Eifelheim

XII. January, 1348 Before Matins, the Epiphany of the Lord

Winter fell like a shroud. The first snow had barely slumped under the pale sun when a second fell upon it, and path and pasture vanished alike into anonymity. The mill stream and its pond froze clear to the bottom, and fish could be spied mid-wriggle in the wintry glass. Peasants in their cottages, employed in mending and repair, threw another log on the fire and rubbed their hands. The wider world had been emptied out and a pall of gray woodsmoke hung over the silence.

The Krenken huddled miserably before their hosts’ firesides, seldom venturing out. The snow had halted all thought of repair to their ship. Instead, they talked about how they would someday repair it.

But after a time, even the talk ceased.

The complines of St. Saturnius brought a wind buffeting the parsonage’s shuttered windows. A low sussurus moaned through chinks in the planking. Hans had gone to the outbuilding to prepare special krenkish foods for himself and the Kratzer. Joachim hunched over the refrectory table where, under the Kratzer’s critical eye, he whittled Balthazar from a bough of black oak, to add to his crèche figurines.

The door flew open, and the alchemist burst into the room and hopped immediately to the fireside, where he opened Gregor’s fur coat and luxuriated in the flames. “In Germany,” Dietrich said as he went to close the door, “the custom stands that we knock on the doorpost and await permission to enter.” But the alchemist, whom they had named after Arnold of Villanova, made no answer. He clacked some announcement to the Kratzer, and the two fell into an animated discussion which the Heinzelmännchen did not translate.

Dietrich took up the stew pot that he had earlier hung to simmer over the fire and served Joachim. The Krenken were a rude and ill-mannered folk. Small wonder they quarreled so among themselves.

Hans returned from the outbuilding with two plates in his hands. At sight of the alchemist, he hesitated, then handed one to the alchemist and the other to the Kratzer. He sat himself across the table from Joachim.

“That was kindly done,” Joachim said curling another shaving from Balthazar’s back.

Hans tossed his arm. “Were but one morsel left, it would be Arnold’s to swallow.”

Dietrich had noticed that even Gschert deferred to the alchemist, though Arnold was clearly an underling. “Why?” He spooned some soup into a wooden bowl and gave it to Hans, along with a stick of little-bread.

Instead of answering, Hans picked up the Christ-child that Joachim had previously carved. “Your brother tells me that this portrays your lord-from-the-sky; but the philosophy of the likelihood of events concludes that folk from different worlds must have different forms.”

“The philosophy of the likelihood of events,” Dietrich said. “That intrigues.”

“Though less so,” Joachim said dryly, “than Godhead made flesh. The Son of God, Hans, assumed the appearance of men at his Incarnation.”

Hans listened silently to his head harness. “The Heinzelmännchen informs me that ‘incarnation’ in your ceremonial tongue likely means ‘enfleshment’.”

“Ja, doch.”

“But… But this is wonderful! Never have we met a folk able to assume the form of another! Was your lord a being of… No, not fire, but of that essence which gives impetus to matter.”

“Spirit,” Dietrich guessed. “In Greek, we say energia, which means that principle which ‘works within’ or animates.”

The Krenk considered that. “We have a… relationship… between spirit and material things. We say that ‘spirit equals material by the speed of light by the speed of light.’”

“An interesting invocation,” said Dietrich, “though occult in meaning.”

But the Krenk had turned away to interrupt his fellows with untranslated exclamations. A furious debate arose among them, which ended when the alchemist donned his own head harness and addressed Dietrich. “Tell me of this lord of pure energia and how he enfleshed himself. Such a being, when he returns, may yet save us!”

“Amen!” said Joachim. But the Kratzer snapped his side-lips. “Enfleshment? The atoms of the flesh would not fit. Can Hochwalder impregnate Krenk? Wa-bwa-wa.”

Arnold flung his arm. “A being of pure energia might know the art of inhabiting a foreign body.” He took a seat at the table. “Tell me, will he come soon?”

“This is the season of Advent,” Dietrich said, “when we await his birth at Christ Mass.”

The alchemist trembled. “And when and where does he enflesh himself?”

“In Bethlehem of Judea.” The remainder of the evening passed in catechetical instruction, which the alchemist noted diligently on the wonderful writing slate all Krenken carried in their scrips. Arnold asked Joachim to translate the Mass into German so that the Heinzelmännchen could in turn translate it into krenkish. Dietrich, who knew how poorly the figures of one tongue might sit upon another, wondered how much of the sense would survive the journey.

Vigil-Night came and, with it, those villagers who otherwise seldom saw the inside of the church. With them, came Arnold Krenk. Some, upon spying this peculiar new catechumen, slipped quietly outside, including Theresia. When the Mass of the Catechumens ended, and Brother Joachim, holding high the book of Gospels, led Arnold Krenk forth for instruction, a few crept back in for the Mass of the Faithful. But Theresia was not among them.

Afterward, Dietrich threw on a coat and, gripping a torch, picked his way to the foot of the hill, where Theresia’s cottage stood. He banged on the door, but she did not answer, pretending to be asleep, and so he doubled his efforts. The noice brought Lorenz from his smithy to stare at him bleary-eyed and to cast an appraising glance at the stars before returning to his slumbers.

Finally, Theresia opened the upper half of her door. “Will you allow no sleep?” she asked.

“You ran from Mass.”

“While demons are present, there can be no true Mass, so I have not broken the Christ Mass law. You have, father, because you have not prayed a proper Mass.”

This was too subtle for Theresia. “Who told you so?”

“Volkmar.”

The entire Bauer family had also departed the church. “And is Bauer then a theologian? Will you come to the Sunrise Mass?” Never had he need to ask the question. In the past, his daughter had attended all three Christ Masses.

“Will they be there?”

The customs and ceremonies of the village interested the Kratzer, so also many of the stranded pilgrims. Some of them surely would attend with their fotografia and mikrofonai. “They may.”

She shook her head. “Then, I must not.” She started to close the door.”

Dietrich put his hand up to stop it. “Wait. If ‘in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no man or woman,’ how in Christ can I bar anyone from the table?”

“Because,” she answered quite simply, “these demons are neither man nor woman, neither Jew nor Greek.”

“You are a disputatious woman!”

Theresia closed the upper door. “You should rest for the sunrise mass,” he heard her say.

Returning to the parsonage, he expressed his frustrations to Joachim and wondered if he might bar the Krenken from some Masses so Theresia and the others would attend. “The simple answer is that you cannot,” the monk replied, “and like much that the Christ taught, the simple answer will suffice. Only schoolmen burden such things with quibbles.” He reached across the table and seized Dietrich’s wrist. “We are engaged in a wonderful task here, Dietrich. Should we bring these henchmen of Satan to the arms of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be far off. And when the Third Age of the World comes — the Age of the Holy Spirit — our names shall be writ in gold.”

But as he lay down to nap until the Sunrise Mass, Dietrich thought, But will Theresia’s name be writ among them?

As often happens, fear showed itself in avoidance and hostility. Theresia threw snowballs at the Krenken whenever she encountered them in the open, having learned of their particular sensitivity to cold. “Of course the cold bothers them,” she told Dietrich after he had chastised her. “They are accustomed to the fires of Hell.” One time, her icy missiles struck a krenkish child. After this, some of the Krenken, knowing that the mere sight of them would drive her wild, would in acts of petty revenge brave the cold merely to show themselves at her cottage window. Baron Grosswald applied the krenkish discipline to these transgressors — not for love of Theresia Gresch, but to maintain the precarious peace — and warmth — he had eked from Herr Manfred’s disposition.

Even Joachim was moved to express his disappointment. “Had you asked me who in this village would sit before the Lord,” he said one afternoon while he mended a tear in his habit, “I would have named the herb woman. Lorenz told me she was mute when she arrived with you.”

Dietrich, who was sweeping the floor, paused over sudden memories. “And so for two years more.” He cast a glance at the crucifix on the wall, where Jesus also twisted in torment. Why, O Lord, have you afflicted her so? Job at least was a wealthy man and so may have merited affliction, but Theresia was only a child when you took everything from her. “Her father was a Herr in the Elsass,” he said, “and the Armleder burned their manor down, killed her father and brothers, and raped her mother.”

Joachim crossed himself. “God’s peace upon them.”

“All for the crime of being wealthy,” Dietrich added pointedly. “I do not know if her father was a cruel lord or a kind one, whether he held vast sallands or only a poor knight’s patch. Such distinctions meant nothing to that army. Madness had laid hold of them. They held the type wicked, not the person.”

“How came she to escape? Tell me the mob did not…!” Joachim had gone white and his lips and fingers trembled.

“There was a man among them,” Dietrich remembered, “who had opened his eyes and was desperate to escape their company. Yet he had been, even so, a leader, and could not slip away unremarked. So he asked for the girl as if he would bed her. The uprising had collapsed by then. They were dead men walking, and so without the law, for what greater penalty can be heaped upon them? The others thought he had only taken the child to some private place. By morn, he was many leagues distant.” Dietrich rubbed his arms. “It was through this wicked man that the girl came to me, and I brought her here where the madness had never touched and she could know a little peace.”

“God bless that man,” Joachim said, crossing himself.

Dietrich turned on him. “God bless him?” he shouted. “He slew men and urged others to slaughter. God’s blessing was far from him.”

“No,” the monk insisted quietly. “It was always there beside him. He had only to accept it.”

For a moment, Dietrich did not speak. “It is hard to forgive such a man,” he said at last, “whatever kindness moved him at the end.”

“Hard for men, perhaps,” Joachim retorted, “but not for God. What befell him afterward? Did the Elsass Duke take him?”

Dietrich shook his head. “No man has heard his name in twelve years.”

The interval between the Vigil-Night and the Epiphany was the longest holiday of the year. The villagers paid extra dues to stock the lord’s banquet table, but were exempt from all handservice, and so a festive spirit came over all. A spruce tree was again erected on the green and hung about with flags and ornaments, and even the meanest cottage did not lack for its dress of holly, fir, or mistel.

But the merry-making did not extend to the Krenken. A too-literal translation of advent into the krenkish tongue had led the stranded travelers to expect the actual arrival of the much-heralded “lord from the sky,” so their disappointment was keen. While he was pleased that the strangers thus looked forward to the Kingdom of Heaven, Dietrich cautioned Hans against naive literalism. “Since thirteen hundred years the Christ is ascended,” Dietrich explained after the Mass for St. Sebastian, while Hans helped him clean the sacred vessels. “His disciples, too, thought he soon would return, but they were mistaken.”

“Perhaps they were confused by the pressing of time,” Hans suggested.

“What! Can time then be pressed like grapes?” Dietrich was both startled and amused, and smacked his lips in Krenk-like laughter while he placed his chalice in its cupboard and locked it. “If time may be ‘pressed,’ then it is a being on which one may act, and being consists of subject and aspect. A thing that is movable alters in its aspect, for it is here, then it is there; it is this, then it is that.” Dietrich wagged his hand back and forth. “Of motions, there are four: change of substance, as when a log becomes ash; change of quality, as when an apple ripens from green to red; change of quantity, as when a body grows or diminishes; and change of place, which we call ‘local motion.’ Obviously, for time to be ‘pressed’ — here long, there short — there must be a change in quality and hence a motion of time. But time is the measure of motion in changeable things and cannot measure itself.”

Hans disagreed. “Spirit travels so fast as the motion of light when there is no air. At such speeds, time passes more quickly, and what is an eye-blink for the Christ-spirit is for you many years. So your thirteen hundred years may seem to him only a few days. We call that the pressing of time.”

Dietrich considered the proposition for a moment. “I admit two sorts of duration: tempus for the sublunar realm and aeternia for the heavens. But eternity is not time, nor is time a portion of eternity — for there cannot be time without change, which requires a beginning and an end, and eternity has neither. Furthermore, motion is an attribute of changeable beings, while light is an attribute of fire. But one attribute cannot inhere in another, for then the second attribute must be an entity and we must not multiply entities without necessity. Thus, light cannot have motion.”

Hans ground his forearms together. “But light is an entity. It is a wave, like the ripples on the mill pond.”

Dietrich laughed at the Krenk’s witticism. “A ripple in the water is not an entity, but an attribute of water that results from a breeze, or a fish, or a stone thrown into it. What is the medium in which light ‘ripples’?”

Hans said, “There is no medium. Our philosophers have shown that…”

“Can there be a ripple without water?” Dietrich laughed again.

“Very well,” Hans said. “It is only like a ripple, but is composed of… very small bodies.”

“Corpuscles,” Dietrich supplied the word. “But if light were composed of corpuscles — a different proposition from being a ‘ripple in no medium’ — those bodies would impress themselves upon our sense of touch.”

Hans made the tossing gesture. “One cannot argue with such reasoning.” He rubbed his forearms together slowly but, as the rasps were muffled by the fur, he made no sound. “When the Heinzelmännchen oversets ‘motion’ or ‘spirit,’” he said at length, “the krenkish terms I hear may differ from the German terms you spoke. By me, the falling rock is in ‘motion,’ but not the burning log. When I say that by pressing a certain type on the talking head, I release spirit from the fires of the storage barrels and so animate the matter, I know what I have said, but not what you have heard. Have you finished your up-cleaning? Good. Let us to the fire in the parsonage. Here is by me too cold.”

They proceeded to the vestibule, and while Dietrich shrugged into his over-coat and pulled his collar close against the chill, the Krenk spoke further. “Yet you did speak a truth. Time is truly inseparable from motion — duration depends on the degree of motion — and time does have a beginning and an end. Our philosophers have concluded that time began when this world and the other world touched.” Hans clapped his two hands in illustration. “That was the beginning of everything. Some day, they will again clap, and all will begin anew.”

Dietrich nodded agreement. “Our world indeed began when touched by the other world; though to speak of ‘clapping hands’ is but a metaphor for what is pure spirit. But, to press a thing, some actor must press upon it, since no motion exists save by a mover. How might we press upon time?”

Hans opened the church door and crouched for the bounding leaps that would take him quickly through the cold to the parsonage. “Say rather,” he answered cryptically, “that time presses upon us.”

The customs of the manor required Herr Manfred to feast the villagers in the Hof during the holy days, and so he selected according to the Weistümer certain households from the manor rolls. By Oberhochwald, the customary number was twelve, to honor the Apostles. Those who, like Volkmar and Klaus, held several manses, sat beside the lord with their wives and ate and drank off the lord’s own dishes. Gärtners were invited also, though these brought their own cloth, cup, and trencher.

Gunther laid out a board of cheese, beer, swine-flesh with mustard, hazel-hen, sausage and puddings, and a stew of chicken. Manfred had told Baron Grosswald to provide the meal for his own folk from his own stores. Charitas went against krenkish inclinations, and most of what Gschert laid out were German foods, eked out with but a small portion of the more particular krenkish fare. Dietrich put the meager portions down to Grosswald’s innate selfishness.

During the banquet, Peter of Rheinhausen, Manfred’s minnesinger, sang from the Heroes’ Book, choosing the passage wherein King Dietrich’s band of knights attack the Rose Garden of the treacherous dwarf, Laurin, so to rescue the sister of Dietlieb, their comrade. One of Peter’s apprentices played a viol, while the other tapped a small tambour. After a time, Dietrich noticed that the krenkish guests clicked their mandibles in time to the lute. It was in such small ways that their essential humanity impressed itself upon him, and he offered contrition to God that he had ever thought them mere beasts.

Afterward, the peasants could take home what leftover food they could carry in their napkins. Langermann had brought an especially large cloth for this purpose. “The Herr’s table was set with the fruits of my labor,” the gärtner told him when he noticed Dietrich’s eye upon him, “so I am only taking back a little of what was once mine.” Nickel overstated the case, since he labored so little as possible himself, but Dietrich did not begrudge him his foresight.

The servants then cleared the tables from the center of the hall to accommodate the dancing. Dietrich marked how Krenken and Hochwalders slowly separated, like oil and water after being shaken. Some, like Volkmar Bauer, avoided the creatures and favored them with stares at once angry and fearful.

Master Peter played a dance, and the Hochwalders paired off: Volkmar and Klaus with their wives, Eugen with Kunigund, and they stepped through the measures while the other guests watched from the fireside.

Manfred turned to the noble Krenken who stood by him: Grosswald, the Kratzer and Shepherd, who was maier of the pilgrims. “There is a story told of a Vigil-Night dance at Schloss Althornberg,” he said, gesturing broadly with a wine-filled Krautstrunk, whose knurled surface provided a surer grip to the drinker than did smooth glass. “In the revelry, some dancers wore hollowed-out bread loaves as clogs. Well, desecration of bread brings down naturally the Divine wrath, so thunder-weather broke out. A serving wench tried to stop the dance, but Althornberg regarded the thunder as God’s applause and he ordered the dancers to continue, whereat a bolt of lightning set the castle ablaze. The serving wench alone survived — and is sometimes seen to this day on the roads around Steinbis.”

Dietrich countered with the story of the Convent of Titisee. “None were admitted save beautiful heiresses, who lived high on their treasure. One dark and stormy night, there fell a knock on their door during a drunken feast, and the sisters sent their newest novice to answer. Peeping out, she saw a weary old man, white of hair, who prayed lodging for the night. Not being yet corrupted, she begged Lady Abbess to give him hospitality, but the woman only drank a toast to his health and sent him away. That night, the rain flooded the valley and all in the convent were lost, save the young novice, who was rescued by a boat rowed by the old pilgrim. And that is the origin of the Titisee.”

“Makes it so?” asked Shepherd.

“Doch,” Manfred added gravely. “The story may be twice tested. First, one may peer into the depths of the lake and spy the towers of the drowned convent. The other is to dive deep into the waters. For if you dive ‘deeper than ever plummet sounded,’ you will hear the chimes of the convent bells. But none who have done so have returned — for the Titisee is bottomless.”

Later, Hans drew him aside and said, “If none have ever returned from the bottomless lake, how does one know if the bells can be heard?” But Dietrich only laughed.

“A fable is to teach a lesson,” he admonished the Krenk, “not to record a history. But mark that punishment was meted for withholding charity from a stranger, and not for some pagan superstition over bread-loaves.”

Little Irmgard had crept from the nursery, as children were wont to do when their elders feasted; but Chlotilde, her nurse, having discovered the escape, came after her and the child ran shrieking into the room, weaving among the tall forest of legs, until, glancing behind for her pursuer, she collided with Shepherd.

The leader of the pilgrims, who had earned her name because she spent much time gathering them and chivvying them about, gazed down upon the small thing that had nearly bowled her over, and a hush fell across the room. The dancers froze in their motions. Kunigund, seeing what her sister had done, said, “Oh” in a very small voice, for everyone knew of the strangers’ choleric nature.

Irmgard looked up, and then up, and her mouth dropped open. She had seen the creatures already from a distance, but this was her first close encounter. “Why…,” she said in delight, “it’s a giant grasshopper! Can you jump?”

Shepherd cocked her head slightly as her head-harness repeated the words; then, with a slight flex of the knees she leapt toward the rafters of the hall — to Irmgard’s delighted claps. At the top of her leap, Shepherd rasped her shins together, much as a man might click his heels. Before she had touched the flagstones, a second Krenk leapt also and soon several were doing so, to an arrhythmic scritching of arms and clacking of mandibles.

So, thought Dietrich, this is what passes for dance among their kind. Yet the leapers made no effort to move in concert, nor did the scratching and clacking follow a tempus.

But Irmgard’s question and Shepherd’s response had broken the quiet tension in the room. The Hochwalders began to smile as they watched the Krenk leap about, for Irmgard, too, had joined in the leaping with childish glee. Even Volkmar’s scowl softened.

Master Peter, hunting on his lute for a tune proper to the display, settled on a French motetus from The Mirror of Narcissus. It had no effect on the krenkish chaos, but did entice Eugen and Kunigund to resume the intricate and patterned dance. Peter sang, Dame, je sui cilz qui vueil endurer, and his apprentices joined in. The tambourine player took the triplum and sang the lover’s plea — lie with me or I die; while the violist took the tenor and sang the lover’s pain.

“Does it please?” Dietrich asked Hans over the private voice-canal they sometimes used with each other. “Dance is one more bond between us.”

“One more barrier. This peculiar ability of yours shows only how different we are.”

“Our peculiar ability?”

“I have no word for it. To accomplish one thing by doing many different things together. Each man sings now different words to different tunes, yet they blend in ways strange but pleasing to our ears. When you and your brother sang to welcome us on your Kermis, the pilgrims could speak of nothing else for days.”

“You do not know harmony or counterpoint?” But even as he spoke, Dietrich realized that they could not. They were a folk who knew only rhythm, for they did not breathe in the same manner as men did, and so could not modulate a voice. By them was everything click or scratch.

Hans indicated the krenkish leapers. “Geese without a goosehound! When the village honored the new cottages, one man hit a skin, another blew through a tube, a third squeezed air from a bladder, a fourth scraped strings with a stick. Yet all combined into a sound to which the dancers stamped their wooden shoes and slapped their leather hose -without being directed.”

“No one directs your folk now,” Dietrich said, indicating the leapers.

“And they do not leap in… ‘in concert,’ the Heinzelmännchen informs me now of the word. We do not know ‘concert.’ Each of us is alone inside his head, with but a single thought: ‘Because we die, we laugh and leap.’”

How literally Hans meant the proverb did not become clear until the sun warmed the snow on the Epiphny of the Lord. Dietrich was wakened by Wanda, Lorenz’s wife, who dragged him down Church Hill to a hummock of snow just off the high road behind the smithy. There, a small crowd of villagers had already gathered in silence, shivering and blowing into their hands and trading uncertain glances. Lorenz said, “The alchemist is dead.”

And indeed, Arnold lay on his side in a hollow dug into the snow, folded up on himself like those ancient corpses sometimes found in timeless barrows. His nakedness startled Dietrich, as the Krenken disliked the cold even when bundled in fur. In his hand, he clutched a sheet of parchment on which were scratched krenkish word-signs.

“Wanda saw the foot protruding from the snow-bank,” Lorenz said, “and we dug him out with our bare hands.” He held out his palms, red and raw, as if Dietrich might doubt his word and ask for proof. Wanda wiped her dripping nose and looked away from the body. Gregor said, “He was gone when I awoke.”

Seppl’ Bauer smirked. “One demon less to vex us.”

Dietrich turned and cuffed him smartly. “Can demons die?” he cried. “Who has done this?” He looked from one to another of the small crowd. “Which of you killed this man?”

He received denials on all sides and Seppl’ rubbed his ear and glowered. “Man?” he cried under his breath. “Where is his ‘crowing rooster’? He sports no manhood.” And indeed, the creature proved more featureless than a eunuch.

Lorenz said, “I think he burrowed into the snow and the cold took him.”

Dietrich studied how the body lay and admitted that there was none of the pungent ichor that served the visitors for blood, no evidence of bruises. He recalled that Arnold was especially melancholic even among the Krenken, and given to solitude. “Has anyone summoned Baron Grosswald from the Hof? No? You, Seppl’, go now. Yes, you. Bring Max, too. Someone tell Klaus.” Dietrich turned away to find that Fra Joachim had come down from the parsonage to gaze upon the corpse with dismay.

“He was my best catechumen,” the monk said, dropping to his knees in the snow. “I thought he would be the first to come over to us.”

“And what demon,” said Volkmar Bauer gravely, “could live with that?”

Hans and the Kratzer had come with Joachim. The philosopher stood in frozen regard of his friend’s body, but Hans stepped forward and pulled the parchment from the alchemist’s grasp.

“What does it say?” Dietrich asked, but he may as well have asked the carving of St. Catherine, for Hans did not move for a long time.

Hans at last passed the parchment to the Kratzer. “It is part of your prayer,” he said. “’This is my body. Whoever eats it shall live.’”

At this evidence of piety, brother Joachim wept openly and ever after, he would name Arnold in the Meménto étiam of the Mass.

Both Hans and the Kratzer remained silent.