Eifelheim

XI. November, 1348 The Kermis

The Krenken were coming into the village.

The announcement struck Dietrich like a blow to the stomach. He steadied himself with a clutch to Eugen’s bridle. They meant to take the village. Given the krenkish choler, it could be nothing else. But why, after the months of hiding? He looked up at the junker, whose face was as white as the ground. The lad knew. “The Herr sent hand-picked men to face them, I hope.”

Eugen swallowed. “They’ve been told. They’ll stand.”

God vouchsafed Dietrich a vision of the coming events. He saw them unfold with awful clarity, as if they had already been accomplished — already factum est. Grim ranks of the strange creatures hurl bullets with their pots de fer, ignite their thunder-paste. Men are pierced, shattered. Krenken swoop from the air to strike men from above.

Max’s men cry in terror. But they are men who answer fear with blows. The Krenken have their magic weapons, but a broadsword hews them as easily as a man. And once frightened men see that, they fall upon the survivors with a fury more murderous for having been born of fear; hacking and chopping to bits the creatures he had named Hans, and Gschert, and Kratzer.

Whichever way the fight might go, too many would die for the remainder to live. It would be pressed to the last. There would be no men left. Or no Krenken.

But if the Krenken were only beasts that spoke, what did it matter? One slays attacking beasts, and it would end his anxiety.

And yet…

Hans had flown through a rain of arrows and braved Gschert’s dungeon to rescue Dietrich from Burg Falkenstein. Whatever cold krenkish reason had driven it, it deserved more than a sword in answer. One did not put down a dog that had succored one, however fiercely it now barked.

Dietrich saw the world suddenly through krenkish eyes — lost, far from home, neighbors to ominous strangers who could contemplate the killing of their lords, an act incomprehensible, even bestial to them. To Hans, Dietrich was the Beast That Spoke.

Dietrich gasped and siezed Eugen’s snaffle rein. “Quickly. Ride to Manfred. Tell him, ‘they are your vassals.’ He will understand. I will meet him at the mill stream bridge. Now, go!”

The villagers chattered. Some had heard the lepers mentioned, and Volkmar said they would bring their illness into the village. Oliver cried that he would drive them off alone, if need be. Theresia answered that they must be welcomed and cared for. Hildegarde Müller, who alone among them realized what was coming down the Bear Valley road, stood frozen with a hand across her open mouth.

Dietrich rushed to the church, where he seized a crucifix and an aspergum and hailed the creature Hans on the head harness. “Turn back,” he pleaded. “There is yet time.” He draped a stole around his neck. “What is it you want?”

“Escape from this numbing cold,” the Krenk answered. “The… hearths… in our ship will not burn until we have repaired the… the sinews of fire.”

The Krenken might have spent the summer building snug cottages instead of collecting butterflies and flowers. But such chastisement was vain. “Max brings a force to turn you back.”

“They will run. Gschert has that sentence in his head. Our weapons and our form will cause them to flee, and so we will take your hearths for ourselves and not feel this cold.”

Dietrich thought about the gargoyles and monsters that adorned the walls of St. Catherine’s. “You may frighten these men, but they will not run. You will perish.”

“Then, likewise, we will not feel the cold.”

Dietrich was running already down Church Hill, a winter cloak drawn around his shoulders. “There may yet be another way. Tell Gschert to hold a white banner aloft and, when Max confronts you, hold out empty hands. I will meet you at the wooden bridge.”

And so it was that the shivering band of Krenken — bundled in what hodge-podge of garments they could muster and escorted by Max’s trembling, round-eyed men — approached the lord of the Hochwald. The Herr Gschert, splendid in red sash and trousers, and a yellow vest too thin for the weather, stepped forward and, at Dietrich’s coaching, dropped to one knee with his shivering hands folded before him. Manfred, after the barest hesitation, enclosed those hands in his own, announcing to all who had dared draw near, “This… man… We declare Our vassal, to hold in fief the greater woods and to produce for Us charcoal and powder for the pots de fer and to teach the arts of his foreign land to Our men. In return, We grant him and his folk food and shelter, clothing and warmth, and the protection of Our strong, right arm.” And so saying, he drew his longsword and held it before him, pommel-up, to resemble a cross. “This We swear before God and the familia of Hof Hochwald.” Then Dietrich blessed the assembly and sprinkled them with the golden-handled aspergum. Those villagers touched by the water crossed themselves, staring wide-eyed at the monsters. Some of the Krenken, noting the gesture, repeated it — to appreciative murmurs from the crowd. Dietrich blessed God for moving the Krenken to thoughtless mimicry.

He pressed the processional crucifix into the hands of Johann von Sterne. “Lead us slowly to the church,” Dietrich told him, “at a pace, thus.” And all set forth from the bridge and through the village to Church Hill. Dietrich followed the cross and Manfred and Gschert followed him. “May the Lord help us,” Manfred whispered for Dietrich’s ear.

The human heart finds comfort in ceremony. Manfred’s impromptu words, Gschert’s humble gesture, Dietrich’s blessing, the procession and cross tempered the dread in folk’s breasts, so that, for the most part, the Krenken were met by stunned silence and gaping mouths. Men clutched sword hilt or knife handle, or fell to their knees in the snow, but none dared speak against what lord and pastor had so clearly countenanced. A few shrieks pierced the still, cold air, and some clumped awkwardly through the snow in a parody of flight. Doors slammed. Bars fell home.

More would flee were flight easier, Dietrich thought, and prayed for snow. Block the roads; choke the pathways; keep this monstrous advent contained in the Hochwald!

When the Krenken caught sight of the “wooden cathedral,” they chittered and pointed and paused to raise fotografik devices to capture images of the carvings. The procession bunched up short of the doors.

Someone shouted, “They fear to enter!” Then another cried, “Demons!” Manfred turned with his hand on his sword. “Get them inside, quickly,” he said to Dietrich.

While Dietrich chivvied the Krenken into the church, he told Hans, “When they see a red lamp, they are to genuflect before it. Do you understand? Tell them.”

The strategem worked. The villagers quieted once more when the creatures passed within and made obeisance to the True Presence. Dietrich dared relax, a little.

Hans stood beside him with the cross. “I have explained,” he said over the mikrofoneh. “That your overlord-from-the-sky will come again means that we may yet be saved. Do you know when this befalls?”

“Neither the day nor the hour.”

“May he come soon,” Hans said. “May he come soon.”

Dietrich, surprised by the evident fervor, could only agree.

When villager and Krenk alike had crowded within the church, Dietrich ascended the pulpit and related all that had transpired since St. Sixtus Day. He described the strangers’ plight in most piteous terms, and had the krenkish children stand before the congregation with their mothers behind them. Hildegarde Müller and Max Schweitzer bore witness to the injuries and deaths that had afflicted the creatures and described how they had helped place their dead in special crypts aboard their ship. “When I sprinkled them with holy water at the bridge,” Dietrich concluded, “they showed no discomfort. Therefore, they cannot be demons.”

The Hochwalders shifted and glanced at one another. Then Gregor asked, “Are they Turks?”

Dietrich nearly laughed. “No, Gregor. They fare from a farther land than that.”

Joachim thrust his way forward. “No!” he cried for all to hear. “They are true demons. A glance alone convinces. Their coming is a great trial for us… and how we answer it may be the saving of our souls!”

Dietrich gripped the pulpit rails and Manfred, who occupied the sedalia usually reserved for the celebrant, growled, “I have accepted this krenkish lord as my vassal. Do you gainsay me?”

But if Joachim heard, he gave no heed; rather, he addressed the familia. “Remember Job,” he told them, “and how God tested his faith, sending demons to torment him! Remember how God Himself, robed in flesh, suffered all human afflictions — even death! Might He not then afflict demons as he afflicted Job, and even His Son? Dare we bind God with necessity and say that this work God cannot do? No! God has willed that these demons suffer the afflictions of the flesh.” His voice dropped. “But why? But why?” This he said as if he pondered aloud, so that the assembly stilled to hear him. “He does nothing without purpose, hidden though His purpose may be from us. He became flesh to save us from sin. He made these demons flesh to save them from sin. If angels fall, then demons may rise. And we are to be the instrument of their salvation! See how they have suffered at God’s will… And pity them!”

Dietrich, having sucked in his breath, let it out in astonishment. Manfred took his hand from his sword.

“Show these beings what a Christian is,” Joachim continued. “Welcome them into your hearths, for they are cold. Give them bread, for they are hungry. Comfort them, for they are far from home. Thus inspired by our example, they will repent and be saved. Remember the Great Plea: Lord, when did we see You hungry? When did we see You naked? When? In our neighbor! And who is our neighbor? Any who may cross our path!” Here he stabbed a finger directly at the mass of impassive Krenken standing on the gospel side of the nave. “Imprisoned in flesh, they can wield no demonic powers. Christ is all-powerful. The goodness of Christ is all-powerful. It triumphs over every mean and petty and wicked thing, it triumphs over wickedness as old as Lucifer. Now we may see that it will triumph over Hell itself!”

The congregation gasped, and even Dietrich felt a shiver run through him. Joachim continued to preach, but Dietrich listened no longer. Instead, he noted the rapt attention of the Hochwalders; heard the clicks of Hans and a few others as they repeated the talking head’s translations. Dietrich was certain of neither the logic nor the orthodoxy of the monk’s words, but their effectiveness he could not deny.

When Joachim had finished — or perhaps only when he had paused — Manfred rose and announced for those who had not been at the bridge that the krenkish leader was henceforth the Baron Grosswald and would live, together with his ministeriales, as a guest in the Hof and that the remaining strangers would be billeted as his council would determine.

This prospect caused much unease — until Klaus stepped forward and, hands on hips, invited the maier of the pilgrims to guest with him. The offer startled Dietrich, but he supposed that, his wife having tended their wounded, he could not appear behindhand in hospitality. After this, some opened their houses, while others muttered, “Better you than me!”

Manfred cautioned the Krenken about their choler. “I understand that your code of honor demands swift, corporal chastisement. Well and good. Other lands, other customs. But you must not handle my people so. The justice is mine alone, and to transgress it is to besmirch my honor. Should any of you transgress the laws and customs of the manor, you must answer in my court when it meets in the spring. Otherwise, Baron Grosswald will have the low justice among you according to your uses. Meanwhile, we want heralds to wear such head-harnesses as the Krenken may provide, so that whenever there is need to speak one with another, the nearest herald may translate.”

In the silence that followed these announcements, Joachim began to sing, low at first and then more strongly, lifting his chin and throwing words to the vises and rafters, as if transported by some inner fire. Dietrich recognized the hymn, Christus factus est pro nobis, and at the next phrase, joined his own voice in duplum, at which Joachim faltered, then recovered. Dietrich took the “holding voice,” or tenor, and Joachim the upper and their voices moved freely against each other, Joachim sometimes rendering a dozen notes to Dietrich’s one. Dietrich became aware that the Krenken had stilled their chittering and stood as the statues in their niches. Not a few of them held mikrofonai aloft to capture the sounds.

At last their two voices fell into unison on “the refreshing fa” with which the fifth mode ended, and the church remained hushed for some moments, until Gregor’s rough “Amen!” started a chorus of affirmations. Dietrich blessed the congregation, saying, “May God prosper this enterprise and strengthen our resolve. We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.”

Then he prayed silently that the concord miraculously elicited by Joachim’s unexpected sermon would not vanish in the face of second thoughts.

When Dietrich later brought Hans and the Kratzer to the parsonage, he found that Joachim had built up the fire in the main room and was adjusting the crackling logs with an iron poker. The two Krenken made exclamations untranslatable by the talking head and pushed into the room, close to the flames. Joachim stepped back, the poker in his hands and considered them.

“These are to be our particular guests,” he supposed.

“The one wearing the strange furs is called the Kratzer, because when I met him he used his forearms to make a rasping sound.”

“And you called their lord ‘Gschert,’” Joachim said with a flat smile. “Does he know it means ‘stupidly rude’? Who is the other? I’ve seen those garments before, in the church rafters at the feriae messis.”

“You saw him then — and said nothing?”

Joachim shrugged. “I had fasted. It might have been a vision.”

“His name is Johann von Sterne. He is a servant who tends the talking head.”

“A servant, and you call him ‘von.’ I never looked for humor from you, Dietrich. Why does he wear short pants and doublet while the other is wrapped in fur?”

“Their country is warmer than ours. They keep their arms and legs bare because their speech sometimes makes use of the arm-rasping. As their ship was bound for lands likewise warm, neither pilgrims nor crew brought cold weather clothing. Only the Kratzer’s folk, who had planned to explore an unknown country, did so.”

Joachim rapped the poker against the stone fireplace to knock the ashes off. “He will share the fur, then,” he said, hanging the poker on its hook.

“It would never occur to him,” Hans Krenk answered. After a pause, he added, “Nor to me.”

Dietrich and Joachim went to prepare beds for the strangers in the kitchen outbuilding, where the larger kitchen hearth would provide greater warmth. In the snow-path between the buildings, Joachim said, “You sang well in the church today. Organum purum is difficult to master.”

“I learned d’Arezzo’s method in Paris.” That had involved memorizing the hymn Ut queant laxis and using the first syllables of each line for the hexachord: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la.

“You sang like a monk,” Joachim said. “I wondered if you’d ever been tonsured.”

Dietrich rubbed the back of his head. “I came by the bald spot in the common course.”

Joachim laughed, but touched Dietrich on the arm. “Do not be afraid. We shall succeed. We shall save these demons for Christ.”

“They are not demons. You will see that in time, as I did.”

“No, they are steeped in evil. The philosopher refused to share his fur with his servant. Philosophers will always have logical reasons for avoiding the good — and those reasons will always hang on their lust for material goods. A man who has little thinks little of sharing it; but the man who has much will clutch it with his dying fingers. This device…” Joachim fingered the cord of the head harness that Dietrich wore. “Explain how it works.”

Dietrich did not know, but repeated what he had been told about insensible waves in the air, ‘felt’ by devices which he had named ‘feelers,’ or antennae. But Joachim laughed. “How often you say that we ought not imagine new entities to explain a thing when those already known suffice. Yet you accept that there are insensible waves in the air. Surely, that the device is demonic is by far the simpler hypothesis.”

“If this device is demonic, it did me no harm.”

“Diabolical arts cannot harm a good Christian, which testifies in your favor. I had feared for you, Dietrich. Your faith is as cold as the snow, and provides no warmth. True faith is a fire that gives life -.”

“If by that you mean that I don’t shout and weep—”

“No. You talk — and while the words are always right, they are not always the right words. There is no joy in you, only a long-forgotten sorrow.”

Dietrich, much discomfited, said, “There is the tithe barn. Fetch the straw for the bedding.”

Joachim hesitated. “I had thought you went into the woods to lie with Hildegarde. I thought the leper colony a ruse. To believe that was the sin of rash judgement — and I pray your pardon.”

“It was a reasonable hypothesis.”

“What has reason to do with it? A man does not reason his way into a slattern’s bed.” He scowled and his thick brows knit together. “The woman is a whore, a temptress. If you did not go into the woods to be with her, it is certain that she went into the woods to be with you.”

“Judge her not too rashly, either.”

“I’m no philosopher, to mince words. If we are to grapple with a foe, let us at least name him. Men like you are a challenge to women like her.”

“Men like me…?”

“Celibates. Oh, how tasty are the grapes that dangle out of reach! How much more desired! Dietrich, you haven’t granted me pardon.”

“Oh, surely. I take the words of the Lord’s Prayer. I will pardon you as you pardon her.”

Surprise contorted the monk’s features. “For what must I pardon Hilde?”

“For having such ‘a woodpile stacked by the hut’ that you dream of her at night.”

Joachim blanched and his jaw muscles knit. Then he looked at the snow. “I do think on them, what they felt — might feel like in my hands. I am a miserable sinner.”

“So are we all. Which is why we merit love, and not condemnation. Which of us is worthy to throw the first stone? But let us at least not blame another for our own weakness.”

In the kitchen, Dietrich discovered Theresia huddled in a tight corner between the hearth and the outer wall. “Father!” she cried. “Send them away!”

“What ails you?” He reached to her, but she would not emerge from her corner.

“No, no, no!” she said. “Evil, wicked things! Father, they’ve come for us, they mean to take us down down down to hell. How could you let them come? Oh, the flames! Mother! Father, make them go away!” Her eyes did not apprehend Dietrich, but looked on another vision.

This affliction he had not seen in many years.

“Theresia, these Krenken are the distressed pilgrims from the woods.”

She clutched at the sleeve of his gown. “Can you not see their hideousness? Have they enchanted your eyes?”

“They are poor beings of flesh and blood, as we are.”

The monk had come to the door of the kitchen outbuilding, a bundle of staw for the bedding balanced on his shoulder. He dropped it and rushed to the alcove where he went to his knee before Theresia.

“The Krenken terrify her,” Dietrich told him.

Joachim held his hands out. “Come, let us go down to your own cottage. There are none there to frighten you.”

“She ought not to be frightened of them,” Dietrich said.

But Joachim turned on him. “In the name of Christ, Dietrich! First, give comfort; then juggle your dialectic! Help me lift her out of there.”

“You are a handsome boy, brother Joachim,” Theresia said. “He was handsome, too. He came with the demons and the fire but he wept and he carried me away and saved me from them.” She had taken two more steps, supported by Joachim and Dietrich on either side, when she shrieked. Hans and the Kratzer had come to the kitchen door.

“I would observe this woman,” the Kratzer said through the talking head. “Why do some of your folk respond so?”

“She is not one of your beetles or leaves, to be studied and divided by genus and species,” Dietrich said. “Fright has awakened old memories in her.”

Joachim took Theresia under his arm, placing himself between the herb woman and the Krenken, and hurried her through the door. “Make them go away!” Theresia begged Joachim.

Hans clicked his horny lips and said, “You shall have your wish.”

He did not ask Dietrich to translate the remark for the girl, and the priest could not help but wonder if it had been an involuntary exclamation, not meant for overhearing.

That evening, Dietrich tramped into the Lesser Wood and cut down pine branches, which he wove into an Advent wreath for the coming Sunday. When afterward he looked into the kitchen, he saw Joachim’s quilted, goose-down blanket laid over the shivering body of Johann Sterne.