“I can run a search engine,” Tom said.
“No offence, Doctor Schwoerin, but no one can mouse the Net like a Master Librarian. There is so much information out there, so poorly organized — and so bogus — that knowing how to find it is a science in itself.”
Tom grunted. “Tell me about it. I run a search and I get thousands of hits, most of it Klimbim, which I’m damned if I can figure out how they made the list.”
“Most sites aren’t worth the paper they’re not written on,” Judy said. “Half of them are set up by cranks or amateur enthusiasts. You need to boole your searchstring. I can write a worm to sniff out not only citations of Oberhochwald, but citations of any key words associated with the place. Like…”
“Like Johannes Sterne? Or the Trinity of Trinities?”
“Or anything. The worm can be taught to screen for context — that’s the hard part — and ignore items that aren’t relevant.”
“All right,” Tom said. “You’ve convinced me. I’ll pay you a stipend from my grant money. It won’t be much, but it’ll give you a title. Research Assistant. And your name will go on the paper after mine.” He straightened his chair. “I’ll key you a special access code for CLIODEINOS so you can dump into my files whenever you find anything. Meanwhile, we -. What’s wrong?”
Judy pulled back from the table. “Nothing.” She looked away briefly. “I thought we might meet here periodically. To coordinate our activities.”
Tom waved his hand. “We can do that easier over the Net. All you need is a smart phone and a modem.”
“I have a smart phone,” she told him, tugging on the string that bound the folder she held. “My phone is smarter than some people.”
Tom laughed, not yet getting the joke.
* * *
The two cartons they already had on the table were as good a place as any to start, so Tom took one and gave Judy the other and they went through them, folder by folder. Tom was reading the same items for the second time that night, so he forced himself to concentrate on the words. Searching for “Oberhochwald,” his eyes were snagged by any word starting with an O — or even a “Q” or a “C.” The manuscripts were penned in a disheartening variety of hands; mostly Latin, but some Middle High German, a few French or Italian. A motley assortment, with nothing in common but their donors.
Three hours later, and two hours after Judy’s shift on the help desk had ended, his eyes red and his brain muzzy, Tom came up for air clutching a single manuscript page.
Judy was still there, and she had found one, too.
* * *
That Judy could read Latin surprised Tom. He found it curious that a Southeast Asian should be interested in the culture and history of Europe, although the converse would not have puzzled him in the least. So while Tom learned little about Eifelheim that night, you could not say he learned nothing. In fact, he was a little mistaken about Judy Cao’s interests.
“Moriuntur amici mei…”
While Judy read, Tom listened with his eyes closed. This was a trick of his whenever he wanted to concentrate on what he heard. By shutting down one information channel, he thought to heighten his attention on the other. However, he was never known to put his fingers in his ears when he wanted to see something especially clearly.
Tom once told me that we Germans keep our verbs in our pockets, so that the meaning does not “until the end of the sentence appear.” Latin can scatter words like candy at Fasching, trusting to its suffixes to maintain discipline. Fortunately, the medievals had imposed a word order on Latin — one reason the humanists detested them — and Tom had a bent for language.
“My friends are dying despite all that we do. They eat, but take no nourishment from their food, so the end draws ever closer. I pray daily that they not succumb to despair, Oberhochwald being so far from their homes, but face their Creator with hope and faith in their hearts.
Two more have taken Christ in their last days, which pleases Hans no less than me. Nor do they place blame with those of us that took them in, knowing well that our time, too, is coming. Rumors fly swift as arrows, and with as much harm, that the pestilence that gutted the southlands in the past year even now lays waste the Swiss. Oh, let this be some lesser ill that has come upon us! Let this cup pass us by.”
That was all. Just a fragment of a journal. No author. No date. “Sometime between 1348 and 1350,” Tom guessed, but Judy pinned it down more closely.
“Mid-to-late ’49. The Plague reached Switzerland in May of ’49 and Strassburg in July, which puts it at the edge of the Black Forest.”
Tom, reflecting that narrative history did have its points, handed her a second sheet. “I found this in the other carton. A petition for redress from a smith in Freiburg to the Herr Manfred von Hochwald. He complains that a copper ingot, left by Pastor Dietrich of Oberhochwald as payment for drawing some fine copper wire, had been stolen.”
“Dated 1349, Vigil of the Feast of the Virgin.” She handed the page back.
Tom made a face. “Like that pins it down… Half the medieval year was taken up by Marian feasts.” He made another note in his palmtop, tugged on his lip. There was something about the letter that bothered him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “Well…” He gathered the hard copies together, stuffed them into his briefcase and snapped it shut. “The exact date doesn’t matter. I’m trying to learn why the place was abandoned, not whether its priest stiffed a local artisan. But, alles gefällt, I’ve learned the one thing that’s made this whole trip worthwhile.”
Judy closed one of the cartons and initialed the log printed on its lid. She gave him a brief glance. “Oh? What was that?”
“I may not be exactly hot on the trail; but at least I know that there is a trail.”
* * *
He left the library to find the night far advanced and the campus deserted and quiet. The classroom buildings blocked the traffic noises from Olney and the only sound was the soft rustling of the branches overhead. Their shadows writhed in the moonlight. Tom hunched his shoulders against the insistent breeze and headed for the campus gate. So, Oberhochwald had changed its name to Eifelheim… Why Eifelheim? He wondered idly.
He was halfway across the quadrangle when it suddenly hit him. According to the Moriuntur document the village had been called Oberhochwald right up until the Black Death swept through and wiped it from the Earth.
Why would a village that no longer existed change its name at all?
* * *
V. August, 1348
The Feast of St. Joachim
Seppl’ Bauer delivered the goose-tithe on St. Mary’s Day: Two dozen birds, short and tall, white and dun and dappled, heads at all inquisitive angles, complaining and strutting with the unfeigned arrogance of the goose-clan. Ulrike, with her longish neck and undershot chin looking not unlike a goose herself, ran ahead of the flock and held the gate open while Otto the goosehound chivvied the birds into the yard.
“Five-and-twenty birds,” Seppl’ announced while Ulrike latched the gate. “Franz Ambach added an extra bird as a love-gift because you ransomed his cow from the Herr.”
“Give him my thanks,” said Dietrich with grave formality, “and to the others too for their generosity.” The levy on the goose-flock was fixed by custom and not by generosity, yet Dietrich always treated it after the manner of a gift. While he did much gardening of his own and owned a milch cow which he farmed to Theresia, his priestly duties precluded him from devoting his time to raising food; and so the villagers tithed of their own sustenance to maintain him. The remainder of his benefice came from archdeacon Willi in Freiburg and from Herr Manfred, in whose gift it lay. He pulled a pfennig from his scrip and placed it in Seppl’s palm. This, too, was a customary duty, which was why the young men of the village jostled for the privilege of delivering the tithe payments.
“I’ll put this against my second furlong,” the boy announced, dropping the coin into his own scrip, “and not use it to buy myself out of my duties, like
some I could name.”
“You’re a frugal lad,” Dietrich said. Ulrike had joined them and stood now holding hands with the boy while Otto panted and his gaze darted from boy to girl with puzzled jealousy. “So, Ulrike,” Dietrich said, “you are prepared for the wedding?”
The girl bobbed. “Yes, father.” She would be twelve the next month, a grown woman, and the union of the Bauers and Ackermanns had been long in the planning.
Through arrangements comprehensible only to an ambitious peasant, Volkmar Bauer had organized a swap involving three other villagers, several furlongs, some livestock, and a bag of copper pfennigs, so as to settle the manse named “Unterbach” on his son. The trades had enabled both the Bauers and the Ackermanns to bring their plots together in a more compact arrangement. Fewer turnings of the plow-team, Felix Ackermann had explained with grave satisfaction.
Dietrich, watching the young couple depart, hoped the union would prove as loving for the couple as it promised to be advantageous for their kin. The minnesingers extolled the virtues of affection over calculation, and peasants ever mimicked the manners of their betters; yet men had a way of loving that which might prove profitable. Love stopped no king from shopping his sons or daughters. The daughter of England, Manfred had said, was resting in Bordeaux on her way to wed the son of Castile, and for no better reason than that the union would discomfit France. Likely, love stopped no peasant, either, however long and narrow his kingdom.
At least Seppl’ and Ulrike were no strangers to each other, as prince Pedro and princess Joan were. Their parents had arranged that, too, cultivating the affections between their offspring with the same patience with which they pruned their grapevines in hope of a future vintage.
Dietrich entered his yard, to the displeasure of the goose-tithe, and took a billet and a knife from the shed in the rear. He passed a greeting with Theresia, who was tending the beans in his garden, and, stunning a goose from the flock with the billet, he took it to the shed and tied it securely by the legs to a hook there. He slit the throat, being careful not to sever the spine lest the muscles contract and make the plucking more difficult. “I am sorry, brother goose,” he told the carcass, “that my hospitality — and yourself — has been so short-lived, but I know of some pilgrims who might be grateful for your flesh.” Then he hung the goose to bleed out.
* * *
The next day, the goose now plucked, butchered, and safely wrapped in a leather game-bag, Dietrich crossed to Burg Hochwald, where Max Schweitzer awaited with two jennets harnessed and ready. “Sweet enough riding for a priest,” the sergeant promised, offering him one of the horses. “The nag is as fat as a monk — and will stop to eat at every chance, so the resemblance is no happenstance. A good kick in the ribs will start her if she does.” He gave Dietrich a leg up and waited until the priest was settled in the saddle. “Do you know the way by now?”
“You’re not coming this time?”
“No. The Herr desires I attend to certain duties. Tell me you know the way.”
“I know the way. The kiln trail to the wind-fall, then I follow the blazes as before.”
Schweitzer looked doubtful. “When you see… them, try to buy one of those tubes they keep in their scrips. They pointed one at us that first time.”
“I remember. You suppose it a weapon?”
“Ja. Some demons kept their hands near their scrips while we are about. A wary man’s hand would hover near his scabbard in just such a way.”
“Mine would hover near my crucifix.”
“I think it may be a sling of some sort. A miniature pot-de-fer.”
“Can they be made so small? But it would sling such a mean bullet that it cannot be much of a weapon.”
“So said Goliath. Offer them my Burgundian quillon, if you think they may trade for it.” He had unfastened his belt and held it up to Dietrich, scabbard and all. Dietrich hefted it. “You want this sling of theirs so much? Well, that leaves only the question of how I may tell them so.”
“Surely demons know Latin!”
Dietrich did not argue terms. “They lack the lips and tongues for it. But I will do what I can. Max, who is the second horse for?”
Before the soldier could answer, Dietrich heard the approaching voice of Herr Manfred and a moment later, the lord passed through the gate in the outer wall with Hilde Müller on his arm. He was smiling down at her, covering hers hand with his where it gripped his left elbow. Dietrich waited while a manservant placed a stool and lifted Hilde into the saddle.
“Dietrich, a word?” said Herr Manfred. He took the mare by the rein and stroked its muzzle, speaking a few words of endearment to the beast. When the servant had gone past earshot, he said in a low voice, “I understand that we have demons in our woods.”
Dietrich gave Max a sharp glance, but the soldier only shrugged. “They’re not demons,” Dietrich told the Herr, “but distressed pilgrims of a strange and foreign mien.”
“Very strange and foreign, if my sergeant can be believed. Dietrich, I do not want demons in my woods.” He held up a hand. “No, nor ‘pilgrims of a strange and foreign mien.’ Exorcise them — or send them on their way — whichever seems appropriate.”
“My lord, you and I are of one accord on that.”
Manfred stopped petting the beast. “I would be grieved to know otherwise. Come tonight, after your return.”
He released the horse, and Dietrich jerked the jennet’s head toward the road. “Move, horse,” he said. “You’ll find more to nibble yonder.”
* * *
The horses plodded their way past the fields, where the harvesters still labored. The salland having been gleaned, the villagers now worked their own manses. The serfs had retired to the curial barn to thresh the lord’s grain. The peasants labored in common, moving from strip to strip according to some intricate schedule that the maier, the schultheiss, and the wardens had brokered long before.
A fistfight had broken out in Zum Holzbrücke, a manse belonging to Gertrude Metzger. Dietrich stood in his stirrups to watch, and saw that the wardens already had matters in hand. “What is it?” Hilde asked as she came abreast of him on the road.
“Someone was stuffing grain in his blouse to steal it and Trude’s nephew raised the hue and cry against him on her behalf.”
Hilde sniffed. “Trude should remarry and let a man work her land.”
Dietrich, who saw no connection between one’s widowhood and another’s theft, remained silent. They resumed their progress toward the wood. Shortly, he said, “A word of caution?”
“Regarding?”
“The Herr. He is a man of appetites. It would be well not to feed them. His wife has been dead now these two years.”
The miller’s wife said nothing for a space. Then she tossed her head and said, “What would you know of appetites?”
“Am I not a man?”
Hilde looked at him sidewise. “A fair question. If you’d pay the fine ‘under the linden,’ you could prove it to me. But the fine is double if the woman’s married.”
The heat rose in Dietrich’s neck and he watched her for a while as their horses plodded steadily onward. The Frau Müller rode with the inelegance of the peasant, flat against the saddle, bouncing against it with each step. Dietrich looked away before his thoughts could travel much further. He had tasted from that table and had found its pleasures over-rated. By God’s grace, women held little appeal for him.
It was not until they had entered the forest that Hilde spoke again. “I went to pray him food and drink for those awful things in the woods. That was all. He gave me the sacks you see here, tied behind the saddle. If he thought a price for the favor, he did not name it.”
“Ah. I had thought…”
“I know what you thought. Try not to think about it so much.” And with that remark, she kicked heels to her horse and trotted ahead of him down the path, her legs splaying artlessly at every jounce.
* * *
Reaching the charcoal kiln, Dietrich
reined his mount in and spoke a short prayer for the souls of Anton and Josef. Shortly, the horse whickered and shied and Dietrich looked up to see two of the strange creatures watching from the edge of the clearing. He froze for a moment at the sight.
Would he ever grow accustomed to their appearance? Images, however grotesque, were one thing when carved of wood or stone; quite another thing when formed of flesh.
Hilde did not turn. “It’s them,” she said, “isn’t it? I could tell by the way you started.” Dietrich nodded dumbly, and Hilde heaved a breath. “I gag at their smell,” she said. “My skin crawls at their touch.”
One of the sentries swung its arm in a passable imitation of a human gesture and leapt into the woods, where it paused for Dietrich and Hilde to follow.
Dietrich’s horse balked, so he kicked until the beast followed, with notable reluctance. The sentry moved in long, gliding lopes, pausing now and then to repeat the beckoning arm gesture. It wore a harness on its head, Dietrich saw, although the bit stood free before its mouth. From time to time it chittered or seemed to listen.
At the edge of the clearing where the creatures had erected their strange barn, the mare tried to bolt. Dietrich called upon half-forgotten skills and fought the beast, turning it away from the sight, shielding its eyes with his broad-brimmed traveling hat. “Stay back!” he told Hilde, who had lagged behind. “The horses fear these beings.”
Hilde jerked hard on the reins. “Then they show better sense.” She and Dietrich dismounted out of sight of the strangers. After picketing the horses, they carried the food sacks to the camp, where several of the creatures awaited them. One snatched the sacks and, using an instrument of some sort, cut small pieces from the foods inside. These, it placed into small glass phials. Dietrich watched the creature sniff at the mouth of one phial and hold it up to the light, and it suddenly occurred to him that it was an alchemist. Perhaps these folk had never seen goose or turnips or apples and so were wary of eating them.
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