tried to count from the last feast of which he was certain, but the days were a blur, and his sleeping and waking had not always matched the circle of the heavens. He checked the positions of the stars, but he had not noted the sunset, nor had he an astrolabe.

  “What seek you, friend Dietrich?” Hans said.

  “The day.”

  “Bwah… You seek the day at night? Bwah-wah!”

  “Friend grasshopper, I think you have discovered synecdoche. I meant the date, of course. The motions of the heavens could tell me, had I the skill at reading them. But I have not read the Almagest since many years, or ibn Qurra. I recall that the crystalline spheres impart a daily motion to the firmament, which is beyond the seventh heaven.”

  “Saturn, I think you called it.”

  “Doch. Beyond Saturn, the firmament of stars, and beyond that, the waters above the heavens, though in a form crystallized to ice.”

  “We, too, find a belt of ice-bodies girdling each world-system. Though, of course, they turn on the hither side of the firmament, not the farther.”

  “So you have said, though I understand not what then keeps the ice-water from seeking its natural place here in the center.”

  “Worm!” Hans replied. “Have I not told you that your image is wrong? The sun sits in the center; not the earth!”

  Dietrich held his forefinger in post. “Did you not tell me that the firmament… What did you call it?”

  “The horizon of the world.”

  “Ja-doch. You say its warmth is the remnant of the wondrous day of creation; and beyond it no one can see. Yet this horizon lies in every direction at the same distance, which any student of Euclid can tell you is the locus of a sphere. Therefore, the earth lies truly at the center of the world, quod erat demonstrandum.”

  Dietrich smiled broadly at having determined successfully the question, but Hans stiffened and emitted an extended hiss. His arms flew up and across his body, presenting the serrated edges. A protective gesture, Dietrich thought. After a moment, the Krenkl’s arms slowly relaxed, and Hans whispered, “Sometimes the dull ache sharpens like a knife.

  “And I conduct a quodlibet while you suffer. Are there no more of your particular medicines?”

  “No. Ulf needed it far more.” Hans pawed with his left hand, seeking Dietrich. “Move, twitch. I can barely see you. No, I would rather discourse on great questions. Unlikely, that either you or I have the answers, but it distracts a little from the pain.”

  Dawn was crawling up the Oberreid road. Dietrich rose. “Perhaps some willow bark tea, then. It eases head-pain among us, and may serve you also.”

  “Or kill me. Or it may contain the missing protein. Willow bark tea… Was it among those things Arnold or the Kratzer tried? Wait, the Heinzelmännchen may have it in his memory.” Hans chittered into his mikrofoneh, listened, then sighed. “Arnold tested it. It makes naught.”

  “Still, if it dulls the pain… Gregor?” He called to the mason, who sat by his eldest son on the other side of the smithy. “Have we any willow bark prepared?”

  Gregor shook his head. “Theresia was stripping bark two days ago. Shall I fetch it?”

  Dietrich dusted his robes. “I will.” To Hans, he added, “Rest well. I’ll be back with the potion.”

  “When I am dead,” the Krenkl replied, “and Gottfried and Beatke drink of me in my memory, each will give his share to the other out of charity, and thus will the quantity double in size from being traded back and forth. Bwah-wa-wah!”

  The jest escaped Dietrich, and he supposed his friend had developed a flaw in his weave. He crossed the road, waving to Seybke at work in his father’s stoneyard. Carving tombstones. Dietrich had told the masons not to worry at the task, but Gregor had said, “What is the point of living if folk forget you when you’re dead?”

  Dietrich knocked on Theresia’s doorjamb and received no answer. “Are you awake?” he called. “Have you any willow bark prepared?”

  He knocked again and wondered if Theresia had gone to the Lesser Wood. But he pulled the string on the latch and opened the door.

  Theresia stood barefoot in the middle of the dirt floor, wearing only her night gown but crumpling and wringing a coverslut in her hands. When she saw Dietrich, she cried out. “What do you want! No!”

  “I came to ask after willow bark. Excuse my intrusion.” He backed away.”

  “What have you done to them?”

  Dietrich stopped. Did she mean those who had left? Those who had died in the hospital?

  “Don’t hurt me!” Her face had turned red with anger; her jaw clenched tight.

  “I would never hurt you, schatzl. You know that.”

  “You were with them! I saw you!”

  Dietrich had just begun to parse her sentence, when she opened her mouth once more; only this time, rather than cries of fright, there issued forth a fountain of black vomit. He was close enough that some of it spattered him, and the rank of it quickly filled the room. Dietrich gagged .

  “No, God!” he cried. “I forbid this!”

  But God was not listening and Dietrich wondered madly if He, too, had fallen to the pest and His vast incorporeal essence, “infinitely extended without extent or dimension,” was rotting even now in the endless void of the Empyrean sphere, beyond the crystalline heavens.

  The fear and rage had fled from Theresia’s countenance and she looked down at herself with astonishment. “Daddy? What’s wrong, daddy?”

  Dietrich opened his arms to her and she staggered into them. “Here,” he said. “You must lie down.” He reached into his scrip and pulled out his cloth pocket of flowers and held it to his nose. But their essence had faded, or else the stink was too powerful.

  He guided her to the bed, and thought as she leaned upon him that she had become already as light as a spirit. As it is the nature of earth to seek the center of the earth, so is it the nature of air to seek the heavens.

  Gregor had come to the door of the cottage. “I heard you cry — . Ach, Herr God in Heaven!”

  Theresia turned to go to him. “Come, dear husband.” But Dietrich held her firmly. “You must lie down.”

  “Ja, ja, I am so tired. Tell me a story, daddy. Tell me about the giant and the dwa
rf.”

  “Gregor, bring my lance. Wash it with old wine and hold it in the fire, as Ulf showed us. Then hurry.”

  Gregor leaned against the jamb and ran a hand over his face. He looked up. “The lance. Ja, doch. So soon as possible.” He hesitated. “Will she…?”

  “I don’t know.” Gregor left and Dietrich made Theresia lie down upon the straw. He arranged a blanket under her head as a pillow. “I must check for the pustules,” he told her.

  “Am I sick?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “It’s the pest.”

  Dietrich said nothing, but lifted the sodden gown.

  There it sat in her groin, great and black and swollen, like a malignant toad. It was larger than the one he had lanced on Everard. It could not have grown overnight. When the onset was rapid, the afflicted died quickly and quietly, without pustules. No, this had been growing for several days, if he was to judge by those he had seen on others.

  Gregor rushed in and squatted beside him, first passing him the lance still warm from the fire, then taking Theresia’s hand in his own. “Schatzi,” he said.

  Theresia’s eyes had closed. Now they opened and she gazed seriously into Dietrich’s face. “Will I die?”

  “Not yet. I need to lance your pustule. It will give great pain, and I have no more sponges.”

  Theresia smiled, and blood dripped from the corners of her mouth, reminding Dietrich of the stories of the Freudenstadt Werewolf. Gregor had found a cloth somewhere and he dabbed at the blood, trying to clean her, but more blood welled up with every dab. “I am afraid for her to open her mouth,” he said tightly. “I think all her life will gush forth.”

  Dietrich climbed atop the woman and sat athwart her legs. “Gregor, hold her down by the arms and shoulder.”

  He reached toward the pustule in Theresia’s crotch. When the point had but touched the tough, hard integument, Theresia shrieked, “Sancta Maria Virgina, ora pro feminis!” And her legs spasmed wildly, nearly unseating Dietrich. Gregor grimly held tight to her arms.

  Dietrich pressed in with the point, thrusting a little to break the skin, as he had grown sadly accustomed to doing. I am too late, he thought. The pustule is far advanced. It was the size of an apple, and of a dark, malignant blue.

  “She showed no sign of it yesterday,” Gregor said. “I swear it.”

  Dietrich believed him. She had concealed the signs, afraid of being bedded among the demons. What sort of fear was it, he wondered, that could smother even the fear of ghastly death? The Lord had commanded, be not afraid, but men broke all His other commandments, why not that one?

  The skin broke and a thick, foul, yellow ichor oozed forth, coloring her thighs and soaking into the straw ticking of the mattress. Theresia screamed and called on the Virgin again and again.

  Dietrich found another pustule, much smaller, high up on her inner thigh. This, he lanced more swiftly and with a cloth squeezed out as much pus as he could. “Examine under her arms and on her chest,” he told the mason.

  Gregor nodded and pulled her gown up as far as he could. Theresia’s cries had subsided into sobs. She said, “The other man was not so nice.”

  “What was that, schatzi? Pastor, what does she mean?”

  Dietrich would not look at him. “She is delirious.”

  “He had a beard, too; but it was bright red. But daddy made him go away.” The blood ran down her chin as she talked and Gregor mopped after it without hope.

  Dietrich remembered the man. His name had been Ezzo, and his beard had been red from his own blood, after Dietrich had slit his throat and pulled him off the girl.

  “You are safe now,” he told the girl, told the woman she had become. “Your husband is here.”

  “It hurts.” Her eyes were clenched closed now.

  There was one more pustule, under her right arm, as big as Dietrich’s thumb. This was more difficult to lance, for when he came off her legs, they bent and tucked themselves up, as small children were wont to do when sleeping. Theresia hugged her knees. “It hurts,” she said again.

  “Why has God abandoned us?” Gregor asked.

  Dietrich tried to pry Theresia’s arm loose so he could lance the last pustule. He did not think it mattered. “God will never abandon us,” he insisted, “but we may abandon God.”

  The mason swept his arm wide, relinquishing his grip on Theresia’s shoulder. “Then where is He in all this?” he shouted. Theresia flinched at the bellow and he immediately took a more tender note and stroked her hair with his great stubby fingers.

  Dietrich thought of all the reasoned arguments, of Aquinas and the other philosophers. He wondered how Joachim would have answered. Then he thought that Gregor did not need an answer, did not want an answer, or that the only answer was hope.

  “Theresia, I need to cut the pustule under your arm.”

  She had opened her eyes. “Will I see God?”

  “Ja. Doch. Gregor, look for some cooking oil.”

  “Cooking oil? Why?”

  “I must anoint her. It is not too late.”

  Gregor blinked, as if annointing were a sudden and alien thing that had never been done before. Then, he released Theresia and went to the other side of the cottage, near the hearth, and came back with a small flask. “I think this is oil.”

  Dietrich took it. “It will do.” His lips moved in silent prayer as he blessed the oil. Then, wetting his thumb in it, he traced the sign of the cross on her forehead, then on her closed eyelids, praying, “Illúmina óculos meos, ne umquam obdórmium in morte…” From time to time, when Dietrich paused to recollect the proper words, Gregor would say, “Amen,” through his tears.

  He was nearly finished with the sacrament when Theresia coughed and a bolus of blood and vomit issued forth from her mouth. Dietrich thought, the small-lives are in there. They will have gotten Gregor and me. Yet this was not the first time he had been spattered; and Ulf, on his last inspection of Dietrich’s blood, had pronounced it still clean.

  But Ulf died many days ago.

  When he had completed the rite, Dietrich set the oil aside — Others would need it soon. — and he took one of Theresia’s hands in his own. It seemed a fragile thing, though the skin was rough and cracked. “Do you remember,” he said, “when Fulk broke his finger and I taught you how to set it?” Her lips, when she smiled, were as red as berries. “I do not know which of the three of us was more frightened, you, I, or Fulk.” To Gregor, he said, “I remember her first words. She was mute when I brought her here. We were out in the Lesser Wood searching for peony and other herbs and roots, and I was showing her where to find them when her foot became caught in the cleft of a fallen branch, and she said…”

  “Help me,” said Theresia and her hand clenched Dietrich’s so tight as possible in her weakness. She coughed a little, and then a little more, and the coughing built until a great flood of vomit and blood poured from her, soaking her gown all the way to her waist. Dietrich reached around to turn her head so that she would not choke on the effluvium, but as he lifted it he knew, perhaps from that it was a little lighter than before, that his unbegotten daughter had died.

  * * *

  Some long time afterward, he crossed the road to the hospital to tell Hans what had happened and found the Krenkl had died also in his absence. Dietrich knelt by the corpse and lifted the great, long, serrated arms and folded them across the mottled torso in an attitude of prayer. He could not close the eyes, of course, and they seemed still aglow, though that was only the rays of the declining sun out beyond the autumn fields reflecting through them like one of Theodoric’s raindrops, and the shadow of a rainbow fell on Hans’ cheeks.

  * * *

  9. Now: Tom

  The subconscious is a wonderful thing. It never sleeps, no matter what the rest of the mind does. And it never stops thinking. No matter what the rest of the mind does.

  Tom awoke in a cold sweat. No, it’s not possible! It was absurd, ridiculous. But everything fit. It all fell into
place. Or did it? Was it the answer to his dilemma, or a chimera that made sense only as a troubled dream?

  He glanced at Sharon, who sprawled, fully-clothed, beside him. She must have returned late from the lab and crashed. Usually, he woke when she entered the condo, no matter how late the hour or how deep his sleep; but he could not remember her coming in last night. She turned slightly and a smile sketched itself on her lips. Dreaming of chronons, no doubt.

  He eased out of bed and tip-toed from the room, closing the door gently behind him. He seated himself at CLEODEINOS and called up the Eifelheim file. He carefully checked and crossreferenced each item, creating a relationship map. Information lay in the arrangement of facts, not in the facts themselves. Re-arrange them in another configuration and — who knew? — their meaning could change utterly.

  He put his facts into chronological order, placing undated items through context or through logical relationship, not always an easy task. Not only had the calendar been unreformed, but they had started years at different times. In the Empire, a Year of Our Lord started on the Feast of the Incarnation, while regnal years, like IV Ludovici, began on the civil new year day. It seemed screwy to Tom, but Judy had laughed and said, “Render unto Caesar, Tom. Popes and emperors may have been trying to one-up each other for centuries, but no one ever forgot that they had different spheres of authority.”

  Which meant that everything from January 1 to March 25 of 1349 CE, in the modern reckoning, had been recorded as Anno Domini 1348.

  He interpolated the dates when the Black Death had broken out in Basel and Freiburg, and any other contextual events on which he could find information. The record was spotty, incomplete. If the strangers had arrived in the fall, why had there been no rumors about sorcerors and demons in Oberhochwald for six months or more? He didn’t really know when Dietrich had bought the wire; nor when the ‘travelers had determined to try for home.’ And how did Ockham fit in? The Pope had invited him to Avignon on 8 June 1349, but there was evidence he had left Munich earlier, just ahead of the plague outbreak there. Nothing further was ever heard of him, and historians supposed he had died of the plague along the way. His route would have taken him near Oberhochwald. Would he have stopped there to see “my friend, the doctor seclusus”? Had he brought the plague with him from Munich? Had he died there?