Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  “Faith is vain,” said Joachim, “without charity. You must follow the Way that is Jesus — shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted, feed the hungry -.”

  “Ach!” cried the Kratzer. “Could I but feed the hungry! Yet, there is food which nourishes and that which merely fills.” He rubbed his forearms slowly together, a sound like a grinding millstone and hopped to the doorway, the upper half of which was open to the late afternoon, and stared out toward the Lesser Wood. “I have never -,” he said after a silence. “Your word is ‘wed,’ though among us it wants three to accomplish. I have never wed, but there are colleagues and nest-brothers that I would see once more, and now I never shall.”

  “Three!” said Joachim.

  The Kratzer hesitated a moment and his mandibles parted, as if on the edge of speech; then he said. “In our language, the terms would mean the ‘sower,’ the ‘eggmaker,’ and the… The Heinzelmännchen does not overset the word. Call it the ‘wet nurse,’ though it nurses before the birth. Bwa-wa-wa! We are truly ‘der,’ ‘die,’ and ‘das’! To watch one’s niggling crawl into the nurse’s pouch is said to be a profoundly moving experience… Ach, I have grown too soon old, and such matters are for the young. Mwa-waa. Never more will I see my nest-brothers.”

  “You must not lose hope,” said Joachim.

  The Kratzer turned his great yellow eyes on the monk. “Hope! One of your ‘inner words.’ I know what you signify by ‘swine’ or ‘palfrey’ or ‘schloss,’ but what is ‘hope’?”

  “When all else is lost,” Joachim told him, “it is the one thing you may keep.”

  * * *

  At Theresia’s cottage, Dietrich’s knock was answered first by silence, then by a furtive movement by the shutters, then by the upper door opening. Awkwardly, Dietrich pulled from his scrip the bag of medicines he had prepared and extended them to the woman who had been the only daughter in his life. “Here,” he said. “I made these for you. One is a sleep-inducement made of mandrake for which some instruction is required.”

  Theresia did not take the bag. “What temptation is this? I am no witch, to deal in poisons.”

  “’The dose makes the poison.’ You know that. I taught you.”

  “Who gave you this poison? The demons?”

  “No, it was the Savoyard physician who treated Eugen.” Only a chirurgeon, but Dietrich did not mention that. He shook the bag. “Take it, please.”

  “Which is the poison? I won’t touch it.”

  Dietrich took the sponge he had infused with the Savoyard’s mixture.

  “I wish you hadn’t made it. You never dealt in poison before they came.”

  “It was the Savoyard, I told you.”

  “He was only their instrument. Oh, father, I pray every day that you break free of their spell. I have asked for help for you.”

  Dietrich felt cold. “Who have you asked?”

  Theresia took the remainder of the bag from him. “I remember when I saw you first,” she said. “I could never remember, but now I do. I was very small, and you seemed enormous. Your face was all blackened from smoke and people were screaming. There was a red beard… Not yours, but…” She shook her head. “You snatched me over your shoulder and said, ‘Come with me.’” She began to close the upper door, but Dietrich held it back.

  “I thought we could talk.”

  “About what?” And she closed the door firmly.

  Dietrich stood silently before the cottage. “About… anything,” he whispered. He had longed so for her smile. She had always delighted in his gifts of medicines. Oh, father! the child cried in his memories. I do love you so!

  “And I love you,” he said aloud. But if the door heard, it did not answer, and Dietrich had barely dried his tears before he reached the parsonage at the top of the hill.

  * * *

  Shortly before vespers on Holy Thursday, a herald arrived from Strassburg bearing a parcel sealed with ribbons and with the episcopal arms impressed into bright red wax. The herald found Dietrich in the church preparing for the morrow’s Mass of the Pre-sanctified, the only day of the year when no Consecration was prayed. Warned by the farspeaker, Hans and the other Christian Krenken, who were helping drape the crosses and statues in black, had leapt into the rafters and hidden themselves in the shadows above.

  Dietrich inspected the seals and saw no sign of tampering. He hefted it, as if its weight would reveal its matter. That someone as august as Berthold II knew his name frightened him beyond measure. “Know you what this touches upon?” he asked the herald.

  But the man denied knowledge and departed, though with many a wary glance at his surroundings. Joachim, who was also helping in the church, said, “I think rumors have reached the bishop’s ears. That man was sent to deliver a message, but he was also told to keep his eyes open.”

  The Krenken dropped to the flagstones and resumed their work with the shrouds. Gottfried, last to drop, said, “Shall we give him something to see?” Then he departed, laughing.

  Dietrich slit the seal on the packet and unfolded it. “What is it?” Joachim asked.

  It was an indictment from the episcopal court that he had baptized demons. If there were any surprise in the contents, it was that they had been so long in coming.

  It came suddenly upon Dietrich that it was on this night, at about this time of day, that the Son of Man had been betrayed by one of his own. Would they come for him tonight, as well? No, he had a month’s grace to respond.

  He read the document a second time, but the words had not changed.

  * * *

  “A month’s grace,” said Manfred when Dietrich came to his scriptorium with the news.

  “By law,” Dietrich answered. “And I must provide a list of my enemies, so the investigating magistrate may decide whether the charges have been laid in malice. There must be at least two witnesses before a judge will act. The bill does not name them, which is unusual.”

  Manfred, sitting in his curule chair at his desk, curled his fingers under his chin. “So. How long is your enemy list?”

  “Mine Herr, I did not believe I had any.”

  Manfred nodded toward the indictment. “You have at least two. By Catherine’s wheel, you are naïve for a priest. I can name a dozen here in the village.”

  Dietrich thought irresistibly of those who had objected to Hans’ baptism, who feared the Krenken beyond reason. The punishments for false witness were severe. A father who had accused his son of heresy, for spite over the lad’s disobedience, had been placed in the stocks, where he had died. Dietrich went to the slit window and sucked in the evening air. Firelight glowed in cottage windows in the valley below. The forest was a rustling black under a twinkling sky.

  How could he name her, and deliver her to such a fate?

  * * *

  6. Now: Tom

  Tom and Judy met at the Pigeon Hole to discuss her latest findings over a couple of cheesesteak hoagies. Searching for Pastor Dietrich, Judy’s worm had turned up a ton of klimbim. “Do you know how many medieval Germans have been named Dietrich?” She rolled her eyes up to heaven, but secretly she knew how much work one eureka took. The journey of a thousand miles really does begin with a single step; it just doesn’t end there. “Wrong century; wrong kingdom. Saxony, Würtemburg, Franconia… A ‘Dietrich’ in Cologne, even a ‘Dietrich’ in Paris. Those, I could eliminate. The tough ones had no particular year or place associated with them. Those I had to read them one by one. And this one?” She waved the printout in the air. “The idiots didn’t put ‘Oberhochwald’ in their index. Otherwise, it would have popped out long ago.” She bit her hoagie savagely. “Jerks,” she muttered.

  This was a book excerpt. During the 1970’s, an enterprising group of liberals had published a book called Tolerance Through the Ages, whose contents were intended to show enlightened attitudes in many times and places. Along with Martin Luther King’s I have a dream… speech and Roger Williams’ The Bloody Tenet was a letter from Pastor Dietrich
to his bishop.

  * * *

  To the Rt. Rev. Wilhelm Jarlsberg, Archdeacon of Frieburg in the Breisgau

  I beseech your good offices to present with my humble prayers this apologia to his grace, Berthold II, Bishop of Strassburg.

  I have remained meekly silent while my detractors, hoping to turn your heart against me, have laid a charge against me with the tribunal of the Holy Office. Reason and truth will prevail, I thought. Yet, this latest incident regarding the flagellants in Strassburg causes me to wonder whether reason be yet highly regarded in Christendom.

  My accusers have told you that we in Oberhochwald have welcomed demons into our homes. By your most gracious leave, I respond in this manner.

  Question. Whether Pastor Dietrich of Oberhochwald has treated with demons and sorcerors and foully abused the blest sacrament of baptism under vehement suspicion of heresy.

  Objection 1. It would seem that I have treated with demons because my guests have employed various occult devices and practice arts unknown to Christian men.

  Objection 2. It would seem that I have treated with demons because my guests are said to fly by supernatural means. And such flight is said to be like that of the witches who meet on the mountain called the Kandel.

  Objection 3. It would seem that I have treated with demons because my guests are peculiar in their appearance.

  On the contrary, it is written that Christ died to save all men. Baptism cannot therefore be withheld from willing converts, but only by force or by impairment of the will is the grace of the sacrament corrupted. Further, Canon Episcopi clearly states that witchcraft, albeit a civil crime, is no heresy. Thus the request of my accusers is improper in both theology and law.

  Reply to Objection 1. Worldly things are either natural or unnatural. But a thing is termed unnatural because it lies outside nature’s usual course, not because it invokes the supernatural. So, a stone thrown upward is said to exhibit unnatural motion, for it would never exhibit such motion by its own nature. Now artificial things include not only constraints of nature of this kind, but also mechanical contrivances such as clocks or eyeglasses. So an herb woman employing some hidden quality of a plant is said to practice magic, because the true essence has not yet been uncovered, and only the efficacy is known. But “hidden” does not mean forever unknown, for these essences, being real, are discoverable, and it would be vain for nature to have a property potentially knowable that cannot be actually known, and as it becomes more generally known to scholars, it ceases to be occulted. For example, we read now God’s Word through the medium of wonderful eye glasses. Though these be but mechanical contrivances, many of the simple folk do mistrust them. My guests employ devices like those described by Roger Bacon, which, while their essences remain occult, are generally regarded as things of this world.

  Reply to Objection 2. Canon Episcopi declares that witches do not fly to their Sabbats, save in dreams induced by belladonna and other noxious herbs, and that to believe otherwise is sinful. Therefore, my accusers err when they claim that my guests fly by supernatural means. Flying, should it be possible, will be accomplished either through God’s Will or through the skills of clever artisans.

  Reply to Objection 3. Demons cannot abide the touch of Holy Water. Yet, the water of baptism caused them no discomfort, in particular he who took the Christian name Johannes. Therefore, he is no demon.

  Thus do I refute my accusers. “Whatsoever ye do to the least of My children, ye do unto Me.” I have aided wanderers lost and hungry, some grievously hurt, when they appeared here this summer past. Granted, Fra Joachim finds them ugly and names them demons, despite their evident mortal ills, but mortal they are. They fare from a far land, and folk there have naturally a different form; but if Pope Clement can by his marvelously rational bull open his palace at Avignon to the Jews, then surely a poor parish priest may shelter helpless wayfarers, no matter the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes.

  Christ with us this Year of Grace 1348. Given by my own hand at Oberhochwald in the Margravate of Baden, on the Commemoration of Gregory Nazianzen.

  Dietrich

  * * *

  “Quite a remarkable man,” said Tom, folding the printout.

  “Yes,” said Judy quietly. “I should have liked to have known him. My parents were also ‘helpless wayfarers.’ They lived in a boat on the water for three years before their ‘Pastor Dietrich’ found them a home.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “It was a long time ago, and I was born here. The American story.

  He tapped the pages with his fingernail. “This brother Joachim, on the other hand, sounds like a bigot, denouncing Dietrich to the Inquisition like that and calling the people ‘demons.’”

  “Dietrich mightn’t have known who his accusers were.”

  “Anonymous denunciation? Sounds like the Inquisition.”

  “Well…”

  Tom cocked his head. “What?”

  “In the beginning, a lot of accusers wound up dead — killed by the heretics — so they were promised anonymity, and severe penalties were imposed for false accusations.”

  He blinked. “The Inquisition had rules?”

  “Oh, yes. More stringent than the royal courts, in fact. For example, they prepared a summary of the case where they changed all the names to Latin pseudonyms and presented it to a group of men chosen for their reputation in the community — the boni viri, the good men — who could then review it without prejudice. We know of cases where the accused deliberately committed blasphemy to get transferred out of the royal court to the inquisitorial court.”

  “They used torture, though, didn’t they?”

  “For questioning, never for punishment. But everybody used torture back then. The tribunals allowed it only long after the imperial courts had introduced it. The inquisitors’ own manual called it ‘deceptive and ineffectual,’ and allowed it only as the last resort, or when guilt was already clear from other evidence. Back then, a confession was required. They couldn’t convict on other testimony. Torture was allowed only once, and could not cause loss of limb or endanger life, and anything said must be sustained by oath given afterward.”

  Tom wouldn’t buy it. “But a persistent prosecutor could find loopholes in that.”

  “Or a corrupt one. Certainly. It was more like a modern grand jury than a trial.”

  “Are you sure? I always thought…”

  “It was my dissertation in narrative history.”

  “Oh. That’s why you learned Latin, then?” In truth, Tom was often surprised by the granular details of history. Working as he did with the big picture, the particulars often vanished into faceless stereotypes.

  He studied the printout again. How much more information was hidden the same way, deep in a Black Forest of words seven centuries thick. “I’d guess they were Chinese. Dietrich’s guests, I mean. The comments about skin color and eye shape. Oriental, at any rate.”

  “There was such travel in the fourteenth century,” Judy admitted. “Marco Polo and his father and uncle. And William Rubrick, who was a friend of Roger Bacon.”

  “What about travelers in the other direction? Did anyone from China head west?”

  Judy wasn’t sure, but the Pigeon Hole was a Hot Spot, so she pulled out her wireless and poked an inquiry. After a few minutes she nodded. “We know about two Chinese Nestorians who came west. Hunh! At the same time the Polos were going east. They may have passed each other on the way. Hey, one of them was named Marco, too. That’s weird. Marco and Sauma. When they reached Iraq, Marco was elected Catholicos, the Nestorian Pope, and he sent Sauma on embassies to the Roman Pope and the English and French Kings.

  “So Dietrich may have sheltered a similar party,” Tom said, tugging his lower lip, “one that met with disaster. Attacked by robber barons, maybe. Some were wounded, he says.”

  “Perhaps,” Judy agreed, “but…”

  “But what?”

  “Chinese aren’t that dif
ferent. And they can’t fly. So why call them flying demons?”

  “If their arrival coincided with an outbreak of ergot hallucinations, the two events may have been connected in the popular mind.”

  Judy pursed her lips. “If so, Dietrich seems to have converted at least one hallucination to Catholicism. Johann. Do you suppose it’s the same person as Johannes Sterne, the one whose baptism was referred to the bishop’s court?”

  “I thnk so. And this was Dietrich’s response. Remember, the moriuntur document?”

  “Yes. I think it must have been part of a journal kept by Pastor Dietrich.”

  “Bestimmt. In a small village like Oberhochwald, the priest was probably the only literate man. Here. These came from Anton this morning in an e-mail.” Tom handed her printouts of some pdf files I had sent him. “He dug around over in Freiburg for me.”

  Judy read through them avidly. Sure, she was only a research assistant, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t care — about the research, among other things. When she finished, she set them down on the table and frowned a little. Then she paged back and re-read some passages.

  “Did you catch that part about their names?” Tom asked. “’He is called Johann because his true name is too difficult for our tongue.’ He would never have heard a non-Indo-European language before.”

  Judy nodded absently. “He must have studied Hebrew if he was the doctor seclusus that Ockham mentions. And he would likely have heard Arabic at some time. But—”

  “Did you read the part where Johann and some of his companions helped care for the villagers during the Plague.” Tom retrieved the pages from Judy, who continued to look at the space they had occupied between her hands. Tom licked his thumb and flipped through the sheets. “Here it is. ‘Hans and three of his countrymen daily visit the sick and bury the dead. How sad that those who hid from their sight will not emerge to witness true Christian charity.’” He took a sip of his soda. “And so Johann and I prayed for strength together, and gave comfort to those pilgrims who have grown despondent.”