Eifelheim

by Michael Flynn

  Dietrich shook his head. How could he say that the boy was wrong?

  * * *

  When Dietrich left the parsonage to ready the church for Mass, he saw One-eyed Herwyg, Gregor and his sons, and others were on their way to the field, hoes or mowing scythes across their shoulders. Jakob’s oven was lit, and Klaus’ mill turning. Only the forge stood yet cold and silent.

  Dietrich remembered how Lorenz would stand by the anvil, sweaty in his apron, and wave to him from below. Perhaps Wanda had found a man’s task at last too much. Or perhaps she lacked for charcoal.

  He made his way downhill, past the sheepfold, where stood a bare handful, all uncertain and with a sickly mien. The decimation of the village beasts had passed barely remarked for the greater dread of the pest. Cattle and sheep had fallen to the murrain. Rats, too, lay about, though that was a blessing. Herwyg’s dog barked, sat, and scratched furiously at his fleas.

  Dietrich stepped inside the open-walled smithy, picked up a hammer that lay upon the anvil, and cradled it in his two hands, finding it curiously heavy. Lorenz had swung it one-handed high over his head, yet Dietrich could barely lift it. A barrel of ox-shoes and another of horse-shoes stood nearby. In the quenching barrel, a green film had grown on the suface of the water.

  A raven’s cry drew his attention. He watched it circle, drop into the smithy’s back garden, then rise again. And circle.

  Dropping the hammer, Dietrich rushed out the rear exit, and there he found Wanda Schmidt sprawled upon her back amidst the beans and cabbage, arms waving as if reaching toward the sky. Her tongue, black and swollen, protruded from dry cracked lips. The raven swooped again, and Dietrich chased it off with a stick.

  “Water,” the prostrate woman gasped. Dietrich returned to the smithy, found a cup by the quenching barrel, and filled it. But when he extended the cup to the stricken woman, her thrashing arms batted it away. Her face was red with fever, so he found a rag, soaked it in water, and laid it across the woman’s brow.

  Wanda shrieked, arching her back and flailing her arms until she had knocked the cloth aside. Retrieving it, Dietrich found the rag already dry. He crumpled the rag in his hands, and sank to his haunches. Why, O Lord? he pleaded. Why?

  Yet that was an impious thought. This pest comes not from God, he reminded himself, but from some mal odour borne on the wind. Everard had breathed it; now Wanda had, too. She had had no late contact with the steward, so the krenkish theory of small-lives jumping from man to man seemed now proven false. Yet there must be reason to it. God had “ordered all things by measure, weight, and number,” and so by measuring and weighing and numbering, mere men could learn the “eternal ordinances by which He set the courses of the stars and the tides of the sea.”

  Wanda cried out, and Dietrich edged away. The mere glance of a stricken one could infect. Blue flames shot forth from the eyes. The only safety lay in flight. He scrabbled to his feet, and backed through the smithy to the high street, where he stood breathing rapidly.

  Without, all seemed in order. He heard the rasping saw from Boettcher’s cooperage, the sheering cry of a hawk circling high over the autumn fields. He saw Ambach’s pig rooting through the garbage along the high road, the flash off the water dripping from the mill’s paddlewheel. He felt the wind’s hot breath on his cheek.

  Wanda was too large a woman to move alone. He must run for help, he told himself. He ran first to the stoneyard, but Gregor had taken his sons out to mow hay. Then, recalling that Klaus and Wanda had lain together, he ran to the western end of the village.

  * * *

  Odo swung the upper door open, but gazed at Dietrich without recognition. “The curse is complete,” the old man said, a riddle he forebore explaining. Dietrich reached past him and, unlatching the lower door, pushed his way inside. “Klaus!” he shouted. Old Schweinfurt stood by the open door, gazing upon the empty street. A groan issued from above, and Dietrich scrambled up the ladder to the sleeping loft.

  There, he found the miller upon a three-legged stool drawn close to the bed. The bed boasted a headboard and, at its foot, an oaken chest with iron hinges and carved with the image of a water-wheel. Upon the bed lay a mattress stuffed with ticking and, upon the mattress, lay Hilde.

  Her golden hair was twisted and matted with sweat, and her frame racked by coughs. She stared with near-krenkish eyes. “Summon pastor Dietrich,” she cried. “Dietrich!”

  “Here,” Dietrich said, and Klaus jerked to that soft statement where he had not reacted to the earlier knocks and shouts. Without turning, he said, “She complained of headaches when she awoke and I thought little of it and went to start the wheel. Then…”

  “Dietrich!” cried Hilde.

  Dietrich knelt beside the bed. “Here I am.”

  “No! No! Bring the pastor to me!”

  Dietrich touched her gently on the shoulder, but the woman jerked away.

  “She has lost her wits,” Klaus said, in a voice preternaturally calm.

  “Have the boils appeared?”

  The maier shook his head. “I know not.”

  “If I may lift her gown up to inspect…?”

  The miller stared at Dietrich for a moment, then began to laugh. They were great rolling laughs that shook his frame and died abruptly. “Pastor,” he said gravely, “you are the only man in this dorp who has prayed my grace before looking.” He moved aside.

  Dietrich lifted the night gown and was relieved to find no swellings in her groin, though reddish spots near her secret place showed where they intended their appearance. When he tried to look at her chest and under her arms, the gown caught and she flailed about. “Max!” she said. “Send for Max! He will protect me!”

  “Will you give her the last rites?” Klaus asked.

  “Not yet. Klaus…,” he hesitated, but then said nothing about Wanda. The miller would not leave his wife in this condition. When he rose, and Hilde clutched at his robe. “Fetch Dietrich,” she begged him.

  “Ja doch,” Dietrich answered unfastening her grip. “I go now to fetch him.”

  Outside, he paused for breath. God was a clever sort. Dietrich had run from the pest in one house, only to find it in another.

  * * *

  Hans and Gottfried had helped him move Wanda to her bed. When Dietrich returned to the parsonage, Joachim took one look at his face. “The pest!” he said. At Dietrich’s nod, he threw his head back and cried, “O God, I have failed You!”

  Dietrich laid a hand on his shoulder. “You have failed no one.”

  He shrugged off the touch. “The Krenken are gone back to Hell unshriven!”

  When Dietrich turned away, Joachim snatched his sleeve. “You cannot let them die alone.”

  “I know. I go to Manfred to pray his grace for a hospice.”

  * * *

  He found the Herr in the great hall, sitting between a roaring fire in the hearth and a second built in a large cauldron placed on the other side of the room. The entire household had huddled there, even Imre the peddler. Servants came and went, bearing wood to feed the fires. They left slowly and returned quickly.

  Manfred, who sat at the council table scratching with a pen on a sheet of parchment, spoke without looking up. “The fires worked for your pope. De Chauliac recommended it when I bespoke him in Avignon. The element of fire destroys the bad air…” He waved the pen in dismissal. “…somehow. I leave science to those trained in it.” His eyes darted to the corners of the room, as if he might spy the pest lurking there. Then he bent once more to the parchment.

  Fire might be effective, Dietrich thought, since it loosened the stiffened mass of bad air and caused it to rise. Bells, too, might break up the mass by shaking the air. But if the pest was carried by innumerable “mikrobiota,” Dietrich did not see where the flames would help — unless, like moths, the small-lives were drawn to the fire for self-immolation. Of these thoughts he said nothing. “Mine Herr, Wanda Schmidt and Hilde Müller have been struck by the pest.”

  “I know. Heloï
se Krenkerin warned us by the farspeaker. What do you want of me?”

  “I pray your grace to establish a hospital. Soon, I fear, too many will lie ill to—”

  Manfred tapped the pen against the table, blunting its point. “You stand too much on ceremony. A hospital. Ja, doch. So be it.” He waved a hand. “For what good it may do.”

  “If we cannot save their lives,” Dietrich said, “we can at least make their dying gentler.”

  “A great comfort that must be. Max!” He dusted the parchment and folded it in quarters. In a gobbet of wax poured off a candle, he impressed his signet. He studied the ring afterward, twisting it a little on his finger. Then he looked to little Irmgard who stood close by with her nurse, snuffling through her tears, and he smiled briefly at her. He handed Max the letter and another that he had already finished. “Take these to the Oberreid road and give them to the first respectable-looking travelers you see. One is for the Baden Markgraf, the other for the Hapsburg Duke. Freiburg and Vienna have already their own problems, but they ought to know what has befallen here. Gunther, go with, and saddle a mount for him.”

  Max looked unhappy, but he bowed his head and, pulling his gloves from his belt, strode toward the door. Gunther followed, looking, if possible, even less happy.

  Manfred shook his head. “I fear death is in this house. Everard fell after he exited this very room. How fares he?”

  “Quieter. May I move him to the hospital?”

  “Do what you think needful. Do not ask my permission again. I am taking everyone to the schloss. I barred folk from entering the village and none heeded me. Now Odo has brought this on us. The schildmauer at least I can bar against intruders. Each man must look now to his own house and to his own kin.”

  Dietrich swallowed. “Mine Herr, all men are brothers.”

  Manfred made a long, sad face. “Then you have much work ahead.”

  * * *

  Dietrich called on Ulf and Heloïse to carry Everard to the make-shift hospital in the smithy. Neither Krenkl had yet accepted Christ. They had stayed, Hans had suggested, because their fear of death in the “gap between the worlds” exceeded their fear of death by starvation. But when he asked Ulf about this, the Krenk only laughed. “I fear nothing,” he bragged over the private canal.

  “Krenk die. Men die. One must die well.”

  “With charitas in the heart.”

  An arm toss. “There is no ‘charitas,’ only courage and honor. One dies without fear, in defiance of the Swooper. Not that one believes, naturally, in the Swooper, but it is a saying of ours.”

  “Then why did you stay behind when your vessel left, if not from dread of this ‘Gap’?”

  Ulf indicated the Krenkerin striding ahead of them. “Because the Heloïse stayed. I promised our spouse -. Understand you our man-woman-nurse? Good. The nurse stays always at the nest. I swore a… a blood-oath to it that I would by our Heloïse stay. Some truth-seekers claim that the Gap lacks time, and so prolongs death forever. The Heloïse feared that above all. By me, is all death the same, and I snap my jaws at it. I stayed because of my oath.”

  * * *

  The stench, when they entered Everard’s cottage, was a palpable thing. The steward lay naked upon his bed, save for a dry, filthy rag placed over his brow. Dark blue-black lines ran up his limbs from from the groin and armpits. Of Yrmegard or Witold, there was no sign. Dietrich bent over Everard, thinking him dead, but the man’s eyes flew open and he half-rose in the bed. “Mother of God!” he cried.

  “I must lance the boils before we move him,” Dietrich said to Ulf, gently pressing the steward supine. The black rivers of poison running out the arms and legs suggested that he was already too late. “Where are your wife and child?” he asked Everard. “Who cares for you?”

  “Mother of God!” The steward clawed at himself, raking his skin with his nails, and shrieking. Then, abrubtly, he lay back quietly, panting and gasping, as if he had repelled an assault from the ramparts and was resting now for the next attack.

  Dietrich had washed the knife already in sour wine, and Ulf suggested heating it in the fire as well. The hearth smoldered in sullen red embers. No firewood stood ready. She has fled, Dietrich thought. Yrmegard has abandoned her husband. He wondered if Everard knew.

  The boils were as large as apples, the skin stretched tight and shining around them. He chose the one under the right arm and touched it with the point of his scalpel.

  Everard howled and thrashed, striking Dietrich with his fist and knocking the scalpel from his hand. Dietrich knelt, seeing double from the blow, then groped among the rushes for the fallen blade. When he rose, Everard lay on his side, hugging his arms tight against himself and with his knees drawn up. Dietrich walked to the stool beside the bed and sat for a moment, rubbing his temple and thinking. Then he called Hans by the farspeaker.

  “There is a basket in my shed, marked with the cross of the Hospitallers,” he told his friend. “Bring to the steward’s cottage one of the sponges you will find in it — but handle it with care. It has steeped in mandrake and other poisons.”

  Hans arrived soon, and stood with the other Krenken to watch. Dietrich moistened the sponge in the water barrel behind the cottage and returned, holding it at arm’s length. Then, as the Savoyard had instructed, he held it firmly against Everard’s nose and mouth while the steward clawed at his hands. Long enough for sleep, the Savoyard had said, but not so long as for death. Everard went suddenly limp, and Dietrich tossed the sponge into the fire. Too long? No, the man’s chest rose and fell. Dietrich crossed himself. “Blessed Jesus, guide my hand.”

  The blade’s touch did not awaken the steward, but he groaned and struggled a little. Hans and Ulf held his limbs steady. The boil was tough and Dietrich pressed harder with the point.

  Suddenly, it split, and a vile, suppurating black filth oozed forth, bearing with it the most abominable stench. Dietrich clenched his teeth and applied himself to the remaining boils.

  When he was done, Heloïse handed him a rag that she had meanwhile boiled and soaked in vinegar. With this, Dietrich mopped up the slime and cleaned the man’s body as best he could. “I would not touch the pus,’ Ulf advised, and Dietrich, who had had no such intention, ran outside and bent double, vomiting out that morning’s breakfast and gulping in great gasps of mountain air. Hans, following, touched him briefly several times. “It was bad?”

  Dietrich gasped. “Very bad.”

  “My…” Hans touched his antennae briefly. “I must wash them.” Then he said, “The steward will not live.”

  Dietrich blew his breath out. “We must ever hope, but… I think you are right. His wife has taken their boy and run off. He has none to care for him.”

  “Then we will do it.”

  They placed Everard on an ambulance that Zimmerman had fashioned, and Ulf and Heloïse took up the handles before and after. Dietrich walked alongside and held the litter steady as they negotiated the hill. He remembered how St. Ephraem the Syrian had fashioned three hundred ambulances during a famine in Mesopotamia. We will need more, he told himself.

  Hans stayed to burn all the rags and clothing, and kill whatever small-lives they harbored. Ulf called to him. “Save a portion of the pus for my inspection.”

  “Why did you ask that?” Dietrich said as they proceeded down the hill.

  “I labored with the instruments in our craft’s lazar,” Ulf told him. “We have a device, which Gshert left with us, that enables us to see the small-lives.”

  Dietrich nodded, though he did not understand. Then he asked, suddenly, “Why do you help us with the sick, if you have no faith in charitas?”

  The pagan Krenk tossed his arm. “The Hans is now the krenkish Herr, so I follow him. Beside, it employs my days.”

  Which was, withal, a krenkish sort of answer.

  * * *

  Wanda Schmidt died the next day, on the Commemoration of St. Maternus of Milan. She kicked and writhed and bit her own tongue in twain. Black blood welled
up from within her and spilled forth from her mouth. She heard not the words of comfort that Gottfried Krenk spoke to her; perhaps she did not even feel the gentle pokes which stood among his kind for caresses.

  Afterward, Gottfried accosted Dietrich. “The Herr-from-the-sky would not save the woman of the blessed Lorenz. Wherefore did we pray His aid?”

  Dietrich shook his head. “All men die when God calls them back to Himself.”

  And Gottfried answered, “Could he not have called her more softly?”

  * * *

  Klaus and Odo brought Hilde to the hospital on an ambulance that they carried between them. When they had lain her on a pallet in the smithy, near the fire that Dietrich had built in the furnace, Klaus bid Odo return to the house, and the old man nodded distractedly, and said, “Tell Hilde to hurry back and cook my dinner.”

  Klaus watched him go. “He sits on the stool before the fireplace, and stares into dry ashes. When I enter the room, he turns his eyes toward me for only a moment before he is drawn back to the fascination of cinders. I think he is already dead — in here.” He beat his breast. “All else is mere ceremony.” He knelt to stroke Hilde’s hair. “The beasts are dying, too,” he said. “Along the roadside I saw dead rats, several cats, and Herwyg’s old hound. One-eye will miss that dog.”

  Dear God, Dietrich prayed, will you scour the earth of all living things? “What is this?’ he asked, fingering the sleeve of Klaus’ jerkin. “It looks like blood. Has she vomited blood?”

  Klaus dropped his eyes to the stains and stared at them as if he had never seen them before. “No,’ he said. He touched one of the spots with his fingertip, but it came away with no color, so the blood there was already dried. “No. I… I followed…’