“Why, all the more, seeing how rare it has become.”
Manfred laughed without humor, then resumed his study of the sunset. “The pest reached Paris this past June,” he said quietly.
Dietrich started. “The pest!”
“Yes.” Manfred crossed his arms and seemed to become smaller. “They say half the city lies dead, and I think it but plain fact. We saw… things no man should see. Corpses left to rot in the street. Strangers denied hospice. Bishops and lords in flight, leaving Paris to fend for herself. And the church bells tolling funeral upon funeral until the town council bade them stop. Worst, I think, were the children — abandoned by their parents, dying alone and uncomprehending.”
Dietrich crossed himself three times. “Dear God have mercy on them. As bad as Italy, then? Did they wall up families into their houses, as the Visconti did in Milan? No? Then some shred of charity remained.”
“Ja. I was told the sisters in the Hospital stayed at their posts. They died, but so fast as they died, others took up their place.”
“A miracle!”
Manfred grunted. “You have a grim taste in miracles, my friend. The English fare no better in Bordeaux. And it reached Avignon in May, though the worst was over by the time we passed there. Don’t worry, Dietrich. Your Pope survived. His Jew physicians bade him sit between two fires and he never even fell sick.” The Herr paused. “I met a brave man there. Perhaps the bravest man I shall ever meet. Guy de Chauliac. Do you know him?”
“Only by reputation. He is said to be the greatest physician in Christendom.”
“That may be. He is a large man with the hands of a peasant and a slow, deliberate way of speaking. I would not have marked him a physician had I found him in the fields. After Clement left the city for his country house, de Chauliac remained — ‘to avoid the infamy,’ he told me, though there is no shame in fleeing such an enemy. He fell ill himself of the pest. And all the while he lay abed, wracked with fever and pain, he described his symptoms and treated himself in divers ways. He wrote everything down, so that any who came after him would know the course of the disease. He lanced his own pustules, and recorded the effect. He was… He was like a knight who stands his ground against his enemy, whatever wounds he has received. Would I had six men with such courage by my side in battle.”
“De Chauliac is dead, then?”
“No, he lived, praise God, though it is hard to say which treatment saved him — if indeed it was anything more than the whim of God.”
Dietrich could not understand how sickness could travel such distances. Plagues had broken out before — inside town walls or castles, among besieging armies — but never since the time of Eusebius had it consumed whole nations. Some invisible, malevolent creature seemed to stalk the land. But it was bad air, all the doctors were agreed. A mal odour, or malady.
An alignment of the planets had caused deep earthquakes in Italy, and the chasms had exuded a vast body of stiff, bad air, which the winds then moved from place to place. None knew how wide the malady was, nor how far it would travel before it finally broke up. Folk in sundry towns had tried to sunder it with loud noises, church bells and the like, but to no avail. Travelers had marked its progress up the Italian peninsula and along the coast to Marseilles. Now it had gone to Avignon, and so to Paris and Bordeaux.
“It has passed us by!” he cried. “The pest has gone west and north!” Dietrich knew shameful joy. He did not rejoice that Paris had suffered, but that Oberhochwald had been spared.
Manfred gave him a bleak look. “No sign among the Swiss, then? Max said not, but there is more than one road out of Italy since they hung that bridge across St. Gothard’s Pass. It worried us on the march that we would find you all dead, that it had passed through here before reaching Avignon.”
“We may be too high for the malady to reach,” Dietrich told him.
Manfred made a dismissive wave. “I am only a simple knight, and leave such notions as malady to scholars. But in France, I bespoke a knight of St. John, lately come from Rhodes, and he said that the pest came out of Cathay, and the story is that the dead there lie without number.
It struck Alexandria, he told me, and his brotherhood at first deemed it God’s judgment on the Saracens.”
“God has not such poor aim,” Dietrich said, “as to lay Christendom waste while smiting the infidel.”
“They’ve been burning Jews over it, all the way from the Mediterranean north — save in Avignon, where your Pope protects them.”
“Jews? That makes nonsense. Jews die also of the pest.”
“So said Clement. I have a copy of his Bull that I obtained in Avignon. Yet Jews travel all about Europe; as also does the pest. The story is that the kabbalists among them have been poisoning the wells, so it may be that the good Jews themselves know nothing about it.”
Dietrich shook his head. “It is bad air, not bad water.”
Manfred shrugged. “DeChauliac said the same, though in his delerium, he wrote that rats brought the pest.”
“Rats!” Dietrich shook his head. “No, that cannot be. Rats have been always about, and this pest is a new thing on earth.”
“As may be,” said Manfred. “But this past May, King Peter put down a pogrom in Barcelona. I had the news from Don Pero himself, who had come north looking for glory in the French war. The Catalans ran wild, but the burger militia protected the Jewish quarter. Queen Joanna sought likewise in Provence, but the folk rose up and expelled the Neapolitans. And last month Count Henri ordered all the Jews in the Dauphine brought into custody. To protect them from the mob, I think; but Henri’s a coward and the mob may ride him.” Manfred curled his right hand into a fist. “So you see that it was no such simple thing as a war that kept me at bay these past two years.”
Dietrich did not want to believe it true. “Pilgrim tales…”
“…may grow in the telling. Ja, ja. Maybe only two Jews have been burned and only twenty Cathayans died; but I know what I saw in Paris, and I would as soon not see it here. Max tells me there are poachers in my woods. If they bring the pest with them, I want them kept away.”
“But people do not carry bad air with them,” Dietrich said.
“There must be a reason why it spreads so far and wide. Some towns, Pisa and Lucca among them, have reported good fortune by blockading travelers, so travelers may well spread it. Perhaps the malady clings to their clothing. Perhaps they really do poison the wells.”
“The Lord commanded we show hospitality to the sick. Would you have Max chase them off, to the peril of our souls?”
Manfred grimaced. His fingers drummed restless on the table top. “Find out, then,” he said. “If they are hale, the wardens may use them in the grain harvest. One pfennig the day plus the evening meal and I overlook any trapping or fishing they may have done in the mean time. Two pfennig if they forego the meal. However, if they need hospitality, that is your affair. Set up a hospital in my woods, but none may enter onto my manor or into the village.”
* * *
In the morning, Max and Dietrich went in search of the poachers. Dietrich had prepared two perfumed kerchiefs with which to filter the malady, should they encounter it, but he did not think much of Manfred’s theory that clothing could carry bad air with it. There was nothing in Galen; nor had Avicenna written of it. All that clothing customarily carried were fleas and lice.
When they came to the place where the trees lay toppled like mown hay, Max hunkered down and sighted along a trunk. “The sentry ran off in that direction,” he said, holding his arm out. “Past that white beech. I noted its location at the time.”
Dietrich saw a great many white beeches, all alike. Trusting, he followed the soldier.
But Max had walked only a few arm-lengths into the brush when he stopped by the flat stump of a great oak. “So. What is this?” A bundle sat upon the stump. “Food stolen from the boon,” the sergeant said opening the kerchief. “These are the loaves that Becker makes for the harvest meal — see h
ow much longer they are than the normal loaf? And turnips and, what’s this?” He sniffed. “Ah. Soured cabbage. And a pot of cheese.” Max turned, brandishing a loaf big enough to feed three men. “Eating well, I think, for landless men.”
“Why would they abandon it?” Dietrich wondered.
Max glanced about. “We frightened them off. Hush!” He held an arm out to Dietrich to still him while his eyes searched the surrounding brush. “Let’s be on our way,” he said more loudly, and turned as if to proceed deeper into the woods, but at the sudden snap of a twig behind them, he whirled and in two leaps grabbed hold of an arm.
“Got you, you rubbish!”
The figure yanked from concealment squealed like a yearling pig. Dietrich glimpsed a brocaded coverslut and two long, flying, yellow braids. “Hilde!” he said.
The miller’s wife swung on Max, who had turned at Dietrich’s cry, and struck him on the nose. Max howled and slapped her with his free hand, spinning her so that he could pull her other arm up high behind her back, nearly to her shoulder blade. “Max, stop!” Dietrich cried. “Let her go! It’s Klaus’ wife!”
Max gave the arm another twist, then shoved the woman away. Hilde staggered a step or two, then turned. “I thought you were robbers, come to steal the food I laid out for the poor.”
Dietrich regarded the bread and cheese on the tree stump. “Ach… You are bringing the poachers food from the harvest meal? Since how long?” Dietrich wondered that Hilde should have done so. There was nothing of pride in the act.
“Since Sixtus Day. I leave it here on this stump just before sunset, after the harvest work. My husband never lacks for meal, and this is as good a use for it as any. I paid the baker’s son to make loaves for me.”
“So that is how the fellow bought himself free of the boon-work. But, why?”
Hilde drew herself up and stood straight. “It is my penance before God.”
Max snorted. “You should not have come here alone.”
“You said there were landless men here. I heard you.”
Dietrich said, “Landless men can be dangerous.”
“More dangerous than this doodle?” Hilde jerked her head toward Max. “They’re timid folk. They wait until I leave before they take the offering.”
“So you thought to hide and have a look at them?” the sergeant said. “Womanly thinking. If they’re serfs off their manor, they’ll not wish to be seen.”
She turned and wagged a finger at Schweitzer. “Wait until I tell my Klaus, the maier, how you handled me!”
Max grinned. “Will that be after you tell him how you go into the woods to feed poachers? Tell me, do you bite and scratch as well as you punch?”
“Come closer and learn.”
Max smiled and took a step forward to Hilde’s step back. Then, his gaze traveled past her, and the smile froze. “God’s wounds!”
Dietrich glimpsed a stealthy figure darting into the woods with the food bundled up into the kerchief. He was a spindly sort — arms and legs too long for his body, joints too far down his limbs. He wore a belt of some shining material, but wore it too high to mark a waist. That much, and grayish skin through strips of colorful cloth, was all that Dietrich saw before the figure had disappeared into the brush. Hazel twigs rustled; an acorn-jay complained. Then all was still.
“Did you see him?” Max demanded.
“That pallor…,” said Dietrich. “I think he must be a leper.”
“His face…”
“What about it?”
“He had no face.”
“Ah. That oft happens in the last stages, when the nose and ears rot off.”
They stood irresolute, until Hildegarde Müller stepped into the brush. “Where are you going, you ignorant slattern?” Max cried.
Hilde cast a bleak look on Dietrich. “You said they were landless men,” she said in a voice like an overtuned lute string. “You said it!” Then she took two more steps into the hazelwood, stopped, and looked about.
Max closed his eyes and let out a breath. Then he pulled his quillon from its sheath and set after the miller’s wife. “Max,” said Dietrich, “you said we should stay on the game trails.”
The sergeant hacked an angry blaze into a tree. “The game has better sense. Stand still, you silly woman! You’ll get yourself lost. God save us.” He squatted and ran some branches from a raspberry bush through his hand. “Broken,” he said. “That way.” Then he set off without looking to see if the others followed.
Every few steps, Max would stoop and examine the ground or a branch. “Long steps,” he muttered at one point. “See where the shoe has come down in the mud? Its fellow was back there.”
“Leaping,” Dietrich guessed.
“On deformed feet? Mark the shape. When have you ever heard of cripples leaping?”
“Acts,” said Dietrich. “Chapter three, verse eight.”
Max grunted, stood and brushed his knees. “This way,” he said.
He led them by stages deeper into the forest, blazing at times a tree or arranging rocks upon the ground as a sign for which way they had come. They pushed past thickets and brambles, stepped over felled trees that had buried their heels in their path, stumbled down sudden ravines. “Lover-God!” said Max when he had found the footprints once more. “He leapt from one bank to the other!”
The trees grew taller and farther apart, their branches arching overhead like the vaulting of a cathedral. Dietrich saw what Max had meant about the game trails. Here, protected by a ridge, no trees had fallen to the blast and every direction looked the same. Bushes and smaller trees had abandoned the field to their triumphant seniors. A mat of leaf-fall, years thick, softened their footsteps. Nor was there cue from the sun. Light was present only in shafts that, arrow-like, pierced the foliage above. When Max hacked a tree, muffled echoes spoke from every direction, so that Dietrich thought that sound itself had gotten lost. Hilde began to say something, but her voice, too, whispered from the stillness and she quieted immediately and thereafter followed the Schweitzer more closely.
In a small clearing where a brook chattered through the forest, they stopped to rest among the ferns. Dietrich sat on a mossy stone beside a pool. Max tested the water, then cupped his hands and drank from it. “Cold,” he said as he refilled his water-skin. “It must run down from the Katerinaberg.”
Hilde looked about and shivered. “Woods are frightnening places. Wolves live here, and witches.”
Max laughed at her. “Villager tales. My parents were foresters. Did I ever tell you that, pastor? We cut wood and sold it to the charcoal burners. We bought our grain from the valley folk, but fruits and meat we took from the forest. It was a quiet life, peaceful, and nobody bothered us much, except once when a troop of Savoy’s men came through on some quarrel.” He thought silently for a time, then rammed the stopper into his water-skin. “That’s when I left. You know what young men are like. I wondered if there was a world outside the forest, and the Savoyards needed a guide. So I went with them until I had shown them the way to — to somewhere. I’ve forgotten. They had a quarrel there with the Visconti over some worthless patch of the Piedmont. But I stayed with them and carried arms and fought the Milanese.” He took Dietrich’s water-skin and refilled it as well. “I found I liked it,” he said as he handed it back. “I don’t think you can understand that, pastor. The overcoming joy when your opponent falls. It’s like… It’s like having a woman, and I guess you don’t understand that, either. Mind you, I never killed a man who did not have his sword bared for me. I’m no murderer. But now you know why I can never go back. To live in the Alps after what I’ve seen, to live in a place like this,” and he swept his arm around him.
Hilde stared at the sergeant with a peculiar intensity. “What sort of man enjoys killing?”
“A living one.”
That utterance was greeted by silence from both the priest and the miller’s wife; and in that silence they heard through the continuo of chittering locusts, the sound of dista
nt hammers. Max craned his neck. “That way. Close. Move quietly. Sound carries in a forest.”
* * *
Nearing the source, Dietrich heard a chorus in an arrhythmic but not unpleasing mix. Drums, perhaps. Or rattles. Beneath it all, rasping and clicking. One sound, he could identify: the chunk of ax on tree, followed by the peculiar crackling rush of a toppling fir. “Now,” said Max, “we can’t have that. Those are the Herr’s trees.” He waved the others back and crept forward on cat feet to the edge of the screen of trees that marked the top of the ridge. There, he stiffened and Dietrich, who had come up behind him, whispered, “What is it?”
Max turned and cried, “Run, for your soul’s sake!”
Dietrich instead grabbed the sergeant and said, “What…,” before he too saw what lay below.
A great, circular swathe had been cut out of the forest, as if a giant had swung a scythe through it. Trees lay broken in all directions. In the center of the fall was a white building, as large as an abbot’s tithe barn, with doors along its side lying open. A dozen figures in suspended activity stared up the ridge at Max and Dietrich.
They were not landless men, at all, Dietrich saw.
They were not men.
Spindly, gangly, misjointed. Bodies festooned with ragged strips of cloth. Gray skin suffused with blots of pale green. Long, hairless torsos surmounted by expressionless faces lacking nose and ear, but dominated by huge, golden, globular eyes, faceted like diamonds, that looked nowhere but saw everything. Antennae waved from their brows like summer’s wheat.
Only their mouths showed expression: Working softly, or hanging half-open, or shut into firm lines. Soft, moist lips parted two ways at either end, so that they seemed to smile and scowl at once. Twin strips of some horny substance lay in the folds at either end of the lips and a broken sound lifted from them as of distant locusts.
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